Freedom's Battle: Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present SituationGandhi, Mahatma
Religion
Freedom's Battle: Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation
Gandhi, Mahatma
British -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1919-1947; Nonviolence
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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