Mr. Gandhi, you have made my task easy in one way by pleading guilty to the charges; nevertheless what remains, namely the determination of a just sentence, is perhaps as difficult a proposition as a judge in this country could have to face.... It would be impossible to ignore the fact that in the eyes of millions of your countrymen you are a great patriot and a great leader. Even those who differ from you in politics look upon you as a man of high ideals and of noble and even saintly life.... But it is my duty to judge you as a man subject to the law.... There are probably few people in India who do not sincerely regret that you should have made it impossible for any Government to leave you at liberty. But it is so. I am trying to balance what is due to you against what appears to me to be necessary in the interest of the public.
With great courtesy he consulted the accused as to the sentence which should be imposed. "You will not consider it unreasonable, I think, to be classed with Mr. Tilak," sentenced twelve years previously to six years. "If the course of events in India should make it possible for the Government to reduce the period and release you, no one will be better pleased than I."
Gandhi did not allow the judge to outdo him in courtesy. He claimed it was his proudest privilege and honor to have his name associated with that of Tilak. So far as the sentence itself was concerned, he considered it as light as any judge could impose on him, and as far as the whole proceedings were concerned, he said that he could not have expected greater courtesy.[120]
The trial was over. Gandhi's friends fell at his feet, sobbing. The Mahatma took leave of them, smiling. And the door of the jail of Sarbamati closed behind him.[121]
§ 4
Ever since the great apostle's voice has been silent. His body is walled in as in a tomb. But never did a tomb act as a barrier to thought, and Gandhi's invisible soul still animates India's vast body. "Peace, non-violence, suffering,"[122] is the only message that has come from the prison. The message has been heard. From one end of the country to the other the watchword has been passed. Three years earlier India would have been swept by bloodshed at Gandhi's arrest. The mere report of its having taken place caused riots among the population in 1920. But the sentence of Ahmedabad was received with religious solemnity. Thousands of Indians with serene joyfulness handed themselves over to prison guards. Non-violence and suffering—one example more amazing than the others—may serve to show to what depths the divine words have penetrated into the spirit of the nation.
As is well known, the Sikhs have always been looked upon as one of the most warlike races in India. Large numbers of them served in the army during the war. Last year grave dissensions arose among them. To our Western eyes the cause seems insignificant. As the result of a religious effervescence, one of the Sikh sects, the Akalis, wished to purify the sanctuaries. The latter had fallen into the hands of guardians of ill repute who refused to be put out. For legal reasons the Government took their defense. And in August, 1922, began the daily martyrdom of Guru-Ka-Bagh.[123] The Akalis adopted the doctrine of non-resistance. A thousand of them settled near the sanctuary, while four thousand took up abode in the Golden Temple at Amritsar, ten miles away. Every day one hundred from among the four thousand, most of them men of military age, many of whom served in the war, left the Golden Temple, after taking the vow of remaining true to the principles of non-violence in thought as well as action, and of reaching Guru-Ka-Bagh or being brought back unconscious. Among the group of the thousand volunteers twenty-five made the same vow every day. Not far from the sanctuary the British constables waited at the bridge with iron-tipped rods to stop the manifestation. And every day a gruesome scene took place. Andrews, Tagore's friend, describes it unforgettably in his "Akali Struggle."[124] With a wreath of small white flowers around their black turbans, the Akalis arrived silently before the constables, and at a distance of about a yard they stopped and began to pray, silently, motionlessly. The constables, in order to drive them away, prodded them with the iron-tipped rods, jabbing harder and harder till blood began to flow and the Sikhs fell unconscious. Those who could get to their feet would begin to pray again, until they were beaten into unconsciousness like the others. Andrews did not hear a single cry, nor did he see a defiant glance. Near-by, a crowd of spectators, their faces tense with anguish, prayed silently. "I could not help thinking," Andrews says, "of the shadow of the cross." The English described the scene in their papers and expressed amazement.[125] It seemed incomprehensible to the British, although they had to admit that the absurd sacrifice proved that the idea of non-coöperation and non-violence was gaining ground and that the people of the Punjab had been won over to the doctrine. Andrews, whose generous spirit and pure idealism enabled him to penetrate the soul of India, says that here he saw, like Goethe at Valmy, "the dawn of a new era. A new heroism, steeled by suffering, has risen, a war of the spirit."
It would seem as if the people of India have lived up to Mahatma's spirit more faithfully than those whose mission it was to guide them. I have already spoken of the opposition to Gandhi at the session of the congress committee at Delhi twenty days before the master was arrested. This opposition still manifested itself when the committee met again, at Lucknow, June 7, 1922. The program of patient waiting and silent reconstruction advocated by Gandhi was bitterly criticized, and a motion was made to proclaim civil disobedience. A commission was appointed to inquire into conditions and determine whether the country might be called ripe for civil disobedience. The commission traveled all over India, and in the autumn sent in a discouraging report. Not only was civil disobedience called impractical for the present, but half the members went to such extremes of conservatism as to suggest that Gandhi's methods of non-coöperation be abandoned and a new Swaraj or home rule party be formed within the government councils. Gandhi's doctrine was, in other words, attacked by those who believed in violence, as well as by those who believed in prudence.
India, however, did not accept the commission's report. In its annual meeting at the end of December, 1922, the National Indian Congress energetically proclaimed its allegiance to the persecuted master and his doctrine of non-coöperation. By 1740 votes to 890 it rejected all participation in government councils. As for those who believed in violence, they were few and far between and had little influence. The session closed with a unanimous resolution urging that the political strike ordered by Gandhi be kept up. A resolution boycotting English materials, however, was turned down, in order not to antagonize European workmen. But the Mussulman conference of the Khilafat, as usual more audacious than the congress, voted for the boycott by a large majority.
Here we must stop the record of the Gandhist movement. Despite a few inevitable backslides due to the absence of the master and his best disciples, imprisoned like himself (especially the Ali brothers), the movement has successfully passed through the trials of the first unguided year. And the English press, at the close of the session of the congress of 1922 at Gaya, expresses surprise and disappointment at the progress of the movement.[126]