Jump to content

Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/167

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

struggle involving assertion and freedom of their conscience must be a religious struggle. He therefore hoped they would hold themselves in readiness to respond to the call and not listen to the advice of those who wavered, nor listen to those who asked them to wait, or to those who might ask them to refrain from the battle. The struggle was one involving quite a clear issue, and an incredibly simple one. "Do not listen to any one," he concluded, "but obey your own conscience and go forward without thinking. Now is the time for thinking, and having made up your minds stick to it, even unto death." (Applause.)


SHOULD INDIANS HAVE FULL CITIZEN RIGHTS?

Though Mr. Gandhi declined to participate with the Solomon commission his demands on behalf of the South African Indians were never extravagant. He realised the limitations under which they had to labour and he defined the limits of their ambition. Within those limits however he was determined to offer resistance to interference. Replying to the criticisms of the "Natal Mercury" he wrote early in January 1914:—

Your first leader in to-day's issue of your paper invites astatement from me, which, I hope, you will permit me to make.

You imagine that a more potent reason for delaying the contemplated march is "to be found in the fact that