India, Oct. 2 -- It is a paradox that in spite of my intimate connection with Mahatmaji, he is the one subject on which I feel helpless when I begin to write. A cynicism overtakes me. Secular admirers have heaped their tributes on him for having shown the world a new method of solving conflicts by truth and love instead of by violence. They often call it a technique. As the secularists have understood the Mahatma, a concealed petitio principii invalidates the technique. It appears to me that we must get behind love and truth and dive deep till we discover what really can make Gandhiji's solution a serviceable reality. Leaders of men abroad have admired Gandhiji as one who developed an effective new technique based on non-violence for struggling against wrong. The very notion that what Gandhiji taught was a technique has led to error and of course disappointment. Non-violence is not a gadget to get what we used to try to get through violence and much trouble, in the pre-Gandhian days, as we get cooking energy from electricity instead of from coal or wood fuel. Mahatma Gandhi's technique is no doubt the presentation of love and truth in any confrontation against evil. But love and truth are not available in the market. We cannot procure them as we can procure rifles and pistols. They can issue only out of faith in God. We have changed from animal powerto steam and from steam to oil fuel and from oil to electricity. All these variations of energy do not furnish the basis of understanding Mahatma Gandhi's technique. The moral energy, soul-force as Gandhiji loved to call it, comes from faith and true religious devotion. All the time up to his death. Gandhiji laid stress on this source of power. Much of the non-violence practices by ardent devotees who, for the sake of convenience or for avoiding bloodshed, seek to practise what Gandhiji taught are only variations of violence. Non-violence does not consist in merely not calling to aid a lathi or a dagger or a pistol. The positive aspect of non-violence is what has to be realised; and that is firm faith in the reality of God's sovereignty. Where this is absent, non-violence will fail. It is generally known that the non-violent way shown by Gandhiji demands abstaining from the use of physical weapons. But it is not as generally realised that abstention from the use of physical violence with hatred and venom burning in the heart is not non-violence such as Gandhiji conceived it. To enunciate that love and truth are the new tools given to us by Gandhiji to serve as powerful answers to the hatred and falsehood and violence of the enemy is easy. To say that these forces of love and truth can solve, and are the only way to solve, the racial, economic and political conflicts of the world is easy. But in practice it will be found to be begging the question: How can I summon up love for one who has given me so much cause to hate? How can a Pakistani patriot love Indians? How can Indian patriots love the Pakistanis? The force of love cannot spring from nowhere where there is good reason for the opposite of love. It must spring from a firm faith in God and his sovereignty over the hearts of men, if we desire to save Gandhiji's way from becoming an empty doctrine or a disappointing technique. Satyagraha is not for the sceptic, not forone who is content with the phenomenal world and the careful classification of what one sees in that world, which is called science. It may be a beautiful fountain-pen. But if there is no ink in it, or if you fill it only with water, the pen can't write. Let us, while celebrating Gandhiji's birth centenary, reflect and realise his true teaching and the true lessons of his work and not look upon him as a mere inventor of a cheap gadget to displace an old troublesome way. Gandhiji was not an inventor. He was a man of God, and therefore was he called Mahatma....