Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/498

 408 EARLIER INDIAN SPEECHES

riyats. The fact is that the audience was composed chiefly of the non-raiyat class. But I had in mind a much bigger atadience, and not merely the few thousand hearers before me. I spoke under a full sense of my responsibility. The question of cow-protection is, in my opinion, as large as the Empire to which Mr. Irwin and I belong. I know that he is the proud father of a young lad of 24, who has received by his gallantry the unique honour of a Colonelcy at his age. Mr, Irwin can, if he will, obtain a greater honour for himself by studying the cow question and taking his full share in its solution. He will, I promise, be tken much better occupied, than when is dashing off his misrepresenta- tions to be published in the press, and most unneces- sarily preparing to bring 2,200 cases against his tenants for the sake of deriving the questionable pleasure of deeming me responsible for those cases.

I said at the meeting that the Hindus had no war- rant for resenting the slaughter of cows by their Maho- medan brethren who kill them from religious conviction, so long as they themselves were a party to the killing by inches of thousands of cattle who were horribly ill- treated by their Hindu owners, to the drinking of milk drawn from coivs in the inhuman dairies of Calcutta, and so long as they calmly contemplated the slaughter of thousands of cattle in the slaughter houses of India for providing beef for the European or Christian resi- dents of India. I suggested that the first step towards procuring full protection for cows was to put their own house m order by securing absolute immunity from ill- treatment of their cattle by Hindus themselves, and then to appeal to the Europeans to abstain from beef- eating whilst resident in India, or ftt least to procure

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