It is to be wished that non-co-operationists will clearly recognise that
nothing can stop the onward march of the nation as violence. Ireland may
gain its freedom by violence. Turkey may regain her lost possessions by
violence within measurable distance of time. But India cannot win her
freedom by violence for a century, because her people are not built in
the manner of other nations. They have been nurtured in the traditions
of suffering. Rightly or wrongly, for good or ill, Islam too has evolved
along peaceful lines in India. And I make bold to say that, if the
honour of Islam is to be vindicated through its followers in India, it
will only be by methods of peaceful, silent, dignified, conscious, and
courageous suffering. The more I study that wonderful faith, the more
convinced I become that the glory of Islam is due not to the sword but
to the sufferings, the renunciation, and the nobility of its early
Caliphs. Islam decayed when its followers, mistaking the evil for the
good, dangled the sword in the face of man, and lost sight of the
godliness, the humility, and austerity of its founder and his disciples.
But, I am not at the present moment, concerned with showing that the
basis of Islam, as of all religions, is not violence but suffering not
the taking of life but the giving of it.
What I am anxious to show is that non-co-operationists must be true as
well to the spirit as to the letter of their vow if they would gain
Swaraj within one year. They may forget non-co-operation but they dare
not forget non-violence. Indeed, non-co-operation is non-violence. We
are violent when we sustain a government whose creed is violence. It
bases itself finally not on right but on might. Its last appeal is not
to reason, nor the heart, but to the sword. We are tired of this creed
and we have risen against it. Let us not ourselves belie our profession
by being violent. Though the English are very few, they are organised
for violence. Though we are many we cannot be organised for violence for
a long time to come. Violence for us is a gospel or despair.
I have seen a pathetic letter from a god-fearing English woman who
defends Dyerism for she thinks that, if General Dyer had not enacted
Jallianwala, women and children would have been murdered by us. If we
are such brutes as to desire the blood of innocent women and children,
we deserve to be blotted out from the face of the earth. There is the
other side. It did not strike this good lady that, if we were friends,
the price that her countrymen paid at Jallianwala for buying their
safety was too great. They gained their safety at the cost of their
humanity. General Dyer has been haltingly blamed, and his evil genius
Sir Michael O'Dwyer entirely exonerated because Englishmen do not want
to leave this country of fields even if everyone of us has to be killed.
If we go mad again as we did at Amritsar, let there be no mistake that a
blacker Jallianwala will be enacted.
Shall we copy Dyerism and O'Dwyerism even whilst we are condemning it?
Let not our rock be violence and devilry. Our rock must be non-violence
and godliness. Let us, workers, be clear as to what we are about.
_Swaraj depends upon our ability to control all the forces of violence
on our side._ Therefore there is no Swaraj within one year, if there is
violence on the part of the people.
We must then refrain from sitting _dhurna_, we must refrain from crying
'shame, shame' to anybody, we must not use any coercion to persuade our
people to adopt our way. We must guarantee to them the same freedom we
claim for ourselves. We must not tamper with the masses. It is dangerous
to make political use of factory labourers or the peasantry--not that we
are not entitled to do so, but we are not ready for it. We have
neglected their political (as distinguished from literary) education all
these long years. We have not got enough honest, intelligent, reliable,
and brave workers to enable us to act upon these countrymen of ours.