738 ON THE EVE OF ARREST
can discard it only when we are tired of Swaraj. Hindu-Muslim unity must be our creed to last for all time and under all circumstances.
Nor must that unity be a menace to the minorities the Parsees, the Christians, the Jews or the powerful Sikhs. If we seek to crush any of them, we shall some day want to fight each other.
1 have been drawn so close to you chiefly because I know that you believe in Hindu-Muslim unity in the full sense of the term.
This unity in my opinion is unattainable without our adopting non-violence as a firm policy. I call it a policy because it is limited to the preservation of that unity. But it follows that thirty crores of Hindus and Mussulmans, united not for a time but for all time, can defy all the powers of the world and should con- sider it a cowardly act to resort to violence in their dealings with the English administrators. We have hitherto feared them and their guns in our simplicity. The moment we realise our combined strength, we shall consider it unmanly to fear them and, there- fore, ever to think of striking them. Hence am I anxious and impatient to persuade my countrymen to feel n on- violent, not out of our weakness but out of our strength. But you and 1 know that we have not yet evolved the non-violence of the strong and we have not done so, because the Hindu- Muslim union has not gone much beyond the stage of policy. There is Still too much mutual distrust and consequent fear. 1 am not disappointed. The progress we have made in that direction is indeed phenomenal. We seem to have covered in eighteen months' time the work of a generation. But infinitely more is necessary.
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