His weekly paper Harijan, 28 March 1936
As Old as the Hills
In March 1936 Mahatma Gandhi travelled to the village of Savli for a meeting of the Gandhi Seva Sangh. The president of the group was Kishorlal Mashruwala, and Jamnalal Bajaj was there with several hundred village workers. The workers wanted to build an organization to spread his ideas. Some of them wanted to write books to explain what they called Gandhism. Gandhiji stopped the plan immediately. He told the gathering that there was no such thing as Gandhism. Then he said, "I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills."
People often look for a new system when work gets difficult. They want a fresh set of rules, or a special theory that solves their problems. Gandhiji told his coworkers that they already had the principles they needed. The basic tools were truth and non-violence, or ahimsa, which means not causing harm. He was not an inventor handing down a patented method. His work was simply putting those common principles into daily practice. You do not need a fresh philosophy to wash a floor, tell the truth to a neighbor, or run a fair meeting.
Therefore
Do not wait for a brand new method before you start your work. Take the ordinary principles you already know and try them out today.
Harijan, 28 March 1936
Gandhiji's secretary, Mahadev Desai, took notes at Savli and printed the address in his weekly paper, Harijan, on 28 March 1936. The weekly paper carried news of village work and his campaign against untouchability. In the printed article, Gandhiji told the workers to leave propaganda alone and stick to silent work like spinning yarn and cleaning villages. He had left party politics behind and settled at Sevagram to test his ideas in daily village life. He reminded the Sangh that all his conclusions were experiments, and that he might change his mind tomorrow if he found an error. The Sangh dropped the book plans and went back to work.
A small reminder, on the notebook or the desk, that the old principles work if you actually put them to use.
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