This is a place in which there is for us no hope, no demand, and no grievance of any sort. This is a turn, without passing through which, we cannot reach our goal.
'Non-Cooperation' is essentially the result of absolute desperation at existing circumstances.... I want to make it quite distinct that the term Non-Cooperation applies only to the Government, its administrative system and its executive and political principles and not to any persons or individuals.
'History bears ample testimony to the fact that whenever a ruling authority has taken up arms against liberty and truth, courts of justice have lent themselves admirably to purposes of a most facile and unfailing weapon for the practice of such inequity. The authority of the law courts is a power which can be used equally to do justice and to perpetuate injustice. In the hands of an equitable Government no weapon is deadlier than these for purposes of revenge and inequity. No pure-minded and truth-loving section of humanity can be found, including even the inventors and savants of science, which has not some time or other stood in the dock before a court of law...
'The inequities of courts of law constitute an endless list and history has not yet finished singing the elegy of such miscarriages of justice. In that list we observe a holy personage like Jesus who had to stand in his time before a foreign court, convicted even as the worst of criminals. We see also in the same list Socrates who was sentenced to be poisoned for no other crime than that of being the most truthful person of his age. We meet also the name of the great Florentine martyr to truth, the inventor Galileo, who refused to belie his observations and researches merely because their avowal was a crime in the eyes of constituted authority... When I ponder on the great and significant history of the convicts' dock and find that the honour of standing in that place belongs to me today, my soul becomes steeped in thankfulness and praise of God'.
'In the natural course of things such dominant authority cannot possibly countenance any nationalistic awakening or agitations for progress, reform or justice. And as such agitation would spell the inevitable downfall of its dominant power, it seeks to kill all agitation by declaring it a crime against constituted authority. No power would tamely submit to movements likely to bring about its own decline, however much such decline might be in the ultimate interests of justice. This posture of affairs is merely a struggle for existence in which both sides fight desperately for their principles. An awakened nation aspires to attain what it considers its birthright and the dominant authority would fain not budge an inch from its position of unquestioned sway. The contention might almost be advanced that the latter party even like its opponents is not open to any blame in as much as it is merely putting up a fight for its own survival and it is quite an incidental matter that its existence happens to be inimical to perpetuation of justice. We cannot deny facts of human nature and its inseparable characteristics. Like good, evil also desires to live in this world and struggle for its own existence.
'Most certainly, therefore, nothing can be a higher crime against the domination of Government, as at present established, than the agitation which seeks to terminate its unlimited authority in the name of liberty and justice.
'The history of politics teaches us that foolishness and recklessness of consequences are always the companions of a decadent power... Repression when practised against national awakening is no fatal thing for a nation but instead breathes new life into it.
'According to my belief it is my duty to speak out at the present moment and I cannot fall short of the full performance of my duty, just because it might be construed into a crime... Most certainly I have stated that the present Government is oppressive. If I do not say this, what else am I to say? I fail to understand why it should be expected of me that I should call things by any but their right names. I refuse absolutely to call black white... I have certainly been asserting that only two paths are open to us in this matter of our duty. The Government has to refrain from all this inequity and deprivation of liberty; or if it cannot bring itself to do so, it has to be wiped off... I believe in the evil of the present Government most assuredly.
Now what is the reason that such is the firm belief of myself... this faith of mine exists because I am an Indian, because I am a Muslim and, first and last, because I am a man.
'It is my belief that liberty is the natural and God-given right of man.
No man and no bureaucracy consisting of men has got the right to make the servants of God its own slaves. However attractive be the euphemism invented for 'subjugation' and 'slavery', still slavery is slavery and it is opposed to the will and to the canons of God. I therefore do not consider the bureaucracy of India to be a legitimate sovereign and I consider it a bounded duty to liberate country from its yoke. The notorious fallacies of 'Reform' and 'gradual transfer of power' can produce no illusions and pitfalls in my unequivocal and definite faith. Liberty being the primary right of man, it is nobody's personal privilege to prescribe limits or apportion shares in the distribution of it. To say that a nation should get its liberty in graduated stages is the same as saying that an owner should by right receive his property only in bits and a creditor his dues by instalments.... Whoever philanthropic acts might be performed by a man who has usurped our property, his usurpation would still continue to be utterly illegal.
Evil cannot be classified into good and bad. All that is in fairness possible is to fix its gradations with respect to quality. We can say very heinous robbery and less heinous robbery, but who can speak of good robbery and bad robbery?
