(5) Boycott of the reformed Councils.
(6) Non-participation in government parties and other official functions.
(7) Refusal to accept any civil or military post.
(8) Agreements to spread the doctrine of Swadeshi.[67]
In other words, the negative part of the program should be completed by constructive measures, which would lead to the building up of the new India of the future.
This program specified the first steps to be taken, and we must admire the prudent sagacity of the leader who, after cranking up the enormous machine of Hindu revolt, stops it short, so to speak, and holds it back, pulsating, at the first turn, a method in startling opposition to that of our European revolutionaries. Gandhi is not planning civil disobedience for the present. He knows civil disobedience. He has studied it in Thoreau, whom he quotes in his articles, and he takes pains to explain the difference between it and non-coöperation. Civil disobedience, he says, is more than a mere refusal to obey the law. It means deliberate opposition to the law; it is an infraction of the law, and can be carried out only by an elite, while non-coöperation should be a mass movement. Gandhi means to prepare the masses in India for civil disobedience but they must be trained for it by a gradual process. He knows that at present people are not ripe for it, and he does not want to set them loose before he feels sure that they have mastered the art of self-control. So he launches non-coöperation. Non-coöperation, in this first stage, does not include a refusal to pay taxes. Gandhi is biding his time.
August 1,1920, Gandhi gives the signal for the movement by his famous letter to the viceroy, surrendering his decorations and honorary titles:
It is not without a pang that I return the Kaisar-i-Hind Gold Medal granted to me by your predecessor for my humanitarian work in South Africa, the Zulu War Medal, granted in South Africa for my services as officer in charge of the Indian Volunteer Ambulance Corps in 1906, and the Boer War Medal for my services as assistant superintendent of the Indian Volunteer Stretcher-bearer Corps during the Boer War of 1899-1900.
But, he adds, after referring to the scenes that took place in the Punjab and the events back of the Khilafat movement:
I can retain neither respect nor affection for a Government which has been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend its immorality.... The Government must be moved to repentance.
I have therefore ventured to suggest non-coöperation which enables those who wish to disassociate themselves from the Government and which, if unattended by violence, must compel the Government co retrace its steps and undo its wrongs.