If, therefore, in the course of his campaign Gandhi finds India insufficiently prepared to understand and practise the radical reforms he wishes to impose, he will adapt his doctrine to conditions. He will bide his time. That is why it is not astonishing to hear the irreconcilable enemy of machinery declare, in 1921:
I would not weep over the disappearance of machinery or consider this a calamity. But for the time being I have no designs on machinery as such.[46]
Or:
The law of complete Love is the Law of my being. But I am not preaching this final law through the political measures I advocate. I know that any such attempt is foredoomed to failure. To expect a whole mass of men and women to obey that law all at once is not to know its working.[47] I am not a visionary. I claim to be a practical idealist.[48]
Gandhi never asks men for more than they can give. But he asks for all that they can give. And this is much in a nation like India—a formidable nation, through its numerical power, its force of duration, and its abysmal soul. From the very first Gandhi and India have formed a pact; they understand each other without words. Gandhi knows what he can demand of India, and India is prepared to give whatever Gandhi may demand.
Between Gandhi and India there reigns, first of all, absolute agreement as to goal: Swaraj, home rule, for the nation.[49]
"I know," he says, "that Swaraj is the object of the nation and not non-violence."
And he adds—words amazing on his lips, "I would rather see India freed by violence than enchained like a slave to her foreign oppressors."
But, he continues, correcting himself at once, this is an impossible supposition, for violence can never free India. Swaraj can only be attained by soul-force. This is India's real weapon, the invincible weapon of love and truth. Gandhi expresses it by the term Satyagraha, which he defines as truth-force and love-force.[50] Gandhi's genius revealed itself when, by the preaching of this gospel, he revealed to his people their real nature and their hidden strength.
Gandhi used the word Satyagraha in South Africa to explain the difference between his ideal and that of passive resistance. Particular stress must be laid on the difference between these two movements. Nothing is more false than to call Gandhi's campaign a movement of passive resistance. No one has a greater horror of passivity than this tireless fighter, who is one of the most heroic incarnations of a man who resists. The soul of his movement is active resistance—resistance which finds outlet, not in violence, but in the active force of love, faith and sacrifice. This threefold energy is expressed in the word Satyagraha.