Daridranarayana is one of the millions of name 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.

I recognize no God except 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 the service of these millions.

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.

With this very hand I have collected soiled pies from them tied 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 tale about God to them. They know, if they know any God at all, a God of terror, vengeance, a pitiless tyrant.

If I preach against the modern artificial life of a sensual enjoyment, and ask men and women to go back to the simple life epitomized in the Charkha, I do so because I know that without an intelligent return to simplicity, there is no escape from our descent to a state lower than brutality.

Don’t be dazzled by the splendour that comes to you from the west. Do not be thrown off your feet by this passing show. The Enlightened One has told you in never to be forgotten words that this little span of life is but a passing shadow, a fleeting thing, and if you realize the nothingness of all that appears before you eyes, the nothingness of this material case that we see before us ever changing, then indeed there are treasures for you up above and there is peace for you down here, peace which pass the all understanding, and happiness to which we are utter strangers. It requires an amazing faith, a divine faith and surrender of all that we see before us.

What did Buddha do, and Christ do, and also Mohammed? Theirs were lives of self-sacrifice and renunciation. Buddha renounced every worldly happiness because he wanted to share with the whole world, his happiness which was to be had by man who sacrificed and suffered in search for Truth.

If it was a good thing to scale the heights of Mt.Ever est. sacrificing precious lives in order to be able to get there and make some slight observations, if it was a glorious thing to give up life after life in planting a flag in the uttermost extremities of the earth, how much more glorious would it be to give not one life, surrender not a million lives but a billion lives in search of the potent and imperishable truth?

A time is coming when those, who are in the mad rush today of multiplying their wants vainly thinking that they add to the real substance, real knowledge of the world, will retrace their steps and say: ‘What have we done?’

Civilization have come and gone, and in spite of all our vaunted progress I am tempted to ask again and again, ‘To what purpose?’ Wallace, a contemporary of Darwin, has said the same thing. Fifty years of brilliant inventions and discoveries, he has said, has not added one inch to the moral height of mankind. So said a dreamer and visionary if you will, Tolstoy. So said Jesus, and Buddha, and Mohammed, whose religion is being denied and falsified in my own country today.

By all means drink deep of the fountains that are given to you in the Sermon on the Mount, but then you will have to take to sackcloth and ashes. The teaching of the Sermon was meant for each and every one of us. You cannot serve both God and Mammon. God the Compassionate and the Merciful, Tolerance incarnate, allows Mammon to have his nine days’ wonder. But I say to you: fly from that self-destroying but destructive show of Mammon.

India’s destiny lies not alone the bloody way of the West, of which she shows signs of tiredness, but along the bloodless way of peace that comes from a simple and godly life. India is in danger of losing her soul. She cannot lose it and live. She must not therefore lazily and helplessly say; ‘I cannot escape the onrush from the West.’ She must be strong enough to resist it for her own sake and that of the world.

I do believe, that if India had patience enough to go through th4e fire of suffering and to resist any unlawful encroachment upon it s own civilization which, imperfect though it undoubtedly is, has hitherto stood the ravages of time, she can make a lasting contribution to the peace and solid progress of the world.

I feel that India’s mission is difference from that of others. India is fitted for the religious supremacy of the world. There is no parallel in the world for the process of purification that this country has voluntarily undergone.

India is essentially Karmabhumi (land of duty) in contradiction to bhogabhumi (land of enjoyment).

India has never waged war against any nation. She has put up sometimes ill organized or half-organized resistance in self-defence pure and simple. She has, therefore, not got to develop the will for peace. She has that in abundance whether she knows it or not.

I want India to recognize that she has a soul that cannot perish and that can rise triumphant above every physical weakness and defy the physical combination of a whole world.

I venture to suggest, in all humility, that if India reaches her destiny through truth and non-violence she will have made no small contribution to the world peace for which all the nations of the earth are thirsting and she would also have, in that case, made some slight return for the help that those nations have been freely giving to her.

India’s freedom must  revolutionize the world’s outlook upon peace and war. Her impotence affects the whole of mankind.

Out nationalism can be no peril to other nations inasmuch as we will exploit none, just as we will allow none to exploit us. Through Swaraj we will serve the whole world.

If the mad race for armaments continues it is bound to result is a slaughter such as has never occurred in history. If there is a victor left the very victory will be a living death for the nation that emerges victorious.

There is no escape from the impending doom save through a bold and unconditional acceptance of the non-violent method with all its glorious implications.

If there were no greed, there would be no occasion for armaments. The principle of non-violence necessitates complete abstention from exploitation in any form.

Immediately the spirit of exploitation is gone, armaments will be left as appositive unbearable burden. Real disarmament cannot come unless the nations of the world cease to exploit one another.

The better mind of the world desires today not absolutely independent States warring one against another, but a federation of friendly interdependent States.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. Without realize its oneness with the universe or suppress his egotism.

His social interdependence enables him to test his faith and to prove himself on the touchstone of reality. If man were so placed or could so place himself as to be absolutely above all dependence on his fellow-beings he would become so proud and arrogant as to be a veritable burden and nuisance to the world.

Dependence on society teaches him the lesson of humility. That a man ought to be able to satisfy most of his essential needs himself is obvious; but it is no less obvious to me when self-sufficiency is carried to the length of isolating oneself from society it almost amounts to sin.

It is impossible for one to be internationalist without being a nationalist. Internationalism is possible only when nationalism becomes a fact, i.e., when peoples belonging to different countries have organized themselves and are able to act as one man.

It is not nationalism that is evil, it is the narrowness, selfishness, exclusiveness which is the bane of modern nations which is evil. Each wants to profit at the expense of, and rise on the ruin of, the other.