Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/622

 NON-CO-OPERATION

constitutional for you to co-operate with a Governmenf which has became so unjust as our Government has become. I am not anti-English; I am not anti-British; I am not anti-any Government ; but I am anti -untruth-* anti-humbug and anti-injustice. So long as the Govern- ment spells injustice, it may regard me as its enemy, implacable enemy. I had hoped at the Congress at Amritsar I am speaking God's truth before you when I pleaded on bended kneess before some of you for co-opera- tron with the Government, I had full hope that the British Ministers who are wise as a rule, would placate the Mussal- man sentiment, that they would do full justice in the matter olthe Punjab atrocities ; and therefore, I said : -let us return good-will to the hand of fellowship that has been ex- tended to us, which I then believed was extended to us through the Royal Proclamation. It was on that account that I pleaded for co-operation. But to-day that faith having gone and obliterated by the acts of the 'British Ministers, I am here to plead not for futile obstruction in the Legislative Council but for real substan- tial non-co-operation which would paralyse the mightiest Government on earth. That is what I stand for to-day. Until we have wrung Justice, and until we having wrung our self-respect from unwilling hands and from un- it illing pens there can be no-co-operation. Our Shastras say and I say so with the greatest deference to all the greatest ' religious preceptors of India but without fear of contradiction, that our Shastras teach us thai; there shall be no-co-operation between injustice, and justice, between an unjust man and a justice-loving man, between truth and untruth. Co-operation is' a duty only so ^ong as Government protects your honour, and non-co-operation is an ed^ual duty when the Government, instead of protecting,

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