A writer in the “Times of India,”
the Editor of that wonderful daily and Mrs. Besant
have all in their own manner condemned non-co-operation
conceived in connection with the Khilafat movement.
All the three writings naturally discuss many side
issues which I shall omit for the time being.
I propose to answer two serious objections raised by
the writers. The sobriety with which they are
stated entitles them to a greater consideration than
if they had been given in violent language. In
non-co-operation, the writers think, it would be difficult
if not impossible to avoid violence. Indeed violence,
the “Times of India” editorial says, has
already commenced in that ostracism has been resorted
to in Calcutta and Delhi. Now I fear that ostracism
to a certain extent is impossible to avoid. I
remember in South Africa in the initial stages of
the passive resistance campaign those who had fallen
away were ostracised. Ostracism is violent or
peaceful in according to the manner in which it is
practised. A congregation may well refuse to
recite prayers after a priest who prizes his title
above his honour. But the ostracism will become
violent if the individual life of a person is made
unbearable by insults innuendoes or abuse. The
real danger of violence lies in the people resorting
to non-co-operation becoming impatient and revengeful.
This may happen, if, for instance, payment of taxes
is suddenly withdrawn or if pressure is put upon soldiers
to lay down their arms. I however do not fear
any evil consequences, for the simple reason that
every responsible Mahomedan understands that non-co-operation
to be successful must be totally unattended with violence.
The other objection raised is that those who may give
up their service may have to starve. That is
just a possibility but a remote one, for the committee
will certainly make due provision for those who may
suddenly find themselves out of employment. I
propose however to examine the whole of the difficult
question much more fully in a future issue and hope
to show that if Indian-Mahomedan feeling is to be respected,
there is nothing left but non-co-operation if the decision
arrived at is adverse.
MR. MONTAGU ON THE KHILAFAT AGITATION
Mr. Montagu does not like the Khilafat
agitation that is daily gathering force. In answer
to questions put in the House of Commons, he is reported
to have said that whilst he acknowledged that I had
rendered distinguished services to the country in
the past, he could not look upon my present attitude
with equanimity and that it was not to be expected
that I could now be treated as leniently as I was during
the Rowlatt Act agitation. He added that he had
every confidence in the central and the local Governments,
that they were carefully watching the movement and
that they had full power to deal with the situation.
This statement of Mr. Montagu has
been regarded in some quarters as a threat. It
has even been considered to be a blank cheque for the
Government of India to re-establish the reign of terror
if they chose. It is certainly inconsistent with
his desire to base the Government on the goodwill
of the people. At the same time if the Hunter
Committee’s finding be true and if I was the
cause of the disturbances last year, I was undoubtedly
treated with exceptional leniency, I admit too that
my activity this year is fraught with greater peril
to the Empire as it is being conducted to-day than
was last year’s activity. Non-co-operation
in itself is more harmless than civil disobedience,
but in its effect it is far more dangerous for the
Government than civil disobedience. Non-co-operation
is intended so far to paralyse the Government, as to
compel justice from it. If it is carried to the
extreme point, it can bring the Government to a standstill.
A friend who has been listening to
my speeches once asked me whether I did not come under
the sedition section of the Indian Penal Code.
Though I had not fully considered it, I told him that
very probably I did and that I could not plead ‘not
guilty’ if I was charged under it. For I
must admit that I can pretend to no ‘affection’
for the present Government. And my speeches are
intended to create ‘disaffection’ such
that the people might consider it a shame to assist
or co-operate with a Government that had forfeited
all title to confidence, respect or support.
I draw no distinction between the
Imperial and the Indian Government. The latter
has accepted, on the Khilafat, the policy imposed upon
it by the former. And in the Punjab case the
former has endorsed the policy of terrorism and emasculation
of a brave people initiated by the latter. British
ministers have broken their pledged word and wantonly
wounded the feelings of the seventy million Mussulmans
of India. Innocent men and women were insulted
by the insolent officers of the Punjab Government.
Their wrongs not only unrighted but the very officers
who so cruelly subjected them to barbarous humiliation
retain office under the Government.
When at Amritsar last year I pleaded
with all the earnestness I could command for co-operation
with the Government and for response to the wishes
expressed in the Royal Proclamation; I did so because
I honestly believed that a new era was about to begin,
and that the old spirit of fear, distrust and consequent
terrorism was about to give place to the new spirit
of respect, trust and good-will. I sincerely believed
that the Mussalman sentiment would be placated and
that the officers that had misbehaved during the Martial
Law regime in the Punjab would be at least dismissed
and the people would be otherwise made to feel that
a Government that had always been found quick (and
rightly) to punish popular excesses would not fail
to punish its agents’ misdeeds. But to
my amazement and dismay I have discovered that the
present representatives of the Empire have become
dishonest and unscrupulous. They have no real
regard for the wishes of the people of India and they
count Indian honour as of little consequence.
I can no longer retain affection for
a Government so evilly manned as it is now-a-days.
And for me, it is humiliating to retain my freedom
and be a witness to the continuing wrong. Mr.
Montagu however is certainly right in threatening
me with deprivation of my liberty if I persist in
endangering the existence of the Government. For
that must be the result if my activity bears fruit.
My only regret is that inasmuch as Mr. Montagu admits
my past services, he might have perceived that there
must be something exceptionally bad in the Government
if a well-wisher like me could no longer give his
affection to it. It was simpler to insist on
justice being done to the Mussulmans and to the Punjab
than to threaten me with punishment so that the injustice
might be perpetuated. Indeed I fully expect it
will be found that even in promoting disaffection
towards an unjust Government I have rendered greater
services to the Empire than I am already credited with.
At the present moment, however, the
duty of those who approve of my activity is clear.
They ought on no account to resent the deprivation
of my liberty, should the Government of India deem
it to be their duty to take it away. A citizen
has no right to resist such restriction imposed in
accordance with the laws of the State to which he belongs.
Much less have those who sympathize with him.
In my case there can be no question of sympathy.
For I deliberately oppose the Government to the extent
of trying to put its very existence in jeopardy.
For my supporters, therefore, it must be a moment
of joy when I am imprisoned. It means the beginning
of success if only the supporters continue the policy
for which I stand. If the Government arrest me,
they would do so in order to stop the progress of
non-co-operation which I preach. It follows that
if non-co-operation continues with unabated vigour,
even after my arrest, the Government must imprison
others or grant the people’s wish in order to
gain their co-operation. Any eruption of violence
on the part of the people even under provocation would
end in disaster. Whether therefore it is I or
any one else who is arrested during the campaign, the
first condition of success is that there must be no
resentment shown against it. We cannot imperil
the very existence of a Government and quarrel with
its attempt to save itself by punishing those who place
it in danger.
AT THE CALL OF THE COUNTRY
Dr. Sapru delivered before the Khilafat
Conference at Allahabad an impassioned address sympathising
with the Mussulmans in their trouble but dissuaded
them from embarking on non-co-operation. He was
frankly unable to suggest a substitute but was emphatically
of opinion that whether there was a substitute or
not non-co-operation was a remedy worse than the disease.
He said further that Mussulmans will be taking upon
their shoulders, a serious responsibility, if whilst
they appealed to the ignorant masses to join them,
they could not appeal to the Indian judges to resign
and if they did they would not succeed.
I acknowledge the force of Dr. Sapru’s
last argument. At the back of Dr. Sapru’s
mind is the fear that non-co-operation by the ignorant
people would lead to distress and chaos and would do
no good. In my opinion any non-co-operation is
bound to do some good. Even the Viceragal door-keeper
saying, ’Please Sir, I can serve the Government
no longer because it has hurt my national honour’
and resigning is a step mightier and more effective
than the mightiest speech declaiming against the Government
for its injustice.
Nevertheless it would be wrong to
appeal to the door-keeper until one has appealed to
the highest in the land. And as I propose, if
the necessity arose, to ask the door-keepers of the
Government to dissociate themselves from an unjust
Government I propose now to address, an appeal to
the Judges and the Executive Councillors to join the
protest that is rising from all over India against
the double wrong done to India, on the Khilafat and
the Punjab question. In both, national honour
is involved.
I take it that these gentlemen have
entered upon their high offices not for the sake of
emolument, nor I hope for the sake of fame, but for
the sake of serving their country. It was not
for money, for they were earning more than they do
now. It must not be for fame, for they cannot
buy fame at the cost of national honour. The only
consideration, that can at the present moment keep
them in office must be service of the country.
When the people have faith in the
government, when it represents the popular will, the
judges and the executive officials possibly serve the
country. But when that government does not represent
the will of the people, when it supports dishonesty
and terrorism, the judges and the executive officials
by retaining office become instrument of dishonesty
and terrorism. And the least therefore that these
holders of high offices can do is to cease to become
agents of a dishonest and terrorising government.
For the judges, the objection will
be raised that they are above politics, and so they
are and should be. But the doctrine is true only
in so far us the government is on the whole for the
benefit of the people and at least represents the
will of the majority. Not to take part in politics
means not to take sides. But when a whole country
has one mind, one will, when a whole country has been
denied justice, it is no longer a question of party
politics, it is a matter of life and death. It
then becomes the duty of every citizen to refuse to
serve a government which misbehaves and flouts national
wish. The judges are at that moment bound to
follow the nation if they are ultimately its servants.
There remains another argument to
be examined. It applies to both the judges and
the members of the executive. It will be urged
that my appeal could only be meant for the Indians
and what good can it do by Indians renouncing offices
which have been won for the nation by hard struggle.
I wish that I could make an effective appeal to the
English as well as the Indians. But I confess
that I have written with the mental reservation that
the appeal is addressed only to the Indians. I
must therefore examine the argument just stated.
Whilst it is true that these offices have been secured
after a prolonged struggle, they are of use not because
of the struggle, but because they are intended to serve
the nation. The moment they cease to possess
that quality, they become useless and as in the present
case harmful, no matter how hard-earned and therefore
valuable they may have been at the outset.
I would submit too to our distinguished
countrymen who occupy high offices that their giving
up will bring the struggle to a speedy end and would
probably obviate the danger attendant upon the masses
being called upon to signify their disapproval by
withdrawing co-operation. If the titleholders
gave up their titles, if the holders of honorary offices
gave up their appointment and if the high officials
gave up their posts, and the would-be councillors
boycotted the councils, the Government would quickly
come to its senses and give effect to the people’s
will. For the alternative before the Government
then would be nothing but despotic rule pure and simple.
That would probably mean military dictatorship.
The world’s opinion has advanced so far that
Britain dare not contemplate such dictatorship with
equanimity. The taking of the steps suggested
by me will constitute the peacefullest revolution the
world has ever seen. Once the infallibility of
non-co-operation is realised, there is an end to all
bloodshed and violence in any shape or form.
Undoubtedly a cause must be grave
to warrant the drastic method of national non-co-operation.
I do say that the affront such as has been put upon
Islam cannot be repeated for a century. Islam
must rise now or ‘be fallen’ if not for
ever, certainly for a century. And I cannot imagine
a graver wrong than the massacre of Jallianwalla and
the barbarity that followed it, the whitewash by the
Hunter Committee, the dispatch of the Government of
India, Mr. Montagu’s letter upholding the Viceroy
and the then Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, the
refusal to remove officials who made of the lives
of the Punjabis ‘a hell’ during the Martial
Law period. These act constitute a complete series
of continuing wrongs against India which if India
has any sense of honour, she must right at the sacrifice
of all the material wealth she possesses. If
she does not, she will have bartered her soul for a
’mess of pottage.’
NON-CO-OPERATION EXPLAINED
A representative of Madras Mail called
on Mr. M.K. Gandhi at his temporary residence
in the Pursewalkam High road for an interview on the
subject of non-co-operation. Mr. Gandhi, who has
come to Madras on a tour to some of the principal
Muslim centres in Southern India, was busy with
a number of workers discussing his programme; but he
expressed his readiness to answer questions on the
chief topic which is agitating Muslims and Hindus.
“After your experience of the
Satyagraha agitation last year, Mr. Gandhi, are you
still hopeful and convinced of the wisdom of advising
non-co-operation?” “Certainly.”
“How do you consider conditions
have altered since the Satyagraha movement of last
year?” “I consider that people
are better disciplined now than they were before.
In this I include even the masses who I have had opportunities
of seeing in large numbers in various parts of the
country.”
“And you are satisfied that
the masses understand the spirit of Satyagraha?” “Yes.”
“And that is why you are pressing
on with the programme of non-co-operation?” “Yes.
Moreover, the danger that attended the civil disobedience
part of Satyagraha does not apply to non-co-operation,
because in non-co-operation we are not taking up civil
disobedience of laws as a mass movement. The
result hitherto has been most encouraging. For
instance, people in Sindh and Delhi in spite of the
irritating restrictions upon their liberty by the
authorities have carried out the Committee’s
instructions in regard to the Seditious Meetings Proclamation
and to the prohibition of posting placards on the walls
which we hold to be inoffensive but which the authorities
consider to be offensive.”
“What is the pressure which
you expect to bring to bear on the authorities if
co-operation is withdrawn?” “I
believe, and everybody must grant, that no Government
can exist for a single moment without the co-operation
of the people, willing or forced, and if people suddenly
withdraw their co-operation in every detail, the Government
will come to a stand-still.”
“But is there not a big ‘If’
in it?” “Certainly there is.”
“And how do you propose to succeed
against the big ’If’?” “In
my plan of campaign expediency has no room. If
the Khilafat movement has really permeated the masses
and the classes, there must be adequate response from
the people.”
“But are you not begging the
question?” “I am not begging
the question, because so far as the data before me
go, I believe that the Muslims keenly feel the Khilafat
grievance. It remains to be seen whether their
feeling is intense enough to evoke in them the measure
of sacrifice adequate for successful non-co-operation.”
“That is, your survey of the
conditions, you think, justifies your advising non-co-operation
in the full conviction that you have behind you the
support of the vast masses of the Mussalman population?” “Yes.”
“This non-co-operation, you
are satisfied, will extend to complete severance of
co-operation with the Government?” No;
nor is it at the present moment my desire that it
should. I am simply practising non-co-operation
to the extent that is necessary to make the Government
realise the depth of popular feeling in the matter
and the dissatisfaction with the Government that all
that could be done has not been done either by the
Government of India or by the Imperial Government,
whether on the Khilafat question or on the “Punjab
question.”
“Do you Mr. Gandhi, realise
that even amongst Mahomedans there are sections of
people who are not enthusiastic over non-co-operation
however much they may feel the wrong that has been
done to their community?” “Yes.
But their number is smaller than those who are prepared
to adopt non-co-operation.”
“And yet does not the fact that
there has not been an adequate response to your appeal
for resignation of titles and offices and for boycott
of elections of the Councils indicate that you may
be placing more faith in their strength of conviction
than is warranted?” “I think
not; for the reason that the stage has only just come
into operation and our people are always most cautious
and slow to move. Moreover, the first stage largely
affects the uppermost strata of society, who represent
a microscopic minority though they are undoubtedly
an influential body of people.”
“This upper class, you think,
has sufficiently responded to your appeal?” “I
am unable to say either one way or the other at present.
I shall be able to give a definite answer at the end
of this month."...
“Do you think that without one’s
loyalty to the King and the Royal Family being questioned,
one can advocate non-co-operation in connection with
the Royal visit?” “Most decidedly; for
the simple reason that if there is any disloyalty
about the proposed boycott of the Prince’s visit,
it is disloyalty to the Government of the day and not
to the person of His Royal highness.”
“What do you think is to be
gained by promoting this boycott in connection with
the Royal visit?” “Because I
want to show that the people of India are not in sympathy
with the Government of the day and that they strongly
disapprove of the policy of the Government in regard
to the Punjab and Khilafat, and even in respect of
other important administrative measures. I consider
that the visit of the Prince of Wales is a singularly
good opportunity to the people to show their disapproval
of the present Government. After all, the visit
is calculated to have tremendous political results.
It is not to be a non-political event, and seeing
that the Government of India and the Imperial Government
want to make the visit a political event of first
class importance, namely, for the purpose of strengthening
their hold upon India, I for one, consider that it
is the bounden duty of the people to boycott the visit
which is being engineered by the two Governments in
their own interest which at the present moment is totally
antagonistic to the people.”
“Do you mean that you want this
boycott promoted because you feel that the strengthening
of the hold upon India is not desirable in the best
interests of the country?” “Yes.
The strengthening of the hold of a Government so wicked
us the present one is not desirable for the best interests
of the people. Not that I want the bond between
England and India to become loosened for the sake
of loosening it but I want that bond to become strengthened
only in so far as it adds to the welfare of India.”
“Do you think that non-co-operation
and the non-boycott of the Legislative Councils consistent?” “No;
because a person who takes up the programme of non-co-operation
cannot consistently stand for Councils.”
“Is non-co-operation, in your
opinion, an end in itself or a means to an end, and
if so, what is the end?” “It is a means
to an end, the end being to make the present Government
just, whereas it has become mostly unjust. Co-operation
with a just Government is a duty; non-co-operation
with an unjust Government is equally a duty.”
“Will you look with favour upon
the proposal to enter the Councils and to carry on
either obstructive tactics or to decline to take the
oath of allegiance consistent with your non-co-operation?” “No;
as an accurate student of non-co-operation, I consider
that such a proposal is inconsistent with the true
spirit of non-co-operation. I have often said
that a Government really thrives on obstruction and
so far as the proposal not to take the oath of allegiance
is concerned, I can really see no meaning in it; it
amounts to a useless waste of valuable time and money.”
“In other words, obstruction
is no stage in non-co-operation?” “No,"....
“Are you satisfied that all
efforts at constitutional agitation have been exhausted
and that non-co-operation is the only course left us?”
“I do not consider non-co-operation to be unconstitutional
remedies now left open to us, non-co-operation is
the only one left for us.” “Do you
consider it constitutional to adopt it with a view
merely to paralyse Government?” “Certainly,
it is not unconstitutional, but a prudent man will
not take all the steps that are constitutional if they
are otherwise undesirable, nor do I advise that course.
I am resorting to non-co-operation in progressive
stages because I want to evolve true order out of
untrue order. I am not going to take a single
step in non-co-operation unless I am satisfied that
the country is ready for that step, namely, non-co-operation
will not be followed by anarchy or disorder.”
“How will you satisfy yourself anarchy will
not follow?”
“For instance, if I advise the
police to lay down their arms, I shall have satisfied
myself that we are able by voluntary assistance to
protect ourselves against thieves and robbers.
That was precisely what was done in Lahore and Amritsar
last year by the citizens by means of volunteers when
the Military and the police had withdrawn. Even
where Government had not taken such measures in a
place, for want of adequate force, I know people have
successfully protected themselves.”
“You have advised lawyers to
non-co-operate by suspending their practice.
What is your experience? Has the lawyers’
response to your appeal encouraged you to hope that
you will be able to carry through all stages of non-co-operation
with the help of such people?”
“I cannot say that a large number
has yet responded to my appeal. It is too early
to say how many will respond. But I may say that
I do not rely merely upon the lawyer class or highly
educated men to enable the Committee to carry out
all the stages of non-co-operation. My hope lies
more with the masses so far as the later stages of
non-co-operation are concerned.”
August 1920.
RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY FOR NON-CO-OPERATION
It is not without the greatest reluctance
that I engage in a controversy with so learned a leader
like Sir Narayan Chandavarkar. But in view of
the fact that I am the author of the movement of non-co-operation,
it becomes my painful duty to state my views even
though they are opposed to those of the leaders whom
I look upon with respect. I have just read during
my travels in Malabar Sir Narayan’s rejoinder
to my answer to the Bombay manifesto against non-co-operation.
I regret to have to say that the rejoinder leaves
me unconvinced. He and I seem to read the teachings
of the Bible, the Gita and the Koran from different
standpoints or we put different interpretations on
them. We seem to understand the words Ahimsa,
politics and religion differently. I shall try
my best to make clear my meaning of the common terms
and my reading of the different religious.
At the outset let me assure Sir Narayan
that I have not changed my views on Ahimsa. I
still believe that man not having been given the power
of creation does not possess the right of destroying
the meanest creature that lives. The prerogative
of destruction belongs solely to the creator of all
that lives. I accept the interpretation of Ahimsa,
namely, that it is not merely a negative State of
harmlessness, but it is a positive state of love,
of doing good even to the evil-doer. But it does
not mean helping the evil-doer to continue the wrong
or tolerating it by passive acquiescence. On
the contrary love, the active state of Ahimsa, requires
you to resist the wrong-doer by dissociating yourself
from him even though it may offend him or injure him
physically. Thus if my son lives a life of shame,
I may not help him to do so by continuing to support
him; on the contrary, my love for him requires me to
withdraw all support from him although it may mean
even his death. And the same love imposes on
me the obligation of welcoming him to my bosom when
he repents. But I may not by physical force compel
my son to become good. That in my opinion is
the moral of the story of the Prodigal Son.