Such is my duty as a man and as an Indian and religious injunctions have also taught me the same lesson. In fact in my view the greatest proof of the truth of my religion is that it is another name for the teaching of the rights of man. I am a Muslim and by virtue of being a Muslim this has become my religious duty. Islam never accepts as valid a sovereignty which is personal or is constituted of a bureaucracy of a handful of paid executive. Islam constitutes a perfected system of freedom and democracy. It has been sent down to get back for the human race the liberty which has been snatched away from it. Monarchs, foreign domination, selfish religious pontiffs and powerful sections had alike misappropriated this liberty of man. They had been fondly nursing the belief that power and possession spell the highest right. Might it not might but right itself. No one except God has got the right. The moment Islam appeared it proclaimed that the highest right is not might but right itself. No one except God has got the right to make serfs and slaves of God's creatures. All men are equal and their fundamental rights are on a par. He only is greater than others, whose deeds are the most righteous of all....
'The sovereignty of the Prophet of Islam and of the Khalif was a perfected conception of democratic equality and it only could take shape with whole nation's free will, unity, suffrage and election. This is the reason why the sovereign or president of a republic is like a designated Khalif; Khilafat literally means nothing more nor less than a representation; so that all the authority a Khalif possesses consists in his representative character and he possesses no domination beyond this representative authority.
'If then Islam defines it as a duty of Muslims to refuse to acknowledge the moral justification even of an Islamic Government, if full play is not granted in it to the will and franchise of the nation, it is perfectly superfluous to add what under Islam would be the ruling given about a foreign bureaucracy. If today there was to be established in India an Islamic Government but if the system of that government was based upon personal monarchy or upon bureaucratic oligarchy, then to protest against the existence of such a Government would still be my primary duty as a Muslim. I would still call the Government oppressive and demand its replacement.
'I frankly confess that this original conception of Islamic sovereignty could not be uniformly maintained in its primal purity on account of the selfishness and personal domineering of the later Muslim sovereigns.
No period of the dynastic sovereignties of Islam has however failed to produce some true Muslim martyrs who have made public declarations of the tyrannies and transgressions of such monarchies and had joyfully and triumphantly suffered all miseries and hardships which inevitably confronted them in the thorny paths of duty.
'The holy prophet of Islam has preached the following doctrine to the Muslims: 'The man is blessed with the best of deaths who proclaims the truth in the face of a tyrannical administration and is slaughtered in punishment of this deed.' Scripture of Islam, the Holy Quran, defines the greatest attribute of the true Muslims to be 'that they fear not any being except God and whatever they consider to be the truth, they reckon not any authority in the public proclamation of such truth.' The Quran further defines the national characteristics of the Muslim as follows: 'They are the witnesses to truth on God's earth.' As long therefore, as they continue to be Muslims they can not desist from giving this public evidence. In fact it has designated Muslims as witnesses i.e. givers of the evidence of truth. When the Prophet of Islam extracted a promise of righteousness from any person, one of the clauses of such a bond used to be: 'I will always proclaim the truth in whatever condition and wherever I may happen to be...
'I know there is still living in India many a Muslim who through his weakness pays homage to this very tyranny. But the failure of man to act up to the spirit of certain tenets can not belie the intrinsic truth of those principles.
'The tenets of Islam are preserved in its scriptures. These under no circumstances make it permissible for Muslims to enjoy life at the expense of liberty. A true Muslim has either to immolate himself or to retain his liberty; no other course is open for him under his religion.
'Today the Muslims have come to a firm decision that in freeing their country from its slavery they will take their fullest share along with their Hindu, Sikh, Parsi and Christian brethren... It is now their belief that to expect any justice from the British Government would be nothing but pure self-deception so that if they really aspire to obtain justice there is only one single avenue leading to it which is the attainment of Swaraj—meaning the Government of India for India and by the Indians themselves. In short on these points my admissions have ever been absolutely clear and unequivocal.
'The present Government is a most illegitimate form of bureaucracy. It is openly spurning the wishes and aspirations of millions of humanity. It has always given the preference over justice to prestige... Does tyranny acquire a right to be given a different name simply because it happens to be powerful.
'In this war of liberty and justice, I have adopted the path of non-violent non-cooperation. Opposed to us stands an authority armed with the complete equipment for oppression, excess and bloodshed. But we place our reliance and trust, next to God, only on our own limitless power of sacrifice and unshakable fortitude.
'Unlike Mahatma Gandhi, my belief is not that armed force should never be opposed by armed force. It is my belief that such opposing of violence with violence is fully in harmony with the natural laws of God in those circumstances under which Islam permits the use of such violence. But at the same time for purpose of liberation of India at the present agitation. I entirely agree with all the arguments of Mahatma Gandhi. It is my definite conviction that India cannot attain success by means of arms nor is it advisable for it to adopt that course. India can only triumph through non-violent agitation and India's triumph will be a memorable example of the victory of moral force.
Power is not normally prone to admit facts just because they are logical and proved. As a matter of fact it waits for the emergence of a counter-strength and when this does present itself, it bows its head down before the most improper demand.
(Source: Translation of Urdu Text 'Qaul-e-Faisal' from Selected Works of Motilal Nehru, Vol. 3, Appendix XIII)