Vinoba and the Librarian

The Central Library of Baroda was then considered one of the best libraries in India. During my vacations, after I had my meal, I would spend the afternoon there. Two or three hours would go by very pleasantly, and the librarian would kindly help me to find the books I wanted. During the hot weather I would take off my shirt and sit reading stripped to the waist, until one day one of the
attendants objected that my dress was not 'decent', I ought to have the sense to dress properly, he said. I told him that I dressed by the common sense God had given me, and turned back to my reading, in which I was soon absorbed. But a complaint reached the director that a student was sitting in the reading room without a shirt and was refusing to listen to the staff. T

The Director was an Englishman; his office was on the third floor and he summoned me there. I found him 'correctly' dressed in shirt and trousers — but he had a fan over his head. He kept me standing before him (as the English usually did in those days) but as he was older than me, I did not find it humiliating. But then he pointed to my naked torso.

"Why this?' He asked. 'Don't you know what good manners mean?'
"Certainly I do" I replied, "Good manners of my own country."
"And what is that" he asked.
"In this country' I said, "we don't think it's good manners for one man to remain seated and keep another man standing".
He was very pleased that a mere lad like me should have answered so boldly.
He at once gave me a chair, and I explained that in India it is no breach of good manners to go naked to the waist in the hot weather. This he accepted, and went on to ask me about my studies and then told the librarian to give me whatever help I needed in finding books.
— Vinoba