Non-co-operation is not a passive
state, it is an intensely active state more
active than physical resistance or violence. Passive
resistance is a misnomer. Non-co-operation in
the sense used by me must be non-violent and therefore
neither punitive nor vindictive nor based on malice
ill-will or hatred. It follows therefore that
it would be sin for me to serve General Dyer and co-operate
with him to shoot innocent men. But it will be
an exercise of forgiveness or love for me to nurse
him back to life, if he was suffering from a physical
malady. I cannot use in this context the word
co-operation as Sir Narayan would perhaps use it.
I would co-operate a thousand times with this Government
to wean it from its career of crime but I will not
for a single moment co-operate with it to continue
that career. And I would be guilty of wrong doing
if I retained a title from it or “a service under
it or supported its law-courts or schools.”
Better for me a beggar’s bowl than the richest
possession from hands stained with the blood of the
innocents of Jallianwala. Better by far a warrant
of imprisonment than honeyed words from those who
have wantonly wounded the religious sentiment of my
seventy million brothers.
My reading of the Gita is diametrically
opposed to Sir Narayan’s. I do not believe
that the Gita teaches violence for doing good.
It is pre-eminently a description of the duel that
goes on in our own hearts. The divine author
has used a historical incident for inculcating the
lesson of doing one’s duty even at the peril
of one’s life. It inculcates performance
of duty irrespective of the consequences, for, we
mortals, limited by our physical frames, are incapable
of controlling actions save our own. The Gita
distinguishes between the powers of light and darkness
and demonstrates their incompatibility.
Jesus, in my humble opinion, was a
prince among politicians. He did render unto
Cæsar that which was Caesar’s. He gave
the devil his due. He ever shunned him and is
reported never once to have yielded to his incantations.
The politics of his time consisted in securing the
welfare of the people by teaching them not to be seduced
by the trinkets of the priests and the pharisees.
The latter then controlled and moulded the life of
the people. To-day the system of government is
so devised as to affect every department of our life.
It threatens our very existence. If therefore
we want to conserve the welfare of the nation, we must
religiously interest ourselves in the doing of the
governors and exert a moral influence on them by insisting
on their obeying the laws of morality. General
Dyer did produce a ‘moral effect’ by an
act of butchery. Those who are engaged in forwarding
the movement of non-co-operation, hope to produce
a moral effect by a process of self-denial, self-sacrifice
and self-purification. It surprises me that Sir
Narayan should speak of General Dyer’s massacre
in the same breath as acts of non-co-operation.
I have done my best to understand his meaning, but
I am sorry to confess that I have failed.
THE INWARDNESS OF NON-CO-OPERATION
I commend to the attention of the
readers the thoughtful letter received from Miss Anne
Marie Peterson. Miss Peterson is a lady who has
been in India for some years and has closely followed
Indian affairs. She is about the sever her connection
with her mission for the purpose of giving herself
to education that is truly national.
I have not given the letter in full.
I have omitted all personal references. But her
argument has been left entirely untouched. The
letter was not meant to be printed. It was written
just after my Vellore speech. But it being intrinsically
important, I asked the writer for her permission,
which she gladly gave, for printing it.
I publish it all the more gladly in
that it enables me to show that the movement of non-co-operation
is neither anti-Christian nor anti-English nor anti-European.
It is a struggle between religion and irreligion,
powers of light and powers of darkness.
It is my firm opinion that Europe
to-day represents not the spirit of God or Christianity
but the spirit of Satan. And Satan’s successes
are the greatest when he appears with the name of
God on his lips. Europe is to-day only nominally
Christian. In reality it is worshipping Mammon.
’It is easier for a camel to pass through the
eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom.’
Thus really spoke Jesus Christ. His so-called
followers measure their moral progress by their material
possessions. The very national anthem of England
is anti-Christian. Jesus who asked his followers
to love their enemies even as themselves, could not
have sung of his enemies, ’confound his enemies
frustrate their knavish tricks.’ The last
book that Dr. Wallace wrote set forth his deliberate
conviction that the much vaunted advance of science
had added not an inch to the moral stature of Europe.
The last war however has shown, as nothing else has,
the Satanic nature of the civilization that dominates
Europe to day. Every canon of public morality
has been broken by the victors in the name of virtue.
No lie has been considered too foul to be uttered.
The motive behind every crime is not religious or
spiritual but grossly material. But the Mussalmans
and the Hindus who are struggling against the Government
have religion and honour as their motive. Even
the cruel assassination which has just shocked the
country is reported to have a religious motive behind
it. It is certainly necessary to purge religion
of its excrescences, but it is equally necessary to
expose the hollowness of moral pretensions on the part
of those who prefer material wealth to moral gain.
It is easier to wean an ignorant fanatic from his
error than a confirmed scoundrel from his scoundrelism.
This however is no indictment against
individuals or even nations. Thousands of individual
Europeans are rising above their environment.
I write of the tendency in Europe as reflected in
her present leaders. England through her leaders
is insolently crushing Indian religious and national
sentiment under her heels. England under the false
plea of self-determination is trying to exploit the
oil fields of Mesopotamia which she is almost to leave
because she has probably no choice. France through
her leaders is lending her name to training Cannibals
as soldiers and is shamelessly betraying her trust
as a mandatory power by trying to kill the spirit
of the Syrians. President Wilson has thrown on
the scrap heap his precious fourteen points.
It is this combination of evil forces
which India is really fighting through non-violent
non-cooperation. And those like Miss Peterson
whether Christian or European, who feel that this error
must be dethroned can exercise the privilege of doing
so by joining the non-co-operation movement.
With the honour of Islam is bound up the safety of
religion itself and with the honour of India is bound
up the honour of every nation known to be weak.
A MISSIONARY ON NON-CO-OPERATION
The following letter has been received
by Mr. Gandhi from Miss Anne
Marie Peterson of the Danish Mission
in Madras:
Dear Mr. Gandhi,
I cannot thank you enough for your
kindness and the way in which you received me and
I feel that meeting more or less decided my future.
I have thrown myself at the feet of India. At
the same time I know that in Christ alone is my abode
and I have no longing and no desire but to live Him,
my crucified Saviour, and reveal Him for those with
whom I come in contact. I just cling to his feet
and pray with tears that I may not disgrace him as
we Christians have been doing by our behaviour in India.
We go on crucifying Christ while we long to proclaim
the Power of His resurrection by which He has conquered
untruth and unrighteousness. If we who bear His
name were true to Him, we would never bow ourselves
before the Powers of this world, but we would always
be on the side of the poor, the suffering and the
oppressed. But we are not and therefore I feel
myself under obligation and only to Christ but to India
for His sake at this time of momentous importance
for her future.
Truly it matters little what I, a
lonely and insignificant person, may say or do.
What is my protest against the common current, the
race to which I belong is taking and (what grieves
me more), which the missionary societies seem to follow?
Even if a respectable number protested it would not
be of any use. Yet were I alone against the whole
world, I must follow my conscience and my God.
I therefore cannot but smile when
I see people saying, you should have awaited the decision
of the National Congress before starting the non-co-operation
movement. You have a message for the country,
and the Congress is the voice of the nation its
servant and not its master. A majority has no
right simply because it is a majority.
But we must try to win the majority.
And it is easy to see that now that Congress is going
to be with you. Would it have done so if you had
kept quiet and not lent your voice to the feelings
of the people? Would the Congress have known
its mind? I think not.
I myself was in much doubt before
I heard you. But you convinced me. Not that
I can feel much on the question of the Khilafat.
I cannot. I can see what service you are doing
to India, if you can prevent the Mahomedans from using
the sword in order to take revenge and get their rights.
I can see that if you unite the Hindus and the Mahomedans,
it will be a master stroke. How I wish the Christian
would also come forward and unite with you for the
sake of their country and the honour not only of their
Motherland but of Christ. I may not feel much
for Turkey, but I feel for India, and I can see she
(India) has no other way to protest against being
trampled down and crushed than non-co-operation.
I also want you to know that many
in Denmark and all over the world, yes, I am sure
every true Christian, will feel with and be in sympathy
with India in the struggle which is now going on.
God forbid that in the struggle between might and
right, truth and untruth, the spirit and the flesh,
there should be a division of races. There is
not. The same struggle is going on all over the
world. What does it matter then that we are a
few? God is on our side.
Brute force often seems to get the
upper hand but righteousness always has and always
shall conquer, be it even through much suffering, and
what may even appear to be a defeat. Christ conquered,
when the world crucified Him. Blessed are the
meek; they shall inherit the earth.
When I read your speech given at Madras
it struck me that it should be printed as a pamphlet
in English, Tamil, Hindustani and all the most used
languages and then spread to every nook and corner
of India.
The non-co-operation movement once
started must be worked so as to become successful.
If it is not, I dread to think of the consequences.
But you cannot expect it to win in a day or two.
It must take time and you will not despair if you
do not reach your goal in a hurry. For those
who have faith there is no haste.
Now for the withdrawal of the children
and students from Government schools, I think, it
a most important step. Taking the Government help
(even if it be your money they pay you back), we must
submit to its scheme, its rules and regulation.
India and we who love her have come to the conclusion
that the education the foreign Government has given
you is not healthy for India and can certainly never
make for her real growth. This movement would
lead to a spontaneous rise of national schools.
Let them be a few but let them spring up through self-sacrifice.
Only by indigenous education can India be truly uplifted.
Why this appeals so much to me is perhaps because I
belong to the part of the Danish people who started
their own independent, indigenous national schools.
The Danish Free Schools and Folk-High-Schools, of
which you may have heard, were started against the
opposition and persecution of the State. The organisers
won and thus have regenerated the nation. With
my truly heartfelt thanks and prayers for you.
I am,
Your sincerely,
Anne Marie.
HOW TO WORK NON-CO-OPERATION
Perhaps the best way of answering
the fears and criticism as to non-co-operation is
to elaborate more fully the scheme of non-co-operation.
The critics seem to imagine that the organisers propose
to give effect to the whole scheme at once. The
fact however is that the organisers have fixed definite,
progressive four stages. The first is the giving
up of titles and resignation of honorary posts.
If there is no response or if the response received
is not effective, recourse will be had to the second
stage. The second stage involves much previous
arrangement. Certainly not a single servant will
be called out unless he is either capable of supporting
himself and his dependents or the Khilafat Committee
is able to bear the burden. All the classes of
servants will not be called out at once and never will
any pressure be put upon a single servant to withdraw
himself from the Government service. Nor will
a single private employee be touched for the simple
reason that the movement is not anti-English.
It is not even anti-Government. Co-operation
is to be withdrawn because the people must not be
party to a wrong a broken pledge a
violation of deep religious sentiment. Naturally,
the movement will receive a check, if there is any
undue influence brought to bear upon any Government
servant or if any violence is used or countenanced
by any member of the Khilafat Committee. The
second stage must be entirely successful, if the response
is at all on an adequate scale. For no Government much
less the Indian Government can subsist
if the people cease to serve it. The withdrawal
therefore of the police and the military the
third stage is a distant goal. The
organisers however wanted to be fair, open and above
suspicion. They did not want to keep back from
the Government or the public a single step they had
in contemplation even as a remote contingency.
The fourth, i.e., suspension of taxes is still
more remote. The organisers recognise that suspension
of general taxation is fraught with the greatest danger.
It is likely to bring a sensitive class in conflict
with the police. They are therefore not likely
to embark upon it, unless they can do so with the
assurance that there will be no violence offered by
the people.
I admit as I have already done that
non-co-operation is not unattended with risk, but
the risk of supineness in the face of a grave issue
is infinitely greater than the danger of violence
ensuing form organizing non-co-operation. To
do nothing is to invite violence for a certainty.
It is easy enough to pass resolutions
or write articles condemning non-co-operation.
But it is no easy task to restrain the fury of a people
incensed by a deep sense of wrong. I urge those
who talk or work against non-co-operation to descend
from their chairs and go down to the people, learn
their feelings and write, if they have the heart against
non-co-operation. They will find, as I have found
that the only way to avoid violence is to enable them
to give such expression to their feelings as to compel
redress. I have found nothing save non-co-operation.
It is logical and harmless. It is the inherent
right of a subject to refuse to assist a Government
that will not listen to him.
Non-co-operation as a voluntary movement
can only succeed, if the feeling is genuine and strong
enough to make people suffer to the utmost. If
the religious sentiment of the Mahomedans is deeply
hurt and if the Hindus entertain neighbourly regard
towards their Muslim brethren, they will both count
no cost too great for achieving the end. Non-co-operation
will not only be an effective remedy but will also
be an effective test of the sincerity of the Muslim
claim and the Hindu profession of friendship.
There is however one formidable argument
urged by friends against my joining the Khilafat movement.
They say that it ill-becomes me, a friend of the English
and an admirer of the British constitution, to join
hands with those who are to-day filled with nothing
but ill-will against the English. I am sorry
to have to confess that the ordinary Mahomedan entertains
to-day no affection for Englishmen. He considers,
not without some cause, that they have not played
the game. But if I am friendly towards Englishmen,
I am no less so towards my countrymen, the Mahomedans.
And as such they have a greater claim upon my attention
than Englishmen. My personal religion however
enables me to serve my countrymen without hurting
Englishmen or for that matter anybody else. What
I am not prepared to do to my blood-brother I would
not do to an Englishman, I would not injure him to
gain a kingdom. But I would withdraw co-operation
from him if it becomes necessary as I had withdrawn
from my own brother (now deceased) when it became necessary.
I serve the Empire by refusing to partake in its wrong.
William Stead offered public prayers for British reverses
at the time of the Boer war because he considered
that the nation to which he belonged was engaged in
an unrighteous war. The present Prime Minister
risked his life in opposing that war and did everything
he could to obstruct his own Government in its prosecution.
And to-day if I have thrown in my lot with the Mahomedans,
a large number of whom, bear no friendly feelings
towards the British, I have done so frankly as a friend
of the British and with the object of gaining justice
and of thereby showing the capacity of the British
constitution to respond to every honest determination
when it is coupled with suffering, I hope by my ‘alliance’
with the Mahomedans to achieve a threefold end to
obtain justice in the face of odds with the method
of Satyagrah and to show its efficacy over all other
methods, to secure Mahomedan friendship for the Hindus
and thereby internal peace also, and last but not
least to transform ill-will into affection for the
British and their constitution which in spite of the
imperfections weathered many a storm. I may fail
in achieving any of the ends. I can but attempt.
God alone can grant success. It will not be denied
that the ends are all worthy. I invite Hindus
and Englishman to join me in a full-hearted manner
in shouldering the burden the Mahomedans of India
are carrying. Theirs is admittedly a just fight.
The Viceroy, the Secretary of State, the Maharaja of
Bikuner and Lord Sinha have testified to it. Time
has arrived to make good the testimony. People
with a just cause are never satisfied with a mere
protest. They have been known to die for it.
Are a high-spirited people like the Mahomedans expected
to do less?
SPEECH AT MADRAS
Addressing a huge concourse of people
of the city of Madras Hindus and Mahomedans numbering
over 50,000, assembled on the South Beach opposite
to the Presidency College, Madras, on the 12th August
1920, Mahatma Gandhi spoke as follows:
Mr. Chairman and Friends, Like
last year, I have to ask your forgiveness that I should
have to speak being seated. Whilst my voice has
become stronger than it was last year, my body is still
weak; and if I were to attempt to speak to you standing,
I could not hold on for very many minutes before the
whole frame would shake. I hope, therefore, that
you will grant me permission to speak seated.
I have sat here to address you on a most important
question, probably a question whose importance we
have not measured up to now.
LOKAMANYA TILAK
But before I approach that question
on this dear old beach of Madras, you will expect
me you will want me to offer
my tribute to the great departed, Lokamanya Tilak
Maharaj (loud and prolonged cheers). I would
ask this great assembly to listen to me in silence.
I have come to make an appeal to your hearts and to
your reason and I could not do so unless you were
prepared to listen to whatever I have to say in absolute
silence. I wish to offer my tribute to the departed
patriot and I think that I cannot do better than say
that his death, as his life, has poured new vigour
into the country. If you were present as I was
present at that great funeral procession, you would
realise with me the meaning of my words. Mr.
Tilak lived for his country. The inspiration of
his life was freedom for his country which he called
Swaraj the inspiration of his death-bed was also freedom
for his country. And it was that which gave him
such marvellous hold upon his countrymen; it was that
which commanded the adoration not of a few chosen
Indians belonging to the upper strata of society but
of millions of his countrymen. His life was one
long sustained piece of self-sacrifice. He began
that life of discipline and self-sacrifice in 1879
and he continued that life up to the end of his day,
and that was the secret of his hold upon his country.
He not only knew what he wanted for his country but
also how to live for his country and how to die for
his country. I hope then that whatever I say
this evening to this vast mass of people, will bear
fruit in that same sacrifice for which the life of
Lokamanya Tilak Maharaj stands. His life, if
it teaches us anything whatsoever, teaches one supreme
lesson: that if we want to do anything whatsoever
for our country we can do so not by speeches, however
grand, eloquent and convincing they may be, but only
by sacrifice at the back of every act if our life.
I have come to ask everyone of you whether you are
ready and willing to give sufficiently for your country’s
sake for country’s honour and for religion.
I have boundless faith in you, the citizens of Madras,
and the people of this great presidency, a faith which
I began to cultivate in the year 1983 when I first
made acquaintance with the Tamil labourers in South
Africa; and I hope that in these hours of our trial,
this province will not be second to any other in India,
and that it will lead in this spirit of self-sacrifice
and will translate every word into action.
NEED FOR NON-CO-OPERATION
What is this non-co-operation, about
which you have heard so much, and why do we want to
offer this non-co-operation? I wish to go for
the time being into the why. here are two things before
this country: the first and the foremost is the
Khilafat question. On this the heart of the Mussalmans
of India has become lascerated. British pledges
given after the greatest deliberation by the Prime
Minister of England in the name of the English nation,
have been dragged into the mire. The promises
given to Moslem India on the strength of which, the
consideration that was expected by the British nation
was exacted, have been broken, and the great religion
of Islam has been placed in danger. The Mussalmans
hold and I venture to think they rightly
hold that so long as British promises remain
unfulfilled, so long is it impossible for them to tender
whole-hearted fealty and loyalty to the British connection;
and if it is to be a choice for a devout Mussalman
between loyalty to the British connection and loyalty
to his Code and Prophet, he will not require a second
to make his choice, and he has declared
his choice. The Mussalmans say frankly openly
and honourably to the whole world that if the British
Ministers and the British nation do not fulfil the
pledges given to them and do not wish to regard with
respect the sentiments of 70 millions of the inhabitants
of India who profess the faith of Islam, it will be
impossible for them to retain Islamic loyalty.
It is a question, then for the rest of the Indian
population to consider whether they want to perform
a neighbourly duty by their Mussalman countrymen,
and if they do, they have an opportunity of a lifetime
which will not occur for another hundred years, to
show their good-will, fellowship and friendship and
to prove what they have been saying for all these long
years that the Mussalman is the brother of the Hindu.
If the Hindu regards that before the connection with
the British nation comes his natural connection with
his Moslem brother, then I say to you that if you
find that the Moslem claim is just, that it is based
upon real sentiment, and that at its back ground is
this great religious feeling, you cannot do otherwise
than help the Mussalman through and through, so long
as their cause remains just, and the means for attaining
the end remains equally just, honourable and free
from harm to India. These are the plain conditions
which the Indian Mussalmans have accepted; and it
was when they saw that they could accept the proferred
aid of the Hindus, that they could always justify
the cause and the means before the whole world, that
they decided to accept the proferred hand of fellowship.
It is then for the Hindus and Mahomedans to offer a
united front to the whole of the Christian powers
of Europe and tell them that weak as India is, India
has still got the capacity of preserving her self-respect,
she still knows how to die for her religion and for
her self-respect.
That is the Khilafat in a nut-shell;
but you have also got the Punjab. The Punjab
has wounded the heart of India as no other question
has for the past century. I do not exclude from
my calculation the Mutiny of 1857. Whatever hardships
India had to suffer during the Mutiny, the insult
that was attempted to be offered to her during the
passage of the Rowlatt legislation and that which
was offered after its passage were unparalleled in
Indian history. It is because you want justice
from the British nation in connection with the Punjab
atrocities: you have to devise, ways and means
as to how you can get this justice. The House
of Commons, the House of Lords, Mr. Montagu, the Viceroy
of India, everyone of them know what the feeling of
India is on this Khilafat question and on that of
the Punjab; the debates in both the Houses of Parliament,
the action of Mr. Montagu and that of the Viceroy
have demonstrated to you completely that they are
not willing to give the justice which is India’s
due and which she demands. I suggest that our
leaders have got to find a way out of this great difficulty
and unless we have made ourselves even with the British
rulers in India and unless we have gained a measure
of self-respect at the hands of the British rulers
in India, no connection, and no friendly intercourse
is possible between them and ourselves. I, therefore,
venture to suggest this beautiful and unanswerable
method of non-co-operation.
IS IT UNCONSTITUTIONAL?
