E-text prepared by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 35349-h.htm or 35349-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/35349/pg35349-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35349/35349-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://www.archive.org/details/freedomthroughdi00dascuoft FREEDOM THROUGH DISOBEDIENCE by C. R. DAS President of the 37th Indian National Congress, Gaya, 1922. Arka Publishing House, George Town, Madras. 1922 Imperial Book Depot, Delhi. Printed at the Manoranjini Press, Sowcarpet, Madras. FREEDOM THROUGH DISOBEDIENCE _The following is the full text of the Presidential Address of Desabhandhu C. R. Das at the thirty-seventh session of the Indian National Congress held at Gaya on 26th December 1922:--_ SISTERS AND BROTHERS,-- As I stand before you to-day, a sense of overwhelming loss overtakes me, and I can scarce give expression to what is uppermost in the minds of all and everyone of us. After a memorable battle which he gave to the Bureaucracy, Mahatma Gandhi has been seized and cast into prison; and we shall not have his guidance in the proceedings of the Congress this year. But there is inspiration for all of us in the last stand which he made in the citadel of the enemy, in the last defiance which he hurled at the agents of the Bureaucracy. To read a story equal in pathos, in dignity, and in sublimity you have to go back over two thousand years, when Jesus of Nazareth, "as one that perverted the people" stood to take his trial before a foreign tribunal. "And Jesus stood before the Governor: and the Governor asked him saying, Art thou the king of the Jews? And Jesus said unto him, Thou sayëst. "And when he has accused of the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing. "Then said Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee? "And he answered him too never a word; insomuch that the Governor marvelled greatly." Mahatma Gandhi took a different course. He admitted that he was guilty, and he pointed out to the public Prosecutor, that his guilt was greater than he, the Prosecutor, had alleged; but he maintained that if he had offended against the law of Bureaucracy in so offending, he had obeyed the law of God. If I may hazard a guess, the Judge who tried him and who passed a sentence of imprisonment on him was filled with the same feeling of marvel as Pontius Pilate had been.