INDIA’S EXPERIMENT WITH PASSIVE RESISTANCE
In a previous chapter we discussed the character and spirit of Mahatma
Gandhi into whose hands has fallen the duty of leading a country
of 300 million people through a political revolution. It must be
understood, however, that Gandhi is the leader of the revolution and
not its creator. Modern thinkers universally admit that individuals or
small groups of reformers do not make revolutions. “Agitators or men
of genius and ability in a backward community might stir up sporadic
revolts and cause minor disturbances, but no human agency can ever
create mass revolutions. A successful revolution requires a state of
political and social evolution ready for the desired transformation.
The history of the world’s important political and social revolutions
furnishes sufficient evidence in support of this theory.”[33] The
insurrection of the slaves headed by the able Spartacus, in spite of
their early admirable victories, could not overthrow Roman domination.
The early attempts of the proletarian revolutionists, supported as
they were by leaders of genius and daring, were doomed to failure.
India’s revolt against English rule in 1857 was ably led, yet it
could not succeed. In all these cases the same argument holds. The
time was not ripe for the desired change. In the present case, Gandhi
has been eminently successful because India was prepared beforehand
for a mass revolution. Passive resistance, or no passive resistance,
the Indian revolution was bound to come as a necessary consequence
of the country’s long continued political oppression and economic
exploitation. The people were already growing desperate when a united
mass uprising was precipitated by the English government’s brutal
actions of 1919. During the war the English parliament had promised a
measure of self-government to the people of India as a reward for their
loyalty to the Empire. Early in 1919, when the country was agitating
for the promised self-government, the English government of India
forcibly passed against the unanimous opposition from all sections of
the people, special repressive measures in order to check the spread
of nationalism in India. Peaceful demonstrations directed against the
newly passed bills were organized all over the country. Once again the
government acted harshly in using inhuman methods in the form of public
flogging, crawlings and so forth, in the effort to suppress the rising
spirit of freedom throughout the land. Just at this time Gandhi came on
the stage, and proposed to his countrymen the use of passive resistance
for the accomplishment of their political revolution. His resolution
of non-violent non-coöperation was officially adopted by the Indian
National Congress, and the nation in its fight for freedom pledged
itself to non-violence. What are passive resistance and non-violent
non-coöperation?
“The ethics of passive resistance is very simple and must be known to
every student of the New Testament. Passive resistance in its essence
is submission to physical force _under protest_. Passive resistance
is really a misnomer. No thought is farther away from the heart of the
passive resister than the thought of passivity. The soul of his ideal
is resistance, and he resists in the most heroic and forceful manner.”
The only difference between his heroism and our common conception
of the word is in the choice of the weapon. His main doctrine is to
avoid violence and to substitute for physical force the forces of
love, faith, and sacrifice. “Passive resistance resists, but not blow
for blow. Passive resistance calls the use of the physical weapon in
the hands of man the most cowardly thing in life.” Passive resistance
teaches men to resist heroically the might and injustice of the untrue
and unrighteous. But they must fight with moral and spiritual weapons.
They must resist tyranny with forbearance, hatred with love, wrong with
right, and injustice with faith. “To hurl back the cowardly weapon of
the wicked and the unjust is useless. Let it fall. Bear your suffering
with patience. Place your faith in the strength of the divine soul
of man.” “The hardest fibre must melt before the fire of love. When
the results do not correspond, the fire is not strong enough.” “The
indomitable tenacity and magic of the great soul will operate and
win out; force must bow down before heroic gentleness.” This is the
technique of passive resistance.
The actual application of this principle to politics requires
explanation. Individuals or groups have a right to refuse submission
to the authority of government which they consider unjust and brutal.
“The people of India,” says Gandhi, “have been convinced, after long
and fearful trials, that the English government of India is Satanic.
It is based on violence. Its object is not the good of the people, but
rapine and plunder. It works not in the interests of the governed, and
its policies are not guided by their consent. It bases itself finally
not on right but on might. Its last appeal is not to the reason, nor
the heart, but to the sword. The country is tired of this creed and it
has risen against it.” Under these conditions the most straightforward
course to follow is to seek the destruction of such an institution. The
people of India can destroy the thing by force, or else they can refuse
their coöperation with its various activities and render it helpless;
then refuse their submission to its authority and render it useless.
