parent; I know that we shall always
have squabbles, we shall always have differences but the lesson that I
want to draw your attention to is that I had the honour and privilege of
addressing both the parties. They gave me their undivided attention and
what is more they showed their attachment, their affection and their
fellowship for me by accepting the humble advice that I had the honour
of tendering to them, and I told them I am not here to distribute
justice that can be awarded only through our worthy president. But I ask
you not to go to the president, you need not worry him. If you are
strong, if you are brave, if you are intent upon getting Swaraj, and if
you really want to revise the creed, then you will bottle up your rage,
you will bottle up all the feelings of injustice that may rankle in
your hearts and forget these things here under this very roof and I told
them to forget their differences, to forgot the wrongs. I don't want to
tell you or go into the history of that incident. Probably most of you
know. I simply want to invite your attention to the fact. I don't say
they have settled up their differences. I hope they have but I do know
that they undertook to forget the differences. They undertook not to
worry the President, they undertook not to make any demonstration here
or in the Subjects Committee. All honour to those who listened to
that advice.
I only wanted my Bengali friends and all the other friends who have come
to this great assembly with a fixed determination to seek nothing but
the settlement of their country, to seek nothing but the advancement of
their respective rights, to seek nothing but the conservation of the
national honour. I appeal to every one of you to copy the example set by
those who felt aggrieved and who felt that their heads were broken. I
know, before we have done with this great battle on which we have
embarked at the special sessions of the Congress, we have to go
probably, possibly through a sea of blood, but let it not be said of us
or any one of us that we are guilty of shedding blood, but let it be
said by generations yet to be born that we suffered, that we shed not
somebody's blood but our own, and so I have no hesitation in saying that
I do not want to show much sympathy for those who had their heads
broken or who were said to be even in danger of losing their lives. What
does it matter? It is much better to die at the hands, at least, of our
own countrymen. What is
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