[The following is the Statement
of Mahatma Gandhi made before the Court during his Trial in Ahmedabad on the
18th March 1921.]
Before reading his written
statement Mahatma Gandhi spoke a few words as introductory remarks to the whole
statement. He said: Before I read this statement, I would like to state that I
entirely endorse the learned Advocate-General's remarks in connection with my
humble self. I think that he was entirely fair to me in all the statements that
he has made, because it is very true and I have no desire whatsoever to conceal
from this Court the fact that to preach disaffection towards the existing
system of Government has become almost a passion with me. And the learned
Advocate-General is also entirely in the right when he says that my preaching
of disaffection did not commence with my connection with "Young
India" but that it commenced much earlier and in the statement that I am
about to read it will be my painful duty to admit before this Court that it
commenced much earlier than the period stated by the Advocate-General. It is
the most painful duty with me but I have to discharge that duty knowing the
responsibility that rested upon my shoulders. And I wish to endorse all the
blame that the Advocate-General has thrown on my shoulders in connection with
the Bombay occurrence, Madras occurrences, and the Chouri Choura occurrences
thinking over these things deeply, and sleeping over them night after night and
examining my heart I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible for me
to dissociate myself from the diabolical crimes of Chouri Choura or the mad
outrages of Bombay. He is quite right when he says that as a man of
responsibility, a man having received a fair share of education, having had a
fair share of experience of this world, I should know them. I knew that I was
playing with fire. I ran the risk and if I was set free I would still do the
same. I would be failing in my duty if I do not do so. I have felt it this
morning that I would have failed in my duty if I did not say all what I said
here just now. I wanted to avoid violence. Non-violence is the first article of
my faith. It is the last article of my faith. But I had to make my choice. I
had either to submit to a system which I considered has done an irreparable
harm to my country or incur the risk of the mad fury of my people bursting
forth when they understood the truth from my lips. I know that my people have
sometimes gone mad. I am deeply sorry for it; and I am, therefore, here to
submit not to a light penalty but to the highest penalty. I do not ask for
mercy. I do not plead any extenuating act. I am here, therefore, to invite and
submit to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is
a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.
The only course open to you, Mr. Judge, is, as I am just going to say in my
statement, either to resign your post or inflict on me the severest penalty if
you believe that the system and law you are assisting to administer are good
for the people. I do not expect that kind of conversion. But by the time I have
finished with my statement you will, perhaps, have a glimpse of what is raging
within my breast to run this maddest risk which a sane man can run.
WRITTEN STATEMENT
I owe it perhaps to the Indian
public and to the public in England to placate which this prosecution is mainly
taken up that I should explain why from a staunch loyalist and co-operator I
have become an uncompromising disaffectionist and non-co-operator. To the Court
too I should say why I plead guilty to the charge of promoting disaffection
towards the Government established by law in India. My public life began in
1893 in South Africa in troubled weather. My first contact with British authority
in that country was not of a happy character. I discovered that as a man and as
an Indian I had no rights. On the contrary I discovered that I had no rights as
a man because I was an Indian.
But I was not baffled. I thought
that this treatment of Indians was an excrescence upon a system that was
intrinsically and mainly good. I gave the Government my voluntary and hearty
co-operation, criticising it fully where I felt it was faulty but never wishing
its destruction.
Consequently when the existence
of the Empire was threatened in 1899 by the Boer challenge, I offered my
services to it, raised a volunteer ambulance corps and served at several
actions that took place for the relief of Ladysmith. Similarly in 1906 at the
time of the Zulu revolt I raised a stretcher-bearer party and served till the
end of the 'rebellion'. On both these occasions I received medals and was even
mentioned in despatches. For my work in South Africa I was given by Lord
Hardinge a Kaiser-i-Hind Gold Medal. When the war broke out in 1914 between
England and Germany I raised a volunteer ambulance corps in London consisting
of the then resident Indians in London, chiefly students. Its work was
acknowledged by the authorities to be valuable. Lastly in India when a special
appeal was made at the War Conference in Delhi in 1917 by Lord Chelmsford for
recruits, I struggled at the cost of my health to raise a corps in Kheda and
the response was being made when the hostilities ceased and orders were
received that no more recruits were wanted. In all those efforts at service I
was actuated by the belief that it was possible by such services to gain a
status of full equality in the Empire for my countrymen.