Just consider the case of a country where all government officers
resign from their offices, where the people boycott the various
governmental institutions such as public schools and colleges, law
courts, and legislatures; and where the taxpayers refuse to pay their
taxes. The people can do all this without resort to force, and so
stop the machinery of the government dead, and make it a meaningless
thing without use and power. To quote Thoreau once again: “When the
officer has resigned office, and the subject has refused allegiance,
the revolution is accomplished.” This is exactly what the people of
India have set out to do by their present policy of passive resistance.
However simple the theory may be, the practice of it is difficult
and perilous. When a people resort to these peaceful means for the
accomplishment of political revolution, they must be prepared to
undergo unlimited suffering. The enemy’s camp will be determined
and organized; from it will issue constant provocations and brutal
exhibitions of force. Under these difficult circumstances, the only
chance for the success of the passive resister is in his readiness
for infinite and courageous suffering, qualities that in turn imply a
powerful reserve of self-control and an utter dedication to the ideal.
Evidently to prepare a nation of 300 million people for this tremendous
task must take time and require great patience and courage. To quote
Gandhi:
“Non-coöperation 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.”
The people of India are moving on the road to freedom with dignity.
They are slowly nearing their goal. On their way the passive resisters
are learning their lessons from bitter experience, and are growing
stronger in faith every day. That they are headed in the right
direction and are quietly pushing forward we do know in a definite way,
but when they will emerge victorious we cannot say. To help the reader
to catch the subtle spirit behind this movement, we shall quote a few
more lines from the pen of its leader:
“I am a man of peace. I believe in peace. But I do not want peace
at any price. I do not want the peace that you find in stone. I do
not want the peace that you find in the grave; but I do want peace
which you find embedded in the human breast, which is exposed to
the arrows of the whole world, but which is protected from all
harm by the power of the Almighty God.”
The wearing of home-spun cloth by all classes of people, rich and
poor alike, is one of the most important items in the non-coöperative
program. Yet every time I have tried to justify it before my American
friends, I have received as response a shrug of the shoulders. Not only
the layman, but serious students of economics have replied: “That is
going back into mediæval ways. In these days of machinery home-spinning
is sheer foolishness.” Yet one does not have to be an economist to know
that “labor spent on home-spinning and thus used in the creation of
a utility, is better spent than wasted in idleness.” The majority of
the population of India lives directly upon the produce of the soil.
They remain in forced idleness for a greater part of the year. There
are no industries in the country, cottage or urban. So the people have
nothing to occupy them during their idle months. Before the English
conquest, agricultural India had its supplementary industries on which
the people could fall during their idle time. But these industries have
been completely destroyed by the English fiscal policy for India, which
was formulated with the desire to build England’s own fabric and other
industries upon the ruins of India’s industries. The country produces
more cotton than is needed for its own use. Under ordinary conditions
this cotton is exported out of the country, and cloth manufactured in
the mills of England is imported into the country for its consumption.
For want of a substitute people are forced to buy this foreign cloth.
And they are so miserably poor that the great majority of them cannot
afford one meal a day. Nothing could be more sensible for these people
than to adopt home-spinning during their idle hours. This will help to
save them, partially at least, from starvation. Let me quote Gandhi on
this subject:
“I claim for the spinning-wheel the properties of a musical
instrument, for whilst a hungry and a naked woman will refuse to
dance to the accompaniment of a piano, I have seen women beaming
with joy to see the spinning-wheel work, for they know that they
can through that rustic instrument both feed and clothe themselves.
“Yes, it does solve the problem of India’s chronic poverty and is
an insurance against famine....
“When spinning was almost compulsorily stopped nothing replaced
it except slavery and idleness. Our mills cannot today spin
enough for our wants, and if they did, they will not keep down
prices unless they were compelled. They are frankly money-makers
and will not therefore regulate prices according to the needs of
the nation. Hand-spinning is therefore designed to put millions
of rupees in the hands of poor villagers. Every agricultural
country requires a supplementary industry to enable the peasants
to utilise the spare hours. Such industry for India has always
been spinning. Is it such a visionary ideal--an attempt to revive
an ancient occupation whose destruction has brought on slavery,
pauperism and disappearance of the inimitable artistic talent
which was once all expressed in the wonderful fabric of India and
which was the envy of the world?”