I have been told that non-co-operation
is unconstitutional. I venture to deny that it
is unconstitutional. On the contrary, I hold that
non-co-operation is a just and religious doctrine;
it is the inherent right of every human being and
it is perfectly constitutional. A great lover
of the British Empire has said that under the British
constitution even a successful rebellion is perfectly
constitutional and he quotes historical instances,
which I cannot deny, in support of his claim.
I do not claim any constitutionality for a rebellion
successful or otherwise, so long as that rebellion
means in the ordinary sense of the term, what it does
mean namely wresting justice by violent means.
On the contrary, I have said it repeatedly to my countrymen
that violence whatever end it may serve in Europe,
will never serve us in India. My brother and
friend Shaukat Ali believes in methods of violence;
and if it was in his power to draw the sword against
the British Empire, I know that he has got the courage
of a man and he has got also the wisdom to see that
he should offer that battle to the British Empire.
But because he recognises as a true soldier that means
of violence are not open to India, he sides with me
accepting my humble assistance and pledges his word
that so long as I am with him and so long as he believes
in the doctrine, so long will he not harbour even
the idea of violence against any single Englishman
or any single man on earth. I am here to tell
you that he has been as true as his word and has kept
it religiously. I am here to bear witness that
he has been following out this plan of non-violent
Non-co-operation to the very letter and I am asking
India to follow this non-violent non-co-operation.
I tell you that there is not a better soldier living
in our ranks in British India than Shaukat Ali.
When the time for the drawing of the sword comes, if
it ever comes, you will find him drawing that sword
and you will find me retiring to the jungles of Hindustan.
As soon as India accepts the doctrine of the sword,
my life as an Indian is finished. It is because
I believe in a mission special to India and it is
because I believe that the ancients of India after
centuries of experience have found out that the true
thing for any human being on earth is not justice based
on violence but justice based on sacrifice of self,
justice based on Yagna and Kurbani, I cling
to that doctrine and I shall cling to it for ever, it
is for that reason I tell you that whilst my friend
believes also in the doctrine of violence and has
adopted the doctrine of non-violence as a weapon of
the weak, I believe in the doctrine of non-violence
as a weapon of the strongest. I believe that
a man is the strongest soldier for daring to die unarmed
with his breast bare before the enemy. So much
for the non-violent part of non-co-operation.
I therefore, venture to suggest to my learned countrymen
that so long as the doctrine of non-co-operation remains
non-violent, so long there is nothing unconstitutional
in that doctrine.
I ask further, is it unconstitutional
for me to say to the British Government ‘I refuse
to serve you?’ Is it unconstitutional for our
worthy Chairman to return with every respect all the
titles that he has ever held from the Government?
Is it unconstitutional for any parent to withdraw
his children from a Government or aided school?
Is it unconstitutional for a lawyer to say ’I
shall no longer support the arm of the law so long
as that arm of law is used not to raise me but to
debase me’? Is it unconstitutional for a
civil servant or for a judge to say, ’I refuse
to serve a Government which does not wish to respect
the wishes of the whole people?’ I ask, is it
unconstitutional for a policeman or for a soldier
to tender his resignation when he knows that he is
called to serve a Government which traduces his own
countrymen? Is it unconstitutional for me to
go to the ‘krishan,’ to the agriculturist,
and say to him ’it is not wise for you to pay
any taxes if these taxes are used by the Government
not to raise you but to weaken you?’ I hold
and I venture to submit, that there is nothing unconstitutional
in it. What is more, I have done every one of
these things in my life and nobody has questioned
the constitutional character of it. I was in Kaira
working in the midst of 7 lakhs of agriculturists.
They had all suspended the payment of taxes and the
whole of India was at one with me. Nobody considered
that it was unconstitutional. I submit that in
the whole plan of non-co-operation, there is nothing
unconstitutional. But I do venture to suggest
that it will be highly unconstitutional in the midst
of this unconstitutional Government, in
the midst of a nation which has built up its magnificent
constitution, for the people of India to
become weak and to crawl on their belly it
will be highly unconstitutional for the people of
India to pocket every insult that is offered to them;
it is highly unconstitutional for the 70 millions of
Mohamedans of India to submit to a violent wrong done
to their religion; it is highly unconstitutional for
the whole of India to sit still and co-operate with
an unjust Government which has trodden under its feet
the honour of the Punjab. I say to my countrymen
so long as you have a sense of honour and so long
as you wish to remain the descendants and defenders
of the noble traditions that have been handed to you
for generations after generations, it is unconstitutional
for you not to non-co-operate and unconstitutional
for you to co-operate with a Government which has
become so unjust as our Government has become.
I am not anti-English; I am not anti-British; I am
not anti any Government; but I am anti-untruth anti-humbug
and anti-injustice. So long as the Government
spells injustice, it may regard me as its enemy, implacable
enemy. I had hoped at the Congress at Amritsar I
am speaking God’s truth before you when
I pleaded on bended knees before some of you for co-operation
with the Government. I had full hope that the
British ministers who are wise, as a rule, would placate
the Mussalman sentiment that they would do full justice
in the matter of the Punjab atrocities; and therefore,
I said: let us return good-will to the hand
of fellowship that has been extended to us, which
I then believed was extended to us through the Royal
Proclamation. It was on that account that I pleaded
for co-operation. But to-day that faith having
gone and obliterated by the acts of the British ministers,
I am here to plead not for futile obstruction in the
Legislative council but for real substantial non-co-operation
which would paralyse the mightiest Government on earth.
That is what I stand for to-day. Until we have
wrung justice, and until we have wrung our self-respect
from unwilling hands and from unwilling pens there
can be no co-operation. Our Shastras say and
I say so with the greatest deference to all the greatest
religious preceptors of India but without fear of contradiction,
that our Shastras teach us that there shall be no
co-operation between injustice and justice, between
an unjust man and a justice-loving man, between truth
and untruth. Co-operation is a duty only so long
as Government protects your honour, and non-co-operation
is an equal duty when the Government instead of protecting
robs you of your honour. That is the doctrine
of non-co-operation.
NON-CO-OPERATION AND THE SPECIAL CONGRESS
I have been told that I should have
waited for the declaration of the special Congress
which is the mouth piece of the whole nation.
I know that it is the mouthpiece of the whole nation.
If it was for me, individual Gandhi, to wait, I would
have waited for eternity. But I had in my hands
a sacred trust. I was advising my Mussalman countrymen
and for the time being I hold their honour in my hands.
I dare not ask them to wait for any verdict but the
verdict of their own Conscience. Do you suppose
that Mussalmans can eat their own words, can withdraw
from the honourable position they have taken up?
If perchance and God forbid that it should
happen the Special Congress decides against
them, I would still advise my countrymen the Mussalmans
to stand single handed and fight rather than yield
to the attempted dishonour to their religion.
It is therefore given to the Mussalmans to go to the
Congress on bended knees and plead for support.
But support or no support, it was not possible for
them to wait for the Congress to give them the lead.
They had to choose between futile violence, drawing
of the naked sword and peaceful non-violent but effective
non-co-operation, and they have made their choice.
I venture further to say to you that if there is any
body of men who feel as I do, the sacred character
of non-co-operation, it is for you and me not to wait
for the Congress but to act and to make it impossible
for the Congress to give any other verdict. After
all what is the Congress? The Congress is the
collected voice of individuals who form it, and if
the individuals go to the Congress with a united voice,
that will be the verdict you will gain from the Congress.
But if we go to the Congress with no opinion because
we have none or because we are afraid to express it,
then naturally we wait the verdict of the Congress.
To those who are unable to make up their mind I say
by all means wait. But for those who have seen
the clear light as they see the lights in front of
them, for them to wait is a sin. The Congress
does not expect you to wait but it expects you to
act so that the Congress can gauge properly the national
feeling. So much for the Congress.
BOYCOTT OF THE COUNCILS
Among the details of non-co-operation
I have placed in the foremost rank the boycott of
the councils. Friends have quarrelled with me
for the use of the word boycott, because I have disapproved as
I disapprove even now boycott of British
goods or any goods for that matter. But there,
boycott has its own meaning and here boycott has its
own meaning. I not only do not disapprove but
approve of the boycott of the councils that are going
to be formed next year. And why do I do it?
The people the masses, require
from us, the leaders, a clear lead. They do not
want any equivocation from us. The suggestion
that we should seek election and then refuse to take
the oath of allegiance, would only make the nation
distrust the leaders. It is not a clear lead to
the nation. So I say to you, my countrymen, not
to fall into this trap. We shall sell our country
by adopting the method of seeking election and then
not taking the oath of allegiance. We may find
it difficult, and I frankly confess to you that I
have not that trust in so many Indians making that
declaration and standing by it. To-day I suggest
to those who honestly hold the view viz.
that we should seek election and then refuse to take
the oath of allegiance I suggest to them
that they will fall into a trap which they are preparing
for themselves and for the nation. That is my
view. I hold that if we want to give the nation
the clearest possible lead, and if we want not to
play with this great nation we must make it clear
to this nation that we cannot take any favours, no
matter how great they may be so long as those favours
are accompanied by an injustice a double wrong, done
to India not yet redressed. The first indispensable
thing before we can receive any favours from them is
that they should redress this double wrong. There
is a Greek proverb which used to say “Beware
of the Greek but especially beware of them when they
bring gifts to you.” To-day from those ministers
who are bent upon perpetuating the wrong to Islam
and to the Punjab, I say we cannot accept gifts but
we should be doubly careful lest we may not fall into
the trap that they may have devised. I therefore
suggest that we must not coquet with the council and
must not have anything whatsoever to do with them.
I am told that if we, who represent the national sentiment
do not seek election, the Moderates who do not represent
that sentiment will. I do not agree. I do
not know what the Moderates represent and I do not
know what the Nationalists represent. I know that
there are good sheep and black sheep amongst the Moderates.
I know that there are good sheep and black sheep amongst
the Nationalists. I know that many Moderates
hold honestly the view that it is a sin to resort to
non-co-operation. I respectfully agree to differ
from them. I do say to them also that they will
fall into a trap which they will have devised if they
seek election. But that does not affect my situation.
If I feel in my heart of hearts that I ought not to
go to the councils I ought at least to abide by this
decision and it does not matter if ninety-nine other
countrymen seek election. That is the only way
in which public work can be done, and public opinion
can be built. That is the only way in which reforms
can be achieved and religion can be conserved.
If it is a question of religious honour, whether I
am one or among many I must stand upon my doctrine.
Even if I should die in the attempt, it is worth dying
for, than that I should live and deny my own doctrine.
I suggest that it will be wrong on the part of any
one to seek election to these Councils. If once
we feel that we cannot co-operate with this Government,
we have to commence from the top. We are the natural
leaders of the people and we have acquired the right
and the power to go to the nation and speak to it
with the voice of non-co-operation. I therefore
do suggest that it is inconsistent with non-co-operation
to seek election to the Councils on any terms whatsoever.
LAWYERS AND NON-CO-OPERATION
I have suggested another difficult
matter, viz., that the lawyers should suspend
their practice. How should I do otherwise knowing
so well how the Government had always been able to
retain this power through the instrumentality of lawyers.
It is perfectly true that it is the lawyers of to-day
who are leading us, who are fighting the country’s
battles, but when it comes to a matter of action against
the Government, when it comes to a matter of paralysing
the activity of the Government I know that the Government
always look to the lawyers, however fine fighters
they may have been to preserve their dignity and their
self-respect. I therefore suggest to my lawyer
friends that it is their duty to suspend their practice
and to show to the Government that they will no longer
retain their offices, because lawyers are considered
to be honorary officers of the courts and therefore
subject to their disciplinary jurisdiction. They
must no longer retain these honorary offices if they
want to withdraw on operation from Government.
But what will happen to law and order? We shall
evolve law and order through the instrumentality of
these very lawyers. We shall promote arbitration
courts and dispense justice, pure, simple home-made
justice, swadeshi justice to our countrymen.
That is what suspension of practice means.
PARENTS AND NON-CO-OPERATION
I have suggested yet another difficulty to
withdraw our children from the Government schools
and to ask collegiate students to withdraw from the
College and to empty Government aided schools.
How could I do otherwise? I want to gauge the
national sentiment. I want to know whether the
Mahomodans feel deeply. If they feel deeply they
will understand in the twinkling of an eye, that it
is not right for them to receive schooling from a
Government in which they have lost all faith; and
which they do not trust at all. How can I, if
I do not want to help this Government, receive any
help from that Government. I think that the schools
and colleges are factories for making clerks and Government
servants. I would not help this great factory
for manufacturing clerks and servants if I want to
withdraw co-operation from that Government. Look
at it from any point of view you like. It is not
possible for you to send your children to the schools
and still believe in the doctrine of non-co-operation.
THE DUTY OF TITLE HOLDERS
I have gone further. I have suggested
that our title holders should give up their titles.
How can they hold on to the titles and honour bestowed
by the Government? They were at one time badges
of honours when we believed that national honour was
safe in their hands. But now they are no longer
badges of honour but badges of dishonour and disgrace
when we really believe that we cannot get justice
from this Government. Every title holder holds
his titles and honours as trustee for the nation and
in this first step in the withdrawal of co-operation
from the Government they should surrender their titles
without a moment’s consideration. I suggest
to my Mahomedan countrymen that if they fail in this
primary duty they will certainly fail in non-co-operation
unless the masses themselves reject the classes and
take up non-co-operation in their own hands and are
able to fight that battle even as the men of the French
Revolution were able to take the reins of Government
in their own hands leaving aside the leaders and marched
to the banner of victory. I want no revolution.
I want ordered progress. I want no disordered
order. I want no chaos. I want real order
to be evolved out of this chaos which is misrepresented
to me as order. If it is order established by
a tyrant in order to get hold of the tyrannical reins
of Government I say that it is no order for me but
it is disorder. I want to evolve justice out of
this injustice. Therefore, I suggest to you the
passive non-co-operation. If we would only realise
the secret of this peaceful and infallible doctrine
you will know and you will find that you will not
want to use even an angry word when they lift the sword
at you and you will not want even to lift your little
finger, let alone a stick or a sword.
NON-CO-OPERATION SERVICE TO THE EMPIRE
You may consider that I have spoken
these words in anger because I have considered the
ways of this Government immoral, unjust, debasing and
untruthful. I use these adjectives with the greatest
deliberation. I have used them for my own true
brother with whom I was engaged in battle of non-co-operation
for full 13 years and although the ashes cover the
remains of my brother I tell you that I used to tell
him that he was unjust when his plans were based upon
immoral foundation. I used to tell him that he
did not stand for truth. There was no anger in
me, I told him this home truth because I loved him.
In the same manner, I tell the British people that
I love them, and that I want their association but
I want that association on conditions well defined.
I want my self-respect and I want my absolute equality
with them. If I cannot gain that equality from
the British people, I do not want that British connection.
If I have to let the British people go and import temporary
disorder and dislocation of national business, I will
favour that disorder and dislocation than that I should
have injustice from the hands of a great nation such
as the British nation. You will find that by the
time the whole chapter is closed that the successors
of Mr. Montagu will give me the credit for having
rendered the most distinguished service that I have
yet rendered to the Empire, in having offered this
non-co-operation and in having suggest the boycott,
not of His Royal Highness the principle of Wales,
but of boycott of a visit engineered by Government
in order to tighten its hold on the national neck.
I will not allow it even if I stand alone, if I cannot
persuade this nation not to welcome that visit but
will boycott that visit with all the power at my command.
It is for that reason I stand before you and implore
you to offer this religious battle, but it is not
a battle offered to you by a visionary or a saint.
I deny being a visionary. I do not accept the
claim of saintliness. I am of the earth, earthy,
a common gardener man as much as any one of you, probably
much more than you are. I am prone to as many
weaknesses as you are. But I have seen the world.
I have lived in the world with my eyes open.
I have gone through the most fiery ordeals that have
fallen to the lot of man. I have gone through
this discipline. I have understood the secret
of my own sacred Hinduism. I have learnt the
lesson that non-co-operation is the duty not merely
of the saint but it is the duty of every ordinary
citizen, who not know much, not caring to know much
but wants to perform his ordinary household functions.
The people of Europe touch even their masses, the
poor people the doctrine of the sword. But the
Rishis of India, those who have held the tradition
of India have preached to the masses of India this
doctrine, not of the sword, not of violence but of
suffering, of self-suffering. And unless you
and I am prepared to go through this primary lesson
we are not ready even to offer the sword and that
is the lesson my brother Shaukal Ali has imbibed to
teach and that is why he to-day accepts my advice
tendered to him in all prayerfulness and in all humility
and says ’long live non-co-operation.’
Please remember that even in England the little children
were withdrawn from the schools; and colleges in Cambridge
and Oxford were closed. Lawyers had left their
desks and were fighting in the trenches. I do
not present to you the trenches but I do ask you to
go through the sacrifice that the men, women and the
brave lads of England went through. Remember
that you are offering battle to a nation which is
saturated with their spirit of sacrifice whenever the
occasion arises. Remember that the little band
of Boers offered stubborn resistance to a mighty nation.
But their lawyers had left their desks. Their
mothers had withdrawn their children from the schools
and colleges and the children had become the volunteers
of the nation, I have seen them with these naked eyes
of mine. I am asking my countrymen in India to
follow no other gospel than the gospel of self-sacrifice
which precedes every battle. Whether you belong
to the school of violence or non-violence you will
still have to go through the fire of sacrifice, and
of discipline. May God grant you, may God grant
our leaders the wisdom, the courage and the true knowledge
to lead the nation to its cherished goal. May
God grant the people of India the right path, the
true vision and the ability and the courage to follow
this path, difficult and yet easy, of sacrifice.
SPEECH AT TRICHINOPOLY
Mahatma Gandhi made the following
speech at Trichinopoly on the 18th
August 1920:
I think you on behalf of my brother
Shaukat Ali and myself for the magnificent reception
that the citizens of Trichinopoly have given to us.
I thank you also for the many addresses that you have
been good enough to present to us, but I must come
to business.
It is a great pleasure to me to renew
your acquaintance for reasons that I need not give
you. I expect great things from Trichinopoly,
Madura and a few places I could name. I take
it that you have read my address on the Madras Beach
on non-co-operation. Without taking up your time
in this great assembly, I wish to deal with one or
two matters that arise out of Mr. S. Kasturiranga
Iyongar’s speech. He says in effect that
I should have waited for the Congress mandate on Non-co-operation.
That was impossible, because the Mussulmans had and
still have a duty, irrespective of the Hindus, to
perform in reference to their own religion. It
was impossible for them to wait for any mandate save
the mandate of their own religion in a matter that
vitally concerned the honour of Islam. It is
therefore possible for them only to go to the Congress
on bended knees with a clear cut programme of their
own and ask the Congress to pronounce its blessings
upon that programme and if they are not so fortunate
as to secure the blessings of the National Assembly
without meaning any disrespect to that assembly, it
is their bounden duty to go on with their programme,
and so it is the duty of every Hindu who considers
his Mussalman brother as a brother who has a just cause
which he wishes to vindicate, to throw in his lot with
his Mussalman brother. Our leader does not quarrel
with the principle of non-co-operation by itself,
but he objects to the three principal details of non-co-operation.
COUNCIL ELECTIONS
He considers that it is our duty to
seek election to the Councils and fight our battle
on the floor of the Council hall. I do not deny
the possibility of a fight and a royal fight on the
Council floor. We have done it for the last 35
years, but I venture to suggest to you and to him,
with all due respect, that it is not non-co-operation
and it is not half as successful as non-co-operation
can be. You cannot go to a class of people with
a view to convince them by any fight call
it even obstruction who have got a settled
conviction and a settled policy to follow. It
is in medical language an incompatible mixture out
of which you can gain nothing, but if you totally
boycott the Council, you create a public opinion in
the country with reference to the Khilafat wrong and
the Punjab wrong which will become totally irresistible.
The first advantage of going to the Councils must
be good-will on the part of the rulers. It is
absolutely lacking. In the place of good-will
you have got nothing but injustice but I must move
on.
LAWYERS’ PRACTICE
I come now to the second objection
of Mr. Kasturiranga Iyengar with reference to the
suspension by lawyers of their practice. Milk
is good in itself but it comes absolutely poisonous
immediately a little bit of arsenic is added to it.
Law courts are similarly good when justice is distilled
through them on behalf of a Sovereign power which wants
to do justice to its people. Law courts are one
of the greatest symbols of power and in the battle
of non-co-operation, you may not leave law courts
untouched and claim to offer non-co-operation, but
if you will read that objection carefully, you will
find in that objection the great fear that the lawyers
will not respond to the call that the country makes
upon them, and it is just there that the beauty of
non-co-operation comes in. If one lawyer alone
suspends practice, it is so much to the good of the
country and so if we are sure to deprive the Government
of the power that it possess through its law courts,
whether one lawyer takes it up or many, we must adopt
that step.
GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS
He objects also to the plan of boycotting
Government schools. I can only say what I have
said with reference to lawyers that if we mean non-co-operation,
we may not receive any favours from the Government,
no matter how advantageous by themselves they may
be. In a great struggle like this, it is not
open to us to count how many schools will respond
and how many parents will respond and just as a geometrical
problem is difficult, because it does not admit of
easy proof, so also because a certain stage in national
evolution is difficult, you may not avoid that step
without making the whole of the evolution a farce.
