E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XXIGoat's MilkTHERE can be no partnership between the brave and the effeminate. We areregarded as a cowardly people. If we want to become free from that reproach,we should learn the use of arms.'Mahatma Gandhi spoke those words in July 1918, while recruiting Indians forthe British Army during the first World War. We should become partners of theEmpire,' he added; 'a dominion like Canada, South Africa and Australia. To bringabout such a thing,' he declared, 'we should have the ability to defendourselves, that is, the ability to bear arms and to use them ... If we want tolearn the use of arms with the greatest possible dispatch, it is our duty to enlistourselves in the Army.'Gandhi delivered this speech in Kheda district of his native Gujarat region inwestern India. In March, he had led a Satyagraha movement in Kheda for theremission of taxes 011 peasants who had suffered a crop failure. The civildisobedience campaign was partly successful: the well-to-do farmers paid taxesbut the poor did not.The peasants had followed him in civil resistance and fed f1 and given him theircarts for transportation. But now, en he came to recruit, they would not evenlet him hire a cart and they refused to feed him and his small party.Gandhi records their heckling: You are a votary of nonviolence, how can youask us to take up arms?' 'What good has the government done for India?''Partnership in the Empire is our definite goal,' he replied. 'We should suffer tothe utmost of our ability and even lay down our lives to defend the Empire. Ifthe Empire perishes, with it perishes our cherished aspirations.'His audiences said India would fight in return for new freedoms. No, Gandhiinsisted, it was evil to take advantage of Britain's war-time predicament. Hetrusted England.www.mkgandhi.org Page 179