Indian Home Rule

or

Hind Swaraj

Mohandas K. Gandhi

Original
editor & publisher (1938): Jitendra T. Desai Navajivan Publishing House
(Navajivan Mudranalaya) Ahmedabad 380014 India

Translation of “Hind
Swaraj”, published in the Gujarat columns of Indian Opinion. 11th and 18th
December, 1909

ISBN 81-7229-070-5

Published by Yann FORGET on
20th July 2003, with LATEX 2s.

©cNavajivan
Trust, 1938

Contents

I
Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule 5 To the reader 6 Preface to the new
edition 7 AnImportantPublication
.............................. 7 TheAttackonMachineryandCivilization . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 LimitationsoftheDoctrine
............................. 10 Preface 13 A Word of Explanation 15 A Message
17

I. The Congress and its Ofﬁcials
19

II. The
Partition of Bengal 22

III. Discontent
and unrest 24

IV. What is
swaraj? 25

V. The
condition of England 27

VI.
Civilization 29

VII. Why was
India lost? 31

VIII. The
condition of India 33

IX. The
condition of India: Railways 35 X. The condition of India: The Hindus and the
Mahomedans 37

XI. The condition of India: Lawyers 41

XII. The
condition of India: Doctors 43

XIII. What is
true civilization? 45

XIV. How can
India become free? 47

XV. Italy and
India 49

XVI. Brute
force 51

XVII. Passive
resistance 55

XVIII.
Education 60

XIX. Machinery
63

XX. Conclusion
65

II Appendices
70

I. Some
Authorithies 71

II. Testimonies
by eminent men 72

VictorCousin
.................................... 72

J.SeymourKeay
.................................. 72 FriedrichMaxMueller
............................... 73 MichaelG.Mulhall
................................. 73
ColonelThomasMunro............................... 73 FrederickvonSchlegel
............................... 73 SirWilliamWedderburn
.............................. 74

I.Young
....................................... 74
AbbeJ.A.Dubois.................................. 74

Part I

Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule

To the reader

I would like to say to the diligent
reader of my writings and to others who are interested in them that I am not at
all concerned with appearing to be consistent. In my search after Truth, I have
discarded many ideas and learnt many new things. Old as I am in age, I have no
feeling that I have ceased to grow inwardly or that my growth will stop at the
dissolution of the ﬂesh. What I am concerned with is my readiness to
obey the call of Truth, my God, from moment to moment, and, therefore, when
anybody ﬁnds any inconsistency between any two writings of mine, if he
has still faith in my sanity, he would do well to choose the later of the two
on the same subject.

Mohandas
K. Gandhi Harijan, 29-04-1933, page 2.

Preface to the new edition

[In issuing this new edition of Hind
Swaray, it may not be inappropriate to publish the following that I wrote
in the Harijan in connection of the Hind Swaraj Special Number of
the Aryan Path. Though Gandhiji’s views as expressed in the ﬁrst
edition of the Hind Swaraj have remained in substance unchanged, they
have gone through a necessary evolution. My article copied below throws some
light on this evolution. The proof copy of this edition has been revised by
numerous friends to whom I am deeply indebted.]

Mahadev Desai
Wardha, 11-12-1938

An
Important Publication

Unique
in its conception and beautifully successful in its execution is the Special
Swaraj Number of the Aryan Path. It owes its appearance mainly to
the devoted labours of that gifted sister Shrimati Sophia Wadia who sent copies
of Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule to numerous friends abroad and
invited the most prominent of them to express their views on the book and seen
in it the hope for future India, but she wanted the European thinkers and
writers to say that it had in it the potency to help even Europe out of its
chaos, and therefore she thought of this plan. The result is remarkable. The
special number contains articles by Professor Soddy,

G.
D. H. Cole, C. Delisle Burns, John Middleton Murry, J. D. Beresford, Hugh
Fausset, Claude Houghton, Gerald Heard and Irene Rathbone. Some of these are of
course well-known paciﬁsts and socialists. One wonders what the number
would have been like, if it had included in it articles by non-paciﬁst
and non-socialist writers! The articles are so arranged “that adverse
criticisms and objections raised in earlier articles are mostly answered in
subsequent ones”. But there are one or two criticisms which have been made
practically by all the writers, and it would be worth while considering them
here.

There are certain things which it would
be well to recognize at once. Thus Professor Soddy remarks that, having just
returned from a visit to India, he saw little outwardly to suggest that the
doctrine inculcated in the book had attainted any considerable measure of
success. That is quite true. Equally true is Mr. G. D. H. Cole’s remark that
though Gandhiji’s is “as near as a man can be to Swaraj in a purely personal
sense, he has never solved, to his own satisfaction, the other problem — that
of ﬁnding terms of collaboration that could span the gulf between man
and man, between acting alone and helping others to act in accordance with their
lights, which involves acting with them and as one of them — being at once
one’s self and someone else, someone one’s self can and must regard and
criticize and attempt to value.” Also as John Middleton Murry says, “the efﬁcacy
of non-violence is quickly exhausted when used as a mere technique of political
pressure”, — when the question arises, “Is non-violence faute de mieux,
really non-violence at all?”

But the whole
process is one of endless evolution. In working for the end, man also works for
perfecting the means. The principle of non-violence and love was enunciated by
Buddha and Christ centuries ago. It has been applied through these centuries by
individual people with success on small clear-cut issues. As it has been
recognized, and as Gerald Heard has pointed out, “the world-wide and age-long
interest of Mr. Gandhi’s experiment lies in the fact that he has attempted to
make the method work in what may be called the wholesale or national scale.”
The difﬁculties of that application are obvious, but Gandhiji trusts
that they are not insurmountable. The experiment seemed impossible in India in
1921 and had to be abandoned, but what was then impossible became possible in
1930. Even now the question often arises: “What is a non-violent means?” It
will take long practice to standardize the meaning and content of this term.
But the means thereof is self-puriﬁcation and more self-puriﬁcation.
What Western thinkers often lose sight of is that the fundamental condition of
non-violence is love, and pure unselﬁsh love is impossible without
unsullied purity of mind and body.

The
Attack on Machinery and Civilization

What is a common feature of all the
other appreciative reviews of the book is in the reviewers’ opinion Gandhiji’s
unwarranted condemnation of machinery. “He forgets, in the urgency of his
vision,” says Middleton Murry, “that the very spinning wheel he loves is also a
machine, and also unnatural. On his principles it should be abolished.” “This,”
says Professor Delisle Burns, “is a fundamental philosophical error. It implies
that we are to regard as morally evil any instrument which may be misused. But
even the spinning wheel is a machine; and spectacles on the nose are mere
mechanisms for “bodily” eyesight. The plough is a machine; and the very
earliest mechanisms for drawing water are themselves only the later survivals
of perhaps ten thousand years of human effort to improve the live of men. . .
Any mechanism may be misused; but if it is, the moral evil is in the man who
misuses it, not in the mechanism.” I must confess that in “the urgency of his
vision” Gandhiji has used rather crude language about machinery, which if he
were revising the book he would himself alter. For I am sure Gandhiji would
accept all the statements I have quoted here, and he has never attributed to
mechanisms moral qualities which belong to the men who use them. Thus in 1924,
he used language which is reminiscent of the two writers I have just quoted. I
shall reproduced a dialogue that took place in Delhi. Replying to a question
whether he was against all machinery, Gandhiji said:

“How
can I be when I know that even this body is a most delicate piece of machinery?
The spinning wheel is a machine; a little toothpick is a machine. What I object
to is the craze for machinery, not machinery as such. The craze is for what
they call labour-saving machinery. Men go on “saving labour” till thousands are
without work and thrown on the open streets to die of starvation. I want to
save time and labour not for a fraction of mankind but for all. I want
the concentration of wealth, not in the hands of a few, but in the hands of
all. Today machinery merely helps a few to ride on the backs of millions. The
impetus behind it all is not the philanthropy to save labour, but greed. It is
against this constitution of things that I am ﬁghting with all my might.
. . The supreme consideration is man. The machine should not tend to atrophy
the limbs of man. For instance, I would make intelligent exceptions. Take the
case of the Singer’s sewing machine. It is one of the few useful things ever
invented, and there is a romance about the device itself.”

“But,” asked
the questioner, “there would have to be a factory for making these sewing
machines, and it would have to contain power-driven machinery of ordinary
types.”

“Yes,” said Gandhiji in reply, “but I
am socialist enough to say that such factories should be nationalized,
State-controlled. . . The saving of the labour of the individual should be the
object, and not human greed the motive. Thus, for instance, I would welcome any
day a machine to straighten crooked spindles. Not that blacksmiths will cease
to make spindles; they will continue to provide spindles but when the spindle
goes wrong every spinner will have a machine to get it straight. Therefore
replace greed by love and everything will be all right.”

“But,” said the quetsioner, “if you
make an exception of the Singer’s sewing machine and your spindle, where would
these exceptions end?”

“Just where they cease to help the
individual and encroach upon his individuality. The machine should not be
allowed to cripple the limbs of man.”

“But, ideally, would you not rule out all
machinery? When you except the sewing machine, you will have to make
exceptions of the bicycle, the motor car, etc.”

“No, I don’t,” he said, “because they
do not satisfy any of the primary wants of man; for it is not the primary need
of man to traverse distances with the rapidity of a motor car. The needle on
the contrary happens to be an essential thing in life, a primary need.”

But he added: “Ideally, I would rule
out all machinery, even as I would reject this very body, which is not helpful
to salvation, and seek the absolute liberation of the soul. From that point of
view I would reject all machinery, but machines will remain because, like the
body, they are inevitable. The body itself, as I told you, is the purest piece
of mechanism; but if it is a hindrance to the highest ﬂights of the
soul, it has to be rejected.”

I do not think any of the critics would
be in fundamental disagreement with this position. The machine is, like the
body, useful if and only to the extent that it subserves the growth of the
soul.

Similarly
about Western civilization, Mr. G. D. H. Cole counters the proposition that
“Western civilization is of sharp necessity at enmity with the human soul”: “I
say that the horrors of Spain and Abyssinia, the perpetual fear that hangs over
us, the destitution in the midst of potential plenty, are defects, grave
defects, of our Western civilization, but are not of its very essence. . . I do
not say that we shall mend this civilization of ours; but I do not believe it
to be past mending. I do not believe that it rests upon a sheer denial of what
is necessary to the human soul.” Quite so, and the defects Gandhiji pointed out
were not inherent defects, but the defects of its tendencies, and Gandhiji’s
object in the book was to contrast the tendencies of the Indian civilization
with those of the Western. Gandhiji would wholly agree with G. D. H. Cole that
Western civilization is not past mending, also that the West will need a “Home
Rule” after the fashion of the West, and also conceived by “leaders who are
masters of themselves, as Gandhi is, but masters after our Western fashion, which
is not his, or India’s.”

Limitations of the Doctrine

G. D. H. Cole has put the following
poser: “Is it so when German and Italian airmen are massacring the Spanish
people, when Japanese airmen are slaughtering thousands upon thousands in
Chinese cities, when German armies have marched into Austria and are
threatening to march into Czechoslovakia, when Abyssinia has been bloodily
bombed into defeat? Until two years ago or so, I believed myself opposed to war
and death-dealing violence under all circumstances. But today, hating war, I
would risk war to stop these horrors.” How acute is the struggle within himself
is apparent from the sentences that follow: “I would risk war; and yet, even
now, that second self of mine shrinks back appalled at the thought of killing a
man. Personally, I would much sooner die than kill. But may it not my duty to
try to kill rather than to die? Gandhi might answer that no such dilemma could
confront a man who had achieved his personal Swaraj. I do not claim to have
achieved mine; but I am unconvinced that the dilemma would confront me, here
and now in Western Europe, less disturbingly if I had.”

Occasions like those Mr. Cole has
mentioned test one’s faith, but the answer has been given by Gandhiji more than
once, though he has not completely achieved his Swaraj, for the simple reason
that for him Swaraj is incomplete so long as his fellow-beings are bereft of
it. But he lives in faith, and the faith in non-violence does not begin to
shake at the mention of Italian or Japanese barbarities. For violence breeds
the results of violence, and once you start the game there is no limit to be
drawn. Philip Mumford in the War Resister has replied as follows to a
Chinese friend urging action on behalf of China:

“Your enemy is
the Japanese Government and not the Japanese peasants and soldiers

—
unfortunate and uneducated people who do not even know why they are being asked
to ﬁght. Yet, if you use ordinary military methods of defending your
country, it is these guiltless people who are not your real enemies whom you
must kill. If only China would try and preserve herself by the non-violent
tactics used by Gandhiji in India, tactics which are indeed far more in
accordance with the teachings of her great religious leaders, she would, I venture
to say, be far more successful than she will be copying the militarist methods
of Europe. . . Surely it is a lesson to mankind in general that the Chinese,
the most paciﬁc people on earth, have preserved themselves and their
civilization for a longer period in history than any of the warlike races.
Please do not think we do not honour those gallant Chinese who are ﬁghting
in defence of their country. We honour their sacriﬁce and recognize that
they hold different principles from ourselves. None the less we believe that
killing is evil in all circumstances and out of it good cannot come. Paciﬁsm
will not spare you from all suffering, but in the long run, it is, I believe, a
more effective weapon against the would-be conqueror than all your ﬁghting
forces; and what is more important, it will keep alive the ideals of your
race.”

Miss Irene Rathbone poses a similar
question: “What human being on this earth, normal or saint-like, can endure
that small boys and girls should perish if, by bowing to the tyrant and denying
his own conscience, he can save them? That question Gandhi does not answer. He
does not even pose it. . . Christ is clearer. . . Here are his words: “But
whose shall offend one of these little ones, which believe in me, it were
better that millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in
the depth of the sea.” . . . Christ is a greater help to us than Gandhi. . . ”
I do not think Christ’s words express anything more than his wrath, and the
action suggested is not by way of punishment to be imposed by another on the
offender, but one to be imposed on himself by himself. And is Miss Rathbone
sure that she can, by using what she supposes to be Christ’s method, save the
child? She is wrong in thinking that Gandhiji has not posed the question. He
has posed it and answered it emphatically, as it was posed and answered in
action by those immortal Muslim martyrs 1300 years ago who suffered women and
children to die of hunger and thirst rather than bow to the tyrant and deny
their own conscience. For, in bowing to the tyrant and denying your own
conscience, you encourage the tyrant to perpetrate further horrors.

But even Miss
Irene Rathbone calls Hind Swaraj “an enormously powerful book”, and says
that by virtue of it she has found “myself forced by its tremendous honesty to
search my own honesty. I would implore people to read it.”

The
Editors of the Aryan Path have done a distinct service to the cause of
peace and nonviolence by issuing their Hind Swaraj Special Number.

Preface

When Lord Lothian was at Segaon, he
asked me if I could give him a copy of Hind Swaray, for, as he said, all
that Gandhiji was teaching now lay in the germ in that little book which
deserved to be read and re-read in order to understand Gandhiji properly.

Curiously enough, about the same time,
Shrimati Sophia Wadia was writing an article on the book exhorting all our
Ministers and M.L.A.s, all the British and Indian Civil Servants, indeed every
one who wanted the present non-violent experiment in democracy to succeed, to
read and re-read the book. “How can a non-violent man be a dictator in his own
home?” she asks. “How can he be a wine-bibber? How can a lawyer advise his
client to go to court and ﬁght?” The answers to all these questions
raise highly important practical issues. The people’s education in Hind
Swaraj, in which these problems are dealt with from the point of view of
principles, should be extensively carried on.”

Her appeal is timely. The book was
written in 1908, during Gandhiji’s return voyage from London, in answer to the
Indian school of violence and published serially in the columns of the Indian
Opinion, edited by Gandhiji. Then it was published in book form, to be
proscribed by the Bombay Government. Gandhiji had translated the book for Mr.
Kallenbach. In answer to the Bombay Government’s action, he published the
English translation. When Gokhale saw the translation, on his visit to
South-Africa in 1912, he thought it so crude and hastily conceived that he
prophesied that Gandhiji himself would destroy the book after spending a year
in India. With deference to the memory of the great teacher, I may say that his
prediction has failed to come true. In 1921, Gandhiji, writing about it, said:
“It teaches the gospel of love in place of that of hate. It replaces violence
with self-sacriﬁce. It pits soul force against brute force. I withdraw
nothing except one word of it, and that in deference to a lady friend. The
booklet is a severe condemnation of “modern civilization”. It was written in
1908. My conviction is deeper today than ever. . . But I would warn the reader
against thinking that I am today aiming at the Swaraj described therein. I know
that India is not ripe for it. It may seem an impertinence to say so. But such
is my conviction. I am individually working for the self-rule pictured therein.
But today my corporate activity is undoubtedly devoted to the attainment of
Parliamentary Swaraj, in accordance with the wishes of the people of India.”
Even in 1938, he would alter nothing in the book, except perhaps the language
in some parts. It is being presented to the reader unabridged.

But
whether India may be ripe for it or not, it is best for Indians to study the
seminal book which contains the ultimate logical conclusion of the acceptance
of the twin principles of Truth and Non-violence, and then decide whether these
principles should be accepted or rejected. On being told that the book had been
out of print for some time and that a few copies of its Madras edition were
available at eight annas a copy, Gandhiji said that it should be published
immediately at a nominal price, so that it may be within easy reach of those
who may wish to read it.

The Navajivan Publishing House is
therefore publishing it at practically the cost price.

