Holland cracks jokes quite
legitimately at the expense of non-co-operationists. To get Swaraj then
is to get rid of our helplessness. The problem is no doubt stupendous
even as it is for the fabled lion who having been brought up in the
company of goats found it impossible to feel that he was a lion. As
Tolstoy used to put it, mankind often laboured under hypnotism. Under
its spell continuously we feel the feeling of helplessness. The British
themselves cannot be expected to help us out of it. On the contrary,
they din into our ears that we shall be fit to govern ourselves only by
slow educative processes. The "Times" suggested that if we boycott the
councils we shall lose the opportunity of a training in Swaraj. I have
no doubt that there are many who believe what the "Times" says. It even
resorts to a falsehood. It audaciously says that Lord Milner's Mission
listened to the Egyptians only when they were ready to lift the boycott
of the Egyptian Council. For me the only training in Swaraj we need is
the ability to defend ourselves against the whole world and to live our
natural life in perfect freedom even though it may be full of defects.
Good Government is no substitute for self-Government. The Afghans have a
bad Government but it is self-Government. I envy them. The Japanese
learnt the art through a sea of blood. And if we to-day had the power to
drive out the English by superior brute force, we would be counted their
superiors, and in spite of our inexperience in debating at the Council
table or in holding executive offices, we would be held fit to govern
ourselves. For brute force is the only test the west has hitherto
recognised. The Germans were defeated not because they were necessarily
in the wrong, but because the allied Powers were found to possess
greater brute strength. In the end therefore India must either learn the
art of war which the British will not teach her or, she must follow her
own way of discipline and self-sacrifice through non-co-operation. It is
as amazing as it is humiliating that less than one hundred-thousand
white men should be able to rule three hundred and fifteen million
Indians. They do so somewhat undoubtedly by force, but more by securing
our co-operation in a thousand ways and making us more and more helpless
and dependent on them as time goes forward. Let us not mistake reformed
councils, more lawcourts and even governorships for real freedom or
power. They are but subtler methods