His weekly paper Young India, 8 January 1925, p. 15
The Source of Rights
In January 1925 Mahatma Gandhi travelled to Bhavnagar in western India. He was presiding over a political conference for people living under the rule of local princes. Many delegates wanted to launch an agitation right away to demand their political rights from the rulers. They thought freedom began with making demands on the government. Gandhiji disagreed. He told the gathering that they had the order backward. In his address, he said, "The true source of rights is duty." If people took care of their duties first, their rights would be easy to find.
Gandhiji linked this idea to the teaching of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita about work and its reward. You do the work, but you do not chase after the prize. When people only fight for what is owed to them, everyone makes demands and nobody does the work to keep the community going. You see this in a bad workplace or an unhappy home. When both sides stop asking what they should contribute and start arguing about what they deserve, the work stalls and cooperation falls apart. Rights are the natural result of duties that were already carried out.
Therefore
Before you demand what people owe you, look at what you have actually done for them. The quickest way to secure a claim is to do your part first.
Young India, 8 January 1925
Gandhiji printed the speech on 8 January 1925 in his English weekly paper, Young India. In that issue, on page 15, he wrote that chasing rights while ignoring duties is like running after a shadow. The faster you run, the farther it flies. Instead of fighting the princes, he urged the delegates to spin khadi (KHAH-dee), which is hand-spun cloth, and remove the prejudice against untouchables. He wanted constructive work to give people the strength to enforce their will. The passage describes what he asked them to do, rather than demonstrating that their rulers subsequently changed. He placed duties on princes as well as their subjects.
A small reminder, on the desk or the notebook, that your claims carry weight only after you have done your work.
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