Mahadev Desai
Wardha, 02-02-1938

A Word of Explanation

It is certainly my good fortune that
this booklet of mine is receiving wide attention. The original is in Gujarati.
It has a chequered career. It was ﬁrst published in the columns of the Indian
Opinion of South-Africa. It was written in 1908 during my return voyage
from London to South-Africa in answer to the Indian school of violence and its
prototype in South-Africa. I came in contact with every known Indian anarchist
in London. Their bravery impressed me, but I felt that violence was no remedy
for India’s ills, and that her civilization required the use of a different and
higher weapon for self-protection. The Satyagraha of South-Africa was still an
infant hardly two years old. But it had developed sufﬁciently to permit
me to write of it with some degree of conﬁdence. What I wrote was so
much appreciated that it was published as a booklet. It attracted some
attention in India. The Bombay Government prohibited its circulation. I replied
by publishing its translation. I thought it was due to my English friends that
they should know its contents.

In my opinion it is a book which can be
put into the hands of a child. It teaches the gospel of love in place of that
of hate. It replaces violence with self-sacriﬁce. It pits sould force
against brute force. It has gone through several editions and I commend it to
those who would care to read it. I withdraw nothing except one word of it, and
that in deference to a lady friend.

The booklet is a severe condemnation of
“modern civilization”. It was written in 1908. My conviction is deeper today
than ever. I feel that if India will discard “modern civilization”, sha can
only gain by doing so.

But I would warn the reader against
thinking that I am today aiming at the Swaraj described therein. I know that
India is not ripe for it. It may seem an impertinence to say so. But such is my
conviction. I am individually working for the self-rule pictured therein. But
today my corporate activity is undoubtedly devoted to the attainment of
Parliamentary Swaraj, in accordance with the wishes of the people of India. I
am not aiming at destroying railways or hospitals, though I would certainly
welcome their natural destruction. Neither railways nor hospitals are a test of
a high and pure civilization. At best they are a necessary evil. Neither adds
one inch to the moral stature of a nation. Nor I am aiming at a permanent
summation devoutly to be wished. Still less am I trying to destroy all
machinery and mills. It requires a higher simplicity and renunciation than the
people are today prepared for.

The
only part of the programme which is now being carried out is that of
non-violence. But I regret to have to confess that even that is not being
carried out in the spirit of the book. If it were, India would establish Swaraj
in a day. If India adopted the doctrine of love as an active part of her
religion and introduced it in her politics, Swaraj would descend upon India
from heaven. But I am painfully aware that that event is far off as yet.

I offer these
comments because I observe that much is being quoted from the booklet to
discredit the present movement. I have even seen writings suggesting that I am
playing a deep game, that I am using the present turmoil to foist my fads on
India, and am making religious experiments at India’s expense. I can only
answer that Satyagraha is made of sterner stuff. There is nothing reserved and
nothing secret in it. A portion of the whole theory of life described in Hind
Swaraj is undoubtedly being carried into practice. There is no danger
attendant upon the whole of it being practised. But it is not right to scare
away people by reproducing from my writings passages that are irrelevant to the
issue before the country.

Mohandas
K. Gandhi Young India, January, 1921.

A Message

I welcome your advertising the
principles in defence of which Hind Swaraj was written. The English
edition is a translation of the original which was in Gujarati. I might change
the language here and there, if I had to rewrite the booklet. But after the
stormy thirty years through which I have passed, I have seen nothing to make me
alter the views expounded in it. Let the reader bear in mind that it is a
faithful record of conversations I had with workers, one of whom was an avowed
anarchist. He should also know that it stopped the rot that was about to set in
among some Indians in South-Africa. The reader may balance against this the
opinion of a dear friend, who alas! is no more, that it was the production of a
fool.1

Mohandas
K. Gandhi Segaon, July 14th, 1938.

1Reproduced from the Aryan Path,
Special Hind Swaraj Number, published in September, 1938.

I.

The Congress
and its Ofﬁcials

READER: Just at present there is a
Home Rule wave passing over India. All our countrymen appear to be pining for
National Independence. A similar spirit pervades them even in South Africa.
Indians seem to be eager to acquire rights. Will you explain your views in this
matter ?

EDITOR: You have put the question
well, but the answer is not easy. One of the objects of a newspaper is to
understand popular feeling and to give expression to it ; another is to arouse
among the people certain desirable sentiments ; and the third is fearlessly to
expose popular defects. The exercise of all these three functions is involved
in answering your question. To a certain extent the people’s will has to be expressed
; certain sentiments will need to be fostered, and defects will have to be
brought to light. But, as you have asked the question, it is my duty to answer
it.

READER: Do you then
consider that a desire for Home Rule has been created among us ?

EDITOR: That desire gave rise to the
National Congress. The choice of the word “National” implies it.

READER: That surely, is not the case.
Young India seems to ignore the Congress. It is considered to be an instrument
for perpetuating British Rule.

EDITOR: That opinion is not justiﬁed.
Had not the Grand Old Man of India prepared the soil, our young men could not
have even spoken about Home Rule. How can we forget what Mr. Hume has written,
how he has lashed us into action, and with what effort he has awakened us, in
order to achieve the objects of the Congress ? Sir William Wedderburn has given
his body, mind and money to the same cause. His writings are worthy of perusal
to this day. Professor Gokhale in order to prepare the nation, embraced poverty
and gave twenty years of his life. Even now, he is living in poverty. The late
Justice Budruddin Tyebji was also one of those who, through the Congress, sowed
the seed of Home Rule. Similarly, in Bengal, Madras, the Punjab and other
places, there have been lovers of India and members of the Congress, both
Indian and English.

READER: Stay, stay; you are going too
far, you are straying away from my question. I have asked you about Home-or
Self-Rule ; you are discussing foreign rule. I do not desire to hear English
names, and you are giving me such names. In these circumstances, I do not think
we can ever meet. I shall be pleased if you will conﬁne yourself to Home
Rule. All other talk will not satisfy me.

EDITOR: You are impatient. I cannot
afford to be likewise. If you will bear with me for a while, I think you will ﬁnd
that you will obtain what you want. Remember the old proverb that the tree does
not grow in one day. The fact that you have checked me and that you do not want
to hear about the well-wishers of India shows that, for you at any rate, Home
Rule is yet far away. If we had many like you, we would never make any advance.
This thought is worthy of your attention.

READER: It seems to
me that you simply want to put me off by talking round and round. Those whom
you consider to be well-wishers of India are not such in my estimation. Why,
then, would I listen to your discourse on such people? What has he whom you
consider to be the Father of the Nation done for it? He says that the English
Governors will do justice and that we should co-operate with them.

EDITOR: I must tell you, with all
gentleness, that it must be a matter of shame for us that you should speak
about that great man in terms of disrespect. Just look at his work. He has
dedicated his life to the service of India. We have learned what we know from
him. It was the respected Dadabhai who taught us that the English had sucked
our life-blood. What does it matter that, today, his trust is still in the English
nation ? Is Dadabhai less to be honoured because, in the exuberance of youth,
we are prepared to go a step further ? Are we, on that account, wiser than he ?
It is a mark of wisdom not to kick away the very step from which we have risen
higher. The removal of a step from a staircase brings down the whole of it.
When, out of infancy, we grow into youth, we do not depise infancy, but, on the
contrary, we recall with affection the days of our childhood. If after many
years of study, a teacher were to teach me something, and if I were to build a
little more on the foundation laid by that teacher, I would not, on that
account, be considered wiser than the teacher. He would always command my
respect. Such is the case with the Grand Old Man of India. We must admit that
he is the author of nationalism.

READER: You have spoken well. I can
now understand that we must look upon Mr. Dadabhai with respect. Without him
and men like him, we should probably not have the spirit that ﬁres us.
How can the same be said of Professor Gokhale ? He has constituted himself a
great friend of the English ; he says that we have to learn a great deal from
them, that we have to learn their political wisdom, before we can talk of Home
Rule. I am tired of reading his speeches.

EDITOR: If you are tired, it only
betrays your impatience. We believe that those, who are discontented with the
slowness of their parents and are angry because the parents would not run with
their children, are considered disrespectful to their parents. Professor
Gokhale occupies the place of a parent. What does it matter if he cannot run
with us ? A nation that is desirous of securing Home Rule cannot afford to
despise its ancestors. We shall become useless, if we lack respect for our
elders. Only men with mature thoughts are capable of ruling themselves and not
the hasty-tempered. Moreover, how many Indians were there like Professor
Gokhale, when he gave himself to Indian education ? I verily believe that
whatever Professor Gokhale does, he does with pure motives and with a view of
serving India. His devotion to the Motherland is so great that he would give
his life for it, if necessary. Whatever he says is said not to ﬂatter
anyone but because he believes it to be true. We are bound, therefore, to
entertain the highest regard for him.

READER: Are we, then,
to follow him in every respect ?

EDITOR: I never said any such thing.
If we conscientiously differed from him, the learned Professor himself would
advise us to follow the dictates of our conscience rather than him. Our chief
purpose is not to decry his work, but to believe that he is inﬁnitely
greater then we are, and to feel assured that compared with his work for India,
ours is inﬁnitesimal. Several newspapers write disrespectfully of him.
It is our duty to protest against such writings. We should consider men like
Professor Gokhale to be the pillars of Home Rule. It is bad habit to say that
another man’s thoughts are bad and ours only are good and that those holding
different views from ours are the enemies of the country.

READER: I now begin
to understand somewhat your meaning. I shall have to think the matter over. But
what you say about Mr. Hume and Sir William Wedderburn is beyond my
comprehension.

EDITOR: The same rule holds good for
the English as for the Indians. I can never subscribe to the statement that all
Englishmen are bad. Many Englishmen desire Home Rule for India. That the
English people are somewhat more selﬁsh than others is true, but that
does not prove that every Englishman is bad. We who seek justice will have to
do justice to others. Sir William does not wish ill to India, ? that should be
enough for us. As we proceed, you will see that, if we act justly, India will
be sooner free. You will see, too, that if we shun every Englishman as an
enemy, Home Rule will be delayed. But if we are just to them, we shall receive
their support in our progress towards the goal.

READER: All this seems to me at
present to be simply nonsensical. English support and the obtaining of Home
Rule are two contradictory things. How can the English people tolerate Home
Rule for us ? But I do not want you to decide this question for me just yet. To
spend time over it is useless. When you have shown how we can have Home rule,
perhaps I shall understand your views. You have prejudiced me against you by
discoursing on English help. I would, therefore, beseech you not to continue
this subject.

EDITOR: I have no desire to do so.
That you are prejudiced against me is not a matter for much anxiety. It is well
that I should say unpleasant things at the commencement. It is my duty
patiently to try to remove your prejudice.

READER: I like that last statement. It
emboldens me to say what I like. One thing still puzzles me. I do not
understand how the Congress laid the foundation of Home Rule.

EDITOR: Let us see.
The Congress brought together Indians from different parts of India, and
enthused us with the idea of nationality. The Government used to look upon it
with disfavour. The Congress has always insisted that the Nation should control
revenue and expenditure. It has always desired self-government after the
Canadian model. Whether we can get it or not, whether we desire it or not, and
whether there is not something more desirable, are different questions. All I
have to show is that the Congress gave us a foretaste of Home Rule. To deprive
it of the honour is not proper, and for us to do so would not only be
ungrateful, but retard the fulﬁlment of our object. To treat the
Congress as an institution inimical to our growth as a nation would disable us
from using that body.

II.

The Partition
of Bengal

READER: Considering the matter as you
put it, it seems proper to say that the foundation of Home Rule was laid by the
Congress. But you will admit that this cannot be considered a real awakening.
When and how did the real awakening take place?

EDITOR: The seed is never seen. It
works underneath the ground, is itself destroyed, and the tree which rises
above the ground is alone seen. Such is the case with the Congress. Yet, what
you call the real awakening took place after the Partition of Bengal. For this
we have to be thankful to Lord Curzon. At the time of the Partition, the people
of Bengal reasoned with Lord Curzon, but in the pride of power he disregarded
all their prayers. He took it for granted that Indians could only prattle, that
they could never take any effective steps. He used insulting language and in
the teeth of all opposition partitioned Bengal. That day may be considered to
be the day of the partition of the British Empire. The shock the British power
received through the Partition has never been equalled by any other act. This
does not mean that the other injustices done to India are less glaring than
that done by the Partition. The salt-tax is not a small injustice. We shall see
many such things later on. But the people were ready to resist the Partition.
At that time feeling ran high. Many leading Bengalis were ready to lose their
all. They knew their power; hence the conﬂagration. It is now well-nigh
unquenchable; it is not necessary to quench it either. The Partition will go,
Bengal will be reunited, but the rift in the English barque will remain; it
must daily widen. India awakened is not likely to fall asleep. The demand for
the abrogation of the Partition is tantamount to a demand for Home Rule.
Leaders in Bengal know this, British ofﬁcials realize it. That is why
the Partition still remains. As time passes, the Nation is being forged.
Nations are not formed is a day; the formation requires years.

READER: What, in your
opinion, are the results of the Partition?

EDITOR: Hitherto we
have considered that for redress of grievances we must approach the throne, and
if we get no redress we must sit still, except that we may still petition.
After the Partition, people saw that petitions must be backed up by force, and
that they must be capable of suffering. This new spirit must be considered to
be the chief result of the Partition. That spirit was seen in the outspoken
writings in the Press. That which the people said tremblingly and in secret
began to be said and to be written publicly. The Swadeshi movement was
inaugurated. People, young and old, used to run away at the sight of an English
face; it now no longer awes them. They do not fear even a row, or being imprisoned.
Some of the best sons of India are at present in banishment. This is something
different from mere petitioning. Thus are the people moved. The spirit
generated in Bengal has spread in the north to the Punjab, and in the south to
Cape Comorin.

READER: Do you suggest any other
striking result?

EDITOR: The Partition
has not only made a rift in the English ship but has made it in ours also.
Great events always produce great results. Our leaders are divided into two
parties: the Moderates and the Extremists. These may be considered as the slow
party and the impatient party. Some call the Moderates the timid party, and the
Extremists the bold party. All interpret the two words according to their
preconceptions. This much is certain ? that there has arisen an enmity between
the two. The one distrusts the other and imputes motives. At the time of the
Surat Congress there was almost a ﬁght. I think that this division is
not a good thing for the country, but I think also that such divisions will not
last long. It all depends upon the leaders how long they will last.

III.

Discontent and
unrest

READER: Then you consider the
Partition to be a cause of the awakening? Do you welcome the unrest which has
resulted from it?

EDITOR: When a man rises from sleep,
he twists his limbs and is restless. It takes some time before he is entirely
awakened. Similarly, although the Partition has caused an awakening, the
comatose condition has not yet disappeared. We are still twisting our limbs and
are still restless, and just as the state between sleep and awakening must be
considered to be necessary, so may the present unrest in India be considered a
necessary and therefore, a proper state. The knowledge that there is unrest
will, it is highly probable, enable us to outgrow it. Rising from sleep, we do
not continue in a comatose state, but according to our ability, sooner or
later, we are completely restored to our senses. So shall we be free from the
present unrest which no one likes.

READER: What is the
other form of unrest?

EDITOR: Unrest is, in
reality, discontent. The latter is only now described as unrest. During the
Congress-period it was labelled discontent. Mr. Hume always said that the
spread of discontent in India was necessary. This discontent is a very useful
thing. As long as a man is contented with his present lot, so long is it difﬁcult
to persuade him to come out of it. Therefore it is that every reform must be
preceded by discontent. We throw away things we have, only when we cease to
like them. Such discontent has been produced among us after reading the great
works of Indians and Englishmen. Discontent has led to unrest, and the latter
has brought about many deaths, many imprisonments, many banishments. Such a
state of things will still continue. It must be so. All these may be considered
good signs but they may also lead to bad results.

IV.

What is swaraj?

READER: I have now learnt what the
Congress has done to make India one nation, how the Partition has caused an
awakening, and how discontent and unrest have spread through the land. I would
now like to know your views on Swaraj. I fear that our interpretation is not
the same as yours.

EDITOR: It is quite possible that we
do not attach the same meaning to the term. You and I and all Indians are
impatient to obtain Swaraj, but we are certainly not decided as to what it is.
To drive the English out of India is a thought heard from many mouths, but it
does not seem that many have properly considered why it should be so. I must
ask you a question. Do you think that it is necessary to drive away the
English, if we get all we want?

READER: I should ask of them only one
thing, that is: “Please leave our country.” If, after they have complied with
this request, their withdrawal from India means that they are still in India. I
should have no objection. Then we would understand that, in their language, the
word “gone” is equivalent to “remained”.

EDITOR: Well then,
let us suppose that the English have retired. What will you do then?

READER: That question cannot be
answered at this stage. The state after withdrawal will depend largely upon the
manner of it. If, as you assume, they retire, it seems to me we shall still
keep their constitution and shall carry on the Government. If they simply
retire for the asking we should have an army, etc., ready at hand. We should,
therefore, have no difﬁculty in carrying on the Government.

EDITOR: You may think so; I do not.
But I will not discuss the matter just now. I have to answer your question, and
that I can do well by asking you several questions. Why do you want to drive
away the English?

READER: Because India has become
impoverished by their Government. They take away our money from year to year.
The most important posts are reserved for themselves. We are kept in a state of
slavery. They behave insolently towards us and disregard our feelings.

EDITOR: If they do not take our money
away, become gentle, and give us responsible posts, would you still consider
their presence to be harmful?

READER: That question is useless. It
is similar to the question whether there is any harm in associating with a
tiger if he changes his nature. Such a question is sheer waste of time. When a
tiger changes his nature, Englishmen will change theirs. This is not possible,
and to believe it to be possible is contrary to human experience.

