If the Government were to come and tell me to-day “Take Swaraj” I would say thank you for the gift, but I will not have that which I cannot acquire by my own hand....  Our programme is that we shall so work in the country, so combine the resources of the people, so organize the forces of the nation, so develop the instincts of freedom in the community, that by this means we shall—­shall_ in the imperative—­compel the submission to our will of any power that may set itself against us.

Equally definite is Mr. Pal as to the methods by which Swaraj is to be made “imperative.”  They consist of Swadeshi in the economic domain, i.e., the encouragement of native industries reinforced by the boycott of imported goods which will kill British commerce and, in the political domain, passive resistance reinforced by the boycott of Government service.

They say:—­Can you boycott all the Government offices?  Whoever said that we would?  Whoever said that there would not be found a single Indian to serve the Government or the European community here?  But what we can do is this.  We can make the Government impossible without entirely making it impossible for them to find people to serve them.  The administration may be made impossible in a variety of ways.  It is not actually that every deputy magistrate should say:  I won’t serve in it.  It is not that when one man resigns nobody will be found to take his place.  But if you create this spirit in the country the Government service will gradually imbibe this spirit, and a whole office may go on strike.  That does not put an end to the administration, but it creates endless complications in the work of administration, and if these complications are created in every part of the country, the administration will have been brought to a deadlock and made none the less impossible, for the primary thing is the prestige of the Government and the boycott strikes at the root of that prestige....  We can reduce every Indian in Government service to the position of a man who has fallen from the dignity of Indian citizenship....  No man shall receive social honours because he is a Hakim or a Munsiff or a Huzur Sheristadar....  No law can compel one to give a chair to a man who comes to his house.  He may give it to an ordinary shopkeeper; he may refuse it to the Deputy Magistrate or the Subordinate Judge.  He may give his daughter in marriage to a poor beggar, he may refuse her to the son of a Deputy Magistrate, because it is absolutely within his rights, absolutely within legal bounds.

Passive resistance is recognized as legitimate in England.  It is legitimate in theory even in India, and if it is made illegal by new legislation, these laws will infringe on the primary rights of personal freedom and will tread on dangerous grounds.  Therefore it seems to me that by means of the boycott we shall be able to do the negative work that will