The following letter has been addressed by Mr. Gandhi to his Royal
Highness the Duke of Connaught;--
Sir,
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.
Your Royal Highness has come not to end the system I have described but
to sustain it by upholding its prestige. Your first pronouncement was a
laudation of Lord Wellingdon. I have the privilege of knowing him. I
believe him to be an honest and amiable gentleman who will not willingly
hurt even a fly. But, he has certainly failed as a ruler. He allowed
himself to be guided by those whose interest it was to support their
power. He is reading the mind of the Dravidian province. Here in Bengal
you are issuing a certificate of merit to a Governor who is again from
all I have heard an estimable gentleman. But he knows nothing of the
heart of Bengal and its yearnings. Bengal is not Calcutta. Fort William
and the palaces of Calcutta represent an insolent exploitation of the
unmurmuring and highly cultured peasantry of this fair province.
Non-co-operationists have come to the conclusion that they must not be
deceived by the reforms that tinker with the problem of India's distress
and humiliation. Nor must they be impatient and angry. We must not in
our impatient anger resort, to stupid violence. We freely admit that we
must take our due share of the blame for the existing state. It is not
so much the British guns that are responsible fur our subjection, as our
voluntary co-operation. Our non-participation in a hearty welcome to
your Royal Highness is thus in no sense a demonstration against your
high personage but it is against the system you have come to uphold. I
know that individual Englishmen cannot even if they will alter the
English nature all of a sudden. If we would be equals of Englishmen we
must cast off fear. We must learn to be self-reliant and independent of
the schools, courts, protection, and patronage of a Government, we seek
to end, if it will not mend. Hence this non-violent non-co-operation. I
know that we have not all yet become non-violent in speech and deed. But
the results so far achieved have I assure Your Royal Highness, been
amazing. The people have understood the secret and the value of
non-violence as they have never done before. He who runs may see that
this a religious, purifying movement. We are leaving off drink, we are
trying to rid India of the curse of untouchability. We are trying to
throw off foreign tinsel splendour and by reverting to the spinning
wheel reviving the ancient and the poetic simplicity of life. We hope
thereby to sterilize the existing harmful institution. I ask Your Royal
Highness as an Englishman to study this movement and its possibilities
for the Empire and the world. We are at war with nothing that is good in
the world. In protecting Islam in the manner we are, we are protecting
all religions. In protecting the honour of India we are protecting the
honour of humanity. For our means are hurtful to none. We desire to live
on terms of friendship with Englishmen but that friendship must be
friendship of equals in both theory and practice. And we must continue
to non-co-operate, i.e. to purify ourselves till the goal is achieved.
I ask Your Royal Highness and through you every Englishman to
appreciate the view-point of the non-co-operationists.
I beg to remain,
Your Royal Highness's faithful servant,
(Sd.) M.K. GANDHI.
_February_, 1921