यतो धर्म: ततो जय:
17, Boze Para Lane,
Bagh Bazaar, Calcutta
April 14, 1903
My Sweet Yum,
Your letter this week is a little note in the midst of enclosures, and it sounds dreadfully like a sob to me. You are in the city of Kneipp Cure-and I fear you are very weary. I wd. love to come to you-only just at this moment I must not desert my port. But when S. Sara Comes, and some of the responsibilities are transferred to her, who knows what might be possible? I am in correspondence just at present with Mr. Stead about the possibility of making a great Indian review. The whole task now is to give th word "Nationality" to India-in all its breadth and meaning. The rest will do itself. India must be observed by this great conception. Hindu and Mohammedan must become one in it, wiht a passinate admiration of each other.
It means new views of history, of custom, and it means th assimilation of the whole Ramakr. [Rramakrishan] - Vivekananda idea in Religion - the synthesis of all religious ideas.
It means a final understanding of the fact that the political process and the economic disaster are only side-issues, that the one essential fact is realisation of her own Nationality by the nation.
I do not know a better means by which such an end wd. be achieved than a great magazine, and the possibility has come to me unsought. But oh, the difficulties! They seem numberless. Please be very silent on the point, for nothing is so fatal as telling your idea to the wrong man - and almost everyone is the wrong man at present. I can only hope that my letters to you are UN-violated. But it will cheer you, I know, to hear of the ideas that come to one.
I have now written a good deal of my book -
1. Threads from an Eastern Loom(Life of bose para lane).
2. Eastern Mother.
3. Hindu Woman as Wife.
4. Love Strong as Death.(=Widows)
----
----
7. Indian Sages.
8. Noblesse Oblige.(=Caste)
9. The Evolution of Hinduism. (An immense chapter, showing Swamiji and Sri R. K. as the turning-point of the whole thing).
10. The wheel of Birth and Death.
11. The Gospel of the Blessed One. (=Gita)
12. Siva or Mahadev-a mountain-myth.
13. An Indian Pilgrimage.
Perhaps Chaps. 5 and 6 will be "Ideals of Indian Womanhood" - and "Problems of Oriental Women." And perhaps 14,15,16 will be
The Bazaar and the Crafts.
The Pageant of India.
The Needs of India.
Of course the failures are painfully clear to myself. But this I suppose must always be so. Perhaps others may have a good word to say for the book. I think of calling it "the Web of Indian Life." What do you think of this title? Is it not better than "Glimpses of Hindu Life?"
Christine is here. She is so very sweet, but curiously like an Indian Woman, as Nigu[Okakura] said the first evening he saw her. It is a deep likeness, not a superficial. Curiously, I watch her going through some of the phases I went thro.' Today we have been at the math all day by her wish. I lay on the floor in Sarada's room reading Egypt all day, and it was she who went off and meditated. But she is not the least like me, really. She is passive, and faithful, and simple. The boys love her, and she is nearer to simple people in some ways than I am.
She is willing to undertake the work amongst the widows, if only her strength comes back to her, and if the Holy Mother returns to Calcutta, to give her a footing. Beyond this, she is more he winess than anyone I ever saw. Love is everything to her-but it is a sngle ardent solitary passion, not a roaming or all-embracing love. She is at once the most fortunate and the saddest amongst women.
A letter has been publised in a Bengali paper wh. shows how sorely N.has had to fight for the Conference idea, and how completely it is worsted for the present.
Mr. Swinny-President of the London Positivists was in India a little while ago-and he is writing beautifully about India in the Positivist Review. I am much mistaken if he is not absolutely the finest and wholest voice we have yet had.
I do hope you will stick to a cure somewhere-though I know you donot care for the country-for you do need repairing and mending, dear Yum-if we are not to see you die. And please don't do that-for you are absolutely necessary to your own Child and His.
Margot
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