Dilemmas, Depressions, Uplifts

Abstract

The letters in this chapter are about how lonely and tired, ill and depressed, the three friends would get from time to time. They were incessantly fighting against odds, personal and national, but never doubting their innate faith in God nor losing their spirit of self-scrutiny. In both moral and practical ways they idealized prayaschit or atonement and practised self-suffering. In August 1920 Tagore described their predicament to Andrews when he wrote: ‘The most difficult problem is ours, which is how to gain our freedom of soul in spite of the crampedness of outward circumstances, how to ignore the perpetual insult of our destiny to be able to uphold the dignity of man.’