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Updated: May 19, 2025
Post graduate students have given up their fellowships. Medical students have refused to appear for their final examination. Non-co-operation in these circumstances cannot be called an inane movement. Either the Government must bend to the will of the people which is being expressed in no unmistakable terms through non-co-operation, or it must attempt to crush the movement by repression.
But in the past, non-co-operation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evil doer. I am endeavouring to show to my countrymen that violent non-co-operation only multiplies evil and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence.
The only way, therefore, the Mahomedans can carry on an effective struggle on behalf of the honour of Islam is to take up non-co-operation in real earnest. It will not only be completely effective if it is adopted by the people on an extensive scale, but it will also provide full scope for individual conscience.
Gandhi's boycott, and their representatives gave effect to it in the legislatures which Mr. Gandhi no less vainly boycotted. Yet in spite of Mr. Gandhi's repeated failures "Non-co-operation" is not dead. It has a widespread organisation, with committees in every town and emissaries particularly active in the large villages and in many rural districts.
The most threatening feature of the "Non-co-operation" movement, now that it has failed so completely in its appeal to the better and more educated classes, is that it is concentrating all its energies on the ignorant and excitable masses.
Moreover, the danger that attended the civil disobedience part of Satyagraha does not apply to non-co-operation, because in non-co-operation we are not taking up civil disobedience of laws as a mass movement. The result hitherto has been most encouraging.
Truly it matters little what I, a lonely and insignificant person, may say or do. Even if a respectable number protested it would not be of any use. Yet were I alone against the whole world, I must follow my conscience and my God. I therefore cannot but smile when I see people saying, you should have awaited the decision of the National Congress before starting the non-co-operation movement.
Subduing of one's anger was a storing up of national energy, which, when set free in an ordered manner, would produce astounding results. His conception of non-co-operation did not involve rapine, plunder, incendiarism and all the concomitants of mass madness. His scheme presupposed ability on their part to control all the forces of evil.
In my opinion, the best way to prevent India from becoming the battle ground between the forces of Islam and those of the English is for Hindus to make non-co-operation a complete and immediate success, and I have little doubt that if the Mahomedans remain true to their declared intention and are able to exercise self-restraint, and make sacrifices the Hindus will "play the game" and join them in the campaign of non-co-operation.
To those who hoped for a more rapid and widespread fusion of Indian and Western ideals, some of the phenomena which have marked the latter-day revival of Hinduism and the shape it has recently assumed in Mr. Gandhi's "Non-co-operation" campaign, may have brought grave disappointment. But the inrush of Western influences was assuredly bound to provoke a strong reaction.
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