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.
Meanwhile we do repent of that arrogant attitude to Indians which has
been all too common among our countrymen, we do hold Indians to be our
brothers and equals, many of them our superiors, and we would rather be
servants than rulers of India. We desire an administration which cannot
he intimated either by the selfish element in Anglo-Indian political
opinion or by any other sectional interest and which shall govern in
accordance with the best democratic principles. We should welcome the
convening of a National assembly of recognized leaders of the people,
representing all shades of political opinion of every caste, race and
creed, to frame a constitution for Swaraj. In all the things that matter
most we are with you. Surely you and we can co-operate in the service of
India, in such matters for example as education. It seems to us nothing
short of a tragedy that you should be rallying Indian Patriotism to
inaugurate a new era of good will under a watchword that divides,
instead of uniting all.
We have spoken of the large amount of common ground upon which you and
we can stand. But frankness demands that we express our anxiety about
some items in your programme. Leaving aside smaller questions on which
your letter seems to us to do the British side less than justice, may we
mention three main points? Your insistence on spiritual forces alone we
deeply respect and desire to emulate, but we cannot understand your
combining into it with a close alliance with those who, as you frankly
say, would draw the sword as soon as they could.
Your desire for an education truly national commands our whole-hearted
approval. But instead of Indianizing the present system, as you could
begin to do from the beginning of next year, or instead of creating a
hundred institutions such as that at Bolpur and turning into them the
stream of India's young intellectual life, you appear to be turning that
stream out of its present channel into open sands where it may dry up.
In other words, you seem to us to be risking the complete cessation, for
a period possibly, of years, of all education, for a large number of
boys and young men. Is it best, for those young men or for India that
the present imperfect education should cease before a better education
is ready to take its place?
Your desire to unite Mohammedan and Hindu and to share with your
Mohammedan brethren in seeking the satisfaction of Mohammedan
aspirations, we can understand and sympathize with. But is there no
danger, in the course which some of your party have urged upon the
Government, that certain races in the former Ottoman Empire might be
fixed under a foreign yoke, for worse than that which you hold the
English yoke to be? You could not wish to purchase freedom in India at
the price of enslavement in the middle East.
To sum up, we thank you for the spirit of your letter, to which we have
tried to respond in the same spirit. We are with you in the desire for
an India genuinely free to develop the best that is in her and in the
belief that best is something wonderful of which the world to-day
stands in need.
We are ready to co-operate with you and with every other man of any race
or nationality who will help India to realize her best. Are you going to
insist that you can have nothing to do with us if we receive a
government grant (i.e., Indian money), for an Indian School. Surely some
more inspiring battle cry than non-co-operation can be discovered. We
have ventured quite frankly to point out three items in your present
programme, which seem to us likely to hinder the attainment of your true
ideals for Indian greatness. But those ideals themselves command our
warm sympathy, and we desire to work, so far as we have opportunity, for
their attainment. In fact, it is only thus that we can interpret our
British citizenship.
Yours sincerely,
(Sd.) H.A. POPLEY,
(Sd.) G.E. PHILLIPS.
Bangalore,
November 15, 1920.