Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/745

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THE INDEPENDENCE RESOLUTION.

��[Mr. Hasrat Mohani, President of the Moslem League, opposed Mr. Gandhi's resolution in the Congress and brought in various amendments which sought to lay down the object of the Congress as the attainment of complete independence, free from- all foreign control* Mr. Gandhi opposed all the amendments and spoke as follows in defence of his own resolution : ]

Friends, I have said only a few words (in Hindi) in connecxion with the proposition of Mr. Hasrat Mohani. All I want to say to you in English is that proposition and the manner, the levity, with which that proposition has been taken up by so many of you, or some of you, I hope, has grieved me. It has grieved me, because it shows a lack of responsibility. As responsible men and women we should go back to the ways of Nagpur and Calcutta and we should remember what we did only an hour ago. An hour ago we passed a resolution which actually contemplates a final settle- ment of the Khilafat and the Punjab wrongs and transference of the power from the hands of the bureaucracy into the hands of the people by certain definite means. Are you going to rub the whole of that condition from the mind by raising a false issue and by .throwing a bombshell in the midst of the Indian atmosphere. I hope that those of you who have voted for the previous resolution will think fifty times before taking up this resolution and voting for it with levity. We shall be charged by the thinking portion of the -qvorld that we did not know really where we are. Let

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