Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/724

 634 NON-CO-OPERATION

moral balance. They were enraged against the Parsts and the Christians who took part in the welcome to the Prince and sought to 'teach them a lesson 1. They invited reprisals and got them. It became after the 17th a game of seesaw in which no one really gained and everybody lost.

Swaraj does not lie that way. India does not want Bolshevism. The people are too peaceful to stand anarchy. They will bow the knee to any one who restores so-called order. Let us recognise the Indian phychology. We need not stop to inquire whether such hankering after peace is a virtue or a vice. The average Musalman of India is quite different from the average Musalman of the other parts of the world. His Indian associations have made him more docile than his co-religionists outside India. He will not stand tangible insecurity of life and property for any length of time. The Hindu is, proverbially, almost contemptibly mild. The Parsi and the Christian love peace more than strife, Indeed we have almost made religion subservient to peace. This mentality is at once our weakness and our strength.

Let us nurse the better, the religious part of of this mentality nf ours. ' Let there be no compul- sion in religion.' Is it not religion with us to observe Swadeshi and therefore wear Khadi^ But if the religion of others does not require them to adopt Swadeshi, we may not compel them. We broke the universal law restated in the Quran. And the law does not mean that there may be compulsion in other matters. The verse means that, if it is bad to use compulsion in religion about which we have definite convictions, it is worse to resort to it in matters of less moment-

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