SPEECH AT MUZAFFARABAD

Before a crowded meeting of Mussalmans in the Muzaffarabad, Bombay, held on the 29th July 1920, speaking on the impending non-co-operation which commenced on the 1st of August, Mr. Gandhi said:  The time for speeches on non-co-operation was past and the time for practice had arrived.  But two things were needful for complete success.  An environment free from any violence on the part of the people and a spirit of self-sacrifice.  Non-co-operation, as the speaker had conceived it, was an impossibility in an atmosphere surcharged with the spirit of violence.  Violence was an exhibition of anger and any such exhibition was dissipation of valuable energy.  Subduing of one’s anger was a storing up of national energy, which, when set free in an ordered manner, would produce astounding results.  His conception of non-co-operation did not involve rapine, plunder, incendiarism and all the concomitants of mass madness.  His scheme presupposed ability on their part to control all the forces of evil.  If, therefore, any disorderliness was found on the part of the people which they could not control, he for one would certainly help the Government to control them.  In the presence of disorder it would be for him a choice of evil, and evil through he considered the present Government to be, he would not hesitate for the time being to help the Government to control disorder.  But he had faith in the people.  He believed that they knew that the cause could only be won by non-violent methods.  To put it at the lowest, the people had not the power, even if they had the will, to resist with brute strength the unjust Governments of Europe who had, in the intoxication of their success disregarding every canon of justice dealt so cruelly by the only Islamic Power in Europe.

In non-co-operation they had a matchless and powerful weapon.  It was a sign of religious atrophy to sustain an unjust Government that supported an injustice by resorting to untruth and camouflage.  So long therefore as the Government did not purge itself of the canker of injustice and untruth, it was their duty to withdraw all help from it consistently with their ability to preserve order in the social structure.  The first stage of non-co-operation was therefore arranged so as to involve minimum of danger to public peace and minimum of sacrifice on the part of those who participated in the movement.  And if they might not help an evil Government nor receive any favours from it, it followed that they must give up all titles of honour which were no longer a proud possession.  Lawyers, who were in reality honorary officers of the Court, should cease to support Courts that uphold the prestige of an unjust Government and the people must be able to settle their disputes and quarrels by private arbitration.  Similarly parents should withdraw their children from the public schools and they must evolve a system of national education or private education totally independent of the Government.  An insolent Government conscious of its brute strength, might laugh at such withdrawals by the people especially as the Law courts and schools were supposed to help the people, but he had not a shadow of doubt that the moral effect of such a step could not possibly be lost even upon a Government whose conscience had become stifled by the intoxication of power.