The people of India have made mistakes in the past, and they
will probably make others in the future. But that in sticking to
non-violence they are fulfilling the noblest ideal ever conceived by
man, and in staying loyal to the spirit of passive resistance they
are following a truer and a richer light will not be questioned. Will
humanity at large see the wisdom of passive resistance? To me in our
present state that seems very doubtful. It will be easy to convince the
common man of the virtue and wisdom of non-violence. But unfortunately
the reins of our destiny are not in the hands of common people. Those
who hold the power over the nations of the world have other interests
to look after than the common interests of the average man. They are
pledged to the service of other masters whose welfare is not the
welfare of the whole race. “The world is ruled at the present day by
those who must oppress and kill in order to exploit.” So long as this
condition continues, there is little hope for the reformation of human
society. We must all suffer because we would not learn.
Mankind will not always refuse to listen to the voice of reason. A
time will come when the great masses all over the world will refuse to
fight, when exploitation and wars will cease, and the different groups
of the human race will consent to live together in coöperation and
peace.
An illustration of the might of passive resistance was furnished during
the conflict between the British Government of India and the Akali
Sikhs over the management of their shrines. This incident shows to what
heights of self-sacrifice and suffering human beings can reach when
they are under the spell of noble idealism. Sikhs are a virile race of
fighting people. They are all members of a religious fellowship and
form nearly one-sixth of the population of the province of Punjab
in the northwest part of India. They constitute by themselves a very
important community, which is closely bound together by a feeling of
common brotherhood. They all go by the name of Singh, meaning the
lion, and are rightly proud of their history, which though brief in
scope of time, is yet full of inspiring deeds committed by the Sikh
forefathers in the defense of religious freedom and justice during the
evil days of a few corrupt and fanatic Moghul rulers of India. As a
rule Sikhs belong to the agriculturist class and both men and women are
stalwart and healthy-looking. Their men are distinguished by their long
hair and beards. They are born with martial characteristics and are
naturally very bold and brave in their habits. Once aroused to sense of
duty towards the weak and the oppressed, they have always been found
willing to give their lives without remorse or regret. Sikhs constitute
a major portion of the military and police forces of India and of
several British colonies. Those tourists who have been in the East will
recall the tall, bearded Sikh policemen of the British principalities
of Shanghai and Hongkong. Since the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, Sikhs have
always been regarded as the most loyal and devoted subjects of the
British Crown in India. “On the battlefields of Flanders, Mesopotamia,
Persia, and Egypt they have served the Empire faithfully and well.
Their deeds of heroism were particularly noticed during the most trying
moments of the World War.”
Before the British acquired the province in 1849 Sikhs were the rulers
of the Punjab. During the period of their rule Sikh princes had made
rich grants of land and other property to the historic temples and
shrines of their religion. Because of the introduction of irrigation
canals some of these properties have acquired immense values in recent
years, their annual incomes in several cases running up to a million
rupees or more.
The Sikhs have always regarded the temple properties as belonging
to the community. And when it was brought to the notice of their
progressive leaders that the hereditary priests at some of the historic
and rich Sikh centers had become corrupt and were wasting the temple
money in vicious pleasures, the Sikhs organized the Central Shrine
Management Committee. The object of the committee was to take away
the management of all important Sikh shrines from the corrupt priests
and to vest it in the community. The committee was first organized in
November, 1920, and its members were elected on the basis of universal
franchise open to both sexes. The method of procedure followed by the
committee was that of arbitration. A local sub-committee, consisting
of the leading Sikhs in the neighborhood, was formed to watch over the
affairs of every shrine. This sub-committee was to act in coöperation
with the temple priest, who was henceforth to be a subordinate and not
the sole master. Whenever the priests agreed to arbitrate the matter in
a fair manner, they were allowed free use of their residence quarters
and were awarded liberal salaries for household expenses. By this
method the Central Shrine Committee in a short time became masters of
some of the very rich and important Sikh shrines.
