SECTION I : Selected Letters

Gandhi Letter 50 : To C Rajagopalachari

July 16, 1925

MY DEAR C. R.,

Somehow or other I need your letter to feel that all is well with you. My position is this. My body and mind are living in a world by which I remain unaffected, but in which I am being tried. My soul is living in a world physically away from me and yet a world by which I am and want to be affected. You are a part of that world and perhaps the nearest to me. My innermost being wants your approbation of what I am doing and thinking. I may not always succeed in getting it, but it craves for your verdict.
Now you understand exactly why I want to hear from you apart from many other reasons. You must let me have if it is only a postcard every week. Mahadev, Devdas, Pyarelal1 should keep you posted with what is going on.
And you must keep well.
Your sadhana2 is the development of the place where you are and a scientific test of our theory of the value of hand-spinning. Even if it proves untrue in the end, neither we nor the world will have lost anything, for I know that we are true in the sense that we have full faith in the programme and, if it is intrinsically not immoral, our theory can be claimed to be true, when a fairly large number of villages sustain hand-spinning and Khadi without protection as the whole of India sustain home cookery without protection. Surely this is a long introduction to what I want to say. Here is Pitt's letter and the letters from Kelappan. I am simply saying that we must keep nominally a Satyagrahi at the Eastern gate unless the local men think otherwise. But you may come to other conclusion. You should write to Kelappan. He seems to be a nice, useful man.
With love,

Yours,
BAPU

Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. XXVII, pp. 384-85

1. Pyarelal Nayyar, Gandhiji's Secretary 1920-48, and biographer.
2. A persistent effort.