We have had a great lesson in non-co-operation
and co-operation. We had a lesson in non-co-operation
when some young men began to fight there and it is
a dangerous weapon. I have not the slightest doubt
about it. One man with a determined will to non-co-operate
can disturb a whole meeting and we had a physical
demonstration of it to night but ours is non-violent,
non-co-operation in which there can be no mistake
whatsoever in the fundamental conditions are observed.
If non-co-operation fails, it will not be for want
of any inherent strength in it, but it will fall because
there is no response to it, or because people have
not sufficiently grasped its simple principles.
You had also a practical demonstration of co-operation
just now; that heavy chair went over the heads of
so many people, because all wanted to lift their little
hand to move that chair away from them and so was that
heavier dome also removed from our sight by co-operation
of man, woman and child. Everybody believes and
knows that this Government of our exists only by the
co-operation of the people and not by the force of
arms it can wield and everyman with a sense of logic
will tell you that the converse of that also is equally
true that Government cannot stand if this co-operation
on which it exists is withdrawn. Difficulties
undoubtedly there are, we have hitherto learned how
to sacrifice our voice and make speeches. We
must also learn to sacrifice ease, money, comfort
and that, we may learn form the Englishmen themselves.
Every one who has studied English history knows that
we are now engaged in a battle with a nation which
is capable of great sacrifice and the three hundred
millions of India cannot make their mark upon the world,
or gain their self-respect without an adequate measure
of sacrifice.
BOYCOTT OF BRITISH GOODS
Our friend has suggested the boycott
of British or foreign goods. Boycott of all foreign
goods is another name for Swadeshi. He thinks
that there will be a greater response in the boycott
of all foreign goods. With the experience of
years behind me and with an intimate knowledge of
the mercantile classes, I venture to tell you that
boycott of foreign goods, or boycott of merely British
goods is more impracticable than any of the stops
I have suggested. Whereas in all the steps that
I have ventured to suggest there is practically no
sacrifice of money involved, in the boycott of British
or foreign goods you are inviting your merchant princes
to sacrifice their millions. It has got to be
done, but it is an exceedingly low process. The
same may be said of the steps that I have ventured
to suggest, I know, but boycott of goods in conceived
as a punishment and the punishment is only effective
when it is inflicted. What I have ventured to
suggest is not a punishment, but the performance of
a sacred duty, a measure of self-denial from ourselves,
and therefore it is effective from its very inception
when it is undertaken even by one man and a substantial
duty performed even by one single man lays the foundation
of nations liberty.
CONCLUSION
I am most anxious for my nation, for
my Mussalman brethren also, to understand that if
they want to vindicate national honour or the honour
of Islam, it will be vindicated without a shadow of
doubt, not be conceiving a punishment or a series
of punishments, but by an adequate measure of self-sacrifice.
I wish to speak of all our leaders in terms of the
greatest respect, but whatever respect we wish to pay
them may not stop or arrest the progress of the country,
and I am most anxious that the country at this very
critical period of its history should make its choice.
The choice clearly does not lie before you and me in
wresting by force of arms the sceptre form the British
nation, but the choice lies in suffering this double
wrong of the Khilafat and the Punjab, in pocketing
humiliation and in accepting national emasculation
or vindication of India’s honour by sacrifice
to-day by every man, woman and child and those who
feel convinced of the rightness of things, we should
make that choice to-night. So, citizens of Trichinopoly,
you may not wait for the whole of India but you can
enforce the first step of non-co-operation and begin
your operations even from to-morrow, if you have not
done so already. You can surrender all your titles
to-morrow all the lawyers may surrender their practice
to-morrow; those who cannot sustain body and soul
by any other means can be easily supported by the
Khilafat Committee, if they will give their whole time
and attention to the work of that Committee and if
the layers will kindly do that, you will find that
there is no difficulty in settling your disputes by
private arbitration. You can nationalise your
schools from to-morrow if you have got the will and
the determination. It is difficult, I know, when
only a few of you think these things. It is as
easy as we are sitting here when the whole of this
vast audience is of one mind and as it was easy for
you to carry that chair so is it easy for you to enforce
this programme from to-morrow if you have one will,
one determination and love for your country, love
for the honour of your country and religion. (Loud
and prolonged cheers.)
SPEECH AT CALICUT
Mr. Chairman and friends. On
behalf of my brother Shaukut Ali and myself I wish
to thank you most sincerely for the warm welcome you
have extended to us. Before I begin to explain
the purpose of our mission I have to give you the
information that Pir Mahboob Shah who was being tried
in Sindh for sedition has been sentenced to two years’
simple imprisonment. I do not know exactly what
the offence was with which the Pir was charged.
I do not know whether the words attributed to him were
ever spoken by him. But I do know that the Pirsaheb
declined to offer any defence and with perfect resignation
he has accepted his penalty. For me it is a matter
of sincere pleasure that the Pirsaheb who exercises
great influence over his followers has understood the
spirit of the struggle upon which we have embarked.
It is not by resisting the authority of Government
that we expect to succeed in the great task before
us. But I do expect that we shall succeed if we
understand the spirit of non-co-operation. The
Lieutenant-Governor of Burma himself has told us that
the British retain their hold on India not by the force
of arms but by the force of co-operation of the people.
Thus he has given us the remedy for any wrong that
the Government may do to the people, whether knowingly
or unknowingly. And so long as we co-operate with
the Government, so long as we support that Government,
we become to that extent sharers in the wrong.
I admit that in ordinary circumstances a wise subject
will tolerate the wrongs of a Government, but a wise
subject never tolerates a wrong that a Government imposes
on the declared will of a people. And I venture
to submit to this great meeting that the Government
of India and the Imperial Government have done a double
wrong to India, and if we are a nation of self-respecting
people conscious of its dignity, conscious of its
right, it is not just and proper that we should stand
the double humiliation that the Government has heaped
upon us. By shaping and by becoming a predominant
partner in the peace terms imposed on the helpless
Sultan of Turkey, the Imperial Government have intentionally
flouted the cherished sentiment of the Mussalman subjects
of the Empire. The present Prime Minister gave
a deliberate pledge after consultation with his colleagues
when it was necessary for him to conciliate the Mussalmans
of India. I claim to have studied this Khilafat
question in a special manner. I claim to understand
the Mussalman feeling on the Khilafat question and
I am here to declare for the tenth time that on the
Khilafat matter the Government has wounded the Mussalman
sentiment as they had never done before. And I
say without fear of contradiction that if the Mussalmans
of India had not exercised great self-restraint and
if there was not the gospel of non-co-operation preached
to them and if they had not accepted it, there would
have been bloodshed in India by this time. I am
free to confess that spilling of blood would not have
availed their cause. But a man who is in a state
of rage whose heart has become lacerated does not
count the cost of his action. So much for the
Khilafat wrong.
I propose to take you for a minute
to the Punjab, the northern end of India. And
what have both Governments done for the Punjab?
I am free to confess again that the crowds in Amritsar
went mad for a moment. They were goaded to madness
by a wicked administration. But no madness on
the part of a people can justify the shedding of innocent
blood, and what have they paid for it? I venture
to submit that no civilised Government could ever
have made the people pay the penalty and retribution
that they have paid. Innocent men were tried
through mock-tribunals and imprisoned for life.
Amnesty granted to them after; I count of no consequence.
Innocent, unarmed men, who knew nothing of what was
to happen, were butchered in cold blood without the
slightest notice. Modesty of women in Manianwalla,
women who had done no wrong to any individual, was
outraged by insolent officers. I want you to understand
what I mean by outrage of their modesty. Their
veils were opened with his stick by an officer.
Men who were declared to be utterly innocent by the
Hunter Committee were made to crawl on their bellies.
And all these wrongs totally undeserved remain unavenged.
If it was the duty of the Government of India to punish
those who were guilty of incendiarism and murder,
as I hold it was their duty, it was doubly their duty
to punish officers who insulted and oppressed innocent
people. But in the face of these official wrongs
we have the debate in the house of lords supporting
official terrorism, it is this double wrong, the affront
to Islam and the injury to the manhood of the Punjab,
that we feel bound to wipe out by non-co-operation.
We have prayed, petitioned, agitated, we have passed
resolutions. Mr. Mahomed Ali supported by his
friends is now waiting on the British public.
He has pleaded the cause of Islam in a most manful
manner, but his pleading has fallen on deaf ears and
we have his word for it that whilst France and Italy
have shown great sympathy for the cause of Islam,
it is the British Ministers who have shown no sympathy.
This shows which way the British Ministers and the
present holders of office in India mean to deal by
the people. There is no goodwill, there is no
desire to placate the people of India. The people
of India must therefore have a remedy to redress the
double wrong. The method of the west is violence.
Wherever the people of the west have felt a wrong
either justly or unjustly, they have rebelled and shed
blood. As I have said in my letter to the Viceroy
of India, half of India does not believe in the remedy
of violence. The other half is too weak to offer
it. But the whole of India is deeply hurt and
stirred by this wrong, and it is for that reason that
I have suggested to the people of India the remedy
of non-co-operation. I consider it perfectly
harmless, absolutely constitutional and yet perfectly
efficacious. It is a remedy in which, if it is
properly adopted, victory is certain, and it is the
age-old remedy of self-sacrifice. Are the Mussalmans
of India who feel the great wrong done to Islam ready
to make an adequate self-sacrifice? All the scriptures
of the world teach us that there can be no compromise
between justice and injustice. Co-operation on
the part of a justice-loving man with an unjust man
is a crime. And if we desire to compel this great
Government to the will of the people, as we must,
we must adopt this great remedy of non-co-operation.
And if the Mussalmans of India offer non-co-operation
to Government in order to secure justice in the Khilafat
matter, I believe it is duty of the Hindus to help
them so long as their moans are just. I consider
the eternal friendship between the Hindus and Mussalmans
is more important than the British connection.
I would prefer any day anarchy and chaos in India
to an armed peace brought about by the bayonet between
the Hindus and Mussalmans. I have therefore ventured
to suggest to my Hindu brethren that if they wanted
to live at peace with Mussalmans, there is an opportunity
which is not going to recur for the next hundred years.
And I venture to assure you that if the Government
of India and the Imperial Government come to know
that there is a determination on the part of the people
to redress this double wrong they would not hesitate
to do what is needed. But in the Mussalmans of
India will have to take the lead in the matter.
You will have to commence the first stage of non-co-operation
in right earnest. And if you may not help this
Government, you may not receive help from it.
Titles which were the other day titles of honour are
to-day in my opinion badges of our disgrace.
We must therefore surrender all titles of honour, all
honorary offices. It will constitute an emphatic
demonstration of the disapproval by the leaders of
the people of the acts of the Government. Lawyers
must suspend their practice and must resist the power
of the Government which has chosen to flout public
opinion. Nor may we receive instruction from
schools controlled by Government and aided by it.
Emptying of the schools will constitute a demonstration
of the will of the middle class of India. It
is far better for the nation even to neglect the literary
instruction of the children than to co-operate with
a Government that has striven to maintain an injustice
and untruth on the Khilafat and Punjab matters.
Similarly have I ventured to suggest a complete boycott
of reformed councils. That will be an emphatic
declaration of the part of the representatives of
the people that they do not desire to associate with
the Government so long as the two wrongs continue.
We must equally decline to offer ourselves as recruits
for the police or the military. It is impossible
for us to go to Mesopotamia or to offer to police
that country or to offer military assistance and to
help the Government in that blood guiltiness.
The last plank in the first stage is Swadeshi.
Swadeshi is intended not so much to bring pressure
upon the Government as to demonstrate the capacity
for sacrifice on the part of the men and women of
India. When one-fourth of India has its religion
at stake and when the whole of India has its honour
at stake, we can be in no mood to bedeck ourselves
with French calico or silks from Japan. We must
resolve to be satisfied with cloth woven by the humble
weavers of India in their own cottages out of yarn
spun by their sisters in their own homes. When
a hundred years ago our tastes were not debased and
we were not lured by all the fineries from the
foreign countries, we were satisfied with the cloth
produced by the men and women in India, and if I could
but in a moment revolutionize the tastes of India and
make it return to its original simplicity, I assure
you that the Gods would descent to rejoice at the
great act of renunciation. That is the first
stage in non-co-operation. I hope it is as easy
for you as it is easy for me to see that if India
is capable of taking the first step in anything like
a full measure that step will bring the redress we
want. I therefore do not intend to take you to
the other stages of non-co-operation. I would
like you to rivet your attention upon the plans in
the first stage. You will have noticed that but
two things are necessary in going through the first
stage: (1) Prefect spirit of non-violence is
indispensable for non-co-operation, (2) only a little
self-sacrifice, I pray to God that He will give the
people of India sufficient courage and wisdom and
patience to go through this experiment of non-co-operation.
I think you for the great reception that you have
given us. And I also thank you for the great patience
and exemplary silence with which you have listened
to my remarks.
August 1920.
SPEECH AT MANGALORE
Mr. Chairman and friends, To
my brother Shaukat Ali and me it was a pleasure to
go through this beautiful garden of India. The
great reception that you gave us this afternoon, and
this great assembly are most welcome to us, if they
are a demonstration of your sympathy with the cause
which you have the honour to represent. I assure
you that we have not undertaken this incessant travelling
in order to have receptions and addresses, no matter
how cordial they may be. But we have undertaken
this travelling throughout the length and breadth of
this dear Motherland to place before you the position
that faces us to-day. It is our privilege, as
it is our duty, to place that position before the
country and let her make the choice.
Throughout our tour we have received
many addresses, but in my humble opinion no address
was more truly worded than the address that was presented
to us at Kasargod. It addressed both of us as
’dear revered brothers.’ I am unable
to accept the second adjective ‘revered.’
The word ‘dear’ is dear to me I must confess.
But dearer than that is the expression ‘brothers.’
The signatories to that address recognized the true
significance of this travel. No blood brothers
can possibly be more intimately related, can possibly
be more united in one purpose, one aim than my brother
Shaukat Ali and I. And I considered it a proud privilege
and honour to be addressed as blood brother to Shaukat
Ali. The contents of that address were as equally
significant. It stated that in our united work
was represented the essence of the unity between the
Mussalmans and Hindus in India. If we two cannot
represent that very desirable unity, if we two cannot
cement the relation between the two communities, I
do not know who can. Then without any rhetoric
and without any flowery language the address went
on to describe the inwardness of the Punjab and the
Khilafat struggle; and then in simple and beautiful
language it described the spiritual significance of
Satyagrah and Non-co-operation. This was followed
by a frank and simple promise. Although the signatories
to the address realised the momentous nature of the
struggle on which we have embarked, and although they
sympathise with the struggle with their whole heart,
they wound up by saying that even if they could not
follow non-co-operation in all its details, they would
do as much as they could to help the struggle.
And lastly, in eloquent, and true language, they said
’if we cannot rise equal to the occasion it
will not be due to want of effort but to want of ability.’
I can desire no better address, no better promise,
and if you, the citizens of Mangalore, can come up
to the level of the signatories, and give us just
the assurance that you consider the struggle to be
right and that it commands your entire approval, I
am certain you will make all sacrifice that lies in
your power. For we are face to face with a peril
greater than plagues, greater than influenza, greater
than earthquakes and mighty floods, which sometimes
overwhelm this land. These physical calamities
can rob us of so many Indian bodies. But the
calamity that has at the present moment overtaken India
touches the religious honour of a fourth of her children
and the self-respect of the whole nation. The
Khilafat wrong affects the Mussalmans of India, and
the Punjab calamity very nearly overwhelms the manhood
of India. Shall we in the face of this danger
be weak or rise to our full height. The remedy
for both the wrongs is the spiritual solvent of non-co-operation.
I call it a spiritual weapon, because it demands discipline
and sacrifice from us. It demands sacrifice from
every individual irrespective of the rest. And
the promise that is behind this performance of duty,
the promise given by every religion that I have studied
is sure and certain. It is that there is no spotless
sacrifice that has been yet offered on earth, which
has not carried with it its absolute adequate reward.
It is a spiritual weapon, because it waits for no
mandate from anybody except one’s own conscience.
It is a spiritual weapon, because it brings out the
best in the nation and it absolutely satisfies individual
honour if a single individual takes it, and it will
satisfy national honour if the whole nation takes it
up. And therefore it is that I have called non-co-operation
in opposition to the opinion of many of my distinguished
countrymen and leaders a weapon that is
infallible and absolutely practicable. It is infallible
and practicable, because it satisfies the demands
of individual conscience. God above cannot, will
not expect Maulana Shaukat Ali to do more than he has
been doing, for he has surrendered and placed at the
disposal of God whom he believes to be the Almighty
ruler of everyone, he has delivered all in the service
of God. And we stand before the citizens of Mangalore
and ask them to make their choice either to accept
this precious gift that we lay at their feet or to
reject it. And after having listened to my message
if you come to the come to the conclusion that you
have no other remedy than non-co-operation for the
conservation of Islam and the honour of India, you
will accept that remedy. I ask you not to be
confused by so many bewildering issues that are placed
before you, nor to be shaken from your purpose because
you see divided counsels amongst your leaders.
This is one of the necessary limitations of any spiritual
or any other struggle that has ever been fought on
this earth. It is because it comes so suddenly
that it confuses the mind if the heart is not tuned
properly. And we would be perfect human beings
on this earth if in all of us was found absolutely
perfect correspondence between the mind and the heart.
But those of you who have been following the newspaper
controversy, will find that no matter what division
of opinion exists amongst our journals and leaders
there is unanimity that the remedy is efficacious
if it can be kept free from violence, and if it is
adopted on a large scale. I admit the difficulty
the virtue however lies in surmounting it. We
cannot possibly combine violence with a spiritual
weapon like non-co-operation. We do not offer
spotless sacrifice if we take the lives of others
in offering our own. Absolute freedom from violence
is therefore it condition precedent to non-co-operation.
But I have faith in my country to know that when it
has assimilated the principle of the doctrine In the
fullest extent, it will respond to it. And in
no case will India make any headway whatsoever until
she has learnt the lesson of self-sacrifice.
Even if this country were to take up the doctrine
of the sword, which God forbid, it will have to learn
the lesson of self-sacrifice. The second difficulty
suggested is the want of solidarity of the nation.
I accept it too. But that difficulty I have already
answered by saying that it is a remedy that can be
taken up by individuals for individual and by the
nation for national satisfaction; and therefore even
if the whole nation does not take up non-co-operation,
the individual successes, which may be obtained by
individuals taking up non-co-operation will stand to
their own credit as of the nation to which they belong.
The first stage in my humble opinion
is incredibly easy inasmuch as it does not involve
any very great sacrifice. If your Khan bahadurs
and other title-holders were to renounce their titles
I venture to submit that whilst the renunciation will
stand to the credit and honour of the nation it will
involve a little or no sacrifice. On the contrary,
they will not only have surrendered no earthly riches
but they will have gained the applause of the nation.
Let us see what it means, this first step. The
able editor of Hindu, Mr. Kastariranga Iyengar,
and almost every journalist in the country are agreed
that the renunciation of titles is a necessary and
a desirable step. And if these chosen people
of the Government were without exception to surrender
their titles to Government giving notice that the
heart of India is doubly wounded in that the honour
of India and of muslim religion is at stake and that
therefore they can no longer retain their titles, I
venture to suggest, that this their step which costs
not a single penny either to them or to the nation
will be an effective demonstration of the national
will.
Take the second step or the second
item of non-co-operation. I know there is strong
opposition to the boycott of councils. The opposition
when you begin to analyse it means not that the step
is faulty or that it is not likely to succeed, but
it is due to the belief that the whole country will
not respond to it and that the Moderates will steal
into the councils. I ask the citizens of Mangalore
to dispel that fear from your hearts. United
the voters of Mangalore can make it impossible for
either a moderate or an extremist or any other form
of leader to enter the councils as your representative.
This step involves no sacrifice of money, no sacrifice
of honour but the gaining of prestige for the whole
nation. And I venture to suggest to you that this
one step alone if it is taken with any degree of unanimity
even by the extremists can bring about the desired
relief, but if all do not respond the individual need
not be afraid. He at least will have laid the
foundation for true self progress, let him have the
comfort that he at least has washed his hands clean
of the guilt of the Government.
Then I come to the members of the
profession which one time I used to carry on.
I have ventured to ask the lawyers of India to suspend
their practice and withdraw their support from a Government
which no longer stands for justice, pure and unadulterated,
for the nation. And the step is good for the
individual lawyer who takes it and is good for the
nation if all the lawyers take it.
And so for the Government and the
Government aided schools, I must confess that I cannot
reconcile my conscience to my children going to Government
schools and to the programme of non-co-operation is
intended to withdraw all support from Government,
and to decline all help from it.
I will not tax your patience by taking
you through the other items of non-co-operation important
as they are. But I have ventured to place before
you four very important and forcible steps any one
of which if fully taken up contains in it possibilities
of success. Swadeshi is preached as an item of
non-co-operation, as a demonstration of the spirit
of sacrifice, and it is an item which every man, woman
and child can take up.
