Your Excellency must be aware that there was a time when the boldest, though the most thoughtless among the Mussulmans favoured violence, and the “Hijrat” (emigration) has not yet ceased to be the battle-cry.  I venture to claim that I have succeeded by patient reasoning in weaning the party of violence from its ways.  I confess that I did not—­I did not attempt to succeed in weaning them from violence on moral grounds, but purely on utilitarian grounds.  The result, for the time being at any has, however, been to stop violence.  The School of “Hijrat” has received a check, if it has not stopped its activity entirely.  I hold that no repression could have prevented a violent eruption, if the people had not had presented to them a form of direct action involving considerable sacrifice and ensuring success if such direct action was largely taken up by the public.  Non-co-operation was the only dignified and constitutional form of such direct action.  For it is the right recognised from times immemorial of the subject to refuse to assist a ruler who misrules.

At the same time I admit that non-co-operation practised by the mass of people is attended with grave risks.  But, in a crisis such as has overtaken the Mussalmans of India, no step that is unattended with large risks, can possibly bring about the desired change.  Not to run some risks now will be to court much greater risks if not virtual destruction of Law and Order.

But there is yet an escape from non-co-operation.  The Mussalman representation has requested your Excellency to lead the agitation yourself, as did your distinguished predecessor at the time of the South African trouble.  But if you cannot see your way to do so, and non-co-operation becomes a dire necessity, I hope that your Excellency will give those who have accepted my advice and myself the credit for being actuated by nothing less than a stern sense of duty.

I have the honour to remain,

Your Excellency’s faithful servant,

(Sd.) M.K.  GANDHI.

Laburnam Road, Gamdevi, Bombay

22nd June 1920

THE PREMIER’S REPLY

The English mail has brought us a full and official report of the Premier’s speech which he recently made when he received the Khilafat deputation.  Mr. Lloyd George’s speech is more definite and therefore more disappointing than H.E. the Viceroy’s reply to the deputation here.  He draws quite unwarranted deductions from the same high principles on which he had based his own pledge only two years ago.  He declares that Turkey must pay the penalty of defeat.  This determination to punish Turkey does not become one whose immediate predecessor had, in order to appease Muslim soldiers, promised that the British Government had no designs on Turkey and that His Majesty’s Government would never think of punishing the Sultan for the misdeeds of the Turkish Committee.  Mr. Lloyd George has expressed his belief that the majority of the population of Turkey did not really want to quarrel with Great Britain and that their rulers misled the country.  In spite of this conviction and in spite of Mr. Asquith’s promise, he is out to punish Turkey and punish it in the name of justice.