(Mahatma Gandhi addressed the following letter to H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught in the first week of February 1921.)
WE ARE DETERMINED TO BATTLE WITH O’DWYERISM AND DYERISM.
Sir,
Your Royal Highness must have heard a great deal about Non-co-operation, Non-co-operationists and their methods and incidentally of me, its humble author. I fear that the information given to your Royal Highness must have been in its nature one-sided. I owe it to you, to my friends and myself that I should place before you what I conceive to be the scope of Non-co-operation as followed not only by me but my closest associates such as Messrs. Shaukat Ali and Mohammad Ali.
For me it is no joy and pleasure to be actively associated in the boycott of Your Royal Highness’ visit. I have tendered loyal, voluntary assistance to Government for an unbroken period of nearly 30 years in the full belief that through that lay the path of freedom for my country. It was therefore no slight thing for me to suggest to my countrymen that they should take no part in welcoming Your Royal Highness. Not one among us has anything against you as an English gentleman. We hold your person as sacred as that of a dearest friend. I do not know any of my friends who would not guard it with his life if he found it in danger.
We are not at war with individual Englishmen. We seek not to destroy English life. We do not desire to destroy the system that has emasculated our country in body, mind and soul. We are determined to battle with all our might against that in English nature which has made O’Dwyerism and Dyersim possible in the Punjab and has resulted in a wanton affront upon Islam, a faith professed by seven crores of your country men. We consider it inconsistent with our self respect any longer to brook the spirit of superiority and dominance, which has systematically ignored and disregarded the sentiments of thirty crores of innocent people of India on many a vital matter. It is humiliating to us. It cannot be a matter of pride to you that thirty crores of Indians should live day in and day out in fear of their lives from one hundred thousand Englishmen and, therefore, be under subjection to them.
Your Royal Highness has come, not to end the system I described, but to sustain it by upholding its prestige. Your first pronouncement was a laudation of Lord Willingdon. I have the privilege of knowing him. I believe him to be an honest, amiable gentleman, who will not willingly hurt even a fly, but he certainly failed as a ruler. He allowed himself to be guided by those whose interest it was to support their power. He is not reading the mind of the Dravidian province. Here in Bengal you are issuing a certificate of merit to a Governor who is again, from all I have heard, an estimable gentleman but he knows nothing of the heart of Bengal and its yearnings. Bengal is not Calcutta. Fort William and the palaces of Calcutta represent an insolent exploitation of the unmurmuring and highly cultured peasantry of this fair province.
The Non-co-operationists have come to the conclusion that they must not be decieved by the reforms that tinker with the problem of India’s distress and humiliation, nor must they be impatient and angry. We must not in our impatient anger resort to stupid violence. We freely admit that we must take our due share of blame for the existing state. It is not so much British guns that are responsible for our subjection as our voluntary co-operation.
Our non-participation in a hearty welcome to Your Royal Highness is thus in no sense a demonstration against your high personage, but it is against the system you come to uphold. I know individual Englishmen cannot, even if they will, alter the English nature all of a sudden. If we would be the equals, of Englishmen, we must cast off fear. We must learn to be self-reliant and independent of schools, courts, protection and patronage of a Government we ween to end if it will not mend.
Hence this Non-violent Non-co-operation. I know we have not all yet become non-violent in speech and deed, but the results so far achieved have, I assure Your Royal Highness been amazing. The people have understood the secret and value of non-violence as they have never done before. He who will may see that this is a religious, purifying movement. We are leaving off drink. We are trying to rid India of the curse of untouchability. We are trying to throw off foreign tinsel splendour and, by reverting to the spinning wheel, reviving the ancient and poetic simplicity of life. We hope thereby to sterilize the existing harmful institutions.
I ask Your Royal Highness as an Englishman to study this movement and its possibilities for the Empire and the world. We are at war with nothing that is good in the world. In protecting Islam in the manner we are, we are protecting all religions; in protecting the honour of India, we are protecting the honour of humanity, for our means are hurtful to none. We desire to live on terms of friendship of equals both in theory and in practice, and we must continue to non-co-operate, i.e., to purify ourselves till the goal is achieved I ask Your Royal Highness and through you every Englishman, to appreciate the view-point of Non-co-operation.
I beg to remain, Your Royal Highness’ faithful servant, M. K. GANDHI.