August 1920.
SPEECH AT BEZWADA
As I said this morning one essential
condition for the progress of India is Hindu-Muslim
Unity. I understand that there was a little bit
of bickering between Hindus and Mussalmans to-day
in Bezwada. My brother Maulana Shaukat Ali adjusted
the dispute between the two communities and he illustrated
in his own person the entire efficacy of one item in
the first stage of Non-co-operation. He sat without
any vakils appearing before him for either parties
to arbitrate on the dispute between them. He
required no postponement for the consideration of the
question from time to time. His fees consisted
in a broken lead pencil. That is what we should
do, if all the lawyers suspended practice and set up
arbitration for the settlement of private disputes.
But why was there any quarrel at all? It is laughable
in the extreme when you come to think of it.
Because the Hindus seem to have played music whilst
passing the mosque. I think it was improper for
them to do so. Hindu Moslem Unity does not mean
that Hindus should cease to respect the prejudices
and sentiments cherished by Mussalmans. And as
this question of music has given rise to many a quarrel
between the two communities it behoves the Hindus,
if they want to cultivate true Hindu-Moslem Unity,
to refrain from acts which they know injure the sentiments
of their Mussalman brethren. We may not take
undue advantage of the great spirit of toleration
that is developing in Mussalmans and do things likely
to irritate them. It is never a matter of principle
for a Hindu procession to continue playing music before
mosques. And now that we desire voluntarily to
respect Mussalman sentiment, we should be doubly careful
at a time when Hindus are offering assistance to Mussalmans
in their troubles. That assistance should be
given in all humility and without any arrogation of
rights. To my Mussalman brethren I would say that
it would become their dignity to restrain themselves
and not feel irritated when any Hindu had done anything
to irritate their religious sentiment. But in
any event, you have today presented to you a remedy
for the settlement of any such issue. We must
settle our disputes by arbitration as was done this
after-noon. You cannot always get a Moulana Shankat
Ali, exercising unrivalled influence on the community.
But we can always get people enough in our own villages,
towns and districts who exercise influence over such
villages and towns and command the confidence of both
the communities. The offended party should consider
it its duty to approach them and not to take the law
in its own hands.
It gives me much pleasure to announce
to you that, Mr. Kaleswar Rao has consented to refrain
from standing for election to the new Legislative
Councils. You will be also pleased to know that
Mr. Gulam Nohiuddin has resigned his Honorary Magistrateship,
I hope that both these patriots will not consider
that they have done their last duty by their acts of
renunciation, but I hope they will regard their acts
as a prelude to acts of greater purpose and greater
energy and I hope they will take in hand the work
of educating the electorate in their districts regarding
boycott of councils. I have said elsewhere that
never for another century will India be faced with
a conjunction of events that faces it to-day.
The cloud that has descended upon Islam has solidified
the Moslem world as nothing else could have.
It has awakened the men and women of Mussulman India
from their deep sleep. Inasmuch as a single Panjabi
was made to crawl on his belly in the famous street
of Amitsar, I hold that the whole of was made to crawl
on its belly. And if we want to straighten up
ourselves from that crawling position and stand erect
before the whole world, it requires, a tremendous effort.
H.E. the Viceroy in his Viceregal pronouncement at
the opening of the Council was pleased to say that
he did not desire to make any remarks on the Punjab
events. He treated them as a closed chapter and
referred us to the future verdict of history.
I venture to tell you the citizens of Bezwada that
India will have deserved to crawl in that lane if she
accepts this pronouncement as the final answer, and
if we want to stand erect before the whole world,
it is impossible for a single child, man or woman in
India to rest until fullest reparation has been done
for the Punjab wrong. Similarly with reference
to the Khilafat grievance the Mussalmans of India
in my humble opinion will forfeit all title to consider
themselves the followers of the great Prophet in whose
name they recite the Kalama, day in and day out, they
will forfeit their title if they do not put their
shoulders to the wheel and lift this cloud that is
hanging on them. But we shall make a serious
blunder. India will commit suicide, if we do
not understand and appreciate the forces that are arrayed
against us. We have got to face a mighty Government
with all its power ranged against us. This composed
of men who are able, courageous, capable of making
sacrifices. It is a Government which does not
scruple to use means, fair or foul, in order to gain
its end. No craft is above that Government.
It resorts to frightfulness, terrorism. It resorts
to bribery, in the shape of titles, honour and high
offices. It administers opiates in the shape
of Reforms. In essence then it is an autocracy
double distilled in the guise of democracy. The
greatest gift of a crafty cunning man are worthless
so long as cunning resides in his heart. It is
a Government representing a civilisation which is purely
material and godless. I have given to you these
qualities of this government in order not to excite
your angry passions, but in order that you may appreciate
the forces that are matched against you. Anger
will serve no purpose. We shall have to meet
ungodliness by godliness. We shall have to meet
their untruth by truth; we shall have to meet their
cunning and their craft by openness and simplicity;
we shall have to meet their terrorism and frightfulness
by bravery. And it is an unbending bravery which
is demanded of every man, woman and child. We
must meet their organisation by greater organising
ability. We must meet their discipline by grater
discipline, and we must meet their sacrifices by infinitely
greater sacrifices, and if we are in a position to
show these qualities in a full measure I have not
the slightest doubt that we shall win this battle.
If really we have fear of God in us, our prayers will
give us the strength to secure victory. God has
always come to the help of the helpless and we need
not go before any earthly power for help.
You heard this morning of the bravery
of the sword, and the bravery of suffering. For
me personally I have forever rejected the bravery of
the sword. But, to-day it is not my purpose to
demonstrate to you the final ineffectiveness of the
sword. But he who runs may see that before India
possesses itself a sword which will be more than a
match for the forces of Europe, it will he generations.
India may resort to the destruction of life and property
here and there but such destructive cases serve no
purpose. I have therefore presented to you a weapon
called the bravery of suffering, otherwise called
Non-co-operation. It is a bravery which is open
to the weakest among the weak. It is open to women
and children. The power of suffering is the prerogative
of nobody, and if only 300 millions of Indians could
show the power of suffering in order to redress a
grievous wrong done to the nation or to its religion,
I make bold to say that, India will never require
to draw the sword. And unless we are able to
show an adequate measure of sacrifice we shall lose
this battle. No one need tell me that India has
not got this power of suffering. Every father
and mother is witness to what I am about to say, viz.,
that every father and mother have shown in the domestic
affairs matchless power of suffering. And if
we have only developed national consciousness, if
we have developed sufficient regard for our religion,
we shall have developed power of suffering in the national
and religious field. Considered in these terms
the first stage in Non-co-operation is the simplest
and the easiest state. If the title-holders of
India consider that India is suffering from a grievous
wrong both as regards the Punjab and the Khilafat
is it any suffering on their part to renounce their
titles to-day? What is the measure of the suffering
awaiting the lawyers who are called upon to suspend
practice when compared to the great benefit which
is in store for the nation? And if thy parents
of India will summon up courage to sacrifice secular
education, they will have given their children the
real education of a life-time. For they will
have learnt the value of religion and national honour.
And I ask you, the citizens of Bezwada, to think well
before you accept the loaves and fishes in the form
of Government offices set them on one side and set
national honour on the other and make your service.
What sacrifice is there involved in the individual
renouncing his candidature for legislative councils.
The councils are a tempting bait. All kinds of
arguments are being advanced in favour of joining the
councils. India will sacrifice the opportunity
of gaining her liberty if she touches them. It
passes comprehension how we, who have known this Government,
who have read the Viceregal pronouncement, how we who
have known their determination not to give justice
in the Punjab and the Khilafat matters, can gain any
benefit by co-operation, constructive or obstructive,
with this Government? But the Nationalists, belonging
to a great popular party, tell us that if they do
not contest these scats, the moderates will
get in. Surely, it is nothing but an exhibition
of want of courage and faith in our own cause to feel
that we must enter the councils lest moderates should
get in. Moderates believe in the possibility
of obtaining justice at the hands of the Government.
Nationalists have on the other hand filled the platforms
with denunciations of the Government and its measures.
How can the Nationalists ever hope to gain anything
by entering the councils, holding the belief that
they do? They will better represent the popular
will if they wring justice from the Government by means
of Non-co-operation. A calculating spirit at
the present moment in the history of India will prove
its ruin. I, therefore, tender my hearty congratulation
to those who have announced their resignations of
candidature or honorary offices, and I hope that their
example will prove infectious. I have been told,
and I believe it myself from what I have seen, that
the Andhrus are a brave, courageous and spiritually-inclined
people. I venture therefore to ask my Andhra
brethren whether they have understood the spirituality
of this beautiful doctrine of Non-co-operation.
If they have, I hope they will not wait for a single
moment for a mandate from the Congress or the Moslem
League. They will understand that a spiritual
weapon is god whether it is wielded by one or many.
I, therefore, invite you to go to Calcutta with a
united will and a united purpose, sanctified by a spirit
of sacrifice, with a will of your own to convert those
who are still undecided about the spirituality or
the practicability of the weapon.
I thank you for the attention and
patience with which you have listened to me.
I pray to the Almighty that He may give you wisdom
and courage that are so necessary at the present moment.
August 1920.
THE CONGRESS
The largest and the most important
Congress ever held has come and gone, It was the biggest
demonstration ever held against the present system
of Government. The President uttered the whole
truth when he said that it was a Congress in which,
instead of the President and the leaders driving the
people, the people drove him and the latter. It
was clear to every one on the platform that the people
had taken the reins in their own hands. The platform
would gladly have moved at a slower pace.
The Congress gave one day to a full
discussion of the creed and voted solidly for it with
but two dissentients after two nights’ sleep
over the discussion. It gave one day to a discussion
of non-co-operation resolution and voted for it with
unparalleled enthusiasm. It gave the last day
to listening to the whole of the remaining thirty-two
Articles of the Constitution which were read and translated
word for word by Maulana Mahomed Ali in a loud and
clear voice. It showed that it was intelligently
following the reading of it, for there was dissent
when Article Eight was reached. It referred to
non-interference by the Congress in the internal affairs
of the Native States. The Congress would not
have passed the proviso if it had meant that it could
even voice the feelings of the people residing in
the territories ruled by the princes. Happily
it resolution suggesting the advisability of establishing
Responsible Government in their territories enabled
me to illustrate to the audience that the proviso
did not preclude the Congress from ventilating the
grievances and aspirations of the subjects of these
states, whilst it clearly prevented the Congress from
taking any executive action in connection with them;
as for instance holding a hostile demonstration in
the Native States against any action of theirs.
The Congress claims to dictate to the Government but
it cannot do so by the very nature of its constitution
in respect of the Native States.
Thus the Congress has taken three
important steps after the greatest deliberation.
It has expressed its determination in the clearest
possible terms to attain complete null-government,
if possible still in association with the British
people, but even without, if necessary. It proposes
to do so only by means that are honourable and non-violent.
It has introduced fundamental changes in the constitution
regulating its activities and has performed an act
of self-denial in voluntarily restricting the number
of delegates to one for every fifty thousand of the
population of India and has insisted upon the delegates
being the real representatives of those who want to
take any part in the political life of the country.
And with a view to ensuring the representation of
all political parties it has accepted the principle
of “single transferable vote.” It
has reaffirmed the non-co-operation resolution of
the Special Session and amplified it in every respect.
It has emphasised the necessity of non-violence and
laid down that the attainment of Swaraj is conditional
upon the complete harmony between the component parts
of India, and has therefore inculcated Hindu-Muslim
unity. The Hindu delegates have called upon their
leaders to settle disputes between Brahmíns and
non-Brahmíns and have urged upon the religious
heads the necessity of getting rid of the poison of
untouchability. The Congress has told the parents
of school-going children, and the lawyers that they
have not responded sufficiently to the call of the
nation and and that they must make greater effort
in doing so. It therefore follows that the lawyers
who do not respond quickly to the call for suspension
and the parents who persist in keeping their children
in Government and aided institutions must find themselves
dropping out from the public life of the country.
The country calls upon every man and woman in India
to do their full share. But of the details of
the non-co-operation resolution I must write later.
WHO IS DISLOYAL?
Mr. Montagu has discovered a new definition
of disloyalty. He considers my suggestion to
boycott the visit of the Prince of Wales to be disloyal
and some newspapers taking the cue from him have called
persons who have made the suggestion ‘unmannerly’.
They have even attributed to these ‘unmannerly’
persons the suggestion of boycotting the Prince.
I draw a sharp and fundamental distinction between
boycotting the Prince and boycotting any welcome arranged
for him. Personally I would extend the heartiest
welcome to His Royal Highness if he came or could come
without official patronage and the protecting wings
of the Government of the day. Being the heir
to a constitutional monarch, the Prince’s movements
are regulated and dictated by the ministers, no matter
how much the dictation may be concealed beneath diplomatically
polite language. In suggesting the boycott therefore
the promoters have suggested boycott of an insolent
bureaucracy and dishonest ministers of his Majesty.
You cannot have it both ways.
It is true that under a constitutional monarchy, the
royalty is above politics. But you cannot send
the Prince on a political visit for the purpose of
making political capital out of him, and then complain
that those who will not play your game and in order
to checkmate you, proclaim boycott of the Royal visit
do not know constitutional usage. For the Prince’s
visit is not for pleasure. His Royal Highness
is to come in Mr. Lloyd George’s words, as the
“ambassador of the British nation,” in
other words, his own ambassador in order to issue
a certificate of merit to him and possibly to give
the ministers a new lease of life. The wish is
designed to consolidate and strengthen a power that
spells mischief for India. Even us it is, Mr.
Montagu has foreseen, that the welcome will probably
be excelled by any hitherto extended to Royalty, meaning
that the people are not really and deeply affected
and stirred by the official atrocities in the Punjab
and the manifestly dishonest breach of official declarations
on the Khilafat. With the knowledge that India
was bleeding at heart, the Government of India should
have told His Majesty’s ministers that the moment
was inopportune for sending the Prince. I venture
to submit that it is adding insult to injury to bring
the Prince and through his visit to steal honours
and further prestige for a Government that deserves
to be dismissed with disgrace. I claim that I
prove my loyalty by saying that India is in no mood,
is too deeply in mourning, to take part in and to
welcome His Royal Highness, and that the ministers
and the Indian Government show their disloyalty by
making the Prince a catspaw of their deep political
game. If they persist, it is the clear duty of
India to have nothing to do with the visit.
CRUSADE AGAINST NON-CO-OPERATION
I have most carefully read the manifesto
addressed by Sir Narayan Chandavarkar and others dissuading
the people from joining the non co-operation movement.
I had expected to find some solid argument against
non-co-operation, but to my great regret I have found
in it nothing but distortion (no doubt unconscious)
of the great religions and history. The manifesto
says that ’non-co-operation is deprecated by
the religious tenets and traditions of our motherland,
nay, of all the religions that have saved and elevated
the human race.’ I venture to submit that
the Bhagwad Gita is a gospel of non-co-operation between
forces of darkness and those of light. If it is
to be literally interpreted Arjun representing a just
cause was enjoined to engage in bloody warfare with
the unjust Kauravas. Tulsidas advises the Sant
(the good) to shun the Asant (the evil-doers).
The Zendavesta represents a perpetual dual between
Ormuzd and Ahriman, between whom there is no compromise.
To say of the Bible that it taboos non-co-operation
is not to know Jesus, a Prince among passive resisters,
who uncompromisingly challenged the might of the Sadducees
and the Pharisees and for the sake of truth did not
hesitate to divide sons from their parents. And
what did the Prophet of Islam do? He non-co-operated
in Mecca in a most active manner so long as his life
was not in danger and wiped the dust of Mecca off
his feet when he found that he and his followers might
have uselessly to perish, and fled to Medina and returned
when he was strong enough to give battle to his opponents.
The duty of non-co-operation with unjust men and kings
is as strictly enjoined by all the religions as is
the duty of co-operation with just men and kings.
Indeed most of the scriptures of the world seem even
to go beyond non-co-operation and prefer a violence
to effeminate submission to a wrong. The Hindu
religious tradition of which the manifesto speaks,
clearly proves the duty of non-co-operation.
Prahlad dissociated himself from his father, Meerabai
from her husband, Bibhishan from his brutal brother.
The manifesto speaking of the secular
aspect says, ’The history of nations affords
no instance to show that it (meaning non-co-operation)
has, when employed, succeeded and done good,’
One most recent instance of brilliant success of non-co-operation
is that of General Botha who boycotted Lord Milner’s
reformed councils and thereby procured a perfect constitution
for his country. The Dukhobours of Russia offered
non-co-operation, and a handful though they were, their
grievances so deeply moved the civilized world that
Canada offered them a home where they form a prosperous
community. In India instances can be given by
the dozen, in which in little principalities the raiyats
when deeply grieved by their chiefs have cut off all
connection with them and bent them to their will.
I know of no instance in history where well-managed
non-co-operation has failed.
Hitherto I have given historical instances
of bloodless non-co-operation, I will not insult the
intelligence of the reader by citing historical instances
of non-co-operation combined with, violence, but I
am free to confess that there are on record as many
successes as failures in violent non-co-operation.
And it is because I know this fact that I have placed
before the country a non-violent scheme in which,
if at all worked satisfactorily, success is a certainty
and in which non-response means no harm. For if
even one man non-co-operates, say, by resigning some
office, he has gained, not lost. That is its
ethical or religious aspect. For its political
result naturally it requires polymerous support.
I fear therefore no disastrous result from non-co-operation
save for an outbreak of violence on the part of the
people whether under provocation or otherwise.
I would risk violence a thousand times than risk the
emasculation of a whole race.
SPEECH AT MUZAFFARABAD
Before a crowded meeting of Mussalmans
in the Muzaffarabad, Bombay, held on the 29th July
1920, speaking on the impending non-co-operation which
commenced on the 1st of August, Mr. Gandhi said:
The time for speeches on non-co-operation was past
and the time for practice had arrived. But two
things were needful for complete success. An environment
free from any violence on the part of the people and
a spirit of self-sacrifice. Non-co-operation,
as the speaker had conceived it, was an impossibility
in an atmosphere surcharged with the spirit of violence.
Violence was an exhibition of anger and any such exhibition
was dissipation of valuable energy. Subduing
of one’s anger was a storing up of national energy,
which, when set free in an ordered manner, would produce
astounding results. His conception of non-co-operation
did not involve rapine, plunder, incendiarism and
all the concomitants of mass madness. His scheme
presupposed ability on their part to control all the
forces of evil. If, therefore, any disorderliness
was found on the part of the people which they could
not control, he for one would certainly help the Government
to control them. In the presence of disorder it
would be for him a choice of evil, and evil through
he considered the present Government to be, he would
not hesitate for the time being to help the Government
to control disorder. But he had faith in the people.
He believed that they knew that the cause could only
be won by non-violent methods. To put it at the
lowest, the people had not the power, even if they
had the will, to resist with brute strength the unjust
Governments of Europe who had, in the intoxication
of their success disregarding every canon of justice
dealt so cruelly by the only Islamic Power in Europe.
In non-co-operation they had a matchless
and powerful weapon. It was a sign of religious
atrophy to sustain an unjust Government that supported
an injustice by resorting to untruth and camouflage.
So long therefore as the Government did not purge
itself of the canker of injustice and untruth, it
was their duty to withdraw all help from it consistently
with their ability to preserve order in the social
structure. The first stage of non-co-operation
was therefore arranged so as to involve minimum of
danger to public peace and minimum of sacrifice on
the part of those who participated in the movement.
And if they might not help an evil Government nor
receive any favours from it, it followed that they
must give up all titles of honour which were no longer
a proud possession. Lawyers, who were in reality
honorary officers of the Court, should cease to support
Courts that uphold the prestige of an unjust Government
and the people must be able to settle their disputes
and quarrels by private arbitration. Similarly
parents should withdraw their children from the public
schools and they must evolve a system of national
education or private education totally independent
of the Government. An insolent Government conscious
of its brute strength, might laugh at such withdrawals
by the people especially as the Law courts and schools
were supposed to help the people, but he had not a
shadow of doubt that the moral effect of such a step
could not possibly be lost even upon a Government
whose conscience had become stifled by the intoxication
of power.
He had hesitation in accepting Swadeshi
as a plank in non-co-operation. To him Swadeshi
was as dear as life itself. But he had no desire
to smuggle in Swadeshi through the Khilafat movement,
if it could not legitimately help that movement, but
conceived as non-co-operation was, in a spirit of
self-sacrifice, Swadeshi had a legitimate place in
the movement. Pure Swadeshi meant sacrifice of
the liking for fineries. He asked the nation
to sacrifice its liking for the fineries of Europe
and Japan and be satisfied with the coarse but beautiful
fabrics woven on their handlooms out of yarns spun
by millions of their sisters. If the nation had
become really awakened to a sense of the danger to
its religions and its self-respect, it could not but
perceive the absolute and immediate necessity of the
adoption of Swadeshi in its intense form and if the
people of India adopted Swadeshi with the religious
zeal he begged to assure them that its adoption would
arm them with a new power and would produce an unmistakable
impression throughout the whole world. He, therefore,
expected the Mussalmans to give the lead by giving
up all the fineries they were so fond of and
adopt the simple cloth that could be produced by the
manual labour of their sisters and brethren in their
own cottages. And he hoped that the Hindus would
follow suit. It was a sacrifice in which the
whole nation, every man, woman and child could take
part.
