Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

“ This is a struggle for existence and let the Mussalmans give proof of their traditional strength, energy and self-sacrifice. Victory is ours only if our people stand firm. The Khilafat cause has awakened united India and let the Mussalmans champion the great cause and take the lead in gaining Swaraj by peacefully following the country's programme even under the gravest provocation, so that when Khilafat wrongs are redressed and Swaraj attained the good name of Mussalmans should ever shine on the horizon of history as saviour of the freedom of their faith and country. ”

“ It is more honourable to live in a real prison than to breathe the polluted air of a slave-land. We appeal to the students of Government institutions to vacate the colleges in a body and take up the struggle for liberty. Now or never is our last word. This noble struggle will lead us either to victory or to death. Both are glorious. It must be life or death, not this slavery any more. We beseech the policemen to resign their posts at once. Let them realize that death by starvation is preferable to doing this dirty work. ”

“ And now that the Government of Bengal have dragged the women into the line of fire, I hope that the women all over India will take up the challenge and organise themselves. In any case they were bound, when a sufficient number of men had been removed, for the honour of their sex to step into their places. But now let it be side by side with men in sharing the hardship of gaol life. God will protect their honour. When as if to mock man, her natural protectors became helpless to prevent Draupadi from being denuded of her last piece of cloth, the power of her own virtue preserved her honour. ”

“ And if there is any authority in this country, that wants to curb the freedom of speech and freedom of association, I want to be able to say, in your name from this platform, that that authority will perish, and that authority will have to repent before an India that is steeled with high courage, noble purpose and determination, till every man and woman who chose to call themselves Indians are blotted out of the earth. ”

“ I believe in loving my enemies. I believe in non-violence as the only remedy open to the Hindus, Musalmans, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians and Jews of India. I believe in the power of suffering to melt the stoniest heart. The brunt of the battle must fall on the first three. The last named three are afraid of the combination of the first three. We must by our honest conduct demonstrate to them that they are our kinsmen. We must by our conduct demonstrate to every Englishman that he is safe in the remotest corner of India as he professes to feel behind the machine gun. ”

“ Fear of Jail, fear of assaults and fear of being shot down—these are the 3 fears which every worker must conquer before we can get Swaraj. We have conquered the fear of Jail; we are about to conquer the fear of assault. It depends on the Bureaucracy when we shall succeed in conquering the fear of being shot down.
In the meantime, I charge every one to remember that our success can only depend on non-violence so real, so perfect that all Godfearing men and women must come over to our side. ”

“ I see thousands and thousands of youngmen all around me wherever I go, but their faces are old with wordly wisdom and their hearts are cold and dead. I wish God had given me the strength to rekindle the fire of life in their hearts so that the youngmen of Calcutta may be young again. It is the young who fought the battle of freedom in every age and in every clime. It is the young who are purer in spirit and are ever ready for sacrifice. ”

“ I cannot sufficiently praise the courage, both moral and physical, of the volunteers and other workers of Congress and the Khilafat, who were always in the midst of the most turbulent crowds trying to calm and pacify them, meeting seething passion with a smiling face and turning away wrath with a soft word, helping and succouring the weak and the wounded and always ready to lay down their lives in their noble and self-imposed duties. ”

“ It is not that my heart does not bleed for the attainment of Swaraj and the redress of the Khilafat and Punjab wrongs; perhaps it does more than many other's. But I did not join in this great struggle for Swaraj, the Khilafat, and the Punjab only. The path society has trudged on so long everywhere is not the right one. Man himself will have to bring back man from this path full of sorrow and misery. For this has the Man within me aspired to become a real man and for this have I joined the great struggle. ”

“ Many of you are prepared to go to jail. But the Indian jails are hells upon earth; vice and corruption reigns there supreme. I, therefore, request you to give up the idea of courting imprisonment; and direct your energies towards the preaching of Swadeshi and yourself wearing pure Swadeshi clothes. There is one other thing which you can do. You can take care of the young children who are left behind by those who go to jail in the country's cause.
My countrymen, I now bid you good-bye. I go to jail in the firm belief that the honour of my beloved country and nation is safe in your keeping. ”

“ There should be no violence in the country. The Government officials are provoking the people in many ways. Courage, patriotism and regard for duty all demand that we should remain non-violent even in the face of the gravest provocation. There is every danger that at the present moment violence might lead to internal dissension, which is bound to ruin us. I, therefore, with the utmost respect and sincerity of purpose, urge on my countrymen to restrain their feelings. ”

“ Has any nation yet won freedom by pursuing the path which you are pursuing? If the appeal should reach any waverer amongst you I ask him to consider whether he will now stand on the side of India in her conflict or with the bureaucracy? There may be compromise in the matter of datails, but there can be no compromise in the essential question that divides us from the bureaucracy and if you do not stand by India, you assuredly stand for the bureaucracy. ”

“ THE BUREAUCRACY
I said the other day that the Congress must be judged by the claim it makes. As we claim to hold the country we must accept responsibility for any violence anywhere in this country. One must in fairness except those places where the message of the Congress has not been allowed to be heard. We accept no responsibility with regard to the Moplah outrage. I firmly believe that that rebellion would have been impossible, had the Congress and the Khilafat workers been permitted to carry the gospel of nonviolent non-co-operation. ”

“ I express my deep gratitude to my brothers the English gentlemen who constitute the Government of India for making themselves the instruments of Providence to test the capacity of the Indian people for self-sacrifice which is the only foundation of true self-Government the self-sacrifice of suffering for truth and right without retaliation which is specially becoming to the soul of India and will help to re-establish the universal religion of peace on earth and good will among men. ”

