Page:Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches.djvu/151

Indians and their Employers that assistance which was given to them by the Government, but would find their own money or borrow it from friends. If they re-indentured, they could come under the same law, namely. Law 25 of 1891. His own advice to them was not to re-indenture, but by all means to serve their present masters under the common law of the country. If ever occasion arose, which he hoped would never happen, they now knew what it was possible for them to do. But he wanted to remind them of this one thing, that Victoria Country, as also the other Districts of Natal, had not been so free from violence on their own part as the Newcastle District had been. He did not care that provocation had been offered to them or how much they had retaliated with their sticks or with stones, or had burned the sugar cane—that was not passive Resistance, and, if he had been in their midst, he would have repudiated them entirely and allowed his own head to be broken rather than permit them to use a single stick against their opponents. And he wanted them to believe him when he told them that Passive Resistance pure and simple was an infinitely finer weapon than all the sticks and gunpowder put together. They 39