Page:Forty Thousand Followers of Gandhi in Prison.djvu/18

 have not grasped the full significance of the non-co-operation movement. To me the beauty of this movement lies in the fact that it is not only a weapon whereby we can force the Bureaucracy to surrender its power, but is also a means whereby we might perfect ourselves and make ourselves fit to exercise that power when we do obtain it. If we have lost our liberty it is because we deserved to lose it, and English domination of India was achieved, not by the strength of England’s arm, but by the weakness of the Indian people. '''The non-co-operation movement aims at removing all the evils inherent in us, and by strengthening ourselves, ipso facto, weaken the forces that have overpowered us. The extent to which we suceedsucceed [sic] in removing the root cause of the evil will also be the extent to which we can hope for success'''. Internal dissensions, lack of self-reliance, and weakening of the social fabric, drove us into the arms of the foreigner who came to India originally for purely commercial purposes.

The diagnosis of India’s helplessness.

If we would only grasp sufficiently clearly the patent fact, that Englishmen would not care to rule India if it were not for material advantages, and that political domination is of little attraction to the Englishmen except as a means for finding markets for the products of their own country we would have gone a long way indeed in correctly diagnosing the political illness we are suffering from.

The very methods by which England consolidated her power in India ought to furnish us a lesson as to how we ought to proceed to achieve self-government for ourselves. You might be quite sure that, if England could only dictate the commercial policy of India, she would tomorrow grant us full powers in all other directions, and it is because she is afraid that, with the loss of political power and domination, she would lose the right of