EDITOR: Supposing we
get Self-Government similar to what the Canadians and the South Africans have,
will it be good enough?

READER: That question also is useless.
We may get it when we have the same powers; we shall then hoist our own ﬂag.
As is Japan, so must India be. We must own our navy, our army, and we must have
our own splendour, and then will India’s voice ring through the world.

EDITOR: You have drawn the picture well.
In effect it means this; that we want English rule without the Englishman. You
want the tiger’s nature, but not the tiger; that is to say, you would make
India English. And when it becomes English, it will be called not Hindustan but
Englistan. This is not the Swaraj that I want.

READER: I have placed before you my
idea of Swaraj as I think it should be. If the education we have received be of
any use, if the works of Spencer, Mill and others be of any importance, and if
the English Parliament be the Mother of Parliaments, I certainly think that we
should copy the English people, and this to such an extent that, just as they
do not allow others to obtain a footing in their country, so we should not
allow them or others to obtain it in ours. What they have done in their own
country has not been done in any other country. It is, therefore, proper for us
to import their institutions. But now I want to know your views.

EDITOR: There is need
for patience. My views will develop of themselves in the course of this
discourse. It is as difﬁcult for me to understand the true nature of
Swaraj as it seems to you to be easy. I shall therefore, for the time being,
content myself with endeavouring to show that what you call Swaraj is not truly
Swaraj.

V.

The condition
of England

READER: Then from your statement I
deduce that the Government of England is not worth copying by us.

EDITOR: Your deduction is justiﬁed.
The condition of England at present is pitiable. I pray to God that India may
never be in that plight. That which you consider to be the Mother of
Parliaments is like a sterile woman and a prostitute. Both these are harsh
terms, but exactly ﬁt the case. That Parliament has not yet, of its own
accord, done a single good thing. Hence I have compared it to a sterile woman.
The natural condition of that Parliament is such that, without outside
pressure, it can do nothing. It is like a prostitute because it is under the
control of ministers who change from time to time. Today it is under Mr.
Asquith, tomorrow it may be under Mr. Balfour.

READER: You have said this
sarcastically. The term “sterile woman” is not applicable. The Parliament,
being elected by the people, must work under public pressure. This is its
quality.

EDITOR: You are mistaken. Let us
examine it a little more closely. The best men are supposed to be elected by
the people. The members serve without pay and therefore, it must be assumed,
only for the public weal. The electors are considered to be educated and
therefore we should assume that they would not generally make mistakes in their
choice. Such a Parliament should not need the spur of petitions or any other
pressure. Its work should be so smooth that its effects would be more apparent
day by day. But, as a matter of fact, it is generally acknowledged that the
members are hypocritical and selﬁsh. Each thinks of his own little
interest. It is fear that is the guiding motive. What is done today may be
undone tomorrow. It is not possible to recall a single instance in which ﬁnality
can be predicted for its work. When the greatest questions are debated, its
members have been seen to stretch themselves and to doze. Sometimes the members
talk away until the listeners are disgusted. Carlyle has called it the “talking
shop of the world” Members vote for their party without a thought. Their
so-called discipline binds them to it. If any member, by way of exception,
gives an independent vote, he is considered a renegade. If the money and the
time wasted by Parliament were entrusted to a few good men, the English nation
would be occupying today a much higher platform. Parliament is simply a costly
toy of the nation. These views are by no means peculiar to me. Some great
English thinkers have expressed them. One of the members of that Parliament recently
said that a true Christian could not become a member of it. Another said that
it was a baby. And if it has remained a baby after an existence of seven
hundred years, when will it out grow its babyhood?

READER: You have set
me thinking; you do not expect me to accept at once all you say.

You give me entirely novel views. I
shall have to digest them. Will you now explain the epithet “prostitute”?

EDITOR: That you cannot accept my
views at once is only right. If you will read the literature on this subject,
you will have some idea of it. Parliament is without a real master. Under the
Prime Minister, its movement is not steady but it is buffeted about like a
prostitute. The Prime Minister is more concerned about his power than about the
welfare of Parliament. His energy is concentrated upon securing the success of
his party. His care is not always that Parliament shall do right. Prime
Ministers are known to have made Parliament do things merely for party
advantage. All this is worth thinking over.

READER: Then you are really attacking
the very men whom we have hitherto considered to be patriotic and honest?

EDITOR: Yes, that is true; I can have
nothing against Prime Ministers, but what I have seen leads me to think that
they cannot be considered really patriotic. If they are to be considered honest
because they do not take what are generally known as bribes, let them be so
considered, but they are open to subtler inﬂuences. In order to gain
their ends, they certainly bribe people with honours. I do not hesitate to say
that they have neither real honesty nor a living conscience.

READER: As you express these views
about Parliament, I would like to hear you on the English people, so that I may
have your view of their Government.

EDITOR: To the English voters their
newspaper is their Bible. They take their cue from their newspapers which are
often dishonest. The same fact is differently interpreted by different
newspapers, according to the party in whose interests they are edited. One
newspaper would consider a great Englishman to be a paragon of honesty, another
would consider him dishonest. What must be the condition of the people whose
newspapers are of this type?

READER: You shall
describe it.

EDITOR: These people change their
views frequently. It is said that they change them every seven years. These
views swing like the pendulum of a clock and are never steadfast. The people
would follow a powerful orator or a man who gives them parties, receptions,
etc. As are the people, so is their Parliament. They have certainly one quality
very strongly developed. They will never allow their country to be lost. If any
person were to cast an evil eye on it, they would pluck out his eyes. But that
does not mean that the nation possesses every other virtue or that it should be
imitated. If India copies England, it is my ﬁrm conviction that she will
be ruined.

READER: To what do
you ascribe this state of England?

EDITOR: It is not due
to any peculiar fault of the English people, but the condition is due to modern
civilization. It is a civilization only in name. Under it the nations of Europe
are becoming degraded and ruined day by day.

VI.

Civilization

READER: Now you will
have to explain what you mean by civilization.

EDITOR: It is not a question of what I
mean. Several English writers refuse to call that civilization which passes
under that name. Many books have been written upon that subject. Societies have
been formed to cure the nation of the evils of civilization. A great English
writer has written a work called Civilization: Its Cause and Cure. Therein he
has called it a disease.

READER: Why do we not
know this generally?

EDITOR: The answer is very simple. We
rarely ﬁnd people arguing against themselves. Those who are intoxicated
by modern civilization are not likely to write against it. Their care will be
to ﬁnd out facts and arguments in support of it and this they do
unconsciously, believing it to be true. A man whilst he is dreaming, believes
in his dream; he is undeceived only when he is awakened from his sleep. A man
labouring under the bane of civilization is like a dreaming man. What we
usually read are the works of defenders of modern civilization, which
undoubtedly claims among its votaries very brilliant and even some very good
men. Their writings hypnotize us. And so, one by one, we are drawn into the
vortex.

READER: This seems to be very
plausible. Now will you tell me something of what you have read and thought of
this civilization?

EDITOR: Let us ﬁrst consider
what state of things is described by the word “civilization”. Its true test
lies in the fact that people living in it make bodily welfare the object of
life. We will take some examples. The people of Europe today live in
better-built houses than they did a hundred years ago. This is considered an
emblem of civilization, and this is also a matter to promote bodily happiness.
Formerly, they wore skins, and used spears as their weapons. Now, they wear
long trousers, and, for embelishing their bodies, they wear a variety of
clothing, and, instead of spears, they carry with them revolvers containing ﬁve
or more chambers. If people of a certain country, who have hitherto not been in
the habit of wearing much clothing, boots, etc., adopt European clothing, they
are supposed to have become civilized out of savagery. Formerly, in Europe,
people ploughed their lands mainly by manual labour. Now, one man can plough a
vast tract by means of steam engines and can thus amass great wealth. This is
called a sign of civilization. Formerly, only a few men wrote valuable books.
Now, anybody writes and prints anything he likes and poisons people’s minds.
Formerly, men travelled in waggons. Now, they ﬂy through the air in
trains at the rate of four hundred and more miles per day. This is considered
the height of civilization. It has been stated that, as men progress, they
shall be able to travel in airship and reach any part of the world in a few
hours. Men will not need the use of their hands and feet. They will press a
button, and they will have their clothing by their side. They will press
another button, and they will have their newspaper. A third, and a motor-car
will be in waiting for them. They will have a variety of delicately dished up food.
Everything will be done by machinery. Formerly, when people wanted to ﬁght
with one another, they measured between them their bodily strength; now it is
possible to take away thousands of lives by one man working behind a gun from a
hill. This is civilization. Formerly, men worked in the open air only as much
as they liked. Now thousands of workmen meet together and for the sake of
maintenance work in factories or mines. Their condition is worse than that of
beasts. They are obliged to work, at the risk of their lives, at most dangerous
occupations, for the sake of millionaires. Formerly, men were made slaves under
physical compulsion. Now they are enslaved by temptation of money and of the
luxuries that money can buy. There are now diseases of which people never
dreamt before, and an army of doctors is engaged in ﬁnding out their
cures, and so hospitals have increased. This is a test of civilization.
Formerly, special messengers were required and much expense was incurred in
order to send letters; today, anyone can abuse his fellow by means of a letter
for one penny. True, at the same cost, one can send one’s thanks also.
Formerly, people had two or three meals consisting of home-made bread and
vegetables; now, they require something to eat every two hours so that they
have hardly leisure for anything else. What more need I say? All this you can
ascertain from several authoritative books. There are all true tests of
civilization. And if anyone speaks to the contrary, know that he is ignorant.
This civilization takes note neither of morality nor of religion. Its votaries
calmly state that their business is not to teach religion. Some even consider
it to be a superstitious growth. Others put on the cloak of religion, and prate
about morality. But, after twenty years’ experience, I have come to the
conclusion that immorality is often taught in the name of morality. Even a
child can understand that in all I have described above there can be no
inducement to morality. Civilization seeks to increase bodily comforts, and it
fails miserably even in doing so.

This
civilization is irreligion, and it has taken such a hold on the people in
Europe who are in it appear to be half mad. They lack real physical strength or
courage. They keep up their energy by intoxication. They can hardly be happy in
solitude. Women, who should be the queens of households, wander in the streets
or they slave away in factories. For the sake of a pittance, half a million
women in England alone are labouring under trying circumstances in factories or
similar institutions. This awful fact is one of the causes of the daily growing
suffragette movement.

This
civilization is such that one has only to be patient and it will be
self-destroyed. According to the teaching of Mahommed this would be considered
a Satanic Civilization. Hinduism calls it the Black Age. I cannot give you an
adequate conception of it. It is eating into the vitals of the English nation.
It must be shunned. Parliaments are really emblems of slavery. If you will sufﬁciently
think over this, you will entertain the same opinion and cease to blame the
English. They rather deserve our sympathy. They are a shrewd nation and I
therefore believe that they will cast off the evil. They are enterprising and
industrious and their mode of thought is not inherently immoral. Neither are
they bad at heart. I therefore respect them. Civilization is not an incurable
disease, but it should never be forgotten that the English people are at
present afﬂicted by it.

VII.

Why was India
lost?

READER: You have said much about
civilization ? enough to make me ponder over it. I do not now know what I
should adopt and what I should avoid from the nations of Europe, but one
question comes to my lips immediately. If civilization is a disease and if it
has attacked England, why has she been able to take India, and why is she able
to retain it?

EDITOR: Your question is not very difﬁcult
to answer, and we shall presently be able to examine the true nature of Swaraj;
for I am aware that I have still to answer that question. I will, however, take
up your previous question. The English have not taken India; we have given it
to them. They are not in India because of their strength, but because we keep
them. Let us now see whether these propositions can be sustained. They came to
our country originally for purposes of trade. Recall the Company Bahadur. Who
made it Bahadur? They had not the slightest intention at the time of
establishing a kingdom. Who assisted the Company’s ofﬁcers? Who was
tempted at the sight of their silver? Who bought their goods? History testiﬁes
that we did all this. In order to become rich all at once we welcomed the
Company’s ofﬁcers with open arms. We assisted them. If I am in the habit
of drinking bhang and a seller thereof sells it to me, am I to blame him or
myself? By blaming the seller shall I be able to avoid the habit? And, if a
particular retailer is driven away will not another take his place? A true
servant of India will have to go to the root of the matter. If an excess of
food has caused me indigestion, I shall certainly not avoid it by blaming
water. He is a true physician who probes the cause of disease, and if you pose
as a physician for the disease of India, you will have to ﬁnd out its
true cause.

READER: You are right. Now I think you
will not have to argue much with me to drive your conclusions home. I am
impatient to know your further views. We are now on a most interesting topic. I
shall, therefore, endeavour to follow your thought, and stop you when I am in
doubt.

EDITOR: I am afraid
that, in spite of your enthusiasm, as we proceed further, we shall have
differences of opinion. Nevertheless, I shall argue only when you stop me. We
have already seen that the English merchants were able to get a footing in
India because we encouraged them. When our Princes fought among themselves,
they sought the assistance of Company Bahadur. That corporation was versed
alike in commerce and war. It was unhampered by questions of morality. Its
object was to increase its commerce and to make money. It accepted our
assistance, and increased the number of its warehouses. To protect the latter
it employed an army which was utilized by us also. Is it not then useless to
blame the English for what we did at that time? The Hindus and the Mahomedans were
at daggers drawn. This, too, gave the Company its opportunity and thus we
created the circumstances that gave the Company its control over India. Hence
it is truer to say that we gave India to the English than that India was lost.

READER: Will you now tell me how they
are able to retain India?

EDITOR: The causes
that gave them India enable them to retain it. Some Englishmen state that they
took and they hold India by the sword. Both these statements are wrong. The
sword is entirely useless for holding India. We alone keep them. Napolean is
said to have described the English as a nation of shopkeepers. It is a ﬁtting
description. They hold whatever dominions they have for the sake of their
commerce. Their army and their navy are intended to protect it. When the
Transvaal offered no such attractions, the late Mr. Gladstone discovered that
it was not right for the English to hold it. When it became a paying
proposition, resistance led to war. Mr. Chamberlain soon discovered that
England enjoyed a suzerainty over the Transvaal. It is related that someone
asked the late President Kruger whether there was gold in the moon. He replied
that it was highly unlikely because, if there were, the English would have
annexed it. Many problems can be solved by remembering that money is their God.
Then it follows that we keep the English in India for our base self-interest.
We like their commerce; they please us by their subtle methods and get what
they want from us. To blame them for this is to perpetuate their power. We
further strengthen their hold by quarrelling amongst ourselves. If you accept
the above statements, it is proved that the English entered India for the
purposes of trade. They remain in it for the same purpose and we help them to
do so.Their arms and ammunition are perfectly useless. In this connection I
remind you that it is the British ﬂag which is waving in Japan and not
the Japanese. The English have a treaty with Japan for the sake of their
commerce, and you will see that if they can manage it their commerce will
greatly expand in that country. They wish to convert the whole world into a
vast market for their goods.That they cannot do so is true, but the blame will
not be theirs. They will leave no stone unturned to reach the goal.

VIII.

The condition
of India

READER: I now understand why the
English hold India. I should like to know your views about the condition of our
country.

EDITOR: It is a sad condition. In
thinking of it my eyes water and my throat gets parched. I have grave doubts
whether I shall be able sufﬁciently to explain what is in my heart. It
is my deliberate opinion that India is being ground down, not under the English
heel, but under that of modern civilization. It is groaning under the monster’s
terrible weight. There is yet time to escape it, but every day makes it more
and more difﬁcult. Religion is dear to me and my ﬁrst complaint
is that India is becoming irreligious. Here I am not thinking of the Hindu or
the Mahomedan or the Zoroastrian religion but of that religion which underlies
all religions. We are turning away from God.

READER: How so?

EDITOR: There is a charge laid against
us that we are a lazy people and that Europeans are industrious and
enterprizing. We have accepted the charge and we therefore wish to change our condition.
Hinduism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and all other religions teach
that we should remain passive about worldly pursuits and active about godly
pursuits, that we should set a limit to our worldly ambition and that our
religious ambition should be illimitable. Our activity should be directed into
the latter channel.

READER: You seem to be encouraging
religious charlatanism. Many a cheat has, by talking in a similar strain, led
the people astray.

EDITOR: You are bringing an unlawful
charge against religion. Humbug there undoubtedly is about all religions.

Where there is light, there is also
shadow. I am prepared to maintain that humbugs in worldly matters are far worse
than the humbugs in religion. The humbug of civilization that I am endeavoring
to show to you is not to be found in religion.

READER: How can you say that? In the
name of religion Hindus and Mahomedams fought against one another. For the same
cause Christians fought Christians. Thousands of innocent men have been
murdered, thousands have been burned and tortured in its name. Surely, this is
much worse than any civilization.

EDITOR: I certainly submit that the
above hardships are far more bearable than those of civilization. Everybody understands
that the cruelties you have named are not part of religion although they have
been practised in its name; therefore there is no aftermath to these cruelties.
They will always happen so long as there are to be found ignorant and credulous
people. But there is no end to the victims destroyed in the ﬁre of
civilization. Its deadly effect is that people come under its scorching ﬂames
believing it to be all good. They become utterly irreligious, in reality,
derive little advantage from the world. Civilization is like a mouse gnawing
while it is soothing us. When its full effect is realized, we shall see that
religious superstition is harmless compared to that of modern civilization. I
am not pleading for a continuance of religious superstitions. We shall
certainly ﬁght them tooth and nail, but we can never do so by
disregarding religion. We can only do so by appreciating and conserving the
latter.

