Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/23



"It is my knowledge, right or wrong, of the British constitution, which has bound me to the British Empire. Tear that constitution to shreds, and my loyalty will also be torn to shreds. On the other hand, keep it intact, and you hold me bound unreservedly in its service. The choice has lain before us, who are Indians in South Africa, either to sunder ourselves from the British Empire, or to struggle by means of passive resistance in order that the ideals of the British Constitution may be preserved, but only those ideals. The theory of racial equality in the eyes of the Law, once recognised, can never be departed from; and its principle must at all costs be maintained, the principle, that is to say, that in all the legal codes, which bind the Empire together, there shall be no racial taint, no racial distinction, no colour disability,"

I have summarised, in the above statement, the speech which Mahatma Gandhi delivered on a very memorable occasion at Johannesburg, before a European audience, and I do not think that he has ever departed from the convictions which he then uttered in public. What has impressed me most of all, has been his unlimited patience, Even now, when he has again been imprisoned by the present rulers of the British Empire, who have charge of Indian affairs, he has not despaired of the British Empire itself. According to his own opinion, it is these rulers themselves who have been untrue to the underlying principle of that Empire.

A short time before Mahatma Gandhi's arrest, when I was with him in Ahmedabad, he blamed me very severely indeed for my lack of faith in the British connexion and for my publicly putting forward a demand for complete independence. He said to me openly that I had done a great deal of mischief by such advocacy of independence. If I interpret him rightly his own position at that time was this. He had lost faith in the British Administration in India, — it was a Satanic Government. But he had not lost faith in the British Constitution itself. He still believed that India could remain within the British Empire