Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
Letter ID: 371
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
May 5, 1933
[...] This second fast of Mahatma Gandhi of three weeks has disquieted me a little1. 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 of anything but disastrous augury? I would like to have your verdict....
Very glad you have recovered your position. Let it be a firm terrain on which the rest can come.
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!
1 Gandhi had been in jail since January 1933. He announced a 21-day fast “in connection with the Harijan cause.” Gandhi was released a few days later, and asked the Congress to suspend the Civil Disobedience Movement.