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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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