Amid divisions within Congress and Subhas Chandra Bose’s different course, he wrote from Sevagram on July 21, 1941 In the July letter, published under the headline “SATYAGRAHA. Civil Resistance Suspended”, Gandhi disclosed that the governor of Bombay had conveyed “a grave warning” from the Government of India that renewed civil disobedience could threaten public security.

Writing from Mani Bhavan in Bombay, Gandhi conceded that the suspension was painful. Yet he remained unyielding on the law: “Satyagrahi will pay for its removal with their lives if it cannot be removed by lesser means.”

He also warned the Raj: “If my occasional Civil Resistance be a lighted match, Rowlatt legislation…is a thousand matches scattered throughout India.” For Gandhi, non-violence was not merely tactical.

Amid divisions within Congress and Subhas Chandra Bose’s different course, he wrote from Sevagram on July 21, 1941: “With me, no doubt non-violence is an end in itself, though it is also a means for the attainment of the freedom of the country.” A year earlier, he had underlined its voluntary nature: “Non-violence cannot be imposed upon anyone.

It has to come from within.” The South Africa YearsGandhi’s letters to the editor predated his emergence as a leader of India’s freedom struggle.

During his 21 years in South Africa, where he first used Satyagraha as a method of resistance, he repeatedly drew attention to discriminatory laws against IndiansIn a Dec 19, 1901 letter, he described the restrictions in the Transvaal, where Indians could not hold land, were required to live and trade only in designated areas, and were barred from footpaths. In the Orange River Colony, he wrote, an Indian could not even enter without special permission, except as a domestic servant or labourer.

After returning to India, he continued to write about the poor conditions of Indians legally settled in South Africa. Cow Slaughter And EidGandhi’s correspondence also addressed social fractures, particularly Hindu-Muslim relations.

In a 1919 letter written around Bakrid, he recounted a conversation with Maulana Abdul Bari of Lucknow’s Firangi Mahal, a prominent supporter of the Khilafat Movement. Gandhi quoted the Maulana as saying: “Islam will fall to pieces if it ever takes and never gives….

If we take from you, we must give to you.” Abdul Bari had urged his followers to abstain from cow slaughter.

On Bakrid, he sent Gandhi a telegram: “In celebration of Hindu-Muslim unity, no cow sacrifices in Firangi-Mahal this Bakri-Id.” More than a century later, these letters are more than historical records.

They reveal Gandhi not only as a politician confronting colonial power but as a public figure wrestling with representation, violence, communal division and moral responsibility. Through TOI’s pages, his words travelled beyond the immediate battles of the freedom struggle, leaving an intimate record of how he tried to shape public opinion — and India itself.

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