peace is the most effective weapon elaborate on the statement keeping in mind the conversation between Mahatma Gandhi and general smuts
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This year, on October the 2nd, Mahatma Gandhi will have reached the threshold of 70. We may well thank God for the wonderful gift that He has given to India in preserving his life for us so long!
When I last saw him, a few months ago, he was lying down on his bed at Juhu by doctor's order, recovering from the very severe and sudden collapse and high blood pressure which had attacked him in Calcutta, only a short time before. Since then, his health has been very precarious indeed and the blood pressure has been unstable. Nevertheless, God has spared his life for our sakes and the sake of humanity: and we pray that it may be still longer preserved. For there is no single man in the whole world today who is so deeply and universally beloved as Mahatma Gandhi. Even those who condemned him during the non-co-operation movement have recently changed their minds; and the most conservative people in India and Great Britain have now one thing in common; they deeply long that Mahatma Gandhi's life may be continued for the sake of the peace of the world.
When I first met him in the year 1913, he was still in South Africa, struggling against almost insuperable odds to obtain justice for the poor laborers who had emigrated to that distant country from India. They had come chiefly from Tamil Nadu and had gone out to South Africa as indentured laborers. They were being cruelly driven back to India after the indenture was over, by means of an unjust poll-tax, and Mahatmaji had determined by passive resistance to get that tax removed. He made, what has been called by one writer, "the most remarkable march with a peaceful army which history has ever recorded." This "army" was composed of indentured laborers ―men, women, and children. They had no weapons of war. Their one weapon was non-violence. They started from one of the central districts of Natal and marched over the high Drakensberg mountains until they came to the borders of Transvaal. I have been along that very road, by which they came over those high mountains. When they crossed these mountains it was so bitterly cold at night time that two little children perished on the way.
When we reached the capital, then, once again, there were almost insuperable difficulties. The telegraph lines were cut by the strikers, and we were thus quite isolated from the rest of the world, for there was no 'wireless' in those days.
Anyone else, who had received such a favorable offer, would have at once demanded the very maximum, but Mr. Gandhi, who is the soul of truth and uprightness in everything he does, asked instead only for the minimum. His one final demand was this, that the £3/- poll-tax (which was the sign of slavery) should be entirely abolished. General Smuts agreed to this and signed a draft agreement.
This was the beginning of the last act in that great drama, whereby Mahatma Gandhi won his passive resistance struggle against overwhelming odds in South Africa. In the history of India and the world, it marks a turning point, which future historians will record, from violence to nonviolence. I have told this amazing story rapidly, to show how Mahatmaji has remained true to his great principle of nonviolence during all these intervening years. He has never turned either to the right hand or the left but has marched straight forward all the while along the same path of nonviolence.
Before me, on the table, there lies open a tiny booklet which he wrote in 1908, while he was on a sea voyage coming back from England. In this little book, he described his own belief in nonviolence as follows:
"Passive resistance, that is, Soul-force is matchless. It is superior to the force of arms. How, then, can it be considered merely a weapon of the weak? Men who use physical force are strangers to the courage that is requisite in a passive resister. Do you believe that a coward can ever disobey a law that he dislikes? Extremists are considered to be advocates of brute force. Why do they talk about obeying laws? I do not blame them. They can say nothing else. When they succeed in driving out the English, and they become governors, they will want you and me to obey their laws. And that is a fitting thing for their constitution. But a passive resister will say he will not obey a law that is against his conscience, even though he may be blown to pieces at the mouth of a cannon.<
"Passive resistance is an all-sided sword; it can be used anyhow; it blesses him who uses it and him against whom it is used. Without drawing a drop of blood, it produces far-reaching results."