Baba's Advice to Youth:

For all the reverence and affection he won from some youngsters, Baba could sense skepticism from others. The skeptics doubted if the 'social-work' energies which allowed Baba to cure leprosy patients would help to stop the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) dam or transform economic relations all over India.

Unaffected by these doubts and criticism, Baba continued to exhort these new, young companions in his life's journey:

Carry your ideals before you like banners; it is not enough to put them on pedestals. Ideals which grip the masses prove to be a mighty force. Their force is stronger than the hope of earthly gain and they are more productive of real wealth ... Nationalized ownership that throttles all creative effort, will no more be the test of revolution. Participation in decision-making will stimulate workers to greater efforts and common ownership will be the aim. ... The war-cry will no more be with Marx and Mao: the spirit of revenge cannot build a new world ... Only a revolution which leads to a higher sense of human dignity can lead to a higher and nobler way of life. Revolutions based on hatred and violence does not really change the situation. They merely transform the people who had been exploited into a new class of exploiters but hatred and exploitation remain. Therefore, there is no substitute for Gandhi's way of rousing the impoverished masses to creative awareness.

Two-and-half decades of youth camps at Somnath had given Baba the confidence that:

The new leadership in India is taking shape quietly, without any drum beating through the newspapers. ... Various centers, the centers of energy and strength in the life of society are gaining tremendous momentum. May be, the surging new generation of today appears to have lost its bearing, to have lost its soul. But it is absolutely certain that one day it will have its own leader and prophet.... I am absolutely confident that the phoenix of a new leadership is rising from the ashes of all its failure. Soon the world will witness the lightning hidden in its beak and the storm hidden in its wings.

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