While in several of the smaller places such transfer of ownership was
accomplished through peaceful means, in some of the bigger temples
the community had to undergo heavy losses in life. For instance at
Nanakana Sahib, the Jerusalem of the Sikhs, a band of one hundred
unarmed followers of the Central Committee were surrounded by a band
of armed hirelings of the priest. They were first shot at, then
assaulted with rifle butt-ends, and later cut into small pieces or
burnt alive after being previously soaked with kerosene oil. The priest
personally supervised this whole affair of daylight butchery which did
not finish until the last one of the Sikhs had been consumed by the
bloody bonfire. Later it was discovered that the priest had prepared
for the bloodshed long before, and that he had hired the armed ruffians
and barricaded the temple premises after consultation with the local
English Justice of the Peace. The leading dailies of the country
openly stated that the English civil commissioner was a co-partner in
the crime, but the government took no notice of the fact. The Hindu
population was not surprised that the priest who had murdered one
hundred innocent, inoffensive, devout Sikhs escaped capital punishment
in the British courts or that in his prison he was surrounded with all
the princely luxuries of his former palace.
Guru Ka Bagh is a historic Sikh temple, situated at a distance of
nearly eight miles from the central headquarters of the Sikhs in the
city of Amritsar. Through an agreement drawn between the Central
Shrine Committee and the temple priest on January 31, 1921, Guru Ka
Bagh had come under the management of a local board assisted by the
priest. Six months later, presumably at the suggestion of the civil
commissioner, the priest burned all the temple records and drove the
representative of the Central Committee out of the temple premises;
whereupon the Central Committee took full charge of the temple. They
were in uncontested possession of the premises until trouble started,
a year later, from the arrest of five Akali Sikhs, who had gone out to
cut firewood from the surrounding grounds attached to the Guru Ka Bagh.
A formal complaint was obtained by the civil commissioner from the
ousted priest to the effect that in cutting wood for use in the temple
kitchen the Akalis were trespassing on his property rights. The cutting
of wood on the premises went on as usual until the police began to make
wholesale arrests of all so-called trespassers.
This procedure continued for four days till the police found out
that large numbers of Akalis (immortals) were pouring in from all
sides, everyone eager to be arrested in protecting the rights of his
community. Then the police began to beat the Akali bands with bamboo
sticks six feet long and fitted with iron knobs on both ends. As soon
as Akalis, in groups of five, started to go across for cutting wood,
they were assaulted by the police armed with these bamboo sticks and
were mercilessly beaten over their heads and bodies until they became
unconscious and had to be carried away by the temple ambulance workers.
The news of this novel method of punishment at once spread throughout
the country like wild fire and thousands of Sikhs started on their way
to Amritsar. The government closed the sale of railroad tickets to all
Akali Sikhs wearing black turbans, which constituted their national
uniform. The various highways leading into the city of the Golden
Temple, Amritsar, were blocked by armed police. But after a call for
them had been issued at the official headquarters of the Central Shrine
Management Committee, nothing could stop the Akalis from crowding into
the city. Where railroads refused passage they walked long distances
on foot, and when river and canal bridges were guarded against them,
both men and women swam across the waters to reach their holy temple
at Amritsar. In the course of two days the huge premises of the Golden
Temple were filled with Akalis of every sort and kind--boys of twelve
with feet sore with blisters from prolonged walking, women of all
ages--and still many were fast pouring in.
“Among them were medaled veterans of many wars who had fought for
the English in foreign lands and won eminent recognition, and had
now rushed to Amritsar to win a higher and nobler merit in the
service of their religion and country. They had assembled there to be
ruthlessly beaten and killed by the agents of the same government for
whose protection they had fought at home and across the seas.” These
old warriors, disillusioned by their English friends, who were now
conspiring to take from them the simple rights of worship in their own
temples, had not lost their independence and courage. They had always
been the first to leap before the firing guns of the enemy on the
battlefields of England; they were first again here to throw themselves
at the feet of their Central Shrine Committee, willing to sacrifice
their lives at its bidding. All were eager, one more than the other,
to offer themselves for the beating at Guru Ka Bagh.
Seeing that their efforts to stop the Akalis from gathering at Amritsar
had been wholly unsuccessful, the Government issued strict orders
against any person or group of persons from proceeding to Guru Ka Bagh.
Sizing up the whole situation, the assembled leaders of the community
represented in the Central Shrine Committee at once resolved on two
things. First, the community would contest its right of peaceful
pilgrimage and worship at Guru Ka Bagh and other temples until the
last among the Sikhs had been killed in the struggle. Secondly, they
would steadfastly adhere to the letter and spirit of Mahatma Gandhi’s
teachings of non-violence. Thirdly, they decided to send Akalis to Guru
Ka Bagh in batches of a hundred each, in direct defiance of the orders
of the British Government. Before starting on the march, each Akali
was required to take an oath of strict non-violence; that he would not
use force in action or speech under any provocation whatsoever; that
if assaulted he would submit to the rough treatment with resignation
and humility; that whatever might be the nature of his ordeal he would
not turn his face backward. He would either reach Guru Ka Bagh and go
out for chopping wood when so instructed, or he would be carried to the
committee’s emergency hospital unconscious, dead or alive.
