Page:Forty Thousand Followers of Gandhi in Prison.djvu/7

 and so thoroughly that at the present day India is more non-violent in its political attitude than India or any other nation ever was or can hope to be. We had inculcated this doctrine in the masses so successfully that, in spite of grave provocation, non-violence even under most trying circumstances has been the rule. Outbreaks of a violent character there have been, but they have been few and far between and really insignificant in their magnitude, or in their effects on the rest of the country. But in spite of all this, the Government has had to depart from its professed attitude of non-interference. We have given most astonishing proofs of our strict adherence to non-violence as a method of political warfare, and the 40,000 men or so who have gone to jail are an incontrovertible proof of this statement.

But what has been the result? The result is that to-day in the Punjab and some other provinces, the Government seems to have entirely lost its head and has resorted to repression pure and simple. Out of our own free will we suspended the movement of mass civil disobedience throughout the country. If the GovermentGovernment [sic] had been really of the opinion that violence was the one thing it objected to, then, after the Bardoli resolution there was no need for any action on its part of a repressive character. In spite of that it is now resorting in the Punjab to repression on such a large scale that it becomes evident that its avowed object of securing law and order is mere camouflage meant to throw dust in the eyes of the outside world.

Intensity of repression index of success.

The lesson I wish to draw is that the very intensity of the efforts the Government is putting forth to suppress this movement is a proof of the strength that the movement has attained. Judged by this standard we can very well say that the non-co-operation movement in the Punjab has attained remarkable success, indeed.