Government for an unbroken period of nearly
30 years in the full belief that through that way lay the path of
freedom for my country. It was therefore no slight thing for me to
suggest to my countrymen that we should take no part in welcoming Your
Royal Highness. Not one among us has anything against you as an English
gentleman. We hold your person as sacred as that of a dearest friend. I
do not know any of my friends who would not guard it with his life, if
he found it in danger. We are not at war with individual Englishmen we
seek not to destroy English life. We do desire to destroy a system that
has emasculated our country in body, mind and soul. We are determined to
battle with all our might against that in the English nature which has
made O'Dwyerism and Dyerism possible in the Punjab and has resulted in a
wanton affront upon Islam a faith professed by seven crores of our
countrymen. The affront has been put in breach of the letter and the
spirit of the solemn declaration of the Prime Minister. We consider it
to be inconsistent with our self respect any longer to brook the spirit
of superiority and dominance which has systematically ignored and
disregarded the sentiments of thirty crores of the innocent people of
India on many a vital matter. It is humiliating to us, it cannot be a
matter of pride to you, that thirty crores of Indians should live day in
and day out in the fear of their lives from one hundred thousand
Englishmen and therefore be under subjection to them.

Your Royal Highness has come not to end the system I have described but
to sustain it by upholding its prestige. Your first pronouncement was a
laudation of Lord Wellingdon. I have the privilege of knowing him. I
believe him to be an honest and amiable gentleman who will not willingly
hurt even a fly. But, he has certainly failed as a ruler. He allowed
himself to be guided by those whose interest it was to support their
power. He is reading the mind of the Dravidian province. Here in Bengal
you are issuing a certificate of merit to a Governor who is again from
all I have heard an estimable gentleman. But he knows nothing of the
heart of Bengal and its yearnings. Bengal is not Calcutta. Fort William
and the palaces of Calcutta represent an insolent exploitation of the
unmurmuring and highly cultured peasantry of this fair province.
Non-co-operationists have come to the conclusion that they must not be
deceived by the reforms that tinker with the pro