Shilaidaha
6 March 1895
There’s an argument in your letter today about whether to give the practice of beauty or the practice of convenience greater importance, Bob. That depends largely on the situation and the amount of inconvenience faced. For instance, the example you gave of riding a horse with an umbrella over your head doesn’t really address the issue of beauty in any way. Because while it might not be unbeautiful to ride a horse while holding an umbrella, it might actually be inconvenient. But to my mind, it’s unnatural. There’s an association between horse riding and manliness; that’s why people might automatically think, if you are riding a horse, why use an umbrella? Inconvenience, ugliness and unnaturalness—it’s necessary to avoid all three, but perhaps the last most of all. Even if a man looks nice wearing a sari, and doesn’t find it inconvenient, still, it’s better not to embark upon so strange an endeavour. The shyness one has with regard to that is a natural one. Actually, one naturally feels timid about attracting too much attention to one’s self—the sort of behaviour that in English is called ‘loud’ is reprehensible for exactly these reasons, and true politeness is habitually reticent. The sort of unnatural or strange behaviour that attracts excessive attention to itself should make people feel ashamed—just as it’s not too much to ask that one should be very self-aware, so too, one should be disinclined to hurl one’s self violently upon someone else’s consciousness. If I go out to meet some gentlemen in my night clothes it might not create an upheaval of mythic proportions, and it might even look good, but it’s not exactly good manners to suddenly assault people with such unnatural behaviour. This sort of thing has a limit, but that limit is very distant. If I think of some prevalent custom—some countrywide practice—as wrong and harmful to most people or if I think that some new practice is good for us, then I mustn’t feel hesitant to assault the public forcefully on that issue; then the argument about what is natural or unnatural is a very minor one. But I must have a steady aim and high ideals. In our country, women do not carry umbrellas over their heads or wear shoes, so the woman who is the first to do so will have to face the disapproval of others—in that case it won’t do for her to bow down before general opinion. But, ordinarily, the convenience of behaving as most people do is that other people are not disturbed, and you yourself find it easier to go on your way—else, other people are inconvenienced and you too face unnecessary obstacles. If one has to fight with general opinion and habit even for the little conveniences of life, then it’s exactly like setting up a canon to fire at a mosquito—an unnatural and strange affair. One cannot then find an appropriate higher purpose that might mitigate the irritation or oddity of that unnatural act. In that case you might just venture out in civilized clothes in civil society and the moment you feel hot, take off your cāpkān and kamij and sit there happily barebodied—if one must philosophize: where’s the harm in that? Why should I bother about what people might say when the heat is making me feel ill? I might be lecturing, but I myself have indulged quite often in behaviour that goes against socially acceptable norms. But I don’t want to defend that—I know that that’s my whimsicality, my madness. I don’t think anybody could say that Baṛ-da’s wrong-side-up jobbā and tricycle-riding costume was very acceptable to received opinion, but since we’re arguing about principle, one shouldn’t bring up individual instances. The basic thing is—when it is a question of only one’s self, one needs to try and practise both convenience and beauty, but when one is talking about society, one needs to synchronize convenience, beauty and naturalness, all three things. The argument has almost filled up the letter—the good thing about small-size letter paper is that one has to restrict one’s argument as well, or this would have turned into a long essay.