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