Dear Mr. Gandhi,
Thank you for your letter to every Englishman in India, with its hard-hitting and its generous tone. Something within us responds to the note which you have struck. We are not representatives of any corporate body, but we think that millions of our countrymen in England, and not a few in India, feel as we do. The reading of your letter convinces us that you and we cannot be real enemies.
May we say at once that in so far as the British Empire stands for the domination and exploitation of other races for Britain's benefit, for degrading treatment of any, for traffic in intoxicating liquors, for repressive legislation, for administration such as that which to the Amritsar incidents, we desire the end of it as much as you do? We quite understand that in the excitement of the present crisis, owing to certain acts of the British Administration, which we join with you in condemning, the Empire presents itself to you under this aspect along. But from personal contact with our countrymen, we know that working like leaven in the midst of such tendencies, as you and we deplore, is the faith in a better ideal--the ideal of a commonwealth of free peoples voluntarily linked together by the ties of common experience in the past and common aspirations for the future, a commonwealth which may hope to spread liberty and progress through the whole earth. With vast numbers of our countrymen we value the British Empire mainly as affording the possibility of the realization of such an idea and on the ground give it our loyal allegiance.
Meanwhile we do repent of that arrogant attitude to Indians which has been all too common among our countrymen, we do hold Indians to be our brothers and equals, many of them our superiors, and we would rather be servants than rulers of India. We desire an administration which cannot he intimated either by the selfish element in Anglo-Indian political opinion or by any other sectional interest and which shall govern in accordance with the best democratic principles. We should welcome the convening of a National assembly of recognized leaders of the people, representing all shades of political opinion of every caste, race and creed, to frame a constitution for Swaraj. In all the things that matter most we are with you. Surely you and we can co-operate in the service of India, in such matters for example as education. It seems to us nothing short of a tragedy that you should be rallying Indian Patriotism to inaugurate a new era of good will under a watchword that divides, instead of uniting all.
We have spoken of the large amount of common ground upon which you and we can stand. But frankness demands that we express our anxiety about some items in your programme. Leaving aside smaller questions on which your letter seems to us to do the British side less than justice, may we mention three main points? Your insistence on spiritual forces alone we deeply respect and desire to emulate, but we cannot understand your combining into it with a close alliance with those who, as you frankly say, would draw the sword as soon as they could.
Your desire for an education truly national commands our whole-hearted approval. But instead of Indianizing the present system, as you could begin to do from the beginning of next year, or instead of creating a hundred institutions such as that at Bolpur and turning into them the stream of India's young intellectual life, you appear to be turning that stream out of its present channel into open sands where it may dry up. In other words, you seem to us to be risking the complete cessation, for a period possibly, of years, of all education, for a large number of boys and young men. Is it best, for those young men or for India that the present imperfect education should cease before a better education is ready to take its place?
Your desire to unite Mohammedan and Hindu and to share with your Mohammedan brethren in seeking the satisfaction of Mohammedan aspirations, we can understand and sympathize with. But is there no danger, in the course which some of your party have urged upon the Government, that certain races in the former Ottoman Empire might be fixed under a foreign yoke, for worse than that which you hold the English yoke to be? You could not wish to purchase freedom in India at the price of enslavement in the middle East.
To sum up, we thank you for the spirit of your letter, to which we have tried to respond in the same spirit. We are with you in the desire for an India genuinely free to develop the best that is in her and in the belief that best is something wonderful of which the world to-day stands in need.
We are ready to co-operate with you and with every other man of any race or nationality who will help India to realize her best. Are you going to insist that you can have nothing to do with us if we receive a government grant (i.e., Indian money), for an Indian School. Surely some more inspiring battle cry than non-co-operation can be discovered. We have ventured quite frankly to point out three items in your present programme, which seem to us likely to hinder the attainment of your true ideals for Indian greatness. But those ideals themselves command our warm sympathy, and we desire to work, so far as we have opportunity, for their attainment. In fact, it is only thus that we can interpret our British citizenship.
Yours sincerely,
(Sd.) H.A. POPLEY,
(Sd.) G.E. PHILLIPS.
Bangalore, November 15, 1920.