Declining the invitation, Mahatma Gandhi wrote back:
11 February 1937
Segaon, Wardha
My dear Dadachanji,
I have [received] your letter. I do not agree with the free distribution of grain and cloth to the poor. It is difficult to discriminate, and why should the poor be made to become beggars?
I cannot understand Shri Baba Saheb agreeing to the free distribution of grain and cloth; whereas I could understand the distribution of work against full and honorable payment for the same. The former in my opinion makes poverty sinful, while the latter method gives it dignity.
In reply to this, Chanji wrote to Gandhi:
... We appreciate your very frank letter, but you seem to have missed the point. For there is no issue of "begging" or any "discrimination" between classes raised at all in the distribution of grain and cloth to the thousands by Shri Baba, whose only object in doing this is to give something from him as a special prasad to each, irrespective of class, creed, color or even status in life, whether rich or poor, with his own hands so that each recipient would not only have the benefit of his darshan after a long period of his seclusion, but also of his personal touch, and a prasad as a special gift of grace from him.
Besides, these thousands who will receive this prasad at the hand of Shri Baba will constitute no particular class but all classes of people, rich as well as poor alike, and all of whom are invited are specially informed that there will be no discrimination or difference in classes, as will be seen from a copy of a Marathi handbill enclosed herewith, thousands of which have been distributed all over. And even though the material worth of the grain or cloth may not count much with the rich or the middle class, it will count much as a substantial help to the thousands of the poor and the destitute coming from the villages all around; while both will have the common benefit of having prasad from a Spiritual Master, the significance and importance of which need not be explained to you — a scholar of the Shastras.
My object in specifically mentioning only the poor and the destitute was only to point out Baba's love and consideration for this class whose interest he has always at heart and for whose upliftment he has always worked, along with all his activities for the general upliftment of humanity.
