Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/661

 state. It is not so much British guns that are responsible for our subjection as our voluntary co-operation.

Our non-participation in a hearty welcome to Your Royal Highness is thus in no sense a demonstration against your high personage, but it is against the system you come to uphold. I know individual Englishmen cannot, even if they will, alter the English nature all of a sudden. If we would be the equals of Englishmen we must cast off fear. We must learn to be self-reliant and independent of schools, courts, protection and patronage t>f a Government we seek to end if it will not mend.

Hence this non-violent Non-Co-operation. I know we have not all yet become non-violent in speech and deed, but the results so far achieved have, I assure Your Royal High- ness, been amazing. The people have understood the secret and value of non-violence as they have never done before. He who will may see that this is a religious, puri- fying movement. We are leaving off drink. We are trying to rid India of the curse of untouchability. We are trying to throw off foreign tinsel splendour and by reverting to the spinning wheel reviving the ancient and poetic simplicity of life. We hope thereby to sterilize the existing ha-mful institutions.

I ask Your Royal Highness as an Englishman to study this movement and its possibilities for the Empire and the world. We are at war with nothing that is good in the world. In protecting Islam in the manner we are, we are protecting all religions; in protecting the honour of India , we are protecting the honour of humanity. For our means are hurtful to none. We desire to live on terms of friend- ship with Englishmen, but that friendship must be friend- ship of equals both in theory and in practice, and we must continue to non-co-operate, r. e. t to purify ourselves till the

�� �