34 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Yet, even in my younger days, I remember, there was much greater tolerance and goodwill, and we lived in a more relaxed atmosphere. My father was a devout Arya Samajist and a great votary of Hindi and Sanskrit, yet he did all his correspondence in Urdu. His letters, even to his sons, were written in Urdu. At home we used to receive a weekly newspaper, named Arya Gazette^ which used to be full of exhortations for the study of Hindi and Sanskrit, but the paper was printed in the Urdu language. Once, I remember, my father, despite his love for Hindi and Sanskrit, very seriously advised me that if ever I had an opportunity to study Persian, I should do so. He himself had studied Persian and was a great lover of Persian poetry, and frequently recited couplets from 'Gulistan' and 'Bostan' of Sheikh Sa'adi. So it was that while we conversed in our mother-tongue, Punjabi, a Panditji would come to teach us Hindi and Sanskrit at home, at school the medium of instruction was Urdu and in higher classes, English. A person whose younger days have been spent in close association with a number of languages, cannot but develop a close liking for each one of them. It is inevitable. Most of us Indians live in a multilingual atmosphere and feel quite comfortable using a number of languages and dialects in our daily lives. Language, by its very nature, is a medium that brings people closer together. It plays a unifying role, it removes psychological barriers and is a powerful mediuip of cohesion and cultural integration. We in India are fortunate that we live and breathe in a multilingual atmosphere. That itself is conducive to the promotion of greater understanding. Any effort, therefore, to divide people on linguistic lines will corrode this healthy, multilingual atmosphere. Similarly, in the sphere of religious belief too, there was greater tolerance and consideration, and we lived in a freer atmosphere. My mother, besides going to the weekly congregations of the Arya Samaj, would frequently go to the Gurudwara also. Almost every afternoon, my mother would disappear from the house and we would learn later that she had gone to listen to the discourse of some Sadhu or other, somewhere. She herself would not know to which sect or faith he belonged. "Good words fall from their mouths, son", she would say, "it does me good to listen to them." And we all know that even tp-day, thousands of our countrymen flock to the vdargahs' or shrines of some ^pir' or holyman to offer their obeisances, irrespective of the religious faith to which they belonged, that one of the most frequented temples in Delhi even to-day is the temple of Sai Baba who was a Muslim by birth. Even in my own younger days, a young sanyasi5