READER: Then you will contend that the
Pax Britannica is a useless encumbrance?

EDITOR: You may see
peace if you like; I see none.

READER: You make light of the terror
that the Thugs, the Pindaris and the Bhils were to the country.

EDITOR: If you give
the matter some thought, you will see that the terror was by no means such a
mighty thing. If it had been a very substantial thing, the other people would
have died away before the English advent. Moreover, the present peace is only
nominal, for by it we have become emasculated and cowardly. We are not to
assume that the English have changed the nature of the Pindaris and the Bhils.
It is, therefore, better to suffer the Pindari peril than that someone else
should protect us from it and thus render us effeminate. I should prefer to be
killed by the arrow of a Bhil than to seek unmanly protection. India without such
protection was an India full of valour. Macaulay betrayed gross ignorance when
he libelled Indians as being practically cowards. They never merited the
charge. Cowards living in a country inhabited by hardy mountaineers and
infested by wolves and tigers must surely ﬁnd an early grave. Have you
ever visited our ﬁelds? I assure you that our agriculturists sleep
fearlessly on their farms even today; but the English and you and I would
hesitate to sleep where they sleep. Strength lies in absence of fear, not in
the quantity of ﬂesh and muscle we may have on our bodies. Moreover, I
must remind you who desire Home Rule that, after all, the Bhils, the Pindaris,
and the Thugs are our own countrymen. To conquer them is your and my work. So
long as we fear our own brethren, we are unﬁt to reach the goal.

IX.

The condition
of India: Railways

READER: You have
deprived me of the consolation I used to have regarding peace in India.

EDITOR: I have merely given you my
opinion on the religious aspect, but when I give you my views as to the poverty
of India, you will perhaps begin to dislike me because what you and I have
hitherto considered beneﬁcial for India no longer appears to me to be
so.

READER: What may that
be?

EDITOR: Railways, lawyers and doctors
have impoverished the country so much so that, if we do not wake up in time, we
shall be ruined.

READER: I do now, indeed, fear that we
are not likely to agree at all. You are attacking the very insitutions which we
have hitherto considered to be good.

EDITOR: It is necessary to exercise
patience. The true inwardness of the evils of civilization you will understand
with difﬁculty. Doctors assure us that a consumptive clings to life even
when he is about to die. Consumption does not produce apparent hurt ? it even
produces a seductive colour about a patient’s face so as to induce the belief
that all is well. Civilization is such a disease and we have to be very wary.

READER: Very well,
then. I shall hear you on the railways.

EDITOR: It must be manifest to you
that, but for the railways, the English could not have such a hold on India as
they have. The railways, too, have spread the bubonic plague. Without them, the
masses could not move from place to place. They are the carriers of plague
germs. Formerly we had natural segregation. Railways have also increased the
frequency of famines because, owing to facility of means of locomotion, people
sell out their grain and it is sent to the dearest markets. People become
careless and so the pressure of famine increases. Railways accentuate the evil
nature of man. Bad men fulﬁl their evil designs with greater rapidity.
The holy places of India have become unholy. Formerly, people went to these
places with very great difﬁculty. Generally, therefore, only the real
devotees visited such places. Nowadays rogues visit them in order to practise
their roguery.

READER: You have given a one-sided
account. Good men can visit these places as well as bad men. Why do they not
take the fullest advantage of the railways?

EDITOR: Good travels at a snail’s pace
? it can, therefore, have little to do with the railways. Those who want to do
good are not selﬁsh, they are not in a hurry, they know that to
impregnate people with good requires a long time. But evil has wings. To build
a house takes time. Its destruction takes none. So the railways can become a
distributing agency for the evil one only. It may be a debatable matter whether
railways spread famines, but it is beyond dispute that they propagate evil.

READER: Be that as it
may, all the disadvantages of railways are more than counterbalanced by the
fact that it is due to them that we see in India the new spirit of nationalism.

EDITOR: I hold this to be a mistake.
The English have taught us that we were not one nation before and that it will
require centuries before we become one nation. This is without foundation. We
were one nation before they came to India. One thought inspired us. Our mode of
life was the same. It was because we were one nation that they were able to
establish one kingdom. Subsequently they divided us.

READER: This requires
an explanation.

EDITOR: I do not wish to suggest that
because we were one nation we had no differences, but it is submitted that our
leading men travelled thoughout India either or foot or in bullock-carts. They
learned one another’s languages and there was no aloofness between them. What
do you think could have been the intention of those farseeing ancestors of ours
who established Setubandha (Rameshwar) in the South, Jagannath in the East and
Hardwar in the North as places of pilgrimage? You will admit they were no
fools. They knew that worship of God could have been performed just as well at
home. They taught us that those whose hearts were aglow with righteousness had
the Ganges in their own homes. But they saw that India was one undivided land
so made by nature. They, therefore, argued that it must be one nation. Arguing
thus, they established holy places in various parts of India, and ﬁred
the people with an idea of nationality in a manner unknown in other parts of
the world. And we Indians are one as no two Englishmen are. Only you and I and
others who consider ourselves civilized and superior persons imagine that we
are many nations. It was after the advent of railways that we began to believe
in distinctions, and you are at liberty now to say that it is through the railways
that we are beginning to abolish distinctions. An opium-eater may argue the
advantage of opium-eating from the fact that he began to understand the evil of
the opium habit after having eaten it. I would ask you to consider well what I
had said on the railways.

READER: I will gladly
do so but one question occurs to me even now. You have described to me the
India of the pre-Mahomedan period, but now we have Mahomedans, Parsis and Christians.
How can they be one nation? Hindus and Mahomedans are old enemies. Our very
proverbs prove it. Mahomedans turn to the West for worship, whilst Hindus turn
to the East. The former look down on the Hindus as idolaters. The Hindus
worship the cow, the Mahomedans kill her. The Hindus believe in the doctrine of
non-killing, the Mahomedans do not. We thus meet with differences at every
step. How can India be one nation?

X.

The condition of India: The Hindus and
the Mahomedans

EDITOR: Your last question is a
serious one and yet, on careful consideration, it will be found to be easy of
solution. The question arises because of the presence of the railways, of the
lawyers and of the doctors. We shall presently examine the last two. We have
already considered the railways. I should, however, like to add that man is so
made by nature as to require him to restrict his movements as far as his hands
and feet will take him. If we did not rush about from place to place by means
of railways and such other maddening conveniences, much of the confusion that
arises would be obviated. Our difﬁculties are of our own creation. God
set a limit to a man’s locomotive ambition in the construction of his body. Man
immediately proceeded to discover means of overriding the limit. God gifted man
with intellect that he might know his Maker. Man abused it so that he might
forget his Maker. I am so constructed that I can only serve my immediate
neighbours, but in my conceit I pretend to have discovered that I must with my
body serve every individual in the Universe. In thus attempting the impossible,
man comes in contact with different natures, different religions, and is
utterly confounded. According to this reasoning, it must be apparent to you
that railways are a most dangerous institution. Owing to them, man has gone
further away from his Maker.

READER: But I am impatient to hear
your answer to my question. Has the introduction of Mahomedanism not unmade the
nation?

EDITOR: India cannot cease to be one
nation because people belonging to different religions live in it. The
introduction of foreigners does not necessarily destroy the nation; they merge
in it. A country is one nation only when such a condition obtains in it. That
country must have a faculty for assimilation. India has ever been such a
country. In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals; but
those who are conscious of the spirit of nationality do not interfere with one
another’s religion. If they do, they are not ﬁt to be considered a
nation. If the Hindus believe that India should be peopled only by Hindus, they
are living in dreamland. The Hindus, the Mahomedans, the Parsis and the
Christians who have made India their country are fellow-countrymen, and they
will have to live in unity, if only for their own interest. In no part of the
world are one nationality and one religion synonymous terms; nor has it ever
been so in India.

READER: But what
about the inborn enmity between Hindus and Mahomedans?

EDITOR: That phrase has been invented
by our mutual enemy. When the Hindus and Mahomedans fought against one
another, they certainly spoke in that strain. They have long since ceased to ﬁght.
How, then, can there be any inborn enmity? Pray remember this too, that we did
not cease to ﬁght only after British occupation. The Hindus ﬂourished
under Moslem sovereigns and Moslems under the Hindu. Each party recognized that
mutual ﬁghting was suicidal, and that neither party would abandon its
religion by force of arms. Both parties, therefore, decided to live in peace.
With the English advent quarrels recommenced.

The proverbs
you have quoted were coined when both were ﬁghting ; to quote them now
is obviously harmful. Should we not remember that many Hindus and Mahomedans
own the same ancestors and the same blood runs through their veins? Do people
become enemies because they change their religion? Is the God of the Mahomedan
different from the God of the Hindu? Religions are different roads converging
to the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads so long as
we reach the same goal? Wherein is the cause for quarrelling?

Moreover, there are deadly proverbs as
between the followers of Siva and those of Vishnu, yet nobody suggests that
these two do not belong to the same nation. It is said that the Vedic religion
is different from Jainism, but the followers of the respective faiths are not
different nations. The fact is that we have become enslaved and, therefore,
quarrel and like to have our quarrels decided by a third party. There are Hindu
iconoclasts as there are Mahomedan. The more we advance in true knowledge, the
better we shall understand that we need not be at war with those whose religion
we may not follow.

READER: Now I would
like to know your views about cow-protection.

EDITOR: I myself respect the cow, that
is, I look upon her with affectionate reverence. The cow is the protector of
India because, being an agricultural country, she is dependent on the cow. The
cow is a most useful animal in hundreds of ways. Our Mahomedan brethren will
admit this.

But, just as I respect the cow, so do I
respect my fellowmen. A man is just as useful as a cow no matter whether he be
a Mahomedan or a Hindu. Am I, then, to ﬁght with or kill a Mahomedan in
order to save a cow? In doing so, I would become an enemy of the Mahomedan as
well as of the cow. Therefore, the only method I know of protecting the cow is
that I should approach my Mahomedan brother and urge him for the sake of the
country to join me in protecting her. If he would not listen to me I should let
the cow go for the simple reason that the matter is beyond my ability. If I
were overfull of pity for the cow, I should sacriﬁce my life to save her
but not take my brother’s. This, I hold, is the law of our religion.

When men become obstinate, it is a difﬁcult
thing. If I pull one way, my Moslem brother will pull another. If I put on a
superior air, he will return the compliment. If I bow to him gently, he will do
it much more so; and if he does not, I shall not be considered to have done
wrong in having bowed.

When the Hindus became insistent, the
killing of cows increased. In my opinion, cow-protection societies may be
considered cow-killing societies. It is a disgrace to us that we should need
such societies. When we forgot how to protect cows. I suppose we needed such
societies.

What am I to do when a blood-brother is
on the point of killing a cow? Am I to kill him, or to fall down at his feet
and implore him? If you admit that I should adopt the latter course. I must do
the same to my Moslem brother.

Who protects the cow from destruction
by Hindus when they cruelly ill-treat her? Whoever reasons with the Hindus when
they mercilessly belabour the progeny of the cow with their sticks? But this
has not prevented us from remaining one nation.

Lastly, if it is be true that the
Hindus believe in the doctrine of non-killing and the Mahomedans do not, what,
pray, is the duty of the former? It is not written that a follower of the
religion of Ahimsa (non-killing) may kill a fellow-man. For him the way is
straight. In order to save one being, he may not kill another. He can only
plead ? therein lies his sole duty.

But does every
Hindu believe in Ahimsa? Going to the root of the matter, not one man really
practises such a religion because we do destroy life. We are said to follow that
religion because we want to obtain freedom from liability to kill any kind of
life. Generally speaking, we may observe that many Hindus partake of meat and
are not, therefore, followers of Ahimsa. It is, therefore, preposterous to
suggest that the two cannot live together amicably because the Hindus believe
in Ahimsa and the Mahomedans do not.

These thoughts are put into our minds
by selﬁsh and false religious teachers. The English put the ﬁnishing
touch. They have habit of writing history; they pretend to study the manners
and customs of all peoples. God has given us a limited mental capacity, but
they usurp the function of the Godhead and indulge in novel experiments. They
write about their own researches in most laudatory terms and hypnotize us into believing
them. We in our ignorance then fall at their feet.

Those who do not wish to misunderstand
thing may read up the Koran, and they will ﬁnd therein hundreds of
passages acceptable to the Hindus; and the Bhagavadgita contains passages to
which not a Mahomedan can take exception. Am I to dislike a Mahomedan because
there are passages in the Koran I do not understand or like? It takes two to
make a quarrel. If I do not want to quarrel with a Mahomedan, the latter will
be powerless to foist a quarrel on me; and, similarly, I should be powerless if
a Mahomedan refuses his assistance to quarrel with me. An arm striking the air
will become disjointed. If everyone will try to understand the core of his own
religion and adhere to it, and will not allow false teachers to dictate to him,
there will be no room left for quarrelling.

READER: But will the
English ever allow the two bodies to join hands?

EDITOR: This question arises out of
your timidity. It betrays our shallowness. If two brothers want to live in peace,
is it possible for a third party to separate them? If they were to listen to
evil counsels we would consider them to be foolish. Similarly, we Hindus and
Mahomedans would have to blame our folly rather than the English, if we allowed
them to put us asunder. A clay pot would break through impact, if not with one
stone, then with another. The way to save the pot is not to keep it away from
the danger point but to bake it so that no stone would break it. We have then
to make our hearts of perfectly baked clay. Then we shall be steeled against
all danger. This can be easily done by the Hindus. They are superior in numbers
; they pretend that they are more educated; they are, therefore, better able to
shield themselves from attack on their amicable relations with the Mahomedans.

There is mutual distrust between the
two communities. The Mahomedans, therefore, ask for certain concessions from
Lord Morley. Why should the Hindus oppose this? If the Hindus desisted, the
English would notice it, the Mahomedans would gradually begin to trust the
Hindus, and brotherliness would be the outcome. We should be ashamed to take
our quarrels to the English. Everyone can ﬁnd out for himself that the
Hindus can lose nothing by desisting. That man who has inspired conﬁdence
in another has never lost anything in this world.

I
do not suggest that the Hindus and the Mahomedans will never ﬁght. Two
brothers living together often do so. We shall sometimes have our heads broken.
Such a thing ought not to be necessary, but all men are not equitable. When
people are in a rage, they do many foolish things. These we have to put up
with. But when we do quarrel, we certainly do not want to engage counsel and
resort to English or any law-courts. Two men ﬁght ; both have their
heads broken, or one only. How shall a third party distribute justice amongst
them? Those who ﬁght may expect to be injured.

XI.

The condition
of India: Lawyers

READER: You tell me that when two men
quarrel they should not go to a law-court. This is astonishing.

EDITOR: Whether you call it
astonishing or not, it is the truth. And your question introduces us to the
lawyers and the doctors. My ﬁrm opinion is that the lawyers have
enslaved India, have accentuated Hindu-Mahomedan dissensions and have conﬁrmed
English authority.

READER: It is easy enough to bring
these charges, but it will be diﬁcult for you to prove them. But for the
lawyers, who would have shown us the road to independence? Who would have
protected the door? Who would have secured justice? For instance, the late
Manomohan Ghose defended many a poor man free of charge. The Congress, which
you have praised so much is dependent for its existence and activity upon the
work of the lawyers. To denounce such an estimable class of men is to spell
injustice, and you are abusing the liberty of the press by decrying lawyers.

EDITOR: At one time I used to think
exactly like you. I have no desire to convince you that they have never done a
single good thing. I honour Mr. Ghose’s memory. It is quite true that he helped
the poor. That the Congress owes the lawyers something is believable. Lawyers
are also men, and there is something good in every man. Whenever instances of
lawyers having done good can be brought forward, it will be found that the good
is due to them as men rather than as lawyers. All I am concerned with is to
show you that the profession teaches immorality ; it is exposed to temptation
from which few are saved.

The Hindus and the Mahomedans have
quarelled. An ordinary man will ask them to forget all about it ; he will tell
them that both must be more or less at fault, and will advise them no longer to
quarrel. But they go to lawyers. The latter’s duty is to side with their
clients and to ﬁnd out ways and arguments in favour of the clients to
which they (the clients) are often strangers. If they do not do so they will be
considered to have degraded their profession. The lawyers, therefore, will, as
a rule, advance quarrels instead of repressing them. Moreover, men take up that
profession, not in order to help others out of their miseries, but to enrich
themselves. It is one of the avenues of becoming wealthy and their interest
exists in multiplying disputes. It is within my knowledge that they are glad
when men have disputes. Petty pleaders actually manufacture them. Their toots,
like so many leeches, suck the blood of the poor people. Lawyers are men who
have little to do. Lazy people, in order to indulge in luxuries, take up such
professions. This is a true statement. Any other argument is a men pretension.
It is the lawyers who have discovered that theirs is an honourable profession.
They frame laws as they frame their own praises. They decide what fees they
will charge and they put on so much side that poor people almost consider them
to be heaven-born.

Why do they
want more fees than common labourers? Why are their requirements greater? In
what way are they more proﬁtable to the country than the labourers? Are
those who do good entitled to greater payment? And, if they have done anything
for the country for the sake of money, how shall it be counted as good?

Those who know anything of the
Hindu-Mahomedan quarrels know that they have been often due to the intervention
of lawyers. Some families have been ruined through them; they have made
brothers enemies. Principalities, having come under the lawyers’ power, have
become loaded with debt. Many have been robbed of their all. Such instances can
be multiplied.

