Freedom's Battle. Mohandas K. Gandhi

the wrong track

       The Congress Constitution

       Swaraj in nine months

       The Attainment of Swaraj

V. Hind Swaraj

       Table of Contents

       The Hindus and the Mahomedans

       Hindu Mahomedan unity

       Hindu Muslim unity

VI. Treatment of the Depressed Classes

       Table of Contents

       Depressed Classes

       Amelioration of the depressed classes

       The Sin of Untouchability

VII. Treatment of Indians Abroad

       Table of Contents

       Indians abroad

       Indians overseas

       Pariahs of the Empire

VIII. Non Cooperation

       Table of Contents

       Non cooperation

       Mr. Montagu on the Khilafat Agitation

       At the call of the country

       Non cooperation explained

       Religious Authority for non cooperation

       The inwardness of non cooperation

       A missionary on non cooperation

       How to work non cooperation

       Speech at Madras

       Speech at Trichinopoly

       Speech at Calicut

       Speech at Mangalore

       Speech at Bexwada

       The Congress

       Who is disloyal

       Crusade against non cooperation

       Speech at Muxafarbail

       Ridicule replacing Repression

       The Viceregal Pronouncement

       From Ridicule to ?

       To every Englishman in India

       One step enough for me

       The need for humility

       Some Questions Answered

       Pledges broken

       More Objections answered

       Mr. Pennington's Objections Answered

       Some Doubts

       Rejoinder

       Two Englishmen Reply

       Letter to the Viceroy, Renunciation of Medals

       Letter to H.R.H. The Duke of Connaught

       The Greatest Thing

       Mahatma Gandhi's Statement

IX. Written Statement

       Table of Contents

      I owe it perhaps to the Indian public and to the public in England to placate which this prosecution is mainly taken up that I should explain why from a staunch loyalist and co-operator I have become an uncompromising disaffectionist and non-co-operator. To the Court too I should say why I plead guilty to the charge of promoting disaffection towards the Government established by law in India. My public life began in 1893 in South Africa in troubled weather. My first contact with British authority in that country was not of a happy character. I discovered that as a man and as an Indian I had no rights. On the contrary I discovered that I had no rights as a man because I was an Indian.

      But I was not baffled. I thought that this treatment of Indians was an excrescence upon a system that was intrinsically and mainly good. I gave the Government my voluntary and hearty co-operation, criticising it fully where I felt it was faulty but never wishing its destruction.

      Consequently when the existence of the Empire was threatened in 1899 by the Boer challenge, I offered my services to it, raised a volunteer ambulance corps and served at several actions that took place for the relief of Ladysmith. Similarly in 1906 at the time of the Zulu revolt I raised a stretcher-bearer party and served till the end of the 'rebellion'. On both these occasions I received medals and was even mentioned in despatches. For my work in South Africa I was given by Lord Hardinge a Kaiser-i-Hind Gold Medal. When the war broke out in 1914 between England and Germany I raised a volunteer ambulance corps in London consisting of the then resident Indians in London, chiefly students. Its work was acknowledged by the authorities to be valuable. Lastly in India when a special appeal was made at the War Conference in Delhi in 1917 by Lord Chelmsford for recruits, I struggled at the cost of my health to raise a corps in Kheda and the response was being made when the hostilities ceased and orders were received that no more recruits were wanted. In all those efforts at service I was actuated by the belief that it was possible by such services to gain a status of full equality in the Empire for my countrymen.

      The first shock came in the shape of the Rowlalt Act a law designed to rob the people of all real freedom. I felt called upon to lead an intensive agitation against it. Then followed the Punjab horrors beginning with the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh and culminating in brawling orders, public floggings and other indescribable humiliations, I discovered too that the plighted word of the Prime Minister to the Mussalmans of India regarding the integrity of Turkey and the holy places of Islam was not likely to be fulfilled. But in spite of the foreboding and the grave warnings of friends, at the Amritsar Congress in 1919 I fought for co-operation and working the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, hoping that the Prime Minister would redeem his promise to the Indian Mussalmans, that the Punjab wound would be healed and that the reforms inadequate and unsatisfactory though they were, marked a new era of hope in the life of India. But all that hope was shattered. The Khilafat promise was not to be redeemed. The Punjab crime was white-washed and most culprits went not only unpunished but remained in service and some continued to draw pensions from the Indian revenue, and in some cases were even rewarded. I saw too that not only did the reforms not mark a change of heart, but they were only a method of further draining India of her wealth and of prolonging her servitude.

      I came reluctantly to the conclusion that the British connection had made India more helpless than she ever was before, politically and economically. A disarmed India has no power of resistance against any aggressor if she wanted to engage in an armed conflict with him. So much is this the case that some of our best men consider that India must take generations before she can achieve the Dominion status. She has become so poor that she has little power of resisting famines.