blem of India's distress
and humiliation. Nor must they be impatient and angry. We must not in
our impatient anger resort, to stupid violence. We freely admit that we
must take our due share of the blame for the existing state. It is not
so much the British guns that are responsible fur our subjection, as our
voluntary co-operation. Our non-participation in a hearty welcome to
your Royal Highness is thus in no sense a demonstration against your
high personage but it is against the system you have come to uphold. I
know that individual Englishmen cannot even if they will alter the
English nature all of a sudden. If we would be equals of Englishmen we
must cast off fear. We must learn to be self-reliant and independent of
the schools, courts, protection, and patronage of a Government, we seek
to end, if it will not mend. Hence this non-violent non-co-operation. I
know that we have not all yet become non-violent in speech and deed. But
the results so far achieved have I assure Your Royal Highness, been
amazing. The people have understood the secret and the value of
non-violence as they have never done before. He who runs may see that
this a religious, purifying movement. We are leaving off drink, we are
trying to rid India of the curse of untouchability. We are trying to
throw off foreign tinsel splendour and by reverting to the spinning
wheel reviving the ancient and the poetic simplicity of life. We hope
thereby to sterilize the existing harmful institution. I ask Your Royal
Highness as an Englishman to study this movement and its possibilities
for the Empire and the world. We are at war with nothing that is good in
the world. In protecting Islam in the manner we are, we are protecting
all religions. In protecting the honour of India we are protecting the
honour of humanity. For our means are hurtful to none. We desire to live
on terms of friendship with Englishmen but that friendship must be
friendship of equals in both theory and practice. And we must continue
to non-co-operate, i.e. to purify ourselves till the goal is achieved.

I ask Your Royal Highness and through you every Englishman to
appreciate the view-point of the non-co-operationists.

I beg to remain,
Your Royal Highness's faithful servant,
(Sd.) M.K. GANDHI.
_February_, 1921

THE GREATEST THING

It is to be wished that non-co-operationists will clearly recognise that
nothing can stop the onward march of the nation as violence. Ireland may
gain its