This day 100 years ago

17 April 2020

This day 100 years ago, Gandhi wrote a letter to Abbas Tyabji, a nationalist Muslim leader of Gujarat and formerly a judge of the High Court, Baroda. He was one of the Commissioners appointed by the Punjab Sub-committee of the Congress to report on the Punjab disorders.

In the letter, Gandhi urged Tyabji and his family to do some spinning. Gandhi, while writing this letter, seems well aware that the Tyabji family household was not enthusiastic of Gandhi’s Charkha mission and indicated that just the partaking of Tyabji’s daughters in this mission would please him. He said that he would be happy to send a teacher to Tyabji’s house if his daughters were not in a position to join Gandhi in his ashram.

Finally, the letter asks Tyabji to take care of his ailing health and concludes with a reminder that, “We are less than ants in the scheme of the universe. All therefore that is given to us to do is to try our best without attaching ourselves to results.”