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Your best won't be enough when you're thrown to the fire
Some have lost a hand, some a leg—everyone is asking for water. And still men continue to speak about the glory of war and try to prove its advantages. In the name of patriotism and nationalism, they go on to cut each other's throats. There is nothing as narrow-minded as nationalism in this world . . . If the word 'patriotism' (or 'nationalism') did not exist in the European dictionary, there would have been far less bloodshed.
In our country, too, in the name of patriotism, many leaders are teaching small schoolchildren how to kill. Murder, the greatest sin, becomes morally acceptable when committed in the name of patriotism. If a person, by guile or force, takes away another's property, it is burglary or dacoity—again a sin. But when a nation snatches away another's land—then it is celebrated as empire. Well, there's little point in discussing all this now—just hope that the war ends soon.
—Kalyan Mukherji, 4 October 1915 (trans. Santanu Das)
In our country, too, in the name of patriotism, many leaders are teaching small schoolchildren how to kill. Murder, the greatest sin, becomes morally acceptable when committed in the name of patriotism. If a person, by guile or force, takes away another's property, it is burglary or dacoity—again a sin. But when a nation snatches away another's land—then it is celebrated as empire. Well, there's little point in discussing all this now—just hope that the war ends soon.
—Kalyan Mukherji, 4 October 1915 (trans. Santanu Das)
no subject
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I know he has other projects on his plate, but I am still hoping that Das will publish a full translation of the Kalyāṇ-Pradīp (ed. Mokkhada Devi, 1928), the combination memoir-memorial from which this letter is excerpted. Mukherji died in 1917 and he's not out of date yet.