But I am not here to day to plead for the medium.  I am to plead for the acceptance by the country of the programme of non-violent, progressive non-co-operation.  Now all the words that I have used here are absolutely necessary and the two adjectives ‘progressive’ and ‘non-violent’ are integral part of a whole.  With me non-violence is part of my religion, a matter of creed.  But with the great number of Mussalmans non-violence is a policy, with thousand, if not millions of Hindus, it is equally a matter of policy.  But whether it is a creed or a policy, it is utterly impossible for you to finish the programme for the enfranchisement of the millions of India, without recognising the necessity and the value of non-violence.  Violence may for a moment avail to secure a certain measure of success but it could not in the long run achieve any appreciable result.  On the other hand all violence would prove destructive to the honour and self-respect of the nation.  The blue books issued by the Government of India show that inasmuch as we have used violence, military expenditure has gone up, not proportionately but in geometrical progression.  The bonds of our slavery have been forged all the stronger for our having offered violence.  And the whole history of British rule in India is a demonstration of the fact that we have never been able to offer successful violence.  Whilst therefore I say that rather than have the yoke of a Government that has so emasculated us, I would welcome violence.  I would urge with all the emphasis that I can command that India will never be able to regain her own by methods of violence.

Lord Ronaldshay who has done me the honour of reading my booklet on Home Rule has warned my countrymen against engaging themselves in a struggle for a Swaraj such as is described in that booklet.  Now though I do not want to withdraw a single word of it, I would say to you on this occasion that I do not ask India to follow out to-day the methods prescribed in my booklet.  If they could do that they would have Home Rule not in a year but in a day, and India by realising that ideal wants to acquire an ascendancy over the rest of the world.  But it must remain a day dream more or less for the time being.  What I am doing to-day is that I am giving the country a pardonable programme not the abolition of law courts, posts, telegraphs and of railways but for the attainment of Parliamentary Swarja.  I am telling you to do that so long as we do not isolate ourselves from this Government, we are co-operating with it through schools, law courts and councils, through service civil and military and payment of taxes and foreign trade.