“ We are challenging the might of this Government because we consider its activity to be wholly evil. We want to overthrow the Government. We want to compel its submission to the people's will. We desire to show that the Government exists to serve the people, not the people the Government. Free life under the Government has become intolerable; for, the price exacted for the retention of freedom is unconscionably great. Whether we are one or many, we must refuse to purchase freedom at the cost of our self-respect or our cherished convictions. ”

“ I know the stuff that is in you, I feel the pulse that beats in you, I dream the dream that sustains and inspires you on your dreary march. Will you then fail the country in this supreme crisis when she has just begun to go your way? The stern discipline of suffering, the salutary schooling of experience, the example and precept of the greatest living Indian have at last set you on the right road to salvation. ”

“ Our bones may lie bleaching in obscure dungeons, built of sand and maintained with our nation's money, but over our unknown graves shall rise the noble edifice of our country's Freedom. We can vanquish the sin of selfishness and the crime of violence by selflessness and the negation of violence. Suffering innocence has God's own might on its side. ”

“ The national Congress sits on the 26th of December. Many of its trusted leaders and workers, young and old, will be absent from its deliberations for reasons which are known to you. These high-souled and selfless patriots, though absent, will be present there in spirit. Should you not be there to be cheered and inspired by their presence? The President's Chair will remain vacant. What then? His message to the Congress he has left with me and on the eve of his arrest he charged me, his wife, with the sacred duty of delivering it to you. ”

“ We are not the aggressors. We have not got to stop any single activity. It is the Government that is to stop its aggravatingly offensive activity aimed, not, at violence, but at the lawful, disciplined, stern, but absolutely non-violent, agitation. It is for the Government of India and, for it alone, to bring about a peaceful atmosphere, if it so desires. ”

“ The nation most emphatically does not desire the release of those leaders who have been imprisoned; nor do the leaders themselves wish this until such release comes automatically with the abdication of the Reformed Government of India in favour of a Swaraj Government. The most dangerous opponents of Indian national freedom are not those Governors who like Lord Ronaldshay are filling the gaols with non-co-operators, but those Satraps who like Sir George Lloyd of Bombay, are resisting the temptation to play into Mahatma Gandhi's and the nation's hands. ”

“ That great soul never expresses himself in the faltering accents of half truth and untruth. If there has been a weakening of the control which the Indian National Congress has established let the fact be clearly admitted so it was admitted. May I not point out with equal force and with equal truth that every case of violence such as was practised in Bombay proves, and must prove, the failure of the bureaucracy to that extent? ”

“ Though I do not see eye to eye with him in some matters, I have always felt attracted to him and I do not at all wonder that his striking personality should capture the imagination of young Bengal or for the matter of that of young India. Even those who differ from him in political matters cannot withhold their admiration for the unparalleled self-sacrifice he has made. ”

“ The nations strikes must be directed against the Government’s laws, and while that Government exists that Government must resort to repression to enforce its laws. When repression ceases non-co-operation will be at an end; for, the cessation of repression will spell the defeat and abdication of the Reformed Government of India it will spell Swaraj. It were therefore, rank hypocrisy in nationalists to protest ever so faintly against repression, or indeed to do anything but welcome it. ”

“ Freedom is to be wooed only inside prison walls and sometimes on the gallows, never in the council chambers, courts or the schoolroom. Freedom is the most capricious jilt ever known to the world. She is the greatest temptress most difficult to please. No wonder she builds her temples in goals or on inaccessible heights and laughs at us as we attempt to scale the prison wall or (in the hope of reaching her temple on some Himalayan height) wade through hills and dales strewn with thorns. The members of the Committee must therefore come with a fixed purpose whatever it may be. ”

“ I repeat with all the emphasis I can command that every Congress and Khilafat worker must remain absolutely non-violent in thought, word and deed. I ask every citizen of Calcutta who has any sympathy for the work of the Congress and Khilafat to remember that the best and the surest way to destroy this work is to help violence in any shape or form. ”

“ Unfaltering in our purpose, unflinching in our devotion, let us fearlessly proclaim the faith within us and prove to an incredulous world that the soldiers of Swaraj win their deliverance from bondage not by the sword of harted and destruction, but by the diviner weapons of love and self-sacrifice, in accordance with their own ancient tradition of spiritual power. ”

“ Having made up my mind to expect the worst, nothing that the Government does in the shape of curbing our activity surprises or irritates me. It is struggling for its very existence and I feel that I would have done much the same that this government is doing if I was in its place. Probably I should do much worse. Why should we expect it to refrain from using the powers it has? Only we must find the means of living and carrying, on our non-co-operation without its aid. We must keep our heads even if inter-provincial communication is denied to us. ”

“ It is by self-suffering that we hope to bring about the desired result. The issue is plain. The bureaucracy wants to impose its will on us by repression and oppression. We on the other hand wish to impose our will on the bureaucracy by our suffering. Heaven only knows the extent and the intensity of the suffering that is in store for us in this process. The other two conditions, therefore, are that the fear of jail and the fear of death both must disappear from our minds. Congressmen in their thousands must be prepared to go to jail and also to lay down their lives if necessary. ”

“ It is a challenge to the authority, which disregards the considered opinion of millions of thinking human beings. It is an humble challenge, and an irrevocable challenge to authority, which in order to save itself wants to crush freedom of opinion, freedom of forming associations, the two lungs that are absolutely necessary for a man to breathe the oxygen of liberty. ”