The first batch started towards Guru Ka Bagh on August 31, 1922, after
previously taking the vow of non-violence. The Akalis were dressed in
black turbans with garlands of white flowers wrapped around their
heads. On their way, as the Akalis sang their religious hymns in
chorus, they were met by a band of policemen armed with bamboo sticks.
Simultaneously the Akalis sat down and thrust their heads forward to
receive blows. An order was given by the English superintendent, and
on rushed the police with their long bamboo rods to do their bloody
work. They beat the non-resisting Sikhs on the heads, backs, and other
delicate parts of their bodies, until the entire one hundred was maimed
and battered and lay there in a mass unconscious, prostrate, bleeding.
While the volunteers were passively receiving blows from the police,
the English superintendent sportively ran his horse over them and back.
His assistants pulled the Sikhs by their sacred hair, spat upon their
faces, and cursed and called them names in the most offensive manner.
Later, their unconscious bodies were dragged away by the long hair and
thrown into the mud on either side of the road. From the ditches they
were picked up by the ambulance workers and brought to the emergency
hospital under the management of the Central Shrine Committee.
In this way batches of one hundred, pledged to the principle of
non-violence, were sent every day to be beaten by the police in this
brutal fashion and then were picked up unconscious by the ambulance
service. After the tenth day Akalis were allowed to proceed freely on
their way. But the beatings in Guru Ka Bagh at the stop where wood for
kitchen use had been cut, continued till much later. After a few over
fifteen hundred non-resistant and innocent human beings had been thus
sacrificed, several hundred of whom had died of injuries received and
many others had been totally disabled for life, the Government withdrew
the police from Guru Ka Bagh and allowed the Sikhs free use of the
temple and its adjoining properties.
It was an acknowledgment of defeat on the part of the British
Government and a definite victory for the passive resisters.
Non-violence had triumphed over brute force. The meek Sikhs had
established their moral and spiritual courage beyond a doubt. Those who
earlier had laughed at Gandhi’s doctrines now began to reconsider their
opinions and wondered if it were not true that the soul force of man
was the mightiest power in the world, more powerful than the might of
all its armies and navies put together. “Socrates and Christ are both
dead, but their spirits live and will continue to live.” Their bodies
were destroyed by those who possessed physical force, but their souls
were invincible. Who could conquer the spirit of Socrates, Christ, or
Gandhi when that spirit refused to be conquered? At the time of the
Guru Ka Bagh incident the physical Gandhi was locked behind iron bars
in a jail of India, but his spirit accompanied every Sikh as he stepped
across the line to receive the enemy’s cowardly blows.
The amazing part of this whole story is the perfect peace that
prevailed throughout its entire course. The program of passive
resistance was carried to completion without one slip of action on the
part of the passive resisters. No community in the whole length and
breadth of India is more warlike and more inflammable for a righteous
cause than the Sikhs; and nothing is more provoking to a Sikh than an
insult offered to his sacred hair. Yet in hundreds of cases their
sacred hair was smeared with mud and trampled upon, while the bodies of
non-resisting Sikhs were dragged by their hair in the most malicious
manner by the police; but the passive resisters remained firm in their
resolve to the last and thereby proved their faith both in themselves
and in their principles.
Those who have not grasped the subtle meaning of passive resistance
will call the Akali Sikhs cowards. They will say: “Well, the reason
why the Akalis did not return the blows of the police was because they
were afraid; and it was cowardice and not courage that made them submit
to such insults as the pulling of their sacred hair and so forth. A
truly brave person, who has a grain of salt in him, will answer the
blows of the enemy under those conditions and fight in the defense of
his honor until he is killed.” Although we do not agree with the first
part of our objecting friend’s argument, we shall admit the truth of
his statement that it takes a brave man to defend his honor at the
risk of death itself. Yet we hold that the Akali who, while defending
his national rights, voluntarily allowed himself to be beaten to death
without thoughts of malice or hatred in his heart against anybody was a
more courageous person than even the hero of our objecting friend. Why?