But the greatest injury they have done
to the country is that they have tightened the English grip. Do you think that
it would be possible for the English to carry on their Government without law
courts? It is wrong to consider that courts are established for the beneﬁt
of the people. Those who want to perpetuate their power do so through the
courts. If people were to settle their own quarrels, a third party would not be
able to exercise any authority over them. Truly, men were less unmanly when
they settled their disputes either by ﬁghting or by asking their
relatives to decide for them. They became more unmanly and cowardly when they
resorted to the courts of law. It was certainly a sign of savagery when they
settled their disputes by ﬁghting. Is it any the less so, if I ask a
third party to decide between you and me? Surely, the decision of a third party
is not always right. The parties alone know who is right. We, in our simplicity
and ignorance, imagine that a stranger, by taking our money, gives us justice.

The chief thing, however, to be
remembered is that without lawyers courts could not have been established or
conducted and without the latter the English could not rule.

Supposing,
that there were only English judges, English pleaders and English police, they
could only rule over the English. The English could not do without Indian
judges and Indian pleaders. How the pleaders were made in the ﬁrst
instance and how they were favoured you should understand well. Then you will
have the same abhorrence for the profession that I have. If pleaders were to
abandon their profession, and consider it just as degrading as prostitution,
English rule would break up in a day. They have been instrumental in having the
charge laid against us that we love quarrels and courts as ﬁsh love
water. What I have said with reference to the pleaders necessarily applies to the
judges; they are ﬁrst cousins; and the one gives strength to the other.

XII.

The condition
of India: Doctors

READER: I now understand the lawyers;
the good they may have done is accidental. I feel that profession is certainly
hateful. You, however, drag in the doctors also, how is that?

EDITOR: The views I submit to you are
those I have adopted. They are not original. Western writers have used stronger
terms regarding both lawyers and doctors. One writer has linked the whole
modern system to the Upas tree. Its branches are represented by parasitical
professions, including those of law and medicine, and over the trunk has been
raised the axe of true religion. Immorality is the root of the tree. So you
will see that the views do not come right out of my mind but represent the
combined experiences of many. I was at one time a great lover of the medical
profession. It was my intention to become a doctor for the sake of the country.
I no longer hold that opinion. I now understand why the medicine men (the
vaids) among us have not occupied a very honourable status.

The English have certainly effectively
used the medical profession for holding us. English physicians are known to
have used their profession with several Asiatic potentates for political gain.

Doctors have almost unhinged us.
Sometimes I think that quacks are better than highly qualiﬁed doctors.
Let us consider : the business of a doctor is to take care of the body, or,
properly speaking, not even that. Their business is really to rid the body of
diseases that may afﬂict it. How do these diseases arise? Surely by our
negligence or indulgence. I overeat, I have indigestion. I go to a doctor, he
gives me medicine, I am cured. I overeat again, I take his pills again. Had I
not taken the pills in the ﬁrst instance, I would have suffered the punishments
deserved by me and I would not have overeaten again. The doctor intervened and
helped me to indulge myself. My body thereby certainly felt more at ease; but
my mind became weakened. A continuance of a course of medicine must, therefore,
result in loss of control over the mind.

I have indulged in vice, I contract a
disease, a doctor cures me, the odds are that I shall repeat the vice. Had the
doctor not intervened, nature would have done its work, and I would have
acquired mastrey over myself, would have been freed from vice and would have
become happy.

Hospitals
are institutions for propagating sin. Men take less care of their bodies and immorality
increases. European doctors are the worst of all. For the sake of a mistaken
care of the human body, they kill annually thousands of animals. They practise
vivisection. No religion sanctions this. All say that it is not necessary to
take so many lives for the sake of our bodies.

These doctors
violate our religious instinct. Most of their medical preparations contain
either animal fat or spirituous liquors ; both of these are tabooed by Hindus
and Mahomedans. We may pretend to be civilized, call religious prohibitions a
superstition and wantonly indulge in what we like. The fact remains that the
doctors induce us to indulge, and the result is that we have become deprived of
self-control and have become effeminate. In these cirsumstances, we are unﬁt
to serve the country. To study European medicine is to deepen our slavery.

It
is worth considering why we take up the profession of medicine. It is certainly
not taken up for the purpose of serving humanity. We become doctors so that we
may obtain honours and riches. I have endeavoured to show that there is no real
service of humanity in the profession, and that it is injurious to mankind.
Doctors make a show of their knowledge, and charge exorbitant fees. Their
preparations, which are intrinsically worth a few pence, cost shillings. The
populace, in its credulity and in the hope of ridding itself of some disease,
allows itself to be cheated. Are not quacks then whom we know, better than the
doctors who put on an air of humaneness?

XIII.

What is true
civilization?

READER: You have denounced railways,
lawyers and doctors. I can see that you will discard all machinery. What, then,
is civilization?

EDITOR: The answer to that question is
not difﬁcult. I believe that the civilization India evolved is not to be
beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestors, Rome
went, Greece shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan
has become Westernized; of China nothing can be said; but India is still,
somehow or other, sound at the foundation. The people of Europe learn their
lessons from the writings of the men of Greece or Rome, which exist no longer
in their former glory. In trying to learn from them, the Europeans imagine that
they will avoid the mistakes of Greece and Rome. Such is their pitiable
condition. In the midst of all this India remains immovable and that is her
glory. It is a charge against India that her people are so uncivilized,
ignorant and stolid, that it is not possible to induce them to adopt any
changes. It is a charge really against our merit. What we have tested and found
true on the anvil of experience, we dare not change. Many thrust their advice
upon India, and she remains steady. This is her beauty: it is the sheet-anchor
of our hope.

Civilization is that mode of conduct
which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of
morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over
our mind and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves. The Gujarati equivalent
for civilization means “good conduct”.

If this deﬁnition be correct,
then India, as so many writers have shown, has nothing to learn from anybody
else, and this is as it should be. We notice that the mind is a restless bird;
the more it gets the more it wants, and still remains unsatisﬁed. The
more we indulge our passions the more unbridled they become. Our ancestors,
therefore set a limit to our indulgences. They saw that happiness was largely a
mental condition. A man is not necessarily happy because he is rich, or unhappy
because he is poor. The rich are often seen to be unhappy, the poor to be
happy. Millions will always remain poor. Observing all this, our ancestors
dissuaded us from luxuries and pleasures. We have managed with the same kind of
plough as existed thousands of years ago. We have retained the same kind of
cottages that we had in former times and our indigenous education remains the
same as before. We have had no system of life-corroding competition. Each
followed his own occupation or trade and charged a regulation wage. It was not
that we did not know how to invent machinery, but our forefathers knew that, if
we set our hearts after such things, we would become slaves and lose our moral ﬁbre.
They, therefore, after due deliberation decided that we should only do what we
could with our hands and feet. They saw that our real happiness and health
consisted in a proper use of our hands and feet. They further reasoned that
large cities were a snare and a useless encumbrance and that people would not
be happy in them, that there would be gangs of thieves and robbers,
prostitution and vice ﬂourishing in them and that poor men would be
robbed by rich men. They were, therefore, satisﬁed with small villages.
They saw that kings and their swords were inferior to the sword of ethics, and
they, therefore, and the sovereigns of the earth to be inferior to the Rishis
and the Fakirs. A nation with a constitution like this is ﬁtter to teach
others than to learn from. This nation had courts, lawyers and doctors, but
they were all within bounds. Everybody knew that these professions were not
particularly superior; moreover, these vakils and vaids did not rob people;
they were considered people’s dependants, not their masters. Justice was
tolerably fair. The ordinary rule was to avoid courts. There were no touts to
lure people into them. This evil, too, was noticeable only in and around
capitals. The common people lived independently and followed their agricultural
occupation. They enjoyed true Home Rule.

And where this
cursed modern civilization has not reached, India remains as it was before. The
inhabitants of that part of India will very properly laugh at your newfangled
notions. The English do not rule over them, nor will you ever rule over them.
Those in whose name we speak we do not know, nor do they know us. I would
certainly advise you and those like you who love the motherland to go into the
interior that has yet been not polluted by the railways and to live there for
six months; you might then be patriotic and speak of Home Rule.

Now you see what I consider to be real
civilization. Those who want to change conditions such as I have described are
enemies of the country and are sinners.

READER: It would be all right if India
were exactly as you have described it, but it is also India where there are
hundreds of child widows, where two year old babies are married, where twelve
year old girls are mothers and housewives, where women practise polyandry,
where the practice of Niyoga obtains, where, in the name of religion, girls
dedicate themselves to prostitution, and in the name of religion sheep and
goats are killed. Do you consider these also symbols of the civilization that
you have described?

EDITOR: You make a
mistake. The defects that you have shown are defects. Nobody mistakes them for
ancient civilization. They remain in spite of it. Attempts have always been
made and will be made to remove them. We may utilize the new spirit that is
born in us for purging ourselves of these evils. But what I have described to
you as emblems of modern civilization are accepted as such by its votaries. The
Indian civilization, as described by me, has been so described by its votaries.
In no part of the world, and under no civilization, have all men attained
perfection. The tendency of the Indian civilization is to elevate the moral
being, that of the Western civilization is to propagate immorality. The latter
is godless, the former is based on a belief in God. So understanding and so
believing, it behoves every lover of India to cling to the old Indian
civilization even as a child clings to the mother’s breast.

XIV.

How can India
become free?

READER: I appreciate your views about
civilization. I will have to think over them. I cannot take them in all at
once. What, then, holding the views you do, would you suggest for freeing
India?

EDITOR: I do not expect my views to be
accepted all of a sudden. My duty is to place them before readers like
yourself. Time can be trusted to do the rest. We have already examined the
conditions for freeing India, but we have done so indirectly; we will now do so
directly. It is a world-known maxim that the removal of the cause of a disease
results in the removal of the disease itself. Similarly if the cause of India’s
slavery be removed, India can become free.

READER: If Indian civilization is, as
you say, the best of all, how do you account for India’s slavery?

EDITOR: This civilization is
unquestionably the best, but it is to be observed that all civilizations have
been on their trial. That civilization which is permanent outlives it. Because
the sons of India were found wanting, its civilization has been placed in
jeopardy. But its strength is to be seen in its ability to survive the shock.
Moreover, the whole of India is not touched. Those alone who have been affected
by Western civilization have become enslaved. We measure the universe by our
own miserable foot-rule. When we are slaves, we think that the whole universe
is enslaved. Because we are in an abject condition, we think that the whole of
India is in that condition. As a matter of fact, it is not so, yet it is as
well to impute our slavery to the whole of India. But if we bear in mind the
above fact, we can see that if we become free, India is free. And in this
thought you have a deﬁnition of Swaraj. It is Swaraj when we learn to
rule ourselves. It is, therefore, in the palm of our hands. Do not consider
this Swaraj to be like a dream. There is no idea of sitting still. The Swaraj
that I wish to picture is such that, after we have once realized it, we shall
endeavour to the end of our life-time to persuade others to do likewise. But
such Swaraj has to be experienced, by each one for himself. One drowning man
will never save another. Slaves ourselves, it would be a mere pretension to
think of freeing others. Now you will have seen that it is not necessary for us
to have as our goal the expulsion of the English. If the English become
Indianized, we can accommodate them. If they wish to remain in India along with
their civilization, there is no room for them. It lies with us to bring about
such a state of things.

READER: It is
impossible that Englishmen should ever become Indianized.

EDITOR: To say that is equivalent to
saying that the English have no humanity in them. And it is really beside the
point whether they become so or not. If we keep our own house in order, only
those who are ﬁt to live in it will remain. Others will leave of their
own accord. Such things occur within the experience of all of us.

READER: But it has not occurred in
history.

EDITOR: To believe that what has not
occurred in history will not occur at all is to argue disbelief in the dignity
of man. At any rate, it behoves us to try what appeals to our reason. All
countries are not similarly conditioned. The condition of India is unique. Its
strength is immeasurable. We need not, therefore, refer to the history of other
countries. I have drawn attention to the fact, that when other civilizations
have succumbed, the Indian has survived many a shock.

READER: I cannot follow this. There seems
little doubt that we shall have to expel the English by force of arms. So long
as they are in the country we cannot rest. One of our poets says that slaves
cannot even dream of happiness. We are day by day becoming weakened owing to
the presence of the English. Our greatness is gone; our people look like terriﬁed
men. The English are in the country like a blight which we must remove by every
means.

EDITOR: In your excitement, you have
forgotten all we have been considering. We brought the English, and we keep
them. Why do you forget that our adoption of their civilization makes their
presence in India at all possible? Your hatred against them ought to be
transferred to their civilization. But let us assume that we have to drive away
the English by ﬁghting, how is that to be done?

READER: In the same
way as Italy did it. What was possible for Mazzini and Garibaldi is possible
for us. You cannot deny that they were very great men.

XV.

Italy and India

EDITOR: It is well that you have
instanced Italy. Mazzini was a great and good man; Garibaldi was a great
warrior. Both are adorable; from their lives we can learn much. But the
condition of Italy was different from that of India. In the ﬁrst
instance, the difference between Mazzini and Garibaldi is worth noting.
Mazzini’s ambition was not and has not yet been realized regarding Italy.
Mazzini has shown in his writings on the duty of man that every man must learn
how to rule himself. This has not happened in Italy. Garibaldi did not hold
this view of Mazzini’s. Garibaldi gave, and every Italian took arms. Italy and
Austria had the same civilization; they were cousins in this respect. It was a
matter of tit for tat. Garibaldi simply wanted Italy to be free from the
Austrian yoke. The machinations of Minister Cavour disgrace that portion of the
history of Italy. And what has been the result? If you believe that because
Italians rule Italy the Italian nation is happy, you are grouping in darkness.
Mazzini has shown conclusively that Italy did not become free. Victor Emanuel
gave one meaning to the expression; Mazzini gave another. According to Emanuel,
Cavour and even Garibaldi, Italy meant the King of Italy and his henchmen.
According to Mazzini, it meant the whole of the Italian people, that is, its
agriculturists. Emanuel was only its servant. The Italy of Mazzini still
remains in a state of slavery. At the time of the so-called national war, it
was a game of chess between two rival kings with the people of Italy as pawns.
The working classes in that land are still unhappy. They, therefore, indulge in
assassination, rise in revolt, and rebellion on their part is always expected.
What substantial gain did Italy obtain after the withdrawal of the Austrian
troops? The gain was only nominal. The reforms for the sake of which the war
was supposed to have been undertaken have not yet been granted. The condition
of the people in general still remains the same. I am sure you do not wish to
reproduce such a condition in India. I believe that you want the millions of India
to be happy, not that you want the reins of Government in your hands. If that
be so, we have to consider only one thing : how can the millions obtain
self-rule? You will admit that people under several Indian princes are being
ground down. The latter mercilessly crush them. Their tyranny is greater than
that of the English, and if you want such tyranny in India, then we shall never
agree. My patriotism does not teach me that I am to allow people to be crushed
under the heel of Indian princes if only the English retire. If I have the
power, I should resist the tyranny of Indian princes just as much as that of
the English. By patriotism I mean the welfare of the whole people, and if I
could secure it at the hands of the English, I should bow down my head to them.
If any Englishman dedicated his life to securing the freedom of India,
resisting tyranny and serving the land, I should welcome that Englishman as an
Indian.

Again, India can ﬁght like Italy
only when she has arms. You have not considered this problem at all. The
English are splendidly armed; that does not frighten me, but it is clear that,
to pit ourselves against them in arms, thousands of Indians must be armed. If
such a thing be possible, how many years will it take? Moreover, to arm India
on a large scale is to Europeanize it. Then her condition will be just as
pitiable as that of Europe. This means, in short, that India must accept
European civilization, and if that is what we want, the best thing is that we
have among us those who are so well trained in that civilization. We will then ﬁght
for a few rights, will get what we can and so pass our days. But the fact is
that the Indian nation will not adopt arms, and it is well that it does not.

READER: You are
over-stating the facts. All need not be armed. At ﬁrst, we shall
assassinate a few Englishmen and strike terror; then, a few men who will have
been armed will ﬁght openly. We may have to lose a quarter of a million
men, more or less, but we shall regain our land. We shall undertake guerilla warfare,
and defeat the English.

EDITOR: That is to say, you want to
make the holy land of India unholy. Do you not tremble to think of freeing
India by assassination? What we need to do is to sacriﬁce ourselves. It
is a cowardly thought, that of killing others. Whom do you suppose to free by
assassination? The millions of India do not desire it. Those who are
intoxicated by the wretched modern civilization think these things. Those who
will rise to power by murder will certainly not make the nation happy. Those
who believe that India has gained by Dhingra’s act and other similar acts in
India make a serious mistake. Dhingra was a patriot, but his love was blind. He
gave his body in a wrong way; its ultimate result can only be mischievous.

READER: But you will admit that the
English have been frightened by these murders, and that Lord Morley’s reforms
are due to fear.

EDITOR: The English
are both a timid and a brave nation. England is, I believe, easily inﬂuenced
by the use of gun-power. It is possible that Lord Morley has granted the
reforms through fear, but what is granted under fear can be retained only so
long as the fear lasts.

XVI.

Brute force

READER: This is a new doctrine, that
what is gained through fear is retained only while the fear lasts. Surely, what
is given will not be withdrawn?

EDITOR: Not so. The proclamation of
1857 was given at the end of a revolt, and for the purpose of preserving peace.
When peace was secured and people became simple-minded its full effect was
toned down. If I cease stealing for fear of punishment, I would recommence the
operation as soon as the fear is withdrawn from me. This is almost a universal
experience. We have assumed that we can get men to do things by force and,
therefore, we use force.

