Freedom of India will demonstrate to all the exploited races of the earth that their freedom is very near.
To gain India’s freedom, the capacity for suffering must go hand in hand with the capacity for ceaseless labour.
I want for India complete independence in the full English sense of that English term.
I would not sell the vital interests of the untouchables for the sake of winning the freedom of India.
I would bend the knee before the poorest scavenger, the poorest untouchable in India for having participated in crushing him for centuries; I would even take the dust off his feet.
My varnashram dharma teaches me that there must be some significance in the fact of my being born in India instead of in Europe.
I am wedded to India because I owe my all to her.
Even if the whole of India, ranged on one side, were to declare that Hindu-Muslim unity is impossible, I will declare that it is perfectly possible.
I hold too that whatever may be true of other countries, a bloody revolution will not succeed in India.
I call the Lancashire trade immoral, because it was raised and is sustained on the ruin of millions of India’s peasants.
If as a member of a slave nation I could deliver the suppressed classes from their slavery without freeing myself from my own, I would do so today. But it is an impossible task.
My nationalism is as broad as my swadeshi, I want India’s rise so that the whole world may benefit.
It is my unshakable belief that India’s destiny is to deliver the message of nonviolence to mankind.
My swadeshi chiefly centers round the handspun khaddar and extends to everything that can be and is produced in India.
My interest in India’s freedom will cease if she adopts violent means, for their fruit will not be freedom but slavery in disguise.
Disorder and violence are, in fact, things that might check the pace of India’s progress.
All I want to say, with the utmost emphasis at my command, is that the description of India as a military country is wrong.
I must declare that it is better for India do discard violence altogether even for defending her borders.
Indian nationalism is not exclusive, nor aggressive, nor destructive.
Urbanization in India is a slow but sure death for her villages and villagers.