The poor do not want to stand in your way, but you insist on their submitting to your compulsion. As it is, every moment of theirs is a life-and-death struggle for a bare living
 Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World (1916). copy citation

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Author Rabindranath Tagore
Source The Home and the World
Topic death struggle
Date 1916
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Surendranath Tagore
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7166/pg7166-images.html

Context

“Why should they put up with such tyranny, and why should we let them?" "But we have taken to Indian salt and sugar and cloth ourselves." "You may do as you please to work off your irritation, to keep up your fanaticism. You are well off, you need not mind the cost. The poor do not want to stand in your way, but you insist on their submitting to your compulsion. As it is, every moment of theirs is a life-and-death struggle for a bare living; you cannot even imagine the difference a few pice means to them—so little have you in common. You have spent your whole past in a superior compartment, and now you come down to use them as tools for the wreaking of your wrath.” source