respectfully contend that an appreciation of other cultures can fitly follow, never precede, an appreciation and assimilation of our own. It is my firm opinion that no culture has treasures so rich as ours has. We have not known it, we have been made even to deprecate its value. We have almost ceased to live it. An academic grasp without practice behind it is like an enbalmed corpse, perhaps lovely to lock at but nothing to inspire or ennoble. My religion forbids me to belittle or disregard other cultures, as it insists under pain of civil suicide upon imbibing and living my own.
FROM SATYAGRAHA TO NON·CO-OPERATION[1]
It is often my lot to answer knotty questions on all sorts of topics arising out of this great movement of national purification. A company of collegiate non co-operators asked me te define for them the terms which I have used as heading for this note. And even at this late day, I was seriously asked whether Satyagrah did not at times warrant resistance by violence, as for instance in the case of a sister whose virtue might be in danger from a desperado. I ventured to suggest that it was the completest defence without irritation, without being rudled, to interpose oneself between the victim and the victimizer, and to face death. I added that this (for the assailant) novel method of defence would, in all probability, exhaust his passion and he will no longer want to ravish an innocent woman, but would want to flee from her presence for very shame, and that, if he did not, the act of personal bravery on the part of her brother would steel her heart for putting up an equally brave defence and resisting the
- ↑ From Young India.