The first shock came in the shape
of the Rowlalt Act a law designed to rob the people of all real freedom. I felt
called upon to lead an intensive agitation against it. Then followed the Punjab
horrors beginning with the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh and culminating in
brawling orders, public floggings and other indescribable humiliations, I discovered
too that the plighted word of the Prime Minister to the Mussalmans of India
regarding the integrity of Turkey and the holy places of Islam was not likely
to be fulfilled. But in spite of the foreboding and the grave warnings of
friends, at the Amritsar Congress in 1919 I fought for co-operation and working
the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, hoping that the Prime Minister would redeem his
promise to the Indian Mussalmans, that the Punjab wound would be healed and
that the reforms inadequate and unsatisfactory though they were, marked a new
era of hope in the life of India. But all that hope was shattered. The Khilafat
promise was not to be redeemed. The Punjab crime was white-washed and most
culprits went not only unpunished but remained in service and some continued to
draw pensions from the Indian revenue, and in some cases were even rewarded. I
saw too that not only did the reforms not mark a change of heart, but they were
only a method of further draining India of her wealth and of prolonging her servitude.
I came reluctantly to the
conclusion that the British connection had made India more helpless than she
ever was before, politically and economically. A disarmed India has no power of
resistance against any aggressor if she wanted to engage in an armed conflict
with him. So much is this the case that some of our best men consider that
India must take generations before she can achieve the Dominion status. She has
become so poor that she has little power of resisting famines. Before the
British advent India spun and wove in her millions of cottages just the
supplement she needed for adding to her meagre agricultural resources. The
cottage industry, so vital for India's existence, has been ruined by incredibly
heartless and inhuman processes as described by English witnesses. Little do
town-dwellers know how the semi-starved masses of Indians are slowly sinking to
lifelessness. Little do they know that their miserable comfort represents the
brokerage they get for the work they do for the foreign exploiter, that the
profits and the brokerage are sucked from the masses. Little do they realise
that the Government established by law in British India is carried on for this
exploitation of the masses. No sophistry, no jugglery in figures can explain
away the evidence the skeletons in many villages present to the naked eye. I
have no doubt whatsoever that both England and the town dwellers of India will
have to answer, if there is a God above, for this crime against humanity which
is perhaps unequalled in history. The law itself in this country has been used
to serve the foreign exploiter. My unbiased, examination of the Punjab Martial
Law cases had led me to believe that at least ninety-five per cent. of
convictions were wholly bad. My experience of political cases in India leads me
to the conclusion that in nine out of every ten the condemned men were totally
innocent. Their crime consisted in love of their country. In ninety-nine cases
out of hundred justice has been denied to Indians as against Europeans in the
Court of India. This is not an exaggerated picture. It is the experience of
almost every Indian who has had anything to do such cases. In my opinion the
administration of the law is thus prostituted consciously or unconsciously for
the benefit of the exploiter. The greatest misfortune is that Englishmen and
their Indian associates in the administration of the country do not know that
they are engaged in the crime I have attempted to describe. I am satisfied that
many English and Indian officials honestly believe that they are administering
one of the best systems devised in the world and that India is making steady
though slow progress. They do not know that a subtle but effective system of
terrorism and an organised display of force on the one hand and the deprivation
of all powers of retaliation of self-defence on the other have emasculated the
people and induced in them the habit of simulation. This awful habit has added
to the ignorance and the self-deception of the administrators. Section 124-A
under which I am happily charged is perhaps the prince among the political
sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the
citizen. Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law. If one has no
affection for a person or thing one should be free to give the fullest
expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote or
incite to violence. But the section under which mere promotion of disaffection
is a crime. I have studied some of the cases tried under it, and I know that
some of the most loved of India's patriots have been convicted under it. I
consider it a privilege therefore, to be charged under it. I have endeavoured
to give in their briefest outline the reasons for my disaffection. I have no
personal ill-will against any single administrator, much less can I have any
disaffection towards the King's person. But I hold it to be a virtue to be
disaffected towards a Government which in its totality has done more harm to
India than any previous system. India is less manly under the British rule than
she ever was before. Holding such a belief, I consider it to be a sin to have
affection for the system. And it has been a precious privilege for me to be
able to write what I have in the various articles tendered in evidence against
me.
In fact I believe that I have
rendered a service to India and England by showing in non-co-operation the way
out of the unnatural state in which both are living. In my humble opinion,
non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good. But
in the past, non-co-operation has been deliberately expressed in violence to
the evil doer. I am endeavouring to show to my countrymen that violent
non-co-operation only multiplies evil and that as evil can only be sustained by
violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from
violence. Non-violent implies voluntary submission to the penalty for
non-co-operation with evil. I am here, therefore, to invite and submit
cheerfully to the highest penalty that can he inflicted upon me for what in law
is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a
citizen. The only course open to you, the Judge and the Assessors, is either to
resign your posts and thus dissociate yourselves from evil if you feel that the
law you are called upon to administer is an evil and that in reality I am
innocent, or to inflict on me the severest penalty if you believe that the
system and the law you are assisting to administer are good for the people of
this country and that my activity is therefore injurious to the public weal.
M. K. GHANDI.