Los Angeles herald., 1907-06-30
WILL PREACH
NON-RES|STANCE
TO COUNTRYMEN
Baba Bharati Returns
to India
Sage and Philosopher Who Has Lived
In Los Angeles Several Years
Makes Farewell Address
to Students

gathered twice week to listen with alb
sorbing interest to the lectures which
Baba Bharati, the Hindoo sage and
author gave, dividing with equal fervor
his orations between the Christ of our
land and the Krishna of India. AS the
baba is about to leave America for his
native country, a reporter called for
few last words with him. The baba
received him in his handsome library,
where books in all languages and
scrolls from all countries are arranged
along the shelves. With his inimitable
smile the Hindoo said he was busy with
many things preparatory to his de-
parture next month. Taking the hint,
the reporter told him at once the object
of his visit and asked him about his
future plans, and If he intended to re-
turn again to America.
Returns to India
'.T Z have &c plans" promptly replied
the baba. "I am in the hands of the
Lord and he plans for me. / can say
that my country needs me. Just now,
as you know, India IS experiencing a
seething unrest, but that unrest is more
on the surface of her consciousness
Perhaps it would be more exact to say
that the unrest Is in the minds of the
majority of the English-educated Hin
docs who, having assimilated western
ideas of life, are naturally swayed by
western aspirations, which the govern
ment has strenuously disappointed.
THE British government in India is
but shop-keeping on the largest scale,
with this difference, that the shopkeep-
ers are the masters and arbiters of the
destinies of their customers. They own
the country and have maintained their
hold upon it by absolutely disarming the
people for the last fifty years. The only
way they have been allowed to pro-
test against wrongs, expressions, ag-
gressive measures and maladministra-
ton was constitutional agitation. This
the English educated Hindoos adopted,
hoping their earnest appeals would be
heard in some measure. They formed
a national congress, an annual political
assembly of most intellectual men, who
for the last twenty-five years, have re-
corded their protests at palpable wrongs
and injustice which the people suffered
at the hands of the government, and
sent in appeals for their redress to the
secretary of state for India, with the
only effect that they were safely pigeon
holed in the Indian office at London and
never responded to. In despair they
boycotted British goods and started the
'Swadeshi'-a movement for the en-
couragement of the use of indigenous
goods.
National Boycott Spreads
This movement has spread and is
now swaying the whole of India. It's
inspiration was a godsend and prac-
tically proved a divine dispensation,
but it has reused the ire of the govern
inent, which has tried to repress it, in
some instances, openly and in others
by indirect means. The 'Swadeshi' has
accomplished another wonderful thing,
its spirit has almost magically made a
united India, throbbing with the same
feelings, pulsating with genuine pa
triotism. This has frightened the gov
ernment, whose policy hitherto had
been, Divide and rule and it has de-
termined to crush it. Some small pa
triotic riots in Lahore and Rawalpindi,'
In the Punjab, have afforded a handle
to the authorities to deal with the pa
triots with blunt severity. They have
resurrected a certain obsolete regula-
ton, Regulation III of 1918, by which
the then barbarous government was
empowered to imprison or deport any
person without trial, and have recently
arrested some patriotic leaders of the
Punjab, while one of them, Lala Lajpat
Raj, who came to America on a lectur-
ing tour over a year ago, has been de-
ported unceremoniously to Burmah
This has naturally reused the people
all the more and intensified the feeling
Of unrest. The causes of the unrest
are much more complicated, but have
put them as briefly and simply as
can.
Will Teach Non-Resistance
'This is what calls me to India just
now, or else should perhaps have re-
inad onnfhear 7
have been tremendously overworked.
I want to tell my countrymen that it
is simply suicidal to try the temper of
the government, more than ever, upon
adopting policy OF utmost repression.
I want to tell them that India, of all
countries in the world, has shown the
most luminous example of observing the
principles of non-resistance, and has al
ways mastered thereby the most hope
less situations in the end. Non-resist-
ance is the most powerful resistance in
the world. for physical non-resistance
only covers and conserves the most
potent moral resistance whose weapons
are the instruments of the divine will.
India lives in her soul, her energy
is in her soul, her might lies in that
soul-energy. She has lived through all
the ages from creation, sustained by
her spiritual power. To her world-old
national existence few hundred years
of foreign oppression is but mosquito
bite of a moment. The time is ap-
preaching when the giant of her spirit
ual consciousness will awake fully and
arise, shaking the Lilliputian tor
mentors off her blessed body. 1t is
coming, coming, and the world will see
that coming before it is decade older.
IT am not political person. belong
to the realm of asceticism. am citi-
zen of the world, aye, of the universe.
But 1t is my duty to warn the beloved
people of my land of birth against their
foolish action. Let them stick to
'Swadeshi' and boycott with all their
energy and resolution and out of that
concentrated mind force will come the
era of their salvation. Let them turn
their minds to the worship of their in
comparable religious consciousness, let
ting the selfish and unsympathetic rul-
ers of their country alone, and out of
the altar of that consciousness will leap
up a flame that will surround their
enemies with a conflagration from
which they will run away or burn
down Ia it.
India is in charge of the worlds
soul She must not neglect that trust
for the worlds sake, to barter ii for