Let not the coward try to hide his cowardice under Gandhi's banner! Gandhi drives him out of the community. Better violence than cowardice!
Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I advise violence....[51] I cultivate the quiet courage of dying without killing. But to him who has not this courage I advise that of killing and of being killed, rather than that of shamefully fleeing from danger. For he who runs away commits mental violence; he runs away because he has not the courage to be killed while he kills.[52]
I would risk violence a thousand times rather than emasculation of the race.[53] I would rather have India resort to arms to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless victim to her own dishonor.[54]
But I believe that non-violence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness more manly than punishment. Forgiveness adorns a soldier. Abstinence is forgiveness only when there is power to punish; it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature.... I do not believe India to be helpless. One hundred thousand Englishmen need not frighten three hundred million human beings.
Besides.
Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. Non-violence does not mean meek submission to the will of the evil-doer but the putting of one's whole soul against the will of the tyrant. Working under this law of our being it is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire and lay the foundation for that empire's fall or its regeneration.
But at the cost of what? Of suffering—the great law.
Suffering is the mark of the human tribe. It is an eternal law.[55] The mother suffers so that her child may live. Life comes out of death. The condition of wheat growing is that the seed grain should perish. No country has ever risen without being purified through the fire of suffering.... It is impossible to do away with the law of suffering which is the one indispensable condition of our being. Progress is to be measured by the amount of suffering undergone ... the purer the suffering, the greater is the progress.[56]
Non-violence in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering.... I have ventured to place before India the ancient law of self-sacrifice, the law of suffering. The Rishis who discovered the law of non-violence in the midst of violence were greater geniuses than Newton, greater warriors than Wellington. Having themselves known the use of arms they realized their uselessness and taught a weary world that salvation lay not through violence but through non-violence.... The religion of non-violence is not meant merely for the Rishis and saints. It is meant for the common people as well. Non-violence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law—to the strength of the spirit.... I want India to practise non-violence being conscious of her strength and power. I want India to recognize that she has a soul that cannot perish and that can rise triumphant above every physical weakness and defy the physical combination of a whole world.[57]
Exalted pride, his proud love of India, demands she should scorn violence as unworthy and be ready to sacrifice herself. Non-violence is her title of nobility. If she abandons it she falls. Gandhi cannot bear the thought.
If India made violence her creed I would not care to live in India. She would cease to evoke any pride in me. My patriotism is subservient to my religion. I cling to India like a child to its mother's breast because I feel that she gives me the spiritual nourishment I need. If she were to fail me, I would feel like an orphan, without hope of ever finding a guardian. Then the snow altitudes of the Himalayas must give what rest they can to my bleeding soul....[58]
§ 8
But Gandhi does not doubt India's endurance. In February, 1919, he decided to start the Satyagraha movement, whose efficacy had already been tested during the agrarian revolt in 1918.
The campaign is not at all political, as yet: Gandhi is still a loyalist. And he remains one as long as he retains a grain of faith in England's loyalty. Until January, 1920, he advocated cooperation with the empire, even though the nationalists criticized him bitterly therefore.[59] Gandhi's arguments are inspired by his sincere conviction, and during the first year of his campaign against the Government he could truthfully assure Lord Hunter that he believed the disciples of Satyagraha to be the most loyal supporters of the Constitution. Only the narrow-minded obstinacy of the Government forced India's moral guide finally to tear up the contract of loyalty by which he considered himself hound.
To begin with, therefore, the Satyagraha campaign takes the form of constitutional opposition to the Government. It is a respectful appeal for certain urgent reforms. The Government is guilty of passing an unjust law. The Satyagrahi, who are law-abiding people, will disobey this law deliberately, because they consider it unjust. If their attitude does not convince the Government of the necessity of repealing the law, they will extend their disobedience to other laws, and eventually they may cease all cooperation with the Government. But how different is the meaning which India gives to this word from that which we in the West give to it! Such extraordinary religious heroism as is contained in it!