READER: Will you not admit that you
are arguing against yourself? You know that what the English obtained in their
own country they obtained by using brute force. I know you have argued that
what they have obtained is useless, but that does not affect my argument. They
wanted useless things and they got them. My point is that their desire was fulﬁlled.
What does it matter what means they adopted? Why should we not obtain our goal,
which is good, by any means whatsoever, even by using violence? Shall I think
of the means when I have to deal with a thief in the house? My duty is to drive
him out anyhow. You seem to admit that we have received nothing, and that we
shall receive nothing by petitioning. Why, then, may we do not so by using
brute force? And, to retain what we may receive we shall keep up the fear by
using the same force to the extent that it may be necessary. You will not ﬁnd
fault with a continuance of force to prevent a child from thrusting its foot
into ﬁre. Somehow or other we have to gain our end.

EDITOR: Your reasoning is plausible.
It has deluded many. I have used similar arguments before now. But I think I
know better now, and I shall endeavour to undeceive you. Let us ﬁrst
take the argument that we are justiﬁed in gaining our end by using brute
force because the English gained theirs by using similar means. It is perfectly
true that they used brute force and that it is possible for us to do likewise,
but by using similar means we can get only the same thing that they got. You
will admit that we do not want that. Your belief that there is no connection
between the means and the end is a great mistake. Through that mistake even men
who have been considered religious have committed grievous crimes. Your
reasoning is the same as saying that we can get a rose through planting a
noxious weed. If I want to cross the ocean, I can do so only by means of a
vessel; if I were to use a cart for that purpose, both the cart and I would
soon ﬁnd the bottom. “As is the God, so is the votary”, is a maxim worth
considering. Its meaning has been distorted and men have gone astray. The means
may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree; and there is just the same
inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the
seed and the tree. I am not likely to obtain the result ﬂowing from the
worship of God by laying myself prostrate before Satan. If, therefore, anyone
were to say : “I want to worship God; it does not matter that I do so by means
of Satan,” it would be set down as ignorant folly. We reap exactly as we sow.
The English in 1833 obtained greater voting power by violence. Did they by
using brute force better appreciate their duty? They wanted the right of
voting, which they obtained by using physical force. But real rights are a
result of performance of duty; these rights they have not obtained. We,
therefore, have before us in English the force of everybody wanting and
insisting on his rights, nobody thinking of his duty. And, where everybody
wants rights, who shall give them to whom? I do not wish to imply that they do
no duties. They don’t perform the duties corresponding to those rights; and as
they do not perform that particular duty, namely, acquire ﬁtness, their
rights have proved a burden to them. In other words, what they have obtained is
an exact result of the means they adapted. They used the means corresponding to
the end. If I want to deprive you of your watch, I shall certainly have to ﬁght
for it; if I want to buy your watch, I shall have to pay you for it; and if I
want a gift, I shall have to plead for it; and, according to the means I
employ, the watch is stolen property, my own property, or a donation. Thus we
see three different results from three different means. Will you still say that
means do not matter?

Now we shall
take the example given by you of the thief to be driven out. I do not agree
with you that the thief may be driven out by any means. If it is my father who
has come to steal I shall use one kind of means. If it is an acquaintance I
shall use another; and in the case of a perfect stranger I shall use a third.
If it is a white man, you will perhaps say you will use means different from
those you will adopt with an Indian thief. If it is a weakling, the means will
be different from those to be adopted for dealing with an equal in physical
strength; and if the thief is armed from top to toe, I shall simply remain
quiet. Thus we have a variety of means between the father and the armed man.
Again, I fancy that I should pretend to be sleeping whether the thief was my
father or that strong armed man. The reason for this is that my father would
also be armed and I should succumb to the strength possessed by either and
allow my things to be stolen. The strength of my father would make me weep with
pity; the strength of the armed man would rouse in me anger and we should
become enemies. Such is the curious situation. From these examples we may not
be able to agree as to the means to be adopted in each case. I myself seem
clearly to see what should be done in all these cases, but the remedy may
frighten you. I therefore hesitate to place it before you. For the time being I
will leave you to guess it, and if you cannot, it is clear you will have to
adopt different means in each case. You will also have seen that any means will
not avail to drive away the thief. You will have to adopt means to ﬁt
each case. Hence it follows that your duty is not to drive away the thief by
any means you like.

Let us proceed a little further. That
well-armed man has stolen your property; you have harboured the thought of his
act; you are ﬁlled with anger; you argue that you want to punish that
rogue, not for your own sake, but for the good of your neighbours; you have
collected a number of armed men, you want to take his house by assault; he is
duly informed of it, he runs away; he too is incensed. He collects his brother
robbers, and sends you a deﬁant message that he will commit robbery in
broad daylight. You are strong, you do not fear him, you are prepared to
receive him. Meanwhile the robber pesters your neighbours. They complain before
you. You reply that you are doing all for their sake, you do not mind that your
own goods have been stolen. Your neighbours reply that the robber never
pestered them before, and that he commenced his depredations only after you
declared hostilities against him. You are between Scylla and Charybdis. You are
full of pity for the poor men. What they say is true. What are you to do? You
will be disgraced if you now leave the robber alone. You therefore, tell the
poor men: “Never mind. Come, my wealth is yours, I will give you arms, I will
teach you how to use them; you should belabour the rogue; don’t you leave him
alone.” And so the battle grows; the robbers increase in numbers; your
neighbours have deliberately put themselves to inconvenience. Thus the result
of wanting to take revenge upon the robber is that you have disturbed your own
peace; you are in perpetual fear of being robbed and assaulted; your courage
has given place to cowardice. If you will patiently examine the argument, you
will see that I have not overdrawn the picture. This is one of the means. Now
let us examine the other. You set this armed robber down as an ignorant
brother; you intend to reason with him at a suitable opportunity: you argue
that he is, after all, a fellow-man; you do not know what prompted him to
steal. You, therefore, decide that, when you can, you will destroy the man’s
motive for stealing. Whilst you are thus reasoning with yourself, the man comes
again to steal. Instead of being angry with him you take pity on him. You think
that this stealing habit must be a disease with him. Henceforth, you,
therefore, keep your doors and windows open, you change your sleeping-place,
and you keep your things in a manner most accessible to him. The robber comes
again and is confused as all this is new to him; nevertheless, he takes away
your things. But his mind is agitated. He inquires about you in the village, he
comes to learn about your broad and loving heart, he repents, he begs your
pardon, returns you your things, and leaves off the stealing habit. He becomes
your servant, and you ﬁnd for him honourable employment. This is the
second method. Thus, you see, different means have brought about totally
different results. I do not wish to deduce from this that robbers will act in
the above manner or that all will have the same pity and love like you, but I
only wish to show that fair means alone can produce fair results, and that, at
least in the majority of cases, if not indeed in all, the force of love and
pity is inﬁnitely greater than the force of arms. There is harm in the
exercise of brute force, never in that of pity.

Now we will
take the question of petitioning. It is a fact beyond dispute that a petition,
without the backing of force is useless. However, the late Justice Ranade used
to say that petitions served a useful purpose because they were a means of
educating people. They give the latter an idea of their condition and warn the
rulers. From this point of view, they are not altogether useless. A petition of
an equal is a sign of courtesy; a petition from a slave is a symbol of his
slavery. A petition backed by force is a petition from an equal and, when he
transmits his demand in the form of a petition, it testiﬁes to his
nobility. Two kinds of force can back petitions. “We shall hurt you if you do
not give this,” is one kind of force; it is the force of arms, whose evil
results we have already examined. The second kind of force can thus be stated;
“If you do not concede our demand, we shall be no longer your petitioners. You
can govern us only so long as we remain the governed; we shall no longer have
any dealings with you.” The force implied in this may be described as
love-force, soul-force, or, more popularly but less accurately, passive resistance.
This force is indestructible. He who uses it perfectly understands his
position. We have an ancient proverb which literally means; “One negative cures
thirty-six diseases.” The force of arms is powerless when matched against the
force of love or the soul.

Now
we shall take your last illustration, that of the child thrusting its foot into
ﬁre. It will not avail you. What do you really do to the child?
Supposing that it can exert so much physical force that it renders you
powerless and rushes into ﬁre, then you cannot prevent it. There are
only two remedies open to you ? either you must kill it in order to prevent it
from perishing in the ﬂames, or you must give your own life because you
do not wish to see it perish before your very eyes. You will not kill it. If
your heart is not quite full of pity, it is possible that you will not
surrender yourself by preceding the child and going into the ﬁre
yourself. You, therefore, helplessly allow it to go into the ﬂames.
Thus, at any rate, you are not using physical force. I hope you will not
consider that it is still physical force, though of a low order, when you would
forcibly prevent the child from rushing towards the ﬁre if you could.
That force is of a different order and we have to understand what it is.

Remember that, in thus preventing the child, you are minding
entirely its own interest, you are exercising authority for its sole beneﬁt.
Your example does not apply to the English. In using brute force against the
English you consult entirely your own, that is the national, interest. There is
no question here either of pity or of love. If you say that the actions of the
English, being evil, represent ﬁre, and that they proceed to their
actions through ignorance, and that therefore they occupy the position of a
child and that you want to protect such a child, then you will have to overtake
every evil action of that kind by whomsoever committed and, as in the case of
the evil child, you will have to sacriﬁce yourself. If you are capable
of such immeasurable pity, I wish you well in its exercise.

XVII.

Passive
resistance

READER: Is there any historical
evidence as to the success of what you have called soul-force or truth-force?
No instance seems to have happened of any nation having risen through soul-force.
I still think that the evil-doers will not cease doing evil without physical
punishment.

EDITOR: The poet Tulsidas has said:
“Of religion, pity, or love, is the root, as egotism of the body. Therefore, we
should not abandon pity so long as we are alive.” This appears to me to be a
scientiﬁc truth. I believe in it as much as I believe in two and two
being four. The force of love is the same as the force of the soul or truth. We
have evidence of its working at every step. The universe would disappear without
the existence of that force. But you ask for historical evidence. It is,
therefore, necessary to know what history means. The Gujarati equivalent means:
“It so happened”. If that is the meaning of history, it is possible to give
copious evidence. But, if it means the doings of the kings and emperors, there
can be no evidence of soul-force or passive resistance in such history. You
cannot expect silver ore in a tin mine. History, as we know it, is a record of
the wars of the world, and so there is a proverb among Englishmen that a nation
which has no history, that is, no wars, is a happy nation. How kings played,
how they became enemies of one another, how they murdered one another, is found
accurately recorded in history, and if this were all that had happened in the
world, it would have been ended long ago. If the story of the universe had
commenced with wars, not a man would have been found alive today. Those people
who have been warred against have disappeared as, for instance, the natives of
Australia of whom hardly a man was left alive by the intruders. Mark, please,
that these natives did not use soul-force in self-defence, and it does not
require much foresight to know that the Australians will share the same fate as
their victims. “Those that take the sword shall perish by the sword.” With us
the proverb is that professional swimmers will ﬁnd a watery grave.

The fact that there are so many men
still alive in the world shows that it is based not on the force of arms but on
the force of truth or love. Therefore, the greatest and most unimpeachable
evidence of the success of this force is to be found in the fact that, in spite
of the wars of the world, it still lives on.

Thousands, indeed tens of thousands,
depend for their existence on a very active working of this force. Little
quarrels of millions of families in their daily lives disappear before the
exercise of this force. Hundreds of nations live in peace. History does not and
cannot take note of this fact. History is really a record of every interruption
of the even working of the force of love or of the soul. Two brothers quarrel;
one of them repents and re-awakens the love that was lying dormant in him; the
two again begin to live in peace; nobody takes note of this. But if the two
brothers, through the intervention of solicitors or some other reason take up
arms or go to law ? which is another form of the exhibition of brute force, ?
their doings would be immediately noticed in the press, they would be the talk
of their neighbours and would probably go down to history. And what is true of
families and communities is true of nations. There is no reason to believe that
there is one law for families and another for nations. History, then, is a
record of an interruption of the course of nature. Soul-force, being natural,
is not noted in history.

READER: According to
what you say, it is plain that instances of this kind of passive resistance
are not to be found in history. It is necessary to understand this passive
resistance more fully. It will be better, therefore, if you enlarge upon it.

EDITOR: Passive resistance is a method
of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by
arms. When I refuse to do a thing that is repugnant to my conscience, I use
soul-force. For instance, the Government of the day has passed a law which is
applicable to me. I do not like it. If by using violence I force the Government
to repeal the law. I am employing what may be termed body-force. If I do not
obey the law and accept the penalty for its breach, I use soul-force. It
involves sacriﬁce of self.

Everybody admits that sacriﬁce
of self is inﬁnitely superior to sacriﬁce of others. Moreover, if
this kind of force is used in a cause that is unjust, only the person using it
suffers. He does not make others suffer for his mistakes. Men have before now
done many things which were subsequently found to have been wrong. No man can
claim that he is absolutely in the right or that a particular thing is wrong
because he thinks so, but it is wrong for him so long as that is his deliberate
judgment. It is therefore meet that he should not do that which he knows to be
wrong, and suffer the consequence whetever it may be. This is the key to the
use of soul-force.

READER: You would then disregard laws
? this is rank disloyalty. We have always been considered a law-abiding nation.
You seem to be going even beyond the extremists. They say that we must obey the
laws that have been passed, but that if the laws be bad, we must drive out the
law-givers even by force.

EDITOR: Whether I go beyond them or
whether I do not is a matter of no consequence to either of us. We simply want
to ﬁnd out what is right and to act accordingly. The real meaning of the
statement that we are a law-abiding nation is that we are passive resisters.
When we do not like certain laws, we do not break the heads of law-givers but
we suffer and do not submit to the laws. That we should obey laws whether good
or bad is a newfangled nation. There was no such thing in former days. The
people disregarded those laws they did not like and suffered the penalties for
their breach. It is contrary to our manhood if we obey laws repugnant to our
conscience. Such teaching is opposed to a religion and means slavery. If the
Government were to ask us to go about without any clothing, should we do so? If
I were a passive resister, I would say to them that I would have nothing to do
with their law. But we have so forgotten ourselves and become so compliant that
we do not mind degrading law.

A man who has realized his manhood, who
fears only God, will fear no one else. Man-made laws are not necessarily
binding on him. Even the Government does not expect any such things from us.
They do not say: “You must do such and such a thing.” but they say: “If you do
not do it, we will punish you.” We are sunk so low that we fancy that it is our
duty and our religion to do what the law lays down. If man will only realize
that it is unmanly to obey laws that are unjust, no man’s tyranny will enslave
him. This is the key to self-rule or home-rule.

It is a superstition and ungodly thing
to believe that an act of a majority binds a minority. Many examples can be
given in which acts of majorities will be found to have been wrong and those of
minorities to have been right. All reforms owe their origin to the initiation
of minorities in opposition to majorities. If among a band of robbers a
knowledge of robbing is obligatory, is a pious man to accept the obligation? So
long as the superstition that men should obey unjust laws exists, so long will
their slavery exist. And a passive resister alone can remove such a
superstition.

To use brute
force, to use gunpowder, is contrary to passive resistance, for it means that
we want our opponent to do by force that which we desire but he does not. And
if such a use of force is justiﬁable, surely he is entitled to do
likewise by us. And so we should never come to an agreement. We may simply
fancy, like the blind horse moving in a circle round a mill, that we are making
progress. Those who believe that they are not bound to obey laws which are
repugnant to their consience have only the remedy of passive resistance open to
them. Any other must lead to disaster.

READER: From what you say I deduce
that passive resistance is a splendid weapon of the weak, but that when they
are strong they may take up arms.

EDITOR: This is gross ignorance.
Passive resistance, that is, soul-force, is matchless. It is superior to the
force of arms. How, then, can it be considered only a weapon of the weak?
Physical-force men are strangers to the courage that is requisite in a passive
resister. Do you believe that a coward can ever disobey a law that he dislikes?
Extremists are considered to be advocates of brute force. Why do they, then,
talk about obeying laws? I do not blame them. They can say nothing else. When
they succeed in driving out the English and they themselves become governors,
they will want you and me to obey their laws. And that is a ﬁtting thing
for their constitution. But a passive resister will say he will not obey a law
that is against his conscience, even though he may be blown to pieces at the
mouth of a cannon.

What do you think? Wherein is courage
required ? in blowing others to pieces from behind a cannon, or with a smiling
face to approach a cannon and be blown to pieces? Who is the true warrior ? he
who keeps death always as a bosom-friend, or he who controls the death of
others? Believe me that a man devoid of courage and manhood can never be a
passive resister.

This however, I will admit : that even
a man weak in body is capable of offering this resistance. One man can offer
it just as well as millions. Both men and women can indulge in it. It does not
require the training of an army; it needs no jiujitsu. Control over the mind is
alone necessary, and when that is attained, man is free like the king of the
forest and his very glance withers the enemy.

Passive resistance is an all-sided
sword, it can be used anyhow; it blesses him who uses it and him against whom
it is used. Without drawing a drop of blood it produces far-reaching results.
It never rusts and cannot be stolen. Competition between passive resisters does
not exhaust. The sword of passive resistance does not require a scabbard. It is
strange indeed that you should consider such a weapon to be a weapon merely of
the weak.

READER: You have said that passive
resistance is a speciality of India. Have cannons never been used in India?

EDITOR: Evidently, in your opinion,
India means its few princes. To me it means its teeming millions on whom
depends the existence of its princes and our own.

