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But in what way can a man believing in god cease believing due to his personal vanity? There are only two ways. The man should either begin to think himself a rival of god or he may begin to believe himself to be god. In neither case can he become a genuine atheist. In the first case he does not even deny the existence of his rival. In the second case as well he admits the existence of a conscious being behind the screen, guiding all the movements of nature. It is of no importance to
us whether he thinks himself to be that supreme being or whether he thinks the supreme conscious being to be somebody apart from himself. The fundamental is there. His belief is there. He is by no means an atheist.
To stand upon one’s own legs amid storms and hurricanes is not a child’s play. At such testing moments, vanity, if any, evaporates, and man cannot dare to defy the general beliefs.
With no selfish motive, or desire to be awarded here or hereafter, quite disinterestedly have I devoted my life to the cause of independence, because I could not do otherwise.
who cannot devote themselves to anything else than the service of mankind and emancipation of the suffering humanity, that day shall inaugurate the era of liberty.
But I do not want the help of any intoxication to meet my fate. I am a realist.
My life is not so precious, at least to me, as you may probably think it to be. It is not at all worth buying at the cost of my principles.
Had any other person done it, I would have considered it to be nothing short of treachery. But in your case, let me say that it has been a weakness - a weakness of the worst type.
By “Revolution” we mean that the present order of things, which is based on manifest injustice, must change. Producers or labourers in spite of being the most necessary element of society, are robbed by their exploiters of the fruits of their labour and deprived of their elementary rights.
It is through motive alone that the real value of any action can be decided.
I will climb the gallows gladly and show to the world as to how bravely the revolutionaries can sacrifice themselves for the cause.
The thing that I wanted to point out was that compromise is an essential weapon which has to be wielded every now and then as the struggle develops.
The revolutionaries must always keep in mind that they are striving for a complete revolution. Complete mastery of power in their hands.
The real revolutionary armies are in the villages and in factories, the peasantry and the labourers.
The sleeping lion once awakened from its slumber shall become irresistible even after the achievement of what our leaders aim at.
revolution means the complete overthrow of the existing social order and its replacement with the socialist order.
The political revolution does not mean the transfer of state (or more crudely, the power) from the hands of the British to the Indian, but to those Indians who are one with us as to the final goal, or to be more precise, the power to be transferred to the revolutionary party through popular support.
It is this half-heartedness that we hate, not the compromise at a particular stage in the struggle.
But I mean to say that mere bomb-throwing is not only useless, but sometimes harmful. The
plea that the lawyer was suggesting to offer defence,
revolution does not merely mean an upheaval or a sanguinary strife. Revolution necessarily implies the programme of systematic reconstruction of society on
new and better adapted basis, after complete destruction of the existing state of affairs (i.e. regime).
Not to punish but to reclaim should be the guiding principle of the administration of justice.