You are at the hope of the future. You will be called upon, when you are discharged from your colleges and schools, to enter upon public life to lead the poor people of this country. I would, therefore like you students to have a sense of your responsibility and show it in a much tangible manner. It is a remarkable fact, and a regrettable fact, that in the case of the vast majority of the students, whilst they entertain noble impulses during their student days, these disappear when they finish their studies. The vast majority of them look out for loaves and fishes. Surely there is something wrong in this. There is one reason which is obvious. Every educational system is faulty. It dos not respond to the requirements of the country, certainly not to the requirements of pauper India. There is no correspondence between the education that is given and the home life and the village life.
These are not necessities of life. There are some who manage to take ten cups of coffee a day.. Is it necessary for their healthy development and for keeping them awake, let them not drink coffee or tea but go to sleep. We must not become slaves to these things. But the majority of the people who drink coffee or tea are slaves to them. Cigars and Cigarettes, wealth foreign or indigenous must be avoided.
Cigarette smoking is like an opiate and the cigars that you smoke have a touch of opium about them. They get to your nerves and you cannot leave them afterwards. How can a single student foul his mouth in converting it into a chimney.? If you give up these habits of smoking cigars and cigarettes and drinking coffee and tea you will find out for yourselves how much you are able to save.
A drunkard in Tolstoy's story is hesitating to execute his design of murder so long as he has not smoked his cigar. But he puffs it, and then gets up smiling and saying, "What a coward am I " takes the dagger and does the deed. Tolstoy spoke from experience of it. And he is much more against cigars and cigarettes than against drinks. But do not make the mistake that between drink and tobacco, drink is a lesser evil. No. If cigarette is Beelzebub than drink is Satan.
The students should be above all humble, and correct.... The greatest to remain great has to be the lowliest by choice. If I can speak from my knowledge of Hindu belief, the life of the student is to correspond to the life of the sanyasi up to the time his studies end. He is to be under the strictest discipline. He cannot marry, nor indulge in dissipation. He cannot indulge in drinks and the like. His behaviour is to be a pattern of exemplary self-resistant.
This article is taken from the book "The Selected Works Of Gandhi" Vol. 6 The Voice of Truth