There are thirty books on China, including four biographies of Mao Tse Tung, three each of Chou En Lai and Deng Xiaoping.
In the library on our farm, there are several encyclopaedias, half a dozen dictionaries, fifty plus volumes of The Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, two volumes of the speeches of S. Radhakrishnan and his translation of the Gita. The Hindu View of Life, An Idealist’s View of Life, Eastern Religion and Western Thought. Thirty books on China, including four biographies of Mao Tse Tung, three each of Chou En Lai and Deng Xiaoping, ten on President Charles de Gaulle, which includes three and a half volumes of his autobiography, three on V.D. Savarkar, one on U Thant, four on Aung San Suu Ki, two on Abraham Lincoln… From these books too I wrote down what appealed to me.
I shall begin by quoting the most famous and universally quoted passage from the speech of President Lincoln made at Gettysburg.
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who, here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
“But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, for above our poor power to add or detract. The World will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Mahatma Gandhi was charged with sedition in 1922, and arrested. He was sentenced to jail for six years. He concluded the statement he made at his trial with these inspiring words: “…I am endeavouring to show to my countrymen that violent non-cooperation only multiplies evil and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence. Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-cooperation with evil. I am here therefore, to invite and submit cheerfully, to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen. The only course open to you, the Judge, is either to resign your post, and thus disassociate yourself from evil if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil and that I am innocent, or to inflict on me the severest penalty if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good for the people of this country and that my activity is therefore injurious to the public weal.”
Gandhiji was sentenced to a six-year jail term.
General De Gaulle flew to London on 17th June 1940. He returned to France only in late 1944. On 18th June the British government authorised BBC to let de Gaulle to speak to the people of France. The country had capitulated to Hitler. General de Gaulle had escaped. This is an excerpt from that broadcast.
“…France is not alone. She is not alone. She is not alone. She has a great Empire behind her…, I General de Gaulle, now in London, call on all French officers and soldiers now present on British Territory or who may be in future, with or without their arms, I call on engineers and specialist workers in the arms industry present on British territory or who may be so in future, to get in touch with me. Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not and will not be extinguished.”
On Friday, 12th June 1964, Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment. He ended his statement at his trial thus: “During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”