Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Remarks on Public Figures in India

Mahatma Gandhi [2]

This second fast of Mahatma Gandhi of three weeks has disquieted me a little. There seems to be no way out, for Gandhi asserts that he can break his irrevocable fast only if he is persuaded that the inner voice which enjoins the fast on him is the voice not of God but of the Devil. I wonder whose voice it is though? Can it be anything but disastrous augury?

I don’t think it was the voice of God that raged and thundered till Gandhi decided to starve himself on to the danger line — it looks as if it were the other fellow. One can only hope that he will scrape through somehow and that the doctors are wrong as they most often are when they opine in the plural; but the last experiment was not encouraging. And as this time there seems to be no reason whatever for this inspired procedure and no practical or practicable object set before it, there is no tangible means either of bringing it to a timely close. What an extraordinary ignorance of spiritual things to take any “inner” shout for the command of the Supreme!

5 May 1933