Page:The Pilgrims' March.djvu/51

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CHITTA RANJAN DAS
29

understand clearly the real issue which governs this assumption of responsibility. I have stated it before, but I find its real significance has not been appreciated.

Do we assert that the movement of non-violent non-co-operation has succeeded? If it has, is it not quite clear that it is because the Congress may be said to have established its control over the masses in this country? That is the only test of the success of this movement.

The continuance of such control is the measure of our success, its discontinuance must be the measure of our failure. This is also the standard by which the bureaucracy must be judged. The bureaucracy claims to hold this country. I am attaching no importance to its claim, so far as that claim is based on physical force. If that had been the only basis of its enormous claim I would have unhesitatingly declared that the bureaucracy was no more. I am dealing only with its claim so far as it depends only on the moral control which it may still exercise, Our rulers are never tired of quoting Mahatma Gandhi's assumption of responsibility as an admission of the failure of the Non-co-operation movement. That great soul never expresses himself in the faltering accents of half truth and un-