This government of ours is an unscrupulous corporation.  It has ruled by dividing Mussalmans from Hindus.  It is quite capable of taking advantage of the internal weaknesses of Hinduism.  It will set the ‘depressed’ classes against the rest of the Hindus, non-Brahmins against Brahmins.  The Gujarat Senate resolution does not end the trouble.  It merely points out the difficulty.  The trouble will end only when the masses and classes of Hindus have rid themselves of the sin of untouchability.  A Hindu lover of Swaraj will as assiduously work for the amelioration of the lot of the ‘depressed’ classes as he works for Hindu-Muslim unity.  We must treat them as our brothers and give them the same rights that we claim for ourselves.

THE SIN OF UNTOUCHABILITY

It is worthy of note that the subjects Committee accepted without any opposition the clause regarding the sin of untouchability.  It is well that the National assembly passed the resolution stating that the removal of this blot on Hinduism was necessary for the attainment of Swaraj.  The Devil succeeds only by receiving help from his fellows.  He always takes advantage of the weakest spots in our natures in order to gain mastery over us.  Even so does the Government retain its control over us through our weaknesses or vices.  And if we would render ourselves proof against its machination, we must remove our weaknesses.  It is for that reason that I have called non-co-operation a process of purification.  As soon as that process is completed, this government must fall to pieces for want of the necessary environment, just as mosquitos cease to haunt a place whose cess-pools are filled up and dried.

Has not a just Nemesis overtaken us for the crime of untouchability?  Have we not reaped as we have sown?  Have we not practised Dwyerism and O’Dwyerism on our own kith and kin?  We have segregated the ‘pariah’ and we are in turn segregated in the British Colonies.  We deny him the use of public wells; we throw the leavings of our plates at him.  His very shadow pollutes us.  Indeed there is no charge that the ‘pariah’ cannot fling in our faces and which we do not fling in the faces of Englishmen.

How is this blot on Hinduism to be removed?  ’Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you.’  I have often told English officials that, if they are friends and servants of India, they should come down from their pedestal, cease to be patrons, demonstrate by their loving deeds that they are in every respect our friends, and believe us to be equals in the same sense they believe fellow Englishmen to be their equals.  After the experiences of the Punjab and the Khilafat, I have gone a step further and asked them to repent and to change their hearts.  Even so is it necessary for us Hindus to repent of the wrong we have done, to alter our behaviour towards those whom we have ‘suppressed’ by a system as devilish as we believe the English system of the