RIDICULE REPLACING REPRESSION
Had His Excellency the Viceroy not
made it impossible by his defiant attitude on the
Punjab and the Khilafat, I would have tendered him
hearty congratulations for substituting ridicule for
repression in order to kill a movement distasteful
to him. For, torn from its context and read by
itself His Excellency’s discourse on non-co-operation
is unexceptionable. It is a symptom of translation
from savagery to civilization. Pouring ridicule
on one’s opponent is an approved method in civilised
politics. And if the method is consistently continued,
it will mark an important improvement upon the official
barbarity of the Punjab. His interpretation of
Mr. Montagu’s statement about the movement is
also not open to any objection whatsoever. Without
doubt a government has the right to use sufficient
force to put down an actual outbreak of violence.
But I regret to have to confess that
this attempt to pour ridicule on the movement, read
in conjunction with the sentiments on the Punjab and
the Khilafat, preceding the ridicule, seems to show
that His Excellency has made it a virtue of necessity.
He has not finally abandoned the method of terrorism
and frightfulness, but he finds the movement being
conducted in such an open and truthful manner that
any attempt to kill it by violent repression would
not expose him not only to ridicule but contempt of
all right-thinking men.
Let us however examine the adjectives
used by His Excellency to kill the movement by laughing
at it. It is ‘futile,’ ‘ill-advised,’
‘intrinsically insane,’ ‘unpractical,’
‘visionary.’ He has rounded off the
adjectives by describing the movement as ’most
foolish of all foolish schemes.’ His Excellency
has become so impatient of it that he has used all
his vocabulary for showing the magnitude of the ridiculous
nature of non-co-operation.
Unfortunately for His Excellency the
movement is likely to grow with ridicule as it is
certain to flourish on repression. No vital movement
can be killed except by the impatience, ignorance or
laziness of its authors. A movement cannot be
‘insane’ that is conducted by men of action
as I claim the members of the Non-co-operation Committee
are. It is hardly ‘unpractical,’
seeing that if the people respond, every one admits
that it will achieve the end. At the same time
it is perfectly true that if there is no response
from the people, the movement will be popularly described
as ‘visionary.’ It is for the nation
to return an effective answer by organised non-co-operation
and change ridicule into respect. Ridicule is
like repression. Both give place to respect when
they fail to produce the intended effect.
THE VICEREGAL PRONOUNCEMENT
It may be that having lost faith in
His Excellency’s probity and capacity to hold
the high office of Viceroy of India, I now read his
speeches with a biased mind, but the speech His Excellency
delivered at the time of opening of the council shows
to me a mental attitude which makes association with
him or his Government impossible for self-respecting
men.
The remarks on the Punjab mean a flat
refusal to grant redress. He would have us to
‘concentrate on the problems of the immediate
future!’ The immediate future is to compel repentance
on the part of the Government on the Punjab matter.
Of this there is no sign. On the contrary, His
Excellency resists the temptation to reply to his critics,
meaning thereby that he has not changed his opinion
on the many vital matters affecting the honour of
India. He is ’content to leave the issues
to the verdict of history.’ Now this kind
of language, in my opinion, is calculated further
to inflame the Indian mind. Of what use can a
favourable verdict of history be to men who have been
wronged and who are still under the heels of officers
who have shown themselves utterly unfit to hold offices
of trust and responsibility? The plea for co-operation
is, to say the least, hypocritical in the face of the
determination to refuse justice to the Punjab.
Can a patient who is suffering from an intolerable
ache be soothed by the most tempting dishes placed
before him? Will he not consider it mockery on
the part of the physician who so tempted him without
curing him of his pain?
His Excellency is, if possible, even
less happy on the Khilafat. “So far as
any Government could,” says this trustee for
the nation, “we pressed upon the Peace Conference
the views of Indian Moslems. But notwithstanding
our efforts on their behalf we are threatened with
a campaign of non-co-operation because, forsooth,
the allied Powers found themselves unable to accept
the contentions advanced by Indian Moslems.”
This is most misleading if not untruthful. His
Excellency knows that the peace terms are not the
work of the allied Powers. He knows that Mr.
Lloyd George is the prime author of terms and that
the latter has never repudiated his responsibility
for them. He has with amazing audacity justified
them in spite of his considered pledge to the Moslems
of India regarding Constantinople, Thrace and the
rich and renowned lands of Asia minor. It is
not truthful to saddle responsibility for the terms
on the allied Powers when Great Britain alone has
promoted them. The offence of the Viceroy becomes
greater when we remember that he admits the justness
of the Muslim claim. He could not have ‘pressed’
it if he did not admit its justice.
I venture to think that His Excellency
by his pronouncement on the Punjab has strengthened
the nation in its efforts to seek a remedy to compel
redress of the two wrongs before it can make anything
of the so-called Reforms.
FROM RIDICULE, TO?
It will be admitted that non-co-operation
has passed the stage ridicule. Whether it will
now be met by repression or respect remains to be seen.
Opinion has already been expressed in these columns
that ridicule is an approved and civilized method
of opposition. The viceregal ridicule though
expressed in unnecessarily impolite terms was not open
to exception.
But the testing time has now arrived.
In a civilized country when ridicule fails to kill
a movement it begins to command respect. Opponents
meet it by respectful and cogent argument and the mutual
behaviour of rival parties never becomes violent.
Each party seeks to convert the other or draw the
uncertain element towards its side by pure argument
and reasoning.
There is little doubt now that the
boycott of the councils will be extensive if it is
not complete. The students have become disturbed.
Important institutions may any day become truly national.
Pandit Motilal Nehru’s great renunciation of
a legal practice which was probably second to nobody’s
is by itself an event calculated to change ridicule
into respect. It ought to set people thinking
seriously about their own attitude. There must
be something very wrong about our Government to
warrant the step Pundit Motilal Nehru has taken.
Post graduate students have given up their fellowships.
Medical students have refused to appear for their
final examination. Non-co-operation in these circumstances
cannot be called an inane movement.
Either the Government must bend to
the will of the people which is being expressed in
no unmistakable terms through non-co-operation, or
it must attempt to crush the movement by repression.
Any force used by a government under
any circumstance is not repression. An open trial
of a person accused of having advocated methods of
violence is not repression. Every State has the
right to put down or prevent violence by force.
But the trial of Mr. Zafar Ali Khan and two Moulvis
of Panipat shows that the Government is seeking not
to put down or prevent violence but to suppress expression
of opinion, to prevent the spread of disaffection.
This is repression. The trials are the beginning
of it. It has not still assumed a virulent form
but if these trials do not result in stilling the
propaganda, it is highly likely that severe repression
will be resorted to by the Government.
The only other way to prevent the
spread of disaffection is to remove the causes thereof.
And that would be to respect the growing response of
the country to the programme of non-co-operation.
It is too much to expect repentance and humility from
a government intoxicated with success and power.
We must therefore assume that the
second stage in the Government programme will be repression
growing in violence in the same ratio as the progress
of non-co-operation. And if the movement survives
repression, the day of victory of truth is near.
We must then be prepared for prosecutions, punishments
even up to déportations. We must evolve
the capacity for going on with our programme without
the leaders. That means capacity for self-government.
And as no government in the world can possibly put
a whole nation in prison, it must yield to its demand
or abdication in favour of a government suited to that
nation.
It is clear that abstention from violence
and persistence in the programme are our only and
surest chance of attaining our end.
The government has its choice, either
to respect the movement or to try to repress it by
barbarous methods. Our choice is either to succumb
to repression or to continue in spite of repression.
TO EVERY ENGLISHMAN IN INDIA
Dear Friend,
I wish that every Englishman will
see this appeal and give thoughtful attention to it.
Let me introduce myself to you.
In my humble opinion no Indian has co-operated with
the British Government more than I have for an unbroken
period of twenty-nine years of public life in the face
of circumstances that might well have turned any other
man into a rebel. I ask you to believe me when
I tell you that my co-operation was not based on the
fear of the punishments provided by your laws or any
other selfish motives. It was free and voluntary
co-operation based on the belief that the sum total
of the activity of the British Government was for the
benefit of India. I put my life in peril four
times for the sake of the Empire, at the
time of the Boer war when I was in charge of the Ambulance
corps whose work was mentioned in General Buller’s
dispatches, at the time of the Zulu revolt in Natal
when I was in charge of a similar corps at the time
of the commencement of the late war when I raised
an Ambulance corps and as a result of the strenuous
training had a severe attack of pleurisy, and lastly,
in fulfilment of my promise to Lord Chelmsford at
the War Conference in Delhi. I threw myself in
such an active recruiting campaign in Kuira District
involving long and trying marches that I had an attack
of dysentry which proved almost fatal. I did
all this in the full belief that acts such as mine
must gain for my country an equal status in the Empire.
So late as last December I pleaded hard for a trustful
co-operation, I fully believed that Mr. Lloyd George
would redeem his promise to the Mussalmans and that
the revelations of the official atrocities in the Punjab
would secure full reparation for the Punjabis.
But the treachery of Mr. Lloyd George and its appreciation
by you, and the condonation of the Punjab atrocities
have completely shattered my faith in the good intentions
of the Government and the nation which is supporting
it.
But though, my faith in your good
intentions is gone, I recognise your bravery and I
know that what you will not yield to justice and reason,
you will gladly yield to bravery.
See what this Empire means to India
Exploitation of India’s resources for the benefit
of Great Britain.
An ever-increasing military expenditure,
and a civil service the most expensive in the world.
Extravagant working of every department
in utter disregard of India’s poverty.
Disarmament and consequent emasculation
of a whole nation lest an armed nation might imperil
the lives of a handful of you in our midst. Traffic
in intoxicating liquors and drugs for the purposes
of sustaining a top heavy administration.
Progressively representative legislation
in order to suppress an evergrowing agitation seeking
to give expression to a nation’s agony.
Degrading treatment of Indians residing
in your dominions, and
You have shown total disregard of
our feelings by glorifying the Punjab administration
and flouting the Mosulman sentiment.
I know you would not mind if we could
fight and wrest the sceptre form your hands.
You know that we are powerless to do that, for you
have ensured our incapacity to fight in open and honourable
battle. Bravery on the battlefield is thus impossible
for us. Bravery of the soul still remains open
to us. I know you will respond to that also.
I am engaged in evoking that bravery. Non-co-operation
means nothing less than training in self-sacrifice.
Why should we co-operate with you when we know that
by your administration of this great country we are
lifting daily enslaved in an increasing degree.
This response of the people to my appeal is not due
to my personality. I would like you to dismiss
me, and for that matter the Ali Brothers too, from
your consideration. My personality will fail
to evoke any response to anti-Muslim cry if I were
foolish enough to rise it, as the magic name of the
Ali Brothers would fail to inspire the Mussalmans
with enthusiasm if they were madly to raise in anti-Hindu
cry. People flock in their thousands to listen
to us because we to-day represent the voice of a nation
groaning under iron heels. The Ali Brothers were
your friends as I was, and still am. My religion
forbids me to bear any ill-will towards you. I
would not raise my hand against you even if I had
the power. I expect to conquer you only by my
suffering. The Ali Brothers will certainly draw
the sword, if they could, in defence of their religion
and their country. But they and I have made common
cause with the people of India in their attempt to
voice their feelings and to find a remedy for their
distress.
You are in search of a remedy to suppress
this rising ebullition of national feeling. I
venture to suggest to you that the only way to suppress
it is to remove the causes. You have yet the power.
You can repent of the wrongs done to Indians.
You can compel Mr. Lloyd George to redeem his promises.
I assure you he has kept many escape doors. You
can compel the Viceroy to retire in favour of a better
one, you can revise your ideas about Sir Michael O’Dwyer
and General Dyer. You can compel the Government
to summon a conference of the recognised lenders of
the people, duly elected by them and representing
all shades of opinion so as to devise means for granting
Swaraj in accordance with the wishes of the
people of India. But this you cannot do unless
you consider every Indian to be in reality your equal
and brother. I ask for no patronage, I merely
point out to you, as a friend, as honourable solution
of a grave problem. The other solution, namely
repression is open to YOU. I prophesy that it
will fail. It has begun already. The Government
has already imprisoned two brave men of Panipat for
holding and expressing their opinions freely.
Another is on his trial in Lahore for having expressed
similar opinion. One in the Oudh District is
already imprisoned. Another awaits judgment.
You should know what is going on in your midst.
Our propaganda is being carried on in anticipation
of repression. I invite you respectfully to choose
the better way and make common cause with the people
of India whose salt you are eating. To seek to
thwart their inspirations is disloyalty to the country.
I am,
Your faithful friend,
M. K. GANDHI
ONE STEP ENOUGH FOR ME
Mr. Stokes is a Christian, who wants
to follow the light that God gives him. He has
adopted India as his home. He is watching the
non-co-operation movement from the Kotgarh hills where
he is living in isolation from the India of the plains
and serving the hillmen. He has contributed three
articles on non-co-operation to the columns of the
Servant of Calcutta and other papers. I had the
pleasure of reading them during my Bengal tour.
Mr. Stokes approves of non-co-operation but dreads
the consequences that may follow complete success i.e.,
evacuation of India by the British. He conjures
up before his mind a picture of India invaded by the
Afghans from the North-West, plundered by the Gurkhas
from the Hills. For me I say with Cardinal Newman:
’I do not ask to see the distant scene; one
step enough for me.’ The movement is essentially
religious. The business of every god-fearing man
is to dissociate himself from evil in total disregard
of consequences. He must have faith in a good
deed producing only a good result: that in my
opinion is the Gita doctrine of work without attachment.
God does not permit him to peep into the future.
He follows truth although the following of it may
endanger his very life. He knows that it is better
to die in the way of God than to live in the way of
Satan. Therefore who ever is satisfied that this
Government represents the activity of Satan has no
choice left to him but to dissociate himself from it.
However, let us consider the worst
that can happen to India on a sudden evacuation of
India by the British. What does it matter that
the Gurkhas and the Pathans attack us? Surely
we would be better able to deal with their violence
than we are with the continued violence, moral and
physical, perpetrated by the present Government.
Mr. Stokes does not seem to eschew the use of physical
force. Surely the combined labour of the Rajput,
the Sikh and the Mussalman warriors in a united India
may be trusted to deal with plunderers from any or
all the sides. Imagine however the worst:
Japan overwhelming us from the Bay of Bengal, the
Gurkhas from the Hills, and the Pathans from the North-West.
If we not succeed in driving them out we make terms
with them and drive them at the first opportunity.
This will be a more manly course than a hopeless submission
to an admittedly wrongful State.
But I refuse to contemplate the dismal
out-look. If the movement succeeds through non-violent
non-co-operation, and that is the supposition Mr.
Stokes has started with, the English whether they remain
or retire, they will do so as friends and under a well-ordered
agreement as between partners. I still believe
in the goodness of human nature, whether it is English
or any other. I therefore do not believe that
the English will leave in a night.
And do I consider the Gurkha and the
Afghan being incorrigible thieves and robbers without
ability to respond to purifying influences? I
do not. If India returns to her spirituality,
it will react upon the neighbouring tribes, she will
interest herself in the welfare of these hardy but
poor people, and even support them if necessary, not
out of fear but as a matter of neighbourly duty.
She will have dealt with Japan simultaneously with
the British. Japan will not want to invade India,
if India has learnt to consider it a sin to use a
single foreign article that she can manufacture within
her own borders. She produces enough to eat and
her men and women can without difficulty manufacture
enough to clothe to cover their nakedness and protect
themselves from heat and cold. We become prey
to invasion if we excite the greed of foreign nation,
by dealing with them under a feeling dependence on
them. We must learn to be independent of every
one of them.
Whether therefore we finally succeed
through violence or non-violence in my opinion, the
prospect is by no means so gloomy as Mr. Stokes has
imagined. Any conceivable prospect is, in my opinion,
less black than the present unmanly and helpless condition.
And we cannot do better than following out fearlessly
and with confidence the open and honourable programme
of non-violence and sacrifice that we have mapped for
ourselves.
THE NEED FOR HUMILITY
The spirit of non-violence necessarily
leads to humility. Non-violence means reliance
on God, the Rocks of ages. If we would seek His
aid, we must approach Him with a humble and a contrite
heart. Non-co-operationists may not trade upon
their amazing success at the Congress. We must
act, even as the mango tree which drops as it bears
fruit. Its grandeur lies in its majestic lowliness.
But one hears of non-co-operationists being insolent
and intolerant in their behaviour towards those who
differ from them. I know that they will lose all
their majesty and glory, if they betray any inflation.
Whilst we may not be dissatisfied with the progress
made so far, we have little to our credit to make
us feel proud. We have to sacrifice much more
than we have done to justify pride, much less elation.
Thousands, who flocked to the Congress pandal, have
undoubtedly given their intellectual assent to the
doctrine but few have followed it out in practice.
Leaving aside the pleaders, how many parents have
withdrawn their children from schools? How many
of those who registered their vote in favour of non-co-operation
have taken to hand-spinning or discarded the use of
all foreign cloth?
Non-co-operation is not a movement
of brag, bluster, or bluff. It is a test of our
sincerity. It requires solid and silent self-sacrifice.
It challenges our honesty and our capacity for national
work. It is a movement that aims at translating
ideas into action. And the more we do, the more
we find that much more must be done than we have expected.
And this thought of our imperfection must make us
humble.
A non-co-operationist strives to compel
attention and to set an example not by his violence
but by his unobtrusive humility. He allows his
solid action to speak for his creed. His strength
lies in his reliance upon the correctness of his position.
And the conviction of it grows most in his opponent
when he least interposes his speech between his action
and his opponent. Speech, especially when it
is haughty, betrays want of confidence and it makes
one’s opponent sceptical about the reality of
the act itself. Humility therefore is the key
to quick success. I hope that every non-co-operationist
will recognise the necessity of being humble and self-restrained.
It is because so little is really required to be done
because all of that little depends entirely upon ourselves
that I have ventured the belief that Swaraj is attainable
in less than one year.
SOME QUESTIONS ANSWERED
“I write to thank you for yours
of the 7th instant and especially for your request
that I should after reading your writings in “Young
India” on non-co-operation, give a full and
frank criticism of them. I know that your sole
desire is to find out the truth and to act accordingly,
and hence I venture to make the following remarks.
In the issue of May 5th you say that non-co-operation
is “not even anti-Government.” But
surely to refuse to have anything to do with the Government
to the extent of not serving it and of not paying
its taxes is actually, if not theoretically anti-Government;
and such a course must ultimately make all Government
impossible. Again, you say, “It is the inherent
right of a subject to refuse to assist a government
that will not listen to him.” Leaving aside
the question of the ethical soundness of this proposition,
may I ask which Government, in the present case?
Has not the Indian Government done all it possibly
can in the matter? Then if its attempts to voice
the request of India should fail, would it be fair
and just to do anything against it? Would not
the proper course be non-co-operation with the Supreme
Council of the Allies, including Great Britain, if
it be found that the latter has failed properly to
support the demand of the Indian Government and people?
It seems to me that in all your writings and speeches
you forget that in the present question both Government
and people are as one, and if they fail to get what
they justly want, how does the question of non-co-operation
arise? Hindus and Englishmen and the Government
are all at present “shouldering in a full-hearted
manner the burden that Muhomedans of India are carrying
etc. etc.” But supposing we fail
of our object what then? Are we all
to refuse to co-operate and with whom?
Might I recommend the consideration
of the following course of conduct?
(1) “Wait and see” what
the actual terms of the Treaty with Turkey are?
(2) If they are not in accordance
with the aspirations and recommendations of the Government
and the people of India, the every legitimate effort
should be made to have the terms revised.
(3) To the bitter end, co-operate
with a Government that co-operates with us, and only
when it refuses co-operation, go in for non-co-operation.
So far I personally see no reason
whatsoever for non-co-operation with the Indian Government,
and till it fails to voice the needs and demands of
India as a whole there can be no reason. The Indian
Government does some times make mistakes, but in the
Khilafat matter it is sound and therefore deserves
or ought to have the sympathetic and whole-hearted
co-operation of every one in India. I hope that
you will kindly consider the above and perhaps you
will be able to find time for a reply in Young
India.”
I gladly make room for the above letter
and respond to the suggestion to give a public reply
as no doubt the difficulty experienced by the English
friend is experienced by many. Causes are generally
lost, not owing to the determined opposition of men
who will not see the truth as they want to perpetuate
an injustice but because they are able to enlist in
their favour the allegiance of those who are anxious
to understand a particular cause and take sides after
mature judgment. It is only by patient argument
with such honest men that one is able to check oneself,
correct one’s own errors of judgment and at times
to wean them from their error and bring them over
to one’s side. This Khilafat question is
specially difficult because there are so many side-issues.
