member of a slave nation could deliver the suppressed classes from their slavery without freeing myself from my own, I would do so to day.  But it is an impossible task.  A slave has not the freedom even to do the right thing.  It is a right for me to prohibit the importation of foreign goods, but I have no power to bring it about.  It was right for Maulana Mahomed Ali to go to Turkey and to tell the Turks personally that India was with them in their righteous struggle.  He was not free to do so.  If I had a truly national legislative I would answer Hindu insolence by creating special and better wells for the exclusive use of suppressed classes and by erecting better and more numerous schools for them, so that there would be not a single member of the suppressed classes left without a school to teach their children.  But I must wait for that better day.

Meanwhile are the depressed classes to be loft to their own resources?  Nothing of the sort.  In my own humble manner I have done and am doing all I can for my Panchama brother.

There are three courses open to those downtrodden members of the nation.  For their impatience they may call in the assistance of the slave owning Government.  They will get it but they will fall from the frying pan into the fire.  To-day they are slaves of slaves.  By seeking Government aid, they will be used for suppressing their kith and kin.  Instead of being sinned against, they will themselves be the sinners.  The Mussalmans tried it and failed.  They found that they were worse off than before.  The Sikhs did it unwittingly and failed.  To-day there is no more discontented community in India than the Sikhs.  Government aid is therefore no solution.

The second is rejection of Hinduism and wholesale conversion to Islam or Christianity.  And if a change of religion could be justified for worldly betterment, I would advise it without hesitation.  But religion is a matter of the heart.  No physical inconvenience can warrant abandonment of one’s own religion.  If the inhuman treatment of the Panchamas were a part of Hinduism, its rejection would be a paramount duty both for them and for those like me who would not make a fetish even of religion and condone every evil in its sacred name.  But, I believe that untouchability is no part of Hinduism.  It is rather its excrescence to be removed by every effort.  And there is quite an army of Hindu reformers who have set their heart upon ridding Hinduism of this blot.  Conversion, therefore, I hold, is no remedy whatsoever.

Then there remains, finally, self-help and self-dependence, with such aid as the non-Panchama Hindus will render of their own motion, not as a matter of patronage but as a matter of duty.  And herein comes the use of non-co-operation.  My correspondent was correctly informed by Mr. Rajagopaluchari and Mr. Hanumantarao that I would favour well-regulated non-co-operation for this acknowledged evil.  But non-co-operation