Sarojini’s letter to Gokhale highlighting the need for leaders to lead India to freedom:
I wonder if it is because they have no ambitions to be Leaders - 'Our Leaders' as my boys ironically call them. Now laugh: relax your solemn brain and laugh - whole heartedly as I do at the mosquito - like, malarial, malicious men who disturbed your peace, not long ago!
Oh, we want a new breed of men before India can be cleansed of her disease. We want deeper sincerity of motive, a greater courage in speech and earnestness in action. We want men who love this country and are full of yearning to serve and succour their brothers and not to further aid in their degradation by insincerity and self-seeking. O how I hate shams and prejudices: how I hate all sectarian narrowness, all provincial limitations of vision and purpose, all the arrogant sophistries of man-made divisions and differences: how tired I am to death of the reiterated resolutions that have become almost meaningless by lip repetition: uncorroborated by the heart's conviction and unsustained by practical action - all this stirs me more deeply just now because of the coming national week. What a week of inspiration it should be to all partaking in the various activities, if only all those activities could be so co-ordinated and realised as intrinsic parts of the same many-sided work of progress: the radii of one unshifting centre.
One needs a Seer's Vision and an Angel's voice to be of any avail. I do not know of any Indian man or woman today who has those gifts in their most complete measure.