It is therefore no wonder that many have more or less
difficulty in making up their minds. It is further
complicated because the painful necessity for some
direct action has arisen in connection with it.
But whatever the difficulty, I am convinced that there
is no question so important as this one if we want
harmony and peace in India.
My friend objects to my statement
that non-co-operation is not anti-Government, because
he considers that refusal to serve it and pay its
taxes is actually anti-Government. I respectfully
dissent from the view. If a brother has fundamental
differences with his brother, and association with
the latter involves his partaking of what in his opinion
is an injustice. I hold that it is brotherly duty
to refrain from serving his brother and sharing his
earnings with him. This happens in everyday life.
Prahalad did not act against his father, when he declined
to associate himself with the latter’s blasphemies.
Nor was Jesus anti-Jewish when he declaimed against
the Pharisees and the hypocrites, and would have none
of them. In such matters, is it not intention
that determines the character of a particular act?
It is hardly correct as the friend suggests that withdrawal
of association under general circumstances would make
all government impossible. But it is true that
such withdrawal would make all injustice impossible.
My correspondent considers that the
Government of India having done all it possibly could,
non-co-operation could not be applicable to that Government.
In my opinion, whilst it is true that the Government
of India has done a great deal, it has not done half
as much as it might have done, and might even now
do. No Government can absolve itself from further
action beyond protesting, when it realises that the
people whom it represents feel as keenly as do lakhs
of Indian Mussalmans in the Khilafat question.
No amount of sympathy with a starving man can possibly
avail. He must have bread or he dies, and what
is wanted at that critical moment is some exertion
to fetch the wherewithal to feed the dying man.
The Government of India can to-day heed the agitation
and ask, to the point of insistence for full vindication
of the pledged word of a British Minister. Has
the Government of India resigned by way of protest
against the threatened, shameful betrayal of trust
on the part of Mr. Lloyd George? Why does the
Government of India hide itself behind secret despatches?
At a less critical moment Lord Hardiage committed a
constitutional indiscretion, openly sympathised with
South African Passive Resistance movement and stemmed
the surging tide of public indignation in India, though
at the same time he incurred the wrath of the then
South African Cabinet and some public men in Great
Britain. After all, the utmost that the Government
of India has done is on its own showing to transmit
and press the Mahomedan claim. Was that not the
least it could have done? Could it have done anything
less without covering itself with disgrace? What
Indian Mahomedans and the Indian public expect the
Government of India to do at this critical juncture
is not the least, but the utmost that it could do.
Viceroys have been known to tender resignations for
much smaller causes. Wounded pride brought forth
not very long ago the resignation of a Lieutenant Governor.
On the Khilafat question, a sacred cause dear to the
hearts of several million Mahomedans is in danger
of being wounded. I would therefore invite the
English friend, and every Englishman in India, and
every Hindu, be he moderate or extremist, to make
common cause with the Mahomedans and thereby compel
the Government of India to do its duty, and thereby
compel His Majesty’s Ministers to do theirs.
There has been much talk of violence
ensuing from active non-co-operation. I venture
to suggest that the Mussalmans of India, if they had
nothing in the shape of non-co-operation in view, would
have long ago yielded to counsels of despair.
I admit that non-co-operation is not unattended with
danger. But violence is a certainty without,
violence is only a possibility with non-co-operation.
And it will he a greater possibility if all the important
men, English, Hindu and others of the country discountenance
it.
I think, that the recommendation made
by the friend is being literally followed by the Mahomedans.
Although they practically know the fate, they are
waiting for the actual terms of the treaty with Turkey.
They are certainly going to try every means at their
disposal to have the terms revised before beginning
non-co-operation. And there will certainly be
no non-co-operation commenced so long as there is even
hope of active co-operation on the part of the Government
of India with the Mahomedans, that is, co-operation
strong enough to secure a revision of the terms should
they be found to be in conflict with the pledges of
British statesmen. But if all these things fail,
can Mahomedans as men of honour who hold their religion
dearer than their lives do anything less than wash
their hands clean of the guilt of British Ministers
and the Government of India by refusing to co-operate
with them? And can Hindus and Englishmen, if
they value Mahomedan friendship, and if they admit
then full justice of the Mahomaden friendship and if
they admit the full justice of the Mahomedan claim
do otherwise than heartily support the Mahomedans
by word and deed.
PLEDGES BROKEN
After the forgoing was printed the
long-expected peace terms regarding Turkey were received.
In my humble opinion they are humiliating to the Supreme
Council, to the British ministers, and if as a Hindu
with deep reverence for Christianity I may say so,
a denial of Christ’s teachings. Turkey
broken down and torn with dissentions within may submit
to the arrogant disposal of herself, and Indian Mahomedans
may out of fear do likewise. Hindus out of fear,
apathy or want of appreciation of the situation, may
refuse to help their Mahomedan brethren in their hour
of peril. The fact remains that a solemn promise
of the Prime Minister of England has been wantonly
broken. I will say nothing about President Wilson’s
fourteen points, for they seem now to be entirely forgotten
as a day’s wonder. It is a matter of deep
sorrow that the Government of India communique
offers a defence of the terms, calls them a fulfilment
of Mr. Lloyd George’s pledge of 5th January 1918
and yet apologises for their defective nature and
appeals to the Mahomedans of India as if to mock them
that they would accept the terms with quiet resignation.
The mask that veils the hypocrisy is too thin to deceive
anybody. It would have been dignified if the communique
had boldly admitted Mr. Lloyd George’s mistake
in having made the promise referred to. As it
is, the claim of fulfilment of the promise only adds
to the irritation caused by its glaring breach.
What is the use of the Viceroy saying, “The
question of the Khilafat is one for the Mahomedans
and Mahomedans only and that with their free choice
in the matter Government have no desire to interfere,”
while the Khalif’s dominions are ruthlessly
dismembered, his control of the Holy places of Islam
shamelessly taken away from him and he himself reduced
to utter impotence in his own palace which can no
longer be called a palace but which can he more fitly
described us a prison? No wonder, His Excellency
fears that the peace includes “terms which must
be painful to all Moslems.” Why should
he insult Muslim intelligence by sending the Mussalmans
of India a of encouragement and sympathy? Are
they expected to find encouragement in the cruel recital
of the arrogant terms or in a remembrance of ‘the
splendid response’ made by them to the call of
the King ‘in the day of the Empire’s need.’
It ill becomes His Excellency to talk of the triumph
of those ideals of justice and humanity for which
the Allies fought. Indeed, the terms of the so
called peace with Turkey if they are to last, will
be a monument of human arrogance and man-made injustice.
To attempt to crush the spirit of a brave and gallant
race, because it has lost in the fortunes of war,
is a triumph not of humanity but a demonstration of
inhumanity. And if Turkey enjoyed the closest
ties of friendship with Great Britain before the war,
Great Britain has certainly made ample reparation
for her mistake by having made the largest contribution
to the humiliation of Turkey. It is insufferable
therefore when the Viceroy feels confident that with
the conclusion of this new treaty that friendship
will quickly take life again and a Turkey regenerate
full of hope and strength, will stand forth in the
future as in the past a pillar of the Islamic faith.
The Viceregal message audaciously concludes, “This
thought will I trust strengthen you to accept the
peace terms with resignation, courage and fortitude
and to keep your loyalty towards the Crown bright
and untarnished as it has been for so many generations.”
If Muslim loyalty remains untarnished it will certainly
not be for want of effort on the part of the Government
of India to put the heaviest strain upon it, but it
will remain so because the Mahomedans realise their
own strength the strength in the knowledge
that their cause is just and that they have got the
power to vindicate justice in spite of the aberration
suffered by Great Britain under a Prime Minister whom
continued power has made as reckless in making promises
as in breaking them.
Whilst therefore I admit that there
is nothing either in the peace terms or in the Viceregal
message covering them to inspire the Mahomedans and
Indians in general with confidence or hope, I venture
to suggest that there is no cause for despair and
anger. Now is the time for Mahomedans to retain
absolute self-control, to unite their forces and, weak
though they are, with firm faith in God to carry on
the struggle with redoubled vigour till justice is
done. If India both Hindu and Mahomedan can
act as one man and can withdraw her partnership in
this crime against humanity which the peace terms
represent, she will soon secure a revision of the
treaty and give herself and the Empire at least, if
not the world, a lasting peace. There is no doubt
that the struggle would be bitter sharp and possibly
prolonged, but it is worth all the sacrifice that
it is likely to call forth. Both the Mussalmans
and the Hindus are on their trial. Is the humiliation
of the Khilafat a matter of concern to the former?
And if it is, are they prepared to exercise restraint,
religiously refrain from violence and practise non-co-operation
without counting the material loss it may entail upon
the community? Do the Hindus honestly feel for
their Mahomedan brethren to the extent of sharing
their sufferings to the fullest extent? The answer
to these questions and not the peace terms, will finally
decide the fate of the Khilafat.
MORE OBJECTIONS ANSWERED
Swadeshmitran is one of the
most influential Tamil dailies of Madras. It
is widely read. Everything appearing in its columns
is entitled to respect. The Editor has suggested
some practical difficulty in the way of non-co-operation.
I would therefore like, to the best of my ability,
to deal with them.
I do not know where the information
has been derived from that I have given up the last
two stages of non-co-operation. What I have said
is that they are a distant goal. I abide by it.
I admit that all the stages are fraught with some
danger, but the last two are fraught with the greatest the
last most of all. The stages have been fixed with
a view to running the least possible risk. The
last two stages will not be taken up unless the committee
has attained sufficient control over the people to
warrant the beliefs that the laying down of arms or
suspension of taxes will, humanly speaking, be free
from an outbreak of violence on the part of the people.
I do entertain the belief that it is possible for
the people to attain the discipline necessary for taking
the two steps. When once they realise that violence
is totally unnecessary to bend an unwilling government
to their will and that the result can be obtained
with certainty by dignified non-co-operation, they
will cease to think of violence even by way of retaliation.
The fact is that hitherto we have not attempted to
take concerted and disciplined action from the masses.
Some day, if we are to become truly a self-governing
nation, that attempt has to be made. The present,
in my opinion, is a propitious movement. Every
Indian feels the insult to the Punjab as a personal
wrong, every Mussalman resents the wrong done to the
Khilafat. There is therefore a favourable atmosphere
for expecting cohesive and restrained movement on
the part of the masses.
So far as response is concerned, I
agree with the Editor that the quickest and the largest
response is to be expected in the matter of suspension
of payment of taxes, but as I have said so long as
the masses are not educated to appreciate the value
of non-violence even whilst their holding are being
sold, so long must it be difficult to take up the
last stage into any appreciable extent.
I agree too that a sudden withdrawal
of the military and the police will be a disaster
if we have not acquired the ability to protect ourselves
against robbers and thieves. But I suggest that
when we are ready to call out the military and the
police on an extensive scale we would find ourselves
in a position to defend ourselves. If the police
and the military resign from patriotic motives, I
would certainly expect them to perform the same duty
as national volunteers, not has hirelings but as willing
protectors of the life and liberty of their countrymen.
The movement of non-co-operation is one of automatic
adjustment. If the Government schools are emptied,
I would certainly expect national schools to come
into being. If the lawyers as a whole suspended
practice, they would devise arbitration courts and
the nation will have expeditions and cheaper method
of setting private disputes and awarding punishment
to the wrong-doer. I may add that the Khilafat
Committee is fully alive to the difficulty of the
task and is taking all the necessary steps to meet
the contingencies as they arise.
Regarding the leaving of civil employment,
no danger is feared, because no one will leave his
employment, unless he is in a position to find support
for himself and family either through friends or otherwise.
Disapproval of the proposed withdrawal
of students betrays, in my humble opinion, lack of
appreciation of the true nature of non-co-operation.
It is true enough that we pay the money wherewith our
children are educated. But, when the agency imparting
the education has become corrupt, we may not employ
it without partaking of the agents, corruption.
When students leave schools or colleges I hardly imagine
that the teachers will fail to perceive the advisability
of themselves resigning. But even if they do
not, money can hardly be allowed to count where honour
or religion are at the stake.
As to the boycott of the councils,
it is not the entry of the Moderates or any other
persons that matters so much as the entry of those
who believe in non-co-operation. You may not
co-operate at the top and non-co-operate at the bottom.
A councillor cannot remain in the council and ask
the gumasta who cleans the council-table to
resign.
MR. PENNINGTON’S OBJECTIONS ANSWERED
I gladly publish Mr. Pennington’s
letter with its enclosure just as I have received
them. Evidently Mr. Pennington is not a regular
reader of ‘Young India,’ or he would have
noticed that no one has condemned mob outrages more
than I have. He seems to think that the article
he has objected to was the only thing I have ever
written on General Dyer. He does not seem to
know that I have endeavoured with the utmost impartiality
to examine the Jallianwala massacre. And he can
see any day all the proof adduced by my fellow-commissioners
and myself in support of our findings on the massacre.
The ordinary readers of ‘Young India’
knew all the facts and therefore it was unnecessary
for me to support my assertion otherwise. But
unfortunately Mr. Pennington represents the typical
Englishman. He does not want to be unjust, nevertheless
he is rarely just in his appreciation of world events
because he has no time to study them except cursorily
and that through a press whose business is to air
only party views. The average Englishman therefore
except in parochial matters is perhaps the least informed
though he claims to be well-informed about every variety
of interest. Mr. Pennington’s ignorance
is thus typical of the others and affords the best
reason for securing control of our own affairs in
our own hands. Ability will come with use and
not by waiting to be trained by those whose natural
interest is to prolong the period of tutelage as much
as possible.
But to return to Mr. Pennington’s
letter he complains that there has been no ‘proper
trial of any one.’ The fault is not ours.
India has consistently and insistently demanded a
trial of all the officers concerned in the crimes
against the Punjab.
He next objects to be ‘violence’
of my language. If truth is violent, I plead
guilty to the charge of violence of language.
But I could not, without doing violence to truth,
refrain from using the language, I have, regarding
General Dyer’s action. It has been proved
out of his own mouth or hostile witnesses:
(1) That the crowd was unarmed.
(2) That it contained children.
(3) That the 13th was the day of Vaisakhi fair.
(4) That thousands had come to the fair.
(5) That there was no rebellion.
(6) That during the intervening two
days before the ‘massacre’ there was peace
in Amritsar.
(7) That the proclamation of the meeting
was made the same day as General Dyer’s proclamation.
(8) That General Dyer’s proclamation
prohibited not meetings but processions or gatherings
of four men on the streets and not in private or public
places.
(9) That General Dyer ran no risk
whether outside or inside the city.
(10) That he admitted himself that
many in the crowd did not know anything of his proclamation.
(11) That he fired without warning
the crowd and even after it had begun to disperse.
He fired on the backs of the people who were in flight.
(12) That the men were practically
penned in an enclosure.
In the face of these admitted facts
I do call the deed a ‘massacre.’ The
action amounted not to ‘an error of judgment’
but its ’paralysis in the face of fancied danger.’
I am sorry to have to say that Mr.
Pennington’s notes, which too the reader will
find published elsewhere, betray as much ignorance
as his letter.
Whatever was adopted on paper in the
days of Canning was certainly not translated into
action in its full sense. ’Promises made
to the ear were broken to the hope,’ was said
by a reactionary Viceroy. Military expenditure
has grown enormously since the days of Canning.
The demonstration in favour of General
Dyer is practically a myth.
No trace was found of the so-called
Danda Fauj dignified by the name of bludgeon-army
by Mr. Pennington. There was no rebel army in
Amritsar. The crown that committed the horrible
murders and incendiarism contained no one community
exclusively. The sheet was found posted only in
Lahore and not in Amritsar. Mr. Pennington should
moreover have known by this time that the meeting
held on the 13th was held, among other things, for
the purpose of condemning mob excesses. This was
brought out at the Amritsar trial. Those who
surrounded him could not stop General Dyer. He
says he made up his mind to shoot in a moment.
He consulted nobody. When the correspondent says
that the troops would have objected to being concerned
in ’what might in that case be not unfairly called
a ‘massacre,’ he writes as if he had never
lived in India. I wish the Indian troops had
the moral courage to refuse to shoot innocent, unarmed
men in full flight. But the Indian troops have
been brought in too slavish an atmosphere to dare
do any such correct act.
I hope Mr. Pennington will not accuse
me again of making unverified assertions because I
have not quoted from the books. The evidence is
there for him to use. I can only assure him that
the assertions are based on positive proofs mostly
obtained from official sources.
Mr. Pennington wants me to publish
an exact account of what happened on the 10th April.
He can find it in the reports, and if he will patiently
go through them he will discover that Sir Michael O’Dwyer
and his officials goaded the people into frenzied
fury a fury which nobody, as I have already
said, has condemned more than I have. The account
of the following days is summed up in one word, viz.
‘peace’ on the part of the crowd disturbed
by indiscriminate arrests, the massacre and the series
of official crimes that followed.
I am prepared to give Mr. Pennington
credit for seeking after the truth. But he has
gone about it in the wrong manner. I suggest his
reading the evidence before the Hunter Committee and
the Congress Committee. He need not read the
reports. But the evidence will convince him that
I have understated the case against General Dyer.
When however I read his description
of himself as “for 12 years Chief Magistrate
of Districts in the South of India before reform, by
assassination and otherwise, became so fashionable.”
I despair of his being able to find the truth.
An angry or a biased man renders himself incapable
of finding it. And Mr. Pennington is evidently
both angry and biased. What does he mean by saying,
“before reform by assassination and otherwise
became so fashionable?” It ill becomes him to
talk of assassination when the school of assassination
seems happily to have become extinct. Englishmen
will never see the truth so long as they permit their
vision to be blinded by arrogant assumption of superiority
or ignorant assumptions of infallibility.
MR. PENNINGTON’S LETTER TO MR. GANDHI
Dear Sir,
I do not like your scheme for “boycotting”
the Government of India under what seems to be
the somewhat less offensive (though more cumbrous)
name of non-co-operation; but have always given you
credit for a genuine desire to carry out revolution
by peaceful means and am astonished at the violence
of the language you use in describing General Dyer
on page 4 of your issue of the 14th July last.
You begin by saying that he is “by no means
the worst offender,” and, so far, I am inclined
to agree, though as there has been no proper trial
of anyone it is impossible to apportion their guilt;
but then you say “his brutality is unmistakable,”
“his abject and unsoldierlike cowardice is
apparent, he has called an unarmed crowd of
men and children mostly holiday makers a
rebel army.” “He believes himself
to be the saviour of the Punjab in that he was able
to shoot down like rabbits men who were penned
in an enclosure; such a man is unworthy to be considered
a soldier. There was no bravery in his action.
He ran no risk. He shot without the slightest
opposition and without warning. This is not
an error of judgement. It is paralysis of
it in the face of fancied danger. It is
proof of criminal incapacity and heartlessness,”
etc.
You must excuse me for saying that all
this is mere rhetoric unsupported by any proof,
even where proof was possible. To begin with,
neither you nor I were present at the Jallianwalla
Bagh on that dreadful day dreadful especially
for General Dyer for whom you show no sympathy, and
therefore cannot know for certain whether the crowd
was or was not unarmed.’ That it was
an ‘illegal,’ because a ‘prohibited,’
assembly is evident; for it is absurd to suppose that
General Dyer’s 4-1/2 hours march, through
the city that very morning, during the whole of
which he was warning the inhabitants against the danger
of any sort of gathering, was not thoroughly well-known.
You say they were ‘mostly holiday makers,’
but you give nor proof; and the idea of holiday
gathering in Amritsar just then in incredible.
I cannot understand your making such a suggestion.
General Dyer was not the only officer present on
the occasion and it is impossible to suppose that
he would have been allowed to go on shooting into an
innocent body of holiday-makers. Even the troops
would have refused to carry out what might then
have been not unfairly called a “massacre.”
I notice that you never even allude to
the frightful brutality of the mob which was immediately
responsible for the punitive measure reluctantly
adopted by General Dyer. Your sympathies seem
to be only with the murderers, and I am not sanguine
enough to suppose that my view of the case will
have much influence with you. Still I am bound
to do what I can to get at the truth, and enclose
a copy of some notes I have had occasion to make.
If you can publish an exact account of what
happened at Amritsar on the 10th of April, 1919 and
the following days, especially on the 13th, including
the demonstration in favour of General Dyer, (if
there was one), I for one, as a mere seeker after
the truth, should be very much obliged to you.
Mere abuse is not convincing, as you so often observe
in your generally reasonable paper,
Yours faithfully, J. R. PENNINGTON,
I.O.S. (Retd.) 35, VICTORIA ROAD, WORTHING, SUSSEX
27th Au.
For 12 years Chief Magistrate of
Districts in the south of India
before reform, by assassination
and otherwise, became so fashionable.
