GANDHI MAHATMA: (1869-1948) ´ All these experiences teach me to be stronger & more & more confirmed in my views´

GANDHI MAHATMA: (1869-1948) ´ All these experiences teach me to be stronger & more & more confirmed in my views´

GANDHI MAHATMA: (1869-1948) Indian political and spiritual leader during the Indian independence movement. A good A.L.S., yours, Old Friend, (although also signed ´from M. K. Gandhi´ to the head of the first page), four pages (written to the first and fourth and second and third sides of two bifolia), 8vo, Ahmedabad, 30th July n.y., to [Hermann Kallenbach] (´My dear friend´). Gandhi states that he has received his friend´s letter ´from your strange & new abode´ and that it had arrived shortly before his time for grinding wheat, ´I thought of you whilst grinding. I wished you were opposite me helping to grind. I then thought how we w[oul]d have talked away, how you would have perhaps kicked against the monotony of it, how you would have wanted to turn the handle alone, how I would then have gone for you & how you would have patiently put up with all that & so we would have made ourselves merry. But it was only a dream. I sighed & I laughed´. Gandhi continues to write in a philosophical manner, ´The experiences you are undergoing are all a preparation for a better future, no matter what it is to be. I shall fondly hope that these experiences are nothing but an asset for our joint life. War must end one day and one day we must meet & again be physically near one another as we are in spirits today. Let not the life there have a depressing effect upon you. Then it will be well with you. Mind is its own place; it can make heaven of hell & hell of heaven. My experiences are no less varied than yours. Every day brings me some fresh experience whether from the inmates of the Ashram or from visitors. All these experiences teach me to be stronger & more & more confirmed in my views´ and also sends news of his family and other matters, ´Manilal [the second son of Gandhi] has now commenced his tuition in a handwove business. Jamnadas [a nephew of Gandhi] has already been to a factory. Tamil study is getting on. I have three Tamilians on the farm engaged in teaching everybody Tamil. I think that the order that is being evolved will please you. It may be that you will just come here when we are best fitted to please your Germanic exactness in all we do. Only be as exacting from yourself as you are from those who surround you´. A personal and endearing letter of fine content demonstrating the warm friendship that existed between Gandhi and Kallenbach, as well as their philosophical and spiritual exchanges, and also illustrating Gandhi´s optimism in the face of war and his indestructible faith in the future of mankind. Some light tape stains to various edges of the letter, only very slightly affecting a few words of text and not the signatures. G

Hermann Kallenbach (1871-1945) Lithuanian-born Jewish South African architect, one of the closest and foremost friends and associates of Mahatma Gandhi.