Kings will always use their kingly
weapons. To use force is bred in them. They want to command, but those who have
to obey commands do not want guns; and these are in a majority throughout the
would. They have to learn either body-force or soul-force. Where they learn the
former, both the rulers and the ruled become like so many madmen: but where
they learn soul-force, the commands of the rulers do not go beyond the point of
their swords, for true men disregard unjust commands. Peasants have never been
subdued by the sword, and never will be. They do not know the use of the sword,
and they are not frightened by the use of it by others. That nation is great
which rests its head upon death as its pillow. Those who defy death are free
from all fear. For those who are labouring under the delusive charms of
brute-force, this picture is not overdrawn. The fact is that, in India, the
nation at large has generally used passive resistance in all departments of
life. We cease to co-operate with our rulers when they displease us. This is
passive resistance.

I remember an
instance when, in a small principality, the villagers were offended by some
command issued by the prince. The former immediately began vacating the
village. The prince became nervous, apologized to his subjects and withdrew his
command. Many such instances can be found in India. Real Home Rule is possible
only where passive resistance is the guiding force of the people. Any other
rule is foreign rule.

READER: Then you will
say that it is not at all necessary for us to train the body?

EDITOR: I will certainly not say any
such thing. It is difﬁcult to become a passive resister unless the body
is trained. As a rule, the mind, residing in a body that has become weakened by
pampering, is also weak, and where there is no strength of mind there can be no
strength of soul. We shall have to improve our physique by getting rid of
infant marriages and luxurious living. If I were to ask a man with a shattered
body to face a cannon’s mouth I should make a laughingstock of myself.

READER: From what you say, then, it
would appear that it is not a small thing to become a passive resister, and, if
that is so, I should like you to explain how a man may become one.

EDITOR: To become a passive resister
is easy enough but it is also equally difﬁcult. I have known a lad of
fourteen years become a passive resister; I have known also sick people do
likewise: and I have also known physically strong and otherwise happy people
unable to take up passive resistance. After a great deal of experience it seems
to me that those who want to become passive resisters for the service of the
country have to observe perfect chastity, adopt poverty, follow truth, and
cultivate fearlessness.

Chastity is one of the greatest
disciplines without which the mind cannot attain requisite ﬁrmness. A
man who is unchaste loses stamina, becomes emasculated and cowardly. He whose
mind is given over to animal passions is not capable of any great effort. This
can be proved by innumerable instances. What, then, is a married person to do
is the question that arises naturally; and yet it need not. When a husband and
wife gratify the passions. it is no less an animal indulgence on that account.
Such an indulgence, except for perpetuating the race, is strictly prohibited.
But a passive resister has to avoid even that very limited indulgence because
he can have no desire for progeny. A married man, therefore, can observe
perfect chastity. This subject is not capable of being treated at greater
length. Several questions arise: How is one to carry one’s wife with one, what are
her rights, and other similar questions. Yet those who wish to take part in a
great work are bound to solve these puzzles.

Just as there is necessity for
chastity, so is there for poverty. Pecuniary ambition and passive resistance
cannot well go together. Those who have money are not expected to throw it
away, but they are expected to be indifferent about it. They must be prepared
to lose every penny rather than give up passive resistance.

Passive resistance has been described
in the course of our discussion as truth-force. Truth, therefore, has
necessarily to be followed and that at any cost. In this connection. academic
questions such as whether a man may not lie in order to save a life, etc.,
arise, but these questions occur only to those who wish to justify lying. Those
who want to follow truth every time are not placed in such a quandary; and if
they are, they are still saved from a false position.

Passive
resistance cannot proceed a step without fearlessness. Those alone can follow
the path of passive resistance who are free from fear, whether as to their
possessions, false honour. their relatives, the government, bodily injuries or
death.

These
observances are not to be abandoned in the belief that they are difﬁcult.
Nature has implanted in the human breast ability to cope with any difﬁculty
or suffering that may come to man unprovoked. These qualities are worth having,
even for those who do not wish to serve the country. Let there be no mistake,
as those who want to train themselves in the use of arms are also obliged to
have these qualities more or less. Everybody does not become a warrior for the
wish. A would-be warrior will have to observe chastity and to be satisﬁed
with poverty as his lot. A warrior without fearlessness cannot be conceived of.
It may be thought that he would not need to be exactly truthful, but that
quality follows real fearlessness. When a man abandons truth, he does so owing
to fear in some shape or form. The above four attributes, then, need not
frighten anyone. It may be as well here to note that a physical-force man has
to have many other useless qualities which a passive resister never needs. And
you will ﬁnd that whatever extra effort a swordsman needs is due to lack
of fearlessness. If he is an embodiment of the latter, the sword will drop from
his hand that very moment. He does not need its support. One who is free from
hatred requires no sword. A man with a stick suddenly came face to face with a
lion and instinctively raised his weapon in self-defence. The man saw that he
had only prated about fearlessness when there was none in him. That moment he
dropped the stick and found himself free from all fear.

XVIII.

Education

READER: In the whole of our
discussion, you have not demonstrated the necessity for education: we always
complain of its absence among us. We notice a movement for compulsory education
in our country. The Maharaja Gaekwar has introduced it in his territories.
Every eye is directed towards them. We bless the Maharaja for it. Is all this
effort then of no use ?

EDITOR: If we consider our
civilization to be the highest, I have regretfully to say that much of the
effort you have described is of no use. The motive of the Maharaja and other
great leaders who have been working in this direction is perfectly pure. They,
therefore, undoubtedly deserve great praise. But we cannot conceal from
ourselves the result that is likely to ﬂow from their effort.

What is the meaning of education ?’ It
simply means a knowledge of letters. It is merely an instrument, and an
instrument may be well used or abused. The same instrument that may be used to
cure a patient may be used to take his life, and so may a knowledge of letters.
We daily observe that many men abuse it and very few make good use of it; and
if this is a correct statement, we have proved that more harm has been done by
it than good.

The ordinay meaning of education is a
knowledge of letters. To teach boys reading, writing and arithmetic is called
primary education. A peasant earns his bread honestly. He has ordinary
knowledge of the world. He knows fairly well how he should behave towards his
parents, his wife, his children and his fellow villagers. He understands and
observes the rules of morality. But he cannot write his own name. What do you
propose to do by giving him a knowledge of letters? Will you add an inch to his
happiness ? Do you wish to make him discontented with his cottage or his lot?
And even if you want to do that, he will not need such an education. Carried
away by the ﬂood of western thought we came to the conclusion, without
weighing pros and cons, that we should give this kind of education to the
people.

Now let us take higher education. I
have learned Geography, Astronomy, Algebra, Geometry, etc. What of that? In
what way have I beneﬁted myself or those around me? Why have I learned
these things? Professor Huxley has thus deﬁned education: “That man I
think has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his
body is the ready servant of his will and does with ease and pleasure all the
work that as a mechanism it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold,
logic engine with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working
order...whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the fundamental truths of
nature . . . whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the
servant of a tender conscience . . .who has learnt to hate all vileness and to
respect others as himself. Such a one and no other, I conceive, has had a
liberal education, for he is in harmony with nature. He will make the best of
her and she of him.”

If this is true education. I
must emphatically say that the sciences I have enumerated above I have a never
been able to use for controlling my senses. Therefore, whether you take
elementary education or higher education, it is not required for the main
thing. It does not make men of us. It does not enable us to do our duty.

READER: If that is so, I shall have to ask you another question.
What enables you to tell all these things to me ? If you had not received
higher education, how would you have been able to explain to me the things that
you have?

EDITOR: You have spoken well. But my answer is simple: I do not
for one moment believe that my life would have been wasted, had I not received
higher or lower education. Nor do I consider that I necessarily serve because I
speak. But I do desire to serve and in endeavouring to fulﬁl that
desire, I make use of the education I have received. And, if I am making good
use of it, even then it is not for the millions, but I can use it only for such
as you, and this supports my contention. Both you and I have come under the
bane of what is mainly false education. I claim to have become free from its
ill effect, and I am trying to give you the beneﬁt of my experience and
in doing so, I am demonstrating the rottenness of this education.

Moreover, I have not run down a knowledge of letters in all
circumstances. All I have now shown is that we must not make of it a fetish. It
is not our Kamadhuk. In its place it can be of use and it has its place when we
have brought our senses under subjection and put our ethics on a ﬁrm
foundation. And then. if we feel inclined to receive that education, we may
make good use of it. As an ornament it is likely to sit well on us. It now
follows that it is not necessary to make this education compulsory. Our ancient
school system is enough. Character building has the ﬁrst place in it and
that is primary education. A building erected on that foundation will last.

READER: Do I then understand that you do not consider English
education necessary for obtaining Home Rule ?

EDITOR: My answer is yes and no. To give millions a knowledge of
English is to enslave them. The foundation that Macaulay laid of education has
enslaved us. I do not suggest that he has any such intention, but that has been
the result. Is it not a sad commentary that we should have to speak of Home
Rule in a foreign tongue?

And it is worthy of note that the systems which the
Europeans have discarded are the systems in vogue among us. Their learned men
continually make changes. We ignorantly adhere to their cast-off systems. They
are trying each division to improve its own status. Wales is a small portion of
England. Great efforts are being made to revive a knowledge of Welsh among
Welshmen. The English Chancellor, Mr. Lloyd George is taking a leading part in
the movement to make Welsh children speak Welsh. And what is our condition? We
write to each other in faulty English, and from this even our M.A.s are not
free; our best thoughts are expressed in English; the proceedings of our
Congress are conducted in English; our best newspapers are printed in English.
If this state of things continues for a long time, posterity will ? it is my ﬁrm
opinion ? condemn and curse us.

It is worth
noting that, by receiving English education, we have enslaved the nation.
Hypocrisy, tyranny, etc., have increased; English-knowing Indians have not
hesitated to cheat and strike terror into the people. Now, if we are doing
anything for the people at all, we are paying only a portion of the debt due to
them.

Is it not a painful thing that, if I
want to go to a court of justice, I must employ the English language as a
medium, that when I become a barrister, I may not speak my mother tongue and
that someone else should have to translate to me from my own language? Is not
this absolutely absurd? Is it not a sign of slavery? Am I to blame the English
for it or myself? It is we, the English-knowing Indians, that have enslaved
India. The curse of the nation will rest not upon the English but upon us.

I have told you
that my answer to your last question is both yes and no. I have explained to
you why it is yes. I shall now explain why it is no.

We are so much beset by the disease of
civilization, that we cannot altogether do without English-education. Those who
have already received it may make good use of it wherever necessary. In our
dealings with the English people, in our dealings with our own people, when we
can only correspond with them through that language, and for the purpose of
knowing how disgusted they (the English) have themselves become with their
civilization, we may use or learn English, as the case may be. Those who have
studied English will have to teach morality to their progeny through their
mother tongue and to teach them another Indian language; but when they have
grown up, they may learn English, the ultimate aim being that we should not
need it. The object of making money thereby should be eschewed. Even in learning
English to such a limited extent we shall have to consider what we should learn
through it and what we should not. It will be necessary to know what sciences
we should learn. A little thought should show you that immediately we cease to
care for English degrees, the rulers will prick up their ears.

READER: Then what
education shall we give ?

EDITOR: This has been somewhat
considered above, but we will consider it a little more. I think that we have
to improve all our languages. What subjects we should learn through them need
not be elaborated here. Those English books which are valuable, we should
translate into the various Indian languages. We should abandon the pretension
of learning many sciences. Religious, that is ethical, education will occupy
the ﬁrst place. Every cultured Indian will know in addition to his own
provincial language, if a Hindu, Sanskrit ; if a Mahomedan, Arabic ; if a
Parsee, Persian ; and all, Hindi. Some Hindus should know Arabic and Persian ;
some Mahomedans and Parsees, Sanskrit. Several Northerners and Westerners
should learn Tamil. A universal language for India should be Hindi, with the
option of writing it in Persian or Nagari characters. In order that the Hindus
and the Mahomedans may have closer relations, it is necessary to know both the
characters. And, if we can do this, we can drive the English language out of
the ﬁeld in a short time. All this is necessary for us, slaves. Through
our slavery the nation has been enslaved, and it will be free with our freedom.

READER: The question
of religious education is very difﬁcult.

EDITOR: Yet we cannot
do without it. India will never be godless. Rank atheism cannot ﬂourish
in this land. The task is indeed difﬁcult. My head begins to turn as I
think of religious education. Our religious teachers are hypocritical and selﬁsh;
they will have to be approached. The Mullas, the Dasturs and the Brahmins hold
the key in their hands, but if thev will not have the good sense, the energy
that we have derived from English education will have to be devoted to
religious education. This is not very difﬁcult. Only the fringe of the
ocean has been polluted and it is those who are within the fringe who alone
need cleansing. We who come under this category can even cleanse ourselves
because my remarks do not apply to the millions. In order to restore India to
its pristine condition, we have to return to it. In our own civilization there
will naturally be progress, retrogression, reforms, and reactions; but one
effort is required, and that is to drive out Western civilization. All else
will follow.

XIX.

Machinery

READER: When you speak of driving out
Western civilization, I suppose you will also say that we want no machinery.

EDITOR: By raising this question, you
have opened the wound I have received. When I read Mr. Dutt’s Economic History
of India. I wept ; and as I think of it again my heart sickens. It is machinery
that has impoverished India. It is difﬁcult to measure the harm that
Manchester has done to us. It is due to Manchester that Indian handicraft has
all but disappeared.

But I make a mistake. How can
Manchester be blamed ? We wore Manchester cloth and this is why Manchester wove
it. I was delighted when I read about the bravery of Bengal. There were no
clothmills in that presidency. They were, therefore, able to restore the
original hand-weaving occupation. It is true Bengal encourages the
mill-industry of Bombay. If Bengal had proclaimed a boycott of all machine-made
goods, it would have been much better.

Machinery has begun to desolate Europe.
Ruination is now knocking at the English gates. Machinery is the chief symbol
of modern civilization ; it represents a great sin.

The workers in the mills of Bombay have
become slaves. The condition of the women working in the mills is shocking.
When there were no mills, these women were not starving. If the machinery craze
grows in our country, it will become an unhappy land. It may be considered a
heresy, but I am bound to say that it were better for us to send money to
Manchester and to use ﬂimsy Manchester cloth than to multiply mills in
India. By using Manchester cloth we only waste our money ; but by reproducing
Manchester in India, we shall keep our money at the price of our blood, because
our very moral being will be sapped, and I call in support of my statement the
very mill-hands as witnesses. And those who have amassed wealth out of
factories are not likely to be better than other rich men. It would be folly to
assume that an Indian Rockefeller would be better than the American
Rockefeller. Impoverished India can become free, but it will be hard for any
India made rich through immorality to regain its freedom. I fear we shall have
to admit that moneyed men support British rule ; their interest is bound up
with its stability. Money renders a man helpless. The other thing which is
equally harmful is sexual vice. Both are poison. A snake-bite is a lesser
poison than these two, because the former merely destroys the body but the
latter destroy body, mind and soul. We need not, therefore, be pleased with the
prospect of the growth of the mill-industry.

READER: Are the
mills, then, to be closed down ?

EDITOR: That is difﬁcult.
It is no easy task to do away with a thing that is established. We, therefore,
say that the non-beginning of a thing is supreme wisdom. We cannot condemn
mill-owners ; we can but pity them. It would be too much to expect them to give
up their mills, but we may implore them not to increase them. If they would be
good they would gradually contract their business. They can establish in
thousands of households the ancient and sacred handlooms and they can buy out
the cloth that may be thus woven. Whether the mill-owners do this or not,
people can cease to use machine-made goods.

READER: You have so
far spoken about machine-made cloth, but there are innumerable machine-made
things. We have either to import them or to introduce machinery into our
country.

EDITOR: Indeed, our gods even are made
in Germany. What need, then, to speak of matches, pins and glassware? My answer
can be only one. What did India do before these articles were introduced?
Precisely the same should be done today. As long as we cannot make pins without
machinery so long will we do without them. The tinsel splendour of glassware we
will have nothing to do with, and we will make wicks, as of old, with
home-grown cotton and use handmade earthen saucers for lamps. So doing, we
shall save our eyes and money and support Swadeshi and so shall we attain Home
Rule.

It is not to be conceived that all men
will do all these things at one time or that some men will give up all
machine-made things at once. But, if the thought is sound, we shall always ﬁnd
out what we can give up and gradually cease to use it. What a few may do,
others will copy; and the movement will grow like the cocoanut of the
mathematical problem. What the leaders do, the populace will gladly do in turn.
The matter is neither complicated nor difﬁcult. You and I need not wait
until we can carry others with us. Those will be the losers who will not do it,
and those who will not do it, although they appreciate the truth, will deserve
to be called cowards.

READER: What, then,
of the tram-cars and electricity?

EDITOR: This question is now too late.
It signiﬁes nothing. If we are to do without the railways we shall have
to do without the tram-cars. Machinery is like a snake-hole which may contain
from one to a hundred snakes. Where there is machinery there are large cities;
and where there are large cities, there are tram-cars and railways ; and there
only does one see electric light. English villages do not boast of any of these
things. Honest physicians will tell you that where means of artiﬁcial
locomotion have increased, the health of the people has suffered. I remember
that when in a European town there was a scarcity of money, the receipts of the
tramway company, of the lawyers and of the doctors went down and people were
less unhealthy. I cannot recall a single good point in connection with
machinery. Books can be written to demonstrate its evils.

READER: Is it a good point or a bad
one that all you are saying will be printed through machinery?

