YOU ARE AS MUCH SLAVES—AS WE.
Dear friend,
This is the second time I venture to address you. I know that most of you detest non-co-operation. But I would invite you to isolate two of my activities from the rest if you can give me credit for honestly. I cannot prove my honesty if you do not feel it. Some of my Indian friends charge me with camouflage when I say we need not hate Englishmen whilst we may hate the system they have established. I am trying to show them that one may detest the wickedness of a brother without hating him. Jesus denounced the wickedness of the Scribes and the Pharisees, but he did not hate them. He did not enunciate this law of love for the man and hate for the evil in him for himself only, but he taught the doctrine for universal practice. Indeed I find it in all the scriptures of the world.
I claim to be a fairly accurate student of human nature and vivisector of my own failings. I have discovered that man is superior to the system he propounds. And so I feel that you as an individual are infinitely better than the system you have evolved as a corporation. Each one of my countrymen in Amritsar on that fateful 10th of April was better than the crowd of which he was a member. He as a man would have declined to kill those innocent English bank managers. But in that crowd, many a man forgot himself. Hence it is that an Englishman in office is different from an Englishman outside. Similarly an Englishman in India is different from an Englishman in England. Here in India you belong to a system that is vile beyond description. It is possible therefore for me to condemn the system in the strongest terms without considering you to be bad and without imputing bad motives to every Englishman. You are as much slaves of the system as we are.
I want you therefore to reciprocate and not impute to me motives which you cannot read in the written word. I give you the whole of my motive when I tell you that I am impatient to end or mend a system which has made India subservient to a handful of you and which has made Englishmen feel secure only in the shadow of the forts and the guns that obtrude themselves on one’s notice in India. It is a degrading spectacle for you and for us. Our corporate life is based on mutual distrust and fear. This you will admit, is unmanly. A system that is responsible for such a state of things is necessarily satanic. You should be able to live in India as an integral part of its people and not always as foreign exploiters. One thousand Indian lives against one English life is a doctrine of dark despair and yet believe me, it was enunciated in 1919 by the highest of you in the land.
I almost feel tempted to invite you to join me in destroying a system that has dragged both you and us down. But I feel I cannot as yet do so. We have not shown ourselves earnest, self-sacrificing and self-restrained enough for that consummation. But I do ask you to help us in the boycott of foreign cloth and in the anti-drink campaign.
The Lancashire cloth, as English historians have shown, was forced upon India and her own world-famed manufactures were deliberately and systematically ruined. India is therefore at the mercy not only of Lancashire but also of Japan, France and America. Just see what this has meant to India. We send out of India every year sixty crores (more or less) of rupees for cloth. We grow enough cotton for our own cloth. Is it not madness to send cotton outside India and have it manufactured into cloth there and shipped to us? Was it right to reduce India to such a helpless state?
A hundred and fifty years ago we manufactured all our cloth. Our women spun fine yarn in their own cottages and supplemented the earnings of their husbands. The village weavers wove that yarn. It was an indispensable part of national economy in a vast agricultural country like ours. It enabled us in a most natural manner to utilise our leisure. Today our women have lost the cunning of their hands and the enforced idleness of millions has impoverished the land. Many weavers have become sweepers. Some have taken to the profession of hired soldiers. Half the race of artistic weavers has died out, and the other half is weaving imported foreign yarn for want of finer handspun yarn.
You will perhaps now understand what boycott of foreign cloth means to India. It is not devised as a punishment. If the Government were today to redress the Khilafat and the Punjab wrongs and consent to India attaining immediate Swaraj the boycott movement must still continue. Swaraj means at least the power to conserve Indian industries that are vital to the economic existence of the nation and to prohibit such imports as may interfere with such existence. Agriculture and hand-spinning are the two lungs of the national body. They must be protected against consumption at any cost. This matter does not admit of any waiting. The interests of the foreign manufacturers and the Indian importers cannot be considered when the whole nation is starving for want of a large productive occupation ancillary to agriculture.
You will not mistake this for a movement of general boycott of foreign goods. India does not wish to shut herself out of international commerce. Things other than cloth which can be better made outside India, she must gracefully receive upon terms advantageous to the contracting parties. Nothing can be forced upon her. But I do not wish to peep into the future. I am certainly hoping that before long it would be possible for India to co-operate with England on equal terms. Then will be the time for examining trade relations. For the time being I beseech your help in bringing about a boycott of foreign cloth.
Of similar and equal importance is the campaign against drink. The liquor shops are an insufferable curse imposed on society. There never was so much awakening among the people as now upon this question. I admit that here it is the Indian Ministers who can help more than you can. But I would like you to speak out your mind clearly on the question. Under every system of Government, total prohibition so far as I can see will be insisted upon by the nation. You can assist the growth of the ever-rising agitation by throwing in the weight of your influence on the side of the nation.
I am, Your faithful friend, M. K. GANDHI.