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THE MEMOIRS OF A CAT
want to be free politically, prosper materially, advance culturally, and elevate themselves morally. Even today, they do love life. The accident of being born on the banks of the Ganges or some other muddy stream does not enable people to overcomc nature, to acquire super-natural powers. The love of life is inherent in life itself. Life germinates in love. If it is sinful to love life, God might have arranged the world differently. Why should hc create an ocean of sin so that man may have the ordeal of crossing it? Such nonsensical ideas of life, world and God are sacrilegious. Indians do love life; but they do so surreptitiously, with a guilty conscience. The very notion of a higher life is the evidence for the natural love of life. You don't shun life ; but reluctantly give up a bad one in the hope of coming in possession of a better one as the recompense. Only those utterly devoid of the critical faculty find this attitude towards life as actuated by the spirit of renunciation. Indians must learn to love life, not surreptitiously as they do, as they have always done, but with a bold frankness. The way to real spiritual elevation lies in normal social progress. How can you make anything out of life, unless you learn how to live? Suicide is not the way to immortality.
Let the Indian masses taste the joy of life, and their natural love of life will no longer be camouflaged in all sorts of religious superstitions and
