Page:Gandhi - Freedom's battle.djvu/67

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Khilafat movement then means to join a movement to keep inviolate the pledge of a British minister. Surely, such a movement is worth much greater sacrifice than may be involved in non-co-operation.

Appeal to the Viceroy

Your Excellency.

As one who has enjoyed a certain measure of your Excellency's confidence, and as one who claims to be a devoted well-wisher of the British Empire, I owe it to your Excellency, and through your Excellency to His Majesty's Ministers, to explain my connection with and my conduct in the Khilafat question.

At the very earliest stages of the war, even whilst I was in London organising the Indian Volunteer Ambulance Corps, I began to interest myself in the Khilafat question. I perceived how deeply moved the little Mussalman World in London was when Turkey decided to throw in her lot with Germany. On my arrival in India in the January of 1915, I found the same anxiousness and earnestness among the Mussalmans with whom I came in contact. Their anxiety became intense when the information about the Secret Treaties leaked out. Distrust of British intentions filled their minds, and despair