Page:Gandhi and Saklatvala - Is India different.pdf/25

 I distrust its schemes of amelioration of the lot of the poor, I distrust its currency reform, I distrust its army and navy. In the name of civilisation and its own safety this Government has continuously bled the masses, it has enslaved the people, it has bribed the powerful with distinctions and riches and it has sought to crush under the weight of its despotic regulations the liberty-loving patriots who would not be won over either by flattery or riches. I would destroy that system to-day, if I had the power. I would use the most deadly weapons, if I believed that they would destroy it. I refrain only because the use of such weapons would only perpetuate the system though it may destroy its present administrators. Those who seek to destroy men rather than their manners, adopt the latter and become worse than those whom they destroy under the mistaken belief that the manners will die with the men. They do not know the root of the evil.

The movement of 1920 was designed to show that we could not reform the soulless system by violent means, thus becoming soulless ourselves, but we could do so only by not becoming victims of the system, i.e., by non-co-operation, by saying an emphatic "No" to every advance made to entrap us into the nets spread by Satan.

That movement suffered a check, but is not dead. My promise was conditional. The conditions were simple and easy. But they proved too difficult for those who took a leading part in the movement.

What "comrade" Saklatvala believes to be my error and failure I regard to be the expression of my strength and deep conviction. It may be an error, but so long as my conviction that it is truth abides, my very error must, as it does, sustain me. My retracing my steps at Bardoli* I hold to be an act of wisdom and supreme service to the country. The Government is the weaker for that decision. It would have regained all lost positions if I had persisted after Chauri Chaura in carrying out the terms of what was regarded as an ultimatum to the Viceroy. My "comrade" is wrong in saying that the South African movement was a failure. If it was, my whole life must be written down as a failure. And his invitation to me to enlist under his colours must be held to be meaningless. South
 * At Bardoli, Gandhi "called off" his policy of non-violent resistance to the Government, owing to a riot having occurred at Chauri Chaura.