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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER S DIARY
denouncing whocver revolts against the inequitous system, as misguided by false ideals? Superstitious most of them are, more or less, but they cannot claim the credit of the bliss of ignorance. They kucw what they are talking aboul. Their opposition to all new ideas and movements is deliberate. They are defenders of an antiquated social order, based upon the slavery of the multitude, sanctified hy religion. Ideas of equality and freculom are foreign to th: “spiritualist" tradition of India. The belief in the fictitious equality of immaterial souls, together with the doctrine of spiritual libcration, dismisses socin cquality and worldly frecdom as paltry things, not to be bothered about. My soul is frce; how can I ever he i slave? Thc stark reality of social slavery is obscured by the fiction of a free soul. The idea of human freedom is not compatible with the belief in a teleological order. Everything in the world is predetermined by the inscrutable Will of God. How can then a mortal be free?
The defenders of a social order based on such religious dogmas are naturally horrified when cven women begin to be attracted by strange ideas imported from the accursed West. The impertinence of women demanding cquality and freedom forces the protagonists of Indian culture to tell the truth about the place allotted to women by the saintly law-givers of ancient India. They have no 130