EDITOR: This is one of those instances
which demonstrate that sometimes poison is used to kill poison. This, then,
will not be a good point regarding machinery. As it expires, the machinery, as
it were, says to us: “Beware and avoid me. You will derive no beneﬁts
from me and the beneﬁt that may accrue from printing will avail only
those who are infected with the machinery-craze.”

Do
not, therefore, forget the main thing. It is necessary to realize that
machinery is bad. We shall then be able gradually to do away with it. Nature
has not provided any way whereby we may reach a desired goal all of a sudden.
If, instead of welcoming machinery as a boon, we should look upon it as an
evil, it would ultimately go.

XX.

Conclusion

READER: From your views I gather that
you would form a third party. You are neither an extremist nor a moderate.

EDITOR: That is a mistake. I do not
think of a third party at all. We do not all think alike. We cannot say that
all the moderates hold identical views. And how can those who want only to
serve have a party? I would serve both the moderates and the extremists. Where
I differ from them, I would respectfully place my position before them and
continue my service.

READER: What, then,
would you say to both the parties?

EDITOR: I would say to the extremists:
“I know that you want Home Rule for India; it is not to be had for your asking.
Everyone will have to take it for himself. What others get for me is not Home
Rule but foreign rule; therefore, it would not be proper for you to say that
you have obtained Home Rule if you have merely expelled the English. I have
already described the true nature of Home Rule. This you would never obtain by
force of arms. Brute-force is not natural to Indian soil. You will have,
therefore, to rely wholly on soul-force. You must not consider that violence is
necessary at any stage for reaching our goal.”

I would say to the moderates: “Mere
petitioning is derogatory; we thereby confess inferiority. To say that British
rule is indispensable, is almost a denial of the Godhead. We cannot say that
anybody or anything is indispensable except God. Moreover, common sense should
tell us that to state that, for the time being, the presence of the English in
India is a necessity, is to make them conceited.

“If the English vacated India, bag and
baggage, it must not be supposed that she would be widowed. It is possible that
those who are forced to observe peace under their pressure would ﬁght
after their withdrawal. There can be no advantage in suppressing an eruption;
it must have its vent. If, therefore, before we can remain at peace, we must ﬁght
amongst ourselves, it is better that we do so. There is no occasion for a third
party to protect the weak. It is this so-called protection which has unnerved
us. Such protection can only make the weak weaker. Unless we realize this, we
cannot have Home Rule. I would paraphrase the thought of an English divine and
say that anarchy under Home Rule were better than orderly foreign rule. Only,
the meaning that the learned divine attached to Home Rule is different from
Indian Home Rule according to my conception. We have to learn, and to teach
others, that we do not want the tyranny of either English rule or Indian rule.”

If this idea were carried out, both the
extremists and the moderates could join hands. There is no occasion to fear or
distrust one another.

READER: What, then, would you say to
the English ?

EDITOR: To them I would respectfully
say: “I admit you are my rulers. It is not necessary to debate the question
whether, you hold India by the sword or by my consent. I have no objection to
your remaining in my country, but although you are the rulers, you will have to
remain as servants of the people. It is not we who have to do as you wish, but
it is you who have to do as we wish. You may keep the riches that you have
drained away from this land, but you may not drain riches henceforth. Your
function will be, if you so wish, to police India; you must abandon the idea of
deriving any commercial beneﬁt from us. We hold the civilization that
you support to be the reverse of civilization. We consider our civilization to
be far superior to yours. If you realize this truth, it will be to your
advantage and, if you do not, according to your own proverb, you should only
live in our country in the same manner as we do. You must not do anything that
is contrary to our religions. It is your duty as rulers that for the sake of
the Hindus you should eschew beef, and for the sake of Mahomedans you should
avoid bacon and ham. We have hitherto said nothing because we have been cowed
down, but you need not consider that you have not hurt our feelings by your
conduct. We are not expressing our sentiments either through base selﬁshness
or fear, but because it is our duty now to speak out boldly. We consider your
schools and law courts to be useless. We want our own ancient schools and
courts to be restored. The common language of India is not English but Hindi.
You should, therefore, learn it. We can hold communication with you only in our
national language.

“We cannot tolerate the idea of your
spending money on railways and the military. We see no occasion for either. You
may fear Russia; we do not. When she comes we shall look after her. If you are
with us, we may then receive her jointly. We do not need any European cloth. We
shall manage with articles produced and manufactured at home. You may not keep
one eye on Manchester and the other on India. We can work together only if our
interests are identical.

“This has not been said to you in
arrogance. You have great military resources. Your naval power is matchless. If
we wanted to ﬁght with you, on your own ground, we should be unable to
do so, but if the above submissions be not acceptable to you, we cease to play
the part of the ruled. You may, if you like, cut us to pieces. You may shatter
us at the cannon’s mouth. If you act contrary to our will, we shall not help
you; and without our help, we know that you cannot move one step forward.

“It is likely that you will laugh at
all this in the intoxication of your power. We may not be able to disillusion
you at once ; but if there be any manliness in us, you will see shortly that
your intoxication is suicidal and that your laugh at our expense is an
aberration of intellect. We believe that at heart you belong to a religious
nation. We are living in a land which is the source of religions. How we came
together need not be considered, but we can make mutual good use of our
relations.

“You,
English, who have come to India are not good specimens of the English nation,
nor can we, almost half-Anglicized Indians, be considered good specimens of the
real Indian nation. If the English nation were to know all you have done, it
would oppose many of your actions. The mass of the Indians have had few
dealings with you. If you will abandon your so-called civilization and search
into your own scriptures, you will ﬁnd that our demands are just. Only
on condition of our demands being fully satisﬁed may you remain in India
; and if you remain under those conditions, we shall learn several things from
you and you will learn many from us. So doing we shall beneﬁt each other
and the world. But that will happen only when the root of our relationship is
sunk in a religious soil.”

READER: What will you
say to the nation?

EDITOR: Who is the nation?

READER: For our purposes it is the
nation that you and I have been thinking of, that is those of us who are
affected by European civilization, and who are eager to have Home Rule.

EDITOR: To these I would say, “It is
only those Indians who are imbued with real love who will be able to speak to
the English in the above strain without being frightened, and only those can be
said to be so imbued who conscientiously believe that Indian civilization is
the best and that the European is a nine days’ wonder. Such ephemeral
civilizations have often come and gone and will continue to do so. Those only
can be considered to be so imbued who, having experienced the force of the soul
within themselves, will not cower before brute-force, and will not, on any account,
desire to use brute-force. Those only can be considered to have been so imbued
who are intensely dissatisﬁed with the present pitiable condition,
having already drunk the cup of poison.

“If there be only one such Indian, he
will speak as above to the English and the English will have to listen to him.

“These are not demands, but they show
our mental state. We shall get nothing by asking; we shall have to take what we
want, and we need the requisite strength for the effort and that strength will
be available to him only who will act thus:

1.
He
will only on rare occasions make use of the English language;

2.
If
a lawyer, he will give up his profession, and take up a handloom;

3.
If
a lawyer, he will devote his knowledge to enlightening both his people and the
English;

4.
If
a lawyer, he will not meddle with the quarrels between parties but will give up
the courts, and from his experience induce the people to do likewise;

5.
If
a lawyer, he will refuse to be a judge, as he will give up his profession;

6.
If
a doctor, he will give up medicine, and understand that rather than mending
bodies, he should mend souls;

7.
If
a doctor, he will understand that no matter to what religion he belongs, it is
better that bodies remain diseased rather than that they are cured through the
instrumentality of the diabolical vivisection that is practised in European
schools of medicine;

8.
Although
a doctor, he will take up a hand-loom, and if any patients come to him, will
tell them the cause of their diseases, and will advise them to remove the cause
rather than pamper them by giving useless drugs ; he will understand that if by
not taking drugs, perchance the patient dies, the world will not come to grief
and that he will have been really merciful to him;

9.
Although
a wealthy man, yet regardless of his wealth, he will speak out his mind and
fear no one;

10.
If
a wealthy man, he will devote his money to establishing hand-looms, and
encourage others to use hand-made goods by wearing them himself;

11.
Like
every other Indian, he will know that this is a time for repentance, expiation
and mourning;

12.
Like
every other Indian, he will know that to blame the English is useless, that
they came because of us, and remain also for the same reason, and that they
will either go or change their nature only when we reform ourselves;

13.
Like
others, he will understand that at a time of mourning, there can be no
indulgence, and that, whilst we are in a fallen state, to be in gaol or in banishment
is much the best:

14.
Like
others, he will know that it is superstition to imagine it necessary that we
should guard against being imprisoned in order that we may deal with the
people;

15.
Like
others, he will know that action is much better than speech; that it is our
duty to say exactly what we think and face the consequences and that it will be
only then that we shall be able to impress anybody with our speech;

16.
Like
others, he will understand that we shall become free only through suffering;

17.
Like
others, he will understand that deportation for life to the Andamans is not
enough expiation for the sin of encouraging European civilization:

18.
Like
others, he will know that no nation has risen without suffering; that, even in
physical warfare, the true test is suffering and not the killing of others,
much more so in the warfare of passive resistance;

19.
Like
others, he will know that it is an idle excuse to say that we shall do a thing
when the others also do it: that we should do what we know to be right, and that
others will do it when they see the way; that when I fancy a particular
delicacy, I do not wait till others taste it: that to make a national effort
and to suffer are in the nature of delicacies; and that to suffer under
pressure is no suffering.”

READER: This is a
large order. When will all carry it out?

EDITOR: You make a mistake. You and I
have nothing to do with the others. Let each do his duty. If I do my duty, that
is, serve myself, I shall be able to serve others. Before I leave you, I will rake
the liberty of repeating:

1.
Real
home-rule is self-rule or self-control.

2.
The
way to it is passive resistance: that is soul-force or love-force.

3.
In
order to exert this force, Swadeshi in every sense is necessary.

4.
What
we want to do should be done, not because we object to the English or because
we want to retaliate but because it is our duty to do so. Thus, supposing that
the English remove the salt-tax, restore our money, give the highest posts to
Indians, withdraw the English troops, we shall certainly not use their
machine-made goods, nor use the English language, nor many of their industries.
It is worth noting that these things are, in their nature, harmful; hence we do
not want them. I bear no enmity towards the English but I do towards their
civilization.

In my opinion, we have used the term “Swaraj” without
understanding its real signiﬁcance. I have endeavoured to explain it as
I understand it, and my conscience testiﬁes that my life henceforth is
dedicated to its attainment.

Part II

Appendices

I.

Some Authorithies

The following books are recommended
for perusal to follow up the study of the foregoing: The Kingdom of God is
Within you: Tolstoy. What Is Art?: Tolstoy. The Slavery of Our
Times: Tolstoy. The First Step: Tolstoy. How Shall We Escape?:
Tolstoy. Letter to a Hindu: Tolstoy. The White Slaves of England:
Sherard. Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure: Carpenter. The Fallacy of
Speed: Taylor. A New Crusade: Blount. On the Duty of Civil
Disobedience: Thoreau. Life Without Principle: Thoreau. Unto This
Last: Ruskin. A Joy For Ever: Ruskin. Duties of Man: Mazzini.
Defence and Death of Socrates: Plato. Paradoxes of Civilisation:
Max Nordau. Poverty and Un-British Rule in India: Naoroji. Economic
History of India: Dutt. Village Communities: Maine.

II.

Testimonies by
eminent men

The following
extracts from Mr Alfred Webb’s valuable collection, if the testimony given
therein be true, show that the ancient Indian civilisation has little to learn
from the modern:

Victor Cousin (1792-1867) Founder of
systematic eclecticism in philosophy

“On the other
hand, when we read with attention the poetical and philosophical movements of
the East, above all, those of India, which are beginning to spread in Europe,
we discover there so many truths, and truths so profound, and which make such a
contrast with the meanness of the results at which the European genius has
sometimes stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before that of the
East, and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the
highest philosophy.”

J. Seymour Keay, MP Banker in India and
India agent (writing in 1883)

“It
cannot be too well understood that our position in India has never been in any
degree that of civilians bringing civilisation to savage races. When we landed
in India we found there a hoary civilisation, which during the progress of
thousands of years had ﬁtted itself into the character and adjusted
itself to the wants of highly intellectual races. The civilisation was not
perfunctory, but universal and all-pervading — furnishing the country not only
with political systems, but with social and domestic institutions of the most
ramiﬁed description. The beneﬁcent nature of these institutions
as a whole may be judged of from their effects on the character of he Hindu
race. Perhaps there are no other people in the world who show so much in their
characters the advantageous effects of their own civilisation. They are shrewd
in business, acute in reasoning, thrifty, religious, sober, charitable,
obedient to parents, referential to old age, amiable, law-abiding,
compassionate towards the helpless, and patient under suffering.”

Friedrich Max
Mueller, LLD

“If I were to ask myself from what
literature we here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on
the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may
draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more
perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life,
not for this life only, but a transﬁgured and eternal life — again I
should point to India.”

Michael
G. Mulhall, FRSS Statistics (1899)

Prison
population per 100,000 of inhabitants:

Several
European States 100 to 230

England
and Wales 190

India
38

Dictionary
of Statistics, Michael G. Mulhall, FRSS: Routledge and Sons, 1899.

Colonel Thomas Munro Thirty-two years’
service in India

“If a good system of agriculture,
unrivalled manufacturing skill, a capacity to produce whatever can contribute
to convenience or luxury; schools established in every village, for teaching
reading, writing, and arithmetic; the general practice of hospitality and
charity among each other; and above all a treatment of the female sex, full of
conﬁdence, respect and delicacy, are among the signs which denote a
civilised people, then the Hindus are not inferior to the nations of Europe;
and if civilisation is to become an article of trade between the two countries,
I am convinced that this country [England] will gain by the import cargo.”

Frederick von Schlegel

“It
cannot be denied that the early Indians possessed a knowledge of the true God;
all their writings are replete with sentiments and expressions, noble, clear,
and severely grand, as deeply conceived and reverently expressed as in any
human language in which men have spoken of their God. Among nations possessing
indigenous philosophy and metaphysics, together with an innate relish for these
pursuits, such as at present characterises Germany, and, in olden times, was
the proud distinction of Greece, Hindustan holds the ﬁrst rank in point
of time”.

Sir William
Wedderburn, Bart.

The Indian
village has thus for centuries remained a bulwark against political disorder,
and the home of the simple domestic and social virtues. No wonder, therefore,
that philosophers and historians have always dwelt lovingly on this ancient
institution which is the natural social unit and the best type of rural life —
self-contained, industries peace-loving, conservative in the best sense of the
word. I think you will agree with me that there is much that is both
picturesque and attractive in this glimpse of social and domestic life in an
Indian village. It is a harmless and happy form of human existence. Moreover,
it is not without good practical outcome.”

I.
Young, Secretary, Sassoon Mechanics’ Institutes (within recent years)

“Those races
[the Indian], viewed from a moral aspect, are perhaps the most remarkable
people in the world. They breathe an atmosphere of moral purity, which cannot
but excite admiration, and this is especially the case with the poorer
classes, who, notwithstanding the privations of their humble lot, appear to be
happy and contented. True children of nature, they live on from day to day,
taking no thought of tomorrow, and thankful for the simple fare which
Providence has provided for them. It is curious to witness the spectacle of
coolies of both sexes returning home at night-fall after a hard day’s work
often lasting from sunrise to sunset. In spite of fatigue from the effects of
the unremitting toil, they are for the most part gay and animated, conversing
cheerfully together and occasionally breaking into snatches of light-hearted
song. Yet what awaits them on their return to the hovels which they call home?
A dish of rice for food, and the ﬂoor for a bed. Domestic felicity
appears to be the rule among the Natives, and this is the more strange when the
customs of marriage are taken into account, parents arranging all such matters.
Many Indian households afford examples of the married state in its highest
degree of perfection. This may be due to the teachings of the Shastras, and to
the strict injunctions which they inculcate with regard to marital obligations;
but it is no exaggeration to say that husbands are generally devotedly attached
to their wives, and in many instances the latter have the most exalted
conception of their duties towards their husbands.”

Abbe J. A. Dubois, Missionary in Mysore
(extracts from a letter dated Seringapatam 15th December, 1820)

“The authority of married women within
their houses is chieﬂy exerted in preserving good order and peace among
the persons who compose their families; and a great many among them discharge
this important duty with a prudence and a discretion which have scarcely a
parallel in Europe. I have known families composed of between thirty and forty
persons, or more, consisting of grown sons and daughters, all married and all
having children, living together under the superintendence of an old matron —
their mother or mother-in-law. The latter, by good management, and by accommodating
herself to the temper of the daughters-in-law, by using, according to
circumstances, ﬁrmness or forbearance, succeeded in preserving peace and
harmony during many years amongst so many females, who had all jarring
interests, and still more jarring tempers. I ask you whether it should be
possible to attain the same end, in the same circumstances, in our countries,
where it is scarcely possible to make two women living under the same roof to
agree together.

In fact, there is perhaps no kind of honest employment in a
civilised country in which the Hindu females have not a due share. Besides the
management of the household, and the care of the family, which (as already
noticed) is under their control, the wives and daughters of husbandmen attend and
assist their husbands and fathers in the labours of agriculture. Those of
tradesmen assist theirs in carrying on their trade. Merchants are attended and
assisted by theirs in their shops. Many females are shopkeepers on their own
account; and without a knowledge of the alphabet or of the decimal scale, they
keep by other means their accounts in excellent order, and are considered as
still shrewder than the males themselves in their commercial dealings.”