Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/726

 636 NON-CO-OPERATION

to greater cordon than the Government will be to make India more slave than she is now.

Swaraj is freedom for every one, the smallest among us, to do as he likes without any physical inter- nerence with his liberty. Non-violent non-co-operation is the method whereby we cultivate the freest public opinion and get it enforced. When there is complete freedom of opinion, that of the majority must prevail. If we are in a minority, we can prove worthy of our religion by remaining true to it in the fact of coercion. The Prophet submitted to the coercion of the majority and remained true to his faith. And when he found himself m a majority he declared to his followers that there should be no compulsion in religion. Let us not again either by verbal or physical violence depart from the injunction, and by our own folly further cut back the hands of the clock of progress.

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE.

��[Though the author of the Civil Disobedience move- ment in India, Mr. Gandhi was always alive to its dangers. He therefore insisted that his conditions should be fulfilled in toto before any Taluka could embark on a campaign of Civil Disobedience. He was always very cautions in permitting Civil Disobedience as will be seen from the following article in Young India. He restrain- ed at a certain stage, the majority of the Congress Com- mittee from a rushing and perilous programme.}

Civil disobedience was on the lips of every one of the members of the All-India Congress Committee. Not having really over tried it, every one appeared to be enamoured of it from a mistaken belief hi it as a

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