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must go. There is enough employment in India for all who will work with their hands

and feet honestly. God has given everyone the capacity to work and earn more than his

daily bread and whoever is ready to use that capacity is sure to find work. No labour is

too mean for one who wants to earn an honest penny. The only thing is the readiness

to use the hands and feet that God has given us.

Harijan, 19-12-36

I hold that a working knowledge of a variety of occupations is to the working class what

metal is to the capitalist. A labourers skill is his capital. Just as the capitalist cannot

make his capital fructify without the co-operation of labour, even so the working man

cannot make his labour fructify without the co-operation of capital. And, if both labour

and capital have the gift of intelligence equally developed in them and have

confidence in their capacity to secure a fair deal, each at the hands of the other, they

would get to respect and appreciate each other as equal partners in a common

enterprise. They need not regard each other as inherently irreconcilable antagonists.

But the difficulty is that whilst today capital is organized and seems to be securely

entrenched, labour is not. The intelligence of the working man is cramped by his

soulless, mechanical occupation which leaves him little scope or chance to develop his

mind. It has prevented him from realizing the power and the full dignity of his status.

He has been taught to believe that his wages have to be dictated by capitalists instead

of his demanding his own terms. Let him only be organized along right lines and have

his intelligence quickened, let him learn a variety of occupations, and he will be able

to go about with his head erect and never be afraid of being without means of

sustenance.

Harijan, 3-7-37

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Chapter 13

DARIDRANARAYAN

Daridranarayan is one of the millions of names by which humanity knows God who is

unnamable and unfathomable by human understanding and it means God of the poor,

God appearing in the hearts of the poor.

Young India, 4-4-29

For the poor the economic is the spiritual. You cannot make any other appeal to those

starving millions. It will fall flat on them. But you take food to them and they will

regard you as their God. They are incapable of any other thought.

Young India, 5-5-27

With this very hand I have collected soiled pies from them tried tightly in their rags.

Talk to them of modern progress. Insult them by taking the name of God before them

in vain. They will call you and me fiends if we talk about God to them. They know, if

they know God at all, a God of terror, vengeance, a pitiless tyrant.

Young India, 15-9-27

I am able to restrain myself from committing suicide by starvation because I have faith

in Indias awakening and her ability to put herself on the way to freedom from this

desolating pauperism. Without faith in such a possibility I should cease to take interest

in living.

Young India, 3-4-31

I dare not take before them the message of God. I may as well place before the dog

over there the message of God as before those hungry millions who have no luster in

their eyes and whose only God is their bread. I can take before them a message of God

only by taking the message of sacred work before them. It is good enough to talk of

God whilst we are sitting here after a nice breakfast and looking forward to nicer

luncheon, but how I am to talk of God to the millions who have to go without two

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meals a day? To them God can only appear as bread from their soil. I offered them the

spinning wheel in order that they may get butter and if I appear today.in my loin-

cloth it is because I come as the sole representative of those half-starved, half-naked

dumb millions.

Young India, 15-10-31

I recognize no God expect the God that is to be found in the hearts of the dumb

millions. They do not recognize His presence; I do. And I worship the God that is Truth

or Truth which is God, through service of these millions.

Harijan, 11-3-39

We are either ignorant or negligent of the divine law by virtue of which man has been

given only his daily bread and no more, with the result that there arise inequalities

with all the misery attendant upon them. The rich have a superfluous store of things

which they do not need and which are, therefore, neglected and wasted; while millions

starve and are frozen to death for want of them. If each retained possession only of

what the needed, no one would be in want and all would live in contentment. As it is,

the rich are discontented no less than the poor. The poor man would become a

millionaire and the millionaire a multi-millionaire. The poor are often not satisfied

when they get just enough to fill their stomachs; but they are clearly entitled to it and

society should make it a point to see that they get it. The rich must take an initiative

in the matter with a view to a universal diffusion of the spirit of contentment. If only

they keep their own property within moderate limits the poor will be easily fed, and

will learn the lesson of contentment along with the rich. From

Yeravda Mandir, Chap.VI

Civilization in the real sense of the term consists not in the multiplication but in the

deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants, which promotes real happiness and

contentment and increase the capacity for service. One can reduce ones wants by

perseverance, and the reduction of wants makes for happiness-a healthy body and a

peaceful mind.

From Yeravda Mandir, Chap. VI

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The golden rule.is resolutely to refuse to have what millions cannot. This ability to

refuse will not descend upon us all of a sudden. The first thing is to cultivate the

mental attitude that will not have possessions or facilities denied to millions, and thenext immediate things is to re-arrange our lives as fast as possible in accordance with

that mentality.

Young India, 24-6-26

Jesus, Muhammed, Buddha, Nank, Kabir, Chaitanya, Shankara, Dayanand, Ramkrishna

were men who exercised an immense influence over and moulded the character of

thousands of men. The world is the richer for their having lived in it. And they were all

men who deliberately embraced poverty as their lot.

Speeches and Writing of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 353

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Chapter 14

THE GOSPEL OF BREAD LABOUR

The great Nature has intended us to earn our bread in the sweat of our brow.

Everyone, therefore, who idles away a single minute becomes to that extent a burden

upon his neighbours, and to do so is to commit a breach of the very first lesson of

Ahimsa.Ahimsa is nothing if not a well-balanced exquisite consideration for ones

neighbor, and an idle man is wanting in that elementary consideration.

Young India, 11-4-29

The divine law, that man must earn his bread by laboring with his own hands, was firststressed by a Russian writer named T. M. Bondaref. Tolstoy advertised it and gave it

wide publicity. In my view the same principle has been set forth in the third chapter of

the Gita, where we are told, that he who eats without offering sacrifice eats stolen

food. Sacrifice here can only mean bread labour.

Reason too leads to an identical conclusion. How can a man, who does not do body

labour, have the right to eat? In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread, says

the Bible. A millionaire cannot carry on for long, and will soon get tired of his life, if

he rolls in his bed all day long, and is even helped to his food. He, therefore, induces

hunger by exercise and helps himself to the food he eats. If everyone, whether rich or

poor, has thus to take exercise in some shape or form, why should it not assume the

form of productive, i.e. bread labour? No one asks the cultivator to take breathing

exercise or to work his muscles. And more than nine-tenths of humanity lives by tilling

the soil. How much happier, healthier and more peaceful would the world become, if

the remaining tenth followed the example of the overwhelming majority, at least tothe extent of laboring enough for their food!

There is a world-wide conflict between capital and labour, and the poor envy the rich.

If all worked for their bread, distinctions of rank would be obliterated; the rich would

still be there, but they would deem themselves only trustees of their property, and

would use it mainly in the public interest.

Bread labour is a veritable blessing to one who would observe non-violence, worship

Truth and make the observance of Brahmacharya a natural act. This labour can truly