P.S. Let us get the case in this
way. General Dyer, acting as the only representative
of Government on the spot shot some hundreds of people
(some of them perhaps innocently mixed up in
an illegal assembly), in the bona fide belief
that he was dealing with the remains of a very
dangerous rebellion and was thereby saving the lives
of very many thousands, and in the opinion of a great
many people did actually save the city from falling
in the hands of a dangerous mob.
SOME DOUBTS
Babu Janakdhari Prasad was a staunch
coworker with me in Champaran. He has written
a long letter setting forth his reasons for his belief
that India has a great mission before her, and that
she can achieve her purpose only by non-violent non-co-operation.
But he has doubts which he would have me answer publicly.
The letter being long, I am withholding. But
the doubts are entitled to respect and I must endeavour
to answer them. Here they are us framed by Bubu
Janakdhari Prasad.
(a) Is not the non-co-operation movement
creating a sort of race-hatred between Englishmen
and Indians, and is it in accordance with the Divine
plan of universal love and brotherhood?
(b) Does not the use of words “devilish,”
“satanic,” etc., savour of unbrotherly
sentiment and incite feelings of hatred?
(c) Should not the non-co-operation
movement be conducted on strictly non-violent and
non-emotional lines both in speech and action?
(d) Is there no danger of the movement
going out of control and lending to violence?
As to (a), I must say that the movement
is not ‘creating’ race-hatred. It
certainly gives, as I have already said, disciplined
expression to it. You cannot eradicate evil by
ignoring it. It is because I want to promote
universal brotherhood that I have taken up non-co-operation
so that, by self-purification, India may make the
world better than it is.
As to (b), I know that the words ‘satanic’
and ‘devilish’ are strong, but they relate
the exact truth. They describe a system not persons:
We are bound to hate evil, if we would shun it.
But by means of non-co-operation we are able to distinguish
between the evil and the evil-doer. I have found
no difficulty in describing a particular activity
of a brother of mine to be devilish, but I am not aware
of having harboured any hatred about him. Non-co-operation
teaches us to love our fellowmen in spite of their
faults, not by ignoring or over-looking them.
As to (c), the movement is certainly
being conducted on strictly non-violent lines.
That all non-co-operators have not yet thoroughly
imbibed the doctrine is true. But that just shows
what an evil legacy we have inherited. Emotion
there is in the movement. And it will remain.
A man without emotion is a man without feeling.
As to (d), there certainly is danger
of the movement becoming violent. But we may
no more drop non-violent non-co-operation because of
its dangers, than we may stop freedom because of the
danger of its abuse.
REJOINDER
Messrs. Popley and Philips have been
good enough to reply to my letter “To Every
Englishman in India.” I recognise and appreciate
the friendly spirit of their letter. But I see
that there are fundamental differences which must
for the time being divide them and me. So long
as I felt that, in spite of grievous lapses the British
Empire represented an activity for the worlds and
India’s good, I clung to it like a child to
its mother’s breast. But that faith is gone.
The British nation has endorsed the Punjab and Khilsfat
crimes. The is no doubt a dissenting minority.
But a dissenting minority that satisfies itself with
a mere expression of its opinion and continues to
help the wrong-doer partakes in wrong-doing.
And when the sum total of his energy
represents a minus quantity one may not pick out the
plus quantities, hold them up for admiration, and ask
an admiring public to help regarding them. It
is a favourite design of Satan to temper evil with
a show of good and thus lure the unwary into the trap.
The only way the world has known of defeating Satan
is by shunning him. I invite Englishmen, who
could work out the ideal the believe in, to join the
ranks of the non-co-operationists. W.T. Stead
prayed for the reverse of the British arms during the
Boer war. Miss Hobbhouse invited the Boers to
keep up the fight. The betrayal of India is much
worse than the injustice done to the Boers. The
Boers fought and bled for their rights. When
therefore, we are prepared to bleed, the right will
have become embodied, and idolatrous world will perceive
it and do homage to it.
But Messers. Popley and
Phillips object that I have allied myself with those
who would draw the sword if they could. I see
nothing wrong in it. They represent the right
no less than I do. And is it not worth while
trying to prevent an unsheathing of the sword by helping
to win the bloodless battle? Those who recognise
the truth of the Indian position can only do God’s
work by assisting this non-violent campaign.
The second objection raised by these
English friends is more to the point. I would
be guilty of wrong-doing myself if the Muslim cause
was not just. The fact is that the Muslim claim
is not to perpetuate foreign domination of non-Muslim
or Turkish races. The Indian Mussalmans do not
resist self-determination, but they would fight to
the last the nefarious plan of exploiting Mesopotamia
under the plea of self-determination. They must
resist the studied attempt to humiliate Turkey and
therefore Islam, under the false pretext of ensuring
Armenian independence.
The third objection has reference
to schools. I do object to missionary or any
schools being carried on with Government money.
It is true that it was at one time our money.
Will these good missionaries be justified in educating
me with funds given to them by a robber who has robbed
me of my money, religion and honour because the money
was originally mine.
I personally tolerated the financial
robbery of India, but it would have been a sin to
have tolerated the robbery of honour through the Punjab,
and of religion through Turkey. This is strong
language. But nothing less would truly describe
my deep conviction. Needless to add that the
emptying of Government aided, or affiliated, schools
does not mean starving the young mind National Schools
are coming into being as fast as the others are emptied.
Messrs. Popley and Phillips think
that my sense of justice has been blurred by the knowledge
of the Punjab and the Khilafat wrongs. I hope
not. I have asked friends to show me some good
fruit (intended and deliberately produced) of the
British occupation of India. And I assure them
that I shall make the amplest amends if I find that
I have erred in my eagerness about the Khilafat and
the Punjab wrongs.
TWO ENGLISHMEN REPLY
Dear Mr. Gandhi,
Thank you for your letter to every
Englishman in India, with its hard-hitting and its
generous tone. Something within us responds to
the note which you have struck. We are not representatives
of any corporate body, but we think that millions
of our countrymen in England, and not a few in India,
feel as we do. The reading of your letter convinces
us that you and we cannot be real enemies.
May we say at once that in so far
as the British Empire stands for the domination and
exploitation of other races for Britain’s benefit,
for degrading treatment of any, for traffic in intoxicating
liquors, for repressive legislation, for administration
such as that which to the Amritsar incidents, we desire
the end of it as much as you do? We quite understand
that in the excitement of the present crisis, owing
to certain acts of the British Administration, which
we join with you in condemning, the Empire presents
itself to you under this aspect along. But from
personal contact with our countrymen, we know that
working like leaven in the midst of such tendencies,
as you and we deplore, is the faith in a better ideal the
ideal of a commonwealth of free peoples voluntarily
linked together by the ties of common experience in
the past and common aspirations for the future, a
commonwealth which may hope to spread liberty and
progress through the whole earth. With vast numbers
of our countrymen we value the British Empire mainly
as affording the possibility of the realization of
such an idea and on the ground give it our loyal allegiance.
Meanwhile we do repent of that arrogant
attitude to Indians which has been all too common
among our countrymen, we do hold Indians to be our
brothers and equals, many of them our superiors, and
we would rather be servants than rulers of India.
We desire an administration which cannot he intimated
either by the selfish element in Anglo-Indian political
opinion or by any other sectional interest and which
shall govern in accordance with the best democratic
principles. We should welcome the convening of
a National assembly of recognized leaders of the people,
representing all shades of political opinion of every
caste, race and creed, to frame a constitution for
Swaraj. In all the things that matter most we
are with you. Surely you and we can co-operate
in the service of India, in such matters for example
as education. It seems to us nothing short of
a tragedy that you should be rallying Indian Patriotism
to inaugurate a new era of good will under a watchword
that divides, instead of uniting all.
We have spoken of the large amount
of common ground upon which you and we can stand.
But frankness demands that we express our anxiety about
some items in your programme. Leaving aside smaller
questions on which your letter seems to us to do the
British side less than justice, may we mention three
main points? Your insistence on spiritual forces
alone we deeply respect and desire to emulate, but
we cannot understand your combining into it with a
close alliance with those who, as you frankly say,
would draw the sword as soon as they could.
Your desire for an education truly
national commands our whole-hearted approval.
But instead of Indianizing the present system, as you
could begin to do from the beginning of next year,
or instead of creating a hundred institutions such
as that at Bolpur and turning into them the stream
of India’s young intellectual life, you appear
to be turning that stream out of its present channel
into open sands where it may dry up. In other
words, you seem to us to be risking the complete cessation,
for a period possibly, of years, of all education,
for a large number of boys and young men. Is
it best, for those young men or for India that the
present imperfect education should cease before a better
education is ready to take its place?
Your desire to unite Mohammedan and
Hindu and to share with your Mohammedan brethren in
seeking the satisfaction of Mohammedan aspirations,
we can understand and sympathize with. But is
there no danger, in the course which some of your
party have urged upon the Government, that certain
races in the former Ottoman Empire might be fixed
under a foreign yoke, for worse than that which you
hold the English yoke to be? You could not wish
to purchase freedom in India at the price of enslavement
in the middle East.
To sum up, we thank you for the spirit
of your letter, to which we have tried to respond
in the same spirit. We are with you in the desire
for an India genuinely free to develop the best that
is in her and in the belief that best is something
wonderful of which the world to-day stands in need.
We are ready to co-operate with you
and with every other man of any race or nationality
who will help India to realize her best. Are you
going to insist that you can have nothing to do with
us if we receive a government grant (i.e., Indian
money), for an Indian School. Surely some more
inspiring battle cry than non-co-operation can be discovered.
We have ventured quite frankly to point out three
items in your present programme, which seem to us
likely to hinder the attainment of your true ideals
for Indian greatness. But those ideals themselves
command our warm sympathy, and we desire to work,
so far as we have opportunity, for their attainment.
In fact, it is only thus that we can interpret our
British citizenship.
Yours sincerely,
(Sd.) H.A. POPLEY,
(Sd.) G.E. PHILLIPS.
Bangalore,
November 15, 1920.
RENUNCIATION OF MEDALS
Mr. Gandhi has addressed the following
letter to the Viceroy:
It is not without a pang that I return
the Kaisar-i-Hind gold medal granted to me by your
predecessor for my humanitarian work in South Africa,
the Zulu war medal granted in South Africa for my services
as officer in charge of the Indian volunteer ambulance
corps in 1906 and the Boer war medal fur my services
as assistant superintendent of the Indian volunteer
stretcher bearer corps during the Boer war of 1899-1900.
I venture to return these medals in pursuance of the
scheme of non-co-operation inaugurated to-day in connection
with the Khilafat movement. Valuable as those
honours have been to me, I cannot wear them with an
easy conscience so long as my Mussalman countrymen
have to labour under a wrong done to their religious
sentiment. Events that have happened during the
past month have confirmed me in the opinion that the
Imperial Government have acted in the Khilafat matter
in an unscrupulous, immoral and unjust manner and
have been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend
their immorality. I can retain neither respect
nor affection for such a Government.
The attitude of the Imperial and Your
Excellency’s Governments on the Punjab question
has given me additional cause for grave dissatisfaction.
I had the honour, as Your Excellency is aware, as one
of the congress commissioners to investigate the causes
of the disorders in the Punjab during the April of
1919. And it is my deliberate conviction that
Sir Michael O’Dwyer was totally unfit to hold
the office of Lieutenant Governor of Punjab and that
his policy was primarily responsible for infuriating
the mob at Amritsar. Do doubt the mob excesses
were unpardonable; incendiarism, murder of five innocent
Englishmen and the cowardly assault on Miss Sherwood
were most deplorable and uncalled for. But the
punitive measures taken by General Dyer, Col.
Frank Johnson, Col. O’Brien, Mr. Bosworth
Smith, Rai Shri Ram Sud, Mr. Malik Khan and other
officers were out of all proportional to the crime
of the people and amounted to wanton cruelty and inhumanity
and almost unparalleled in modern times. Your
excellency’s light-hearted treatment of the official
crime, your, exoneration of Sir Michael O’Dwyer,
Mr. Montagu’s dispatch and above all the shameful
ignorance of the Punjab events and callous disregard
of the feelings of Indians betrayed by the House of
Lords, have filled me with the gravest misgivings
regarding the future of the Empire, have estranged
me completely from the present Government and have
disabled me from tendering, as I have hitherto whole-heartedly
tendered, my loyal co-operation.
In my humble opinion the ordinary
method of agitating by way of petitions, deputations
and the like is no remedy for moving to repentence
a Government so hopelessly indifferent to the welfare
of its charges as the Government of India has proved
to me. In European countries, condonation of
such grievous wrongs as the Khilafat and the Punjab
would have resulted in a bloody revolution by the people.
They would have resisted at all costs national emasculation
such as the said wrongs imply. But half of India
is to weak to offer violent resistance and the other
half is unwilling to do so.
I have therefore ventured to suggest
the remedy of non-co-operation which enables those
who wish, to dissociate themselves from the Government
and which, if it is unattended by violence and undertaken
in an ordered manner, must compel it to retrace its
steps and undo the wrongs committed. But whilst
I shall pursue the policy of non-co-operation in so
far as I can carry the people with me, I shall not
lose hope that you will yet see your way to do justice.
I therefore respectfully ask Your Excellency to summon
a conference of the recognised leaders of the people
and in consultation with them find a way that would
placate the Mussalmans and do reparation to the unhappy
Punjab.
August 4, 1920.
MAHATMA GANDHI’S LETTER TO H.R.H. THE DUKE OF CONNAUGHT
The following letter has been addressed
by Mr. Gandhi to his Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught;
Sir,
Your Royal Highness must have heard
a great deal about non-co-operation, non-co-operationists
and their methods and incidentally of me its humble
author. I fear that the information given to Your
Royal Highness must have been in its nature one-sided.
I owe it to you and to my friends and myself that
I should place before you what I conceive to be the
scope of non-co-operation as followed not only be
me but my closest associates such as Messrs. Shaukat
Ali and Mahomed Ali.
For me it is no joy and pleasure to
be actively associated in the boycott of your Royal
Highness’ visit I have tendered loyal
and voluntary association to the Government for an
unbroken period of nearly 30 years in the full belief
that through that way lay the path of freedom for
my country. It was therefore no slight thing for
me to suggest to my countrymen that we should take
no part in welcoming Your Royal Highness. Not
one among us has anything against you as an English
gentleman. We hold your person as sacred as that
of a dearest friend. I do not know any of my
friends who would not guard it with his life, if he
found it in danger. We are not at war with individual
Englishmen we seek not to destroy English life.
We do desire to destroy a system that has emasculated
our country in body, mind and soul. We are determined
to battle with all our might against that in the English
nature which has made O’Dwyerism and Dyerism
possible in the Punjab and has resulted in a wanton
affront upon Islam a faith professed by seven crores
of our countrymen. The affront has been put in
breach of the letter and the spirit of the solemn
declaration of the Prime Minister. We consider
it to be inconsistent with our self respect any longer
to brook the spirit of superiority and dominance which
has systematically ignored and disregarded the sentiments
of thirty crores of the innocent people of India on
many a vital matter. It is humiliating to us,
it cannot be a matter of pride to you, that thirty
crores of Indians should live day in and day out in
the fear of their lives from one hundred thousand
Englishmen and therefore be under subjection to them.
Your Royal Highness has come not to
end the system I have described but to sustain it
by upholding its prestige. Your first pronouncement
was a laudation of Lord Wellingdon. I have the
privilege of knowing him. I believe him to be
an honest and amiable gentleman who will not willingly
hurt even a fly. But, he has certainly failed
as a ruler. He allowed himself to be guided by
those whose interest it was to support their power.
He is reading the mind of the Dravidian province.
Here in Bengal you are issuing a certificate of merit
to a Governor who is again from all I have heard an
estimable gentleman. But he knows nothing of the
heart of Bengal and its yearnings. Bengal is not
Calcutta. Fort William and the palaces of Calcutta
represent an insolent exploitation of the unmurmuring
and highly cultured peasantry of this fair province.
Non-co-operationists have come to the conclusion that
they must not be deceived by the reforms that tinker
with the problem of India’s distress and humiliation.
Nor must they be impatient and angry. We must
not in our impatient anger resort, to stupid violence.
We freely admit that we must take our due share of
the blame for the existing state. It is not so
much the British guns that are responsible fur our
subjection, as our voluntary co-operation. Our
non-participation in a hearty welcome to your Royal
Highness is thus in no sense a demonstration against
your high personage but it is against the system you
have come to uphold. I know that individual Englishmen
cannot even if they will alter the English nature
all of a sudden. If we would be equals of Englishmen
we must cast off fear. We must learn to be self-reliant
and independent of the schools, courts, protection,
and patronage of a Government, we seek to end, if
it will not mend. Hence this non-violent non-co-operation.
I know that we have not all yet become non-violent
in speech and deed. But the results so far achieved
have I assure Your Royal Highness, been amazing.
The people have understood the secret and the value
of non-violence as they have never done before.
He who runs may see that this a religious, purifying
movement. We are leaving off drink, we are trying
to rid India of the curse of untouchability. We
are trying to throw off foreign tinsel splendour and
by reverting to the spinning wheel reviving the ancient
and the poetic simplicity of life. We hope thereby
to sterilize the existing harmful institution.
I ask Your Royal Highness as an Englishman to study
this movement and its possibilities for the Empire
and the world. We are at war with nothing that
is good in the world. In protecting Islam in
the manner we are, we are protecting all religions.
In protecting the honour of India we are protecting
the honour of humanity. For our means are hurtful
to none. We desire to live on terms of friendship
with Englishmen but that friendship must be friendship
of equals in both theory and practice. And we
must continue to non-co-operate, i.e. to purify
ourselves till the goal is achieved.
I ask Your Royal Highness and through
you every Englishman to appreciate the view-point
of the non-co-operationists.
I beg to remain,
Your Royal Highness’s faithful servant,
(Sd.) M.K. GANDHI.
February, 1921
THE GREATEST THING
It is to be wished that non-co-operationists
will clearly recognise that nothing can stop the onward
march of the nation as violence. Ireland may
gain its freedom by violence. Turkey may regain
her lost possessions by violence within measurable
distance of time. But India cannot win her freedom
by violence for a century, because her people are not
built in the manner of other nations. They have
been nurtured in the traditions of suffering.
Rightly or wrongly, for good or ill, Islam too has
evolved along peaceful lines in India. And I
make bold to say that, if the honour of Islam is to
be vindicated through its followers in India, it will
only be by methods of peaceful, silent, dignified,
conscious, and courageous suffering. The more
I study that wonderful faith, the more convinced I
become that the glory of Islam is due not to the sword
but to the sufferings, the renunciation, and the nobility
of its early Caliphs. Islam decayed when its
followers, mistaking the evil for the good, dangled
the sword in the face of man, and lost sight of the
godliness, the humility, and austerity of its founder
and his disciples. But, I am not at the present
moment, concerned with showing that the basis of Islam,
as of all religions, is not violence but suffering
not the taking of life but the giving of it.
What I am anxious to show is that
non-co-operationists must be true as well to the spirit
as to the letter of their vow if they would gain Swaraj
within one year. They may forget non-co-operation
but they dare not forget non-violence. Indeed,
non-co-operation is non-violence. We are violent
when we sustain a government whose creed is violence.
It bases itself finally not on right but on might.
Its last appeal is not to reason, nor the heart, but
to the sword. We are tired of this creed and
we have risen against it. Let us not ourselves
belie our profession by being violent. Though
the English are very few, they are organised for violence.
Though we are many we cannot be organised for violence
for a long time to come. Violence for us is a
gospel or despair.
I have seen a pathetic letter from
a god-fearing English woman who defends Dyerism for
she thinks that, if General Dyer had not enacted Jallianwala,
women and children would have been murdered by us.
If we are such brutes as to desire the blood of innocent
women and children, we deserve to be blotted out from
the face of the earth. There is the other side.
It did not strike this good lady that, if we were friends,
the price that her countrymen paid at Jallianwala for
buying their safety was too great. They gained
their safety at the cost of their humanity. General
Dyer has been haltingly blamed, and his evil genius
Sir Michael O’Dwyer entirely exonerated because
Englishmen do not want to leave this country of fields
even if everyone of us has to be killed. If we
go mad again as we did at Amritsar, let there be no
mistake that a blacker Jallianwala will be enacted.
Shall we copy Dyerism and O’Dwyerism
even whilst we are condemning it? Let not our
rock be violence and devilry. Our rock must be
non-violence and godliness. Let us, workers,
be clear as to what we are about. Swaraj depends
upon our ability to control all the forces of violence
on our side. Therefore there is no Swaraj within
one year, if there is violence on the part of the
people.
We must then refrain from sitting
dhurna, we must refrain from crying ‘shame,
shame’ to anybody, we must not use any coercion
to persuade our people to adopt our way. We must
guarantee to them the same freedom we claim for ourselves.
We must not tamper with the masses. It is dangerous
to make political use of factory labourers or the peasantry not
that we are not entitled to do so, but we are not
ready for it. We have neglected their political
(as distinguished from literary) education all these
long years. We have not got enough honest, intelligent,
reliable, and brave workers to enable us to act upon
these countrymen of ours.