To use Gandhi’s illustration: “What do you think? Wherein is courage
required--in blowing others to pieces from behind a cannon or with a
smiling face approaching a cannon and being blown to pieces? Who is the
true warrior--he who keeps death as a bosom-friend or he who controls
the death of others? Believe me that a man devoid of courage and
manhood can never be a passive resister.”
Let us stretch the point a little further in order to make it more
clear. During the martial law days at Amritsar in 1919, the commanding
officer ordered that all persons passing through a certain lane, where
previously an Englishwoman had been assaulted by a furious mob, should
be made to crawl on the bellies. Those living in the neighborhood had
submitted to this humiliation at the point of British bayonets. Later,
when Mahatma Gandhi visited the lane, he is reported to have made a
speech from the spot which may be summarized thus: “You Punjabees, who
possess muscular bodies and have statures six feet tall; you, who call
yourselves brave, submitted to the soul-degrading crawling order. I am
a small man and my physique is very weak. I weigh less than a hundred
pounds. But there is no power in this world that can make _me_ crawl
on my belly. General Dyer’s soldiers can bind my body and put me in
jail, or with their military weapons they can take my life; but when
he orders me to crawl on my belly I shall say: ‘Oh foolish man, don’t
you see, God has given me two feet to walk on? Why shall I crawl on my
knees, then?’” This is an instance of passive resistance. Under these
circumstances, would you call Gandhi a coward? You must remember this
distinction between a coward and a passive resister: a coward submits
to force through fear; while a passive resister submits to force _under
protest_. In our illustration of the crawling order those persons who
had submitted to the order because they were afraid of the punishment
involved if they disobeyed it were cowards of the first degree. But
Gandhi would be a passive resister, and you would not call him a
coward, would you?
Let me give you a sample of the sublime heroism displayed by the Akalis
at Guru Ka Bagh. In one instance the policeman’s blow struck an Akali
with such violence that one of his eyeballs dropped out. His eye was
bleeding profusely, but still he walked forward towards his goal until
he was knocked down the second time and fell on the ground unconscious.
Another Akali, Pritipal Singh, was knocked down eight times. Each time
as soon as he recovered his senses, he stood on his feet and started
to go forward, until after the eighth time he lay on the ground wholly
prostrate. I have known Pritipal Singh in India. We went to school
together for five years. Pritipal was a good boy in every way. He was
the strongest person in our school and yet the meekest of all men. He
had a very jolly temper, and I can hear to this day his loud ringing
laugh. Inoffensive in his habits, he was a cultured and a loving
friend. When I read his name in the papers and later discovered how
cruelly he suffered from the injuries which finally resulted in his
premature death, I was indeed sorrowful. That such a saintly person as
Pritipal Singh should be made to go through such hellish tortures and
that his life should be thus cruelly ended in the prime of youth was
enough to give anyone a shock. But when I persuaded myself that with
the passing of that handsome youth there was one more gone for truth’s
sake, I felt peaceful and happy once more.
Lest the reader be at a loss to know what this whole drama of horrible
tortures on the one hand and supernatural courage on the other was all
about, we shall give the gist of the whole affair as follows:
At the time when the issue was precipitated in Guru Ka Bagh the Central
Shrine Management Committee had already acquired control over many
of the rich Sikh shrines, and become a powerful force in the uplift
of the community. The committee was receiving huge incomes from the
various shrine properties, which it proposed to spend on educational
and social service work. Those at the helm of affairs were profoundly
nationalistic in their views. Naturally, the British Government began
to fear their power, which it desired to break through suppression.
Hence the issue at Guru Ka Bagh was not the chopping of fuel wood. The
ghastly motive of the Government was to cow the Sikhs and crush their
spirits through oppression. How it started to demonstrate its power
and how shamefully it failed in its sinister purpose has already been
explained.
Many other examples of the victory of soul force over brute strength
could be cited from the recent history of India. I chose the Guru Ka
Bagh affair as the subject of my illustration for two reasons. In
the first place, it was the most simple and yet the most prominent
demonstration of the holiness and might of passive resistance; and
secondly, the drama was performed in my own home town by actors who
belonged to my own community and were kith and kin to me in the sense
that I could know fully their joys and sorrows, their hopes and fears.
FOOTNOTE:
[33] Hyndman.