Mr. Stokes is a Christian, who wants to follow the light that God gives
him. He has adopted India as his home. He is watching the
non-co-operation movement from the Kotgarh hills where he is living in
isolation from the India of the plains and serving the hillmen. He has
contributed three articles on non-co-operation to the columns of the
Servant of Calcutta and other papers. I had the pleasure of reading them
during my Bengal tour. Mr. Stokes approves of non-co-operation but
dreads the consequences that may follow complete success _i.e.,_
evacuation of India by the British. He conjures up before his mind a
picture of India invaded by the Afghans from the North-West, plundered
by the Gurkhas from the Hills. For me I say with Cardinal Newman: 'I do
not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me.' The movement
is essentially religious. The business of every god-fearing man is to
dissociate himself from evil in total disregard of consequences. He must
have faith in a good deed producing only a good result: that in my
opinion is the Gita doctrine of work without attachment. God does not
permit him to peep into the future. He follows truth although the
following of it may endanger his very life. He knows that it is better
to die in the way of God than to live in the way of Satan. Therefore who
ever is satisfied that this Government represents the activity of Satan
has no choice left to him but to dissociate himself from it.
However, let us consider the worst that can happen to India on a sudden
evacuation of India by the British. What does it matter that the Gurkhas
and the Pathans attack us? Surely we would be better able to deal with
their violence than we are with the continued violence, moral and
physical, perpetrated by the present Government. Mr. Stokes does not
seem to eschew the use of physical force. Surely the combined labour of
the Rajput, the Sikh and the Mussalman warriors in a united India may be
trusted to deal with plunderers from any or all the sides. Imagine
however the worst: Japan overwhelming us from the Bay of Bengal, the
Gurkhas from the Hills, and the Pathans from the North-West. If we not
succeed in driving them out we make terms with them and drive them at
the first opportunity. This will be a more manly course than a hopeless
submission to an admittedly wrongful State.
But I refuse to contemplate the dismal out-look. If the movement
succeeds through non-violent non-co-operation, and that is the
supposition Mr. Stokes has started with, the English whether they remain
or retire, they will do so as friends and under a well-ordered agreement
as between partners. I still believe in the goodness of human nature,
whether it is English or any other. I therefore do not believe that the
English will leave in a night.
And do I consider the Gurkha and the Afghan being incorrigible thieves
and robbers without ability to respond to purifying influences? I do
not. If India returns to her spirituality, it will react upon the
neighbouring tribes, she will interest herself in the welfare of these
hardy but poor people, and even support them if necessary, not out of
fear but as a matter of neighbourly duty. She will have dealt with Japan
simultaneously with the British. Japan will not want to invade India, if
India has learnt to consider it a sin to use a single foreign article
that she can manufacture within her own borders. She produces enough to
eat and her men and women can without difficulty manufacture enough to
clothe to cover their nakedness and protect themselves from heat and
cold. We become prey to invasion if we excite the greed of foreign
nation, by dealing with them under a feeling dependence on them. We must
learn to be independent of every one of them.
Whether therefore we finally succeed through violence or non-violence in
my opinion, the prospect is by no means so gloomy as Mr. Stokes has
imagined. Any conceivable prospect is, in my opinion, less black than
the present unmanly and helpless condition. And we cannot do better than
following out fearlessly and with confidence the open and honourable
programme of non-violence and sacrifice that we have mapped for
ourselves.