THE
COLONY
25
taxes and rent, and property rights," Satya went on, his voice high
and piercing and beginning to crack. "Now you must learn and put
into effect disobedience toward the entire social structure. Disobedience
of the minor laws and of the unwritten laws; disobedience of the as–
sumptions of society. They have a community among us, and we
must destroy their community by withholding recognition, by with–
holding consent, by withholding respect even for the most elementary
pledges that they put upon us. Do not recognize their forms of life!
Do not acknowledge the common air and the sun they share with us!
Uproot them thoroughly from your consciousness, from your fear,
your concern. Deprive them of being, of the human support that even
the most degraded heart requires. They will be unable to go on living
in
a country where they no longer exist!"
His speech had overwhelmed the critical position from which his
mind had run a commentary. It now gave assent to his words. "That
was a good line. Use it again. No, no, I am not jeering at you. I am
with you."
"Do all this without hatred," continued Satya, feeling he owed
the injunction to his inner self in return for its consent. "Hatred is a
form of cooperation, a form of recognition, the opposite of love, but
just as binding. Do not hate. Steel yourselves! Be cold. Again, not the
coldness of fraudulence or of suppressed heat that burns within. Be
cold as their prisons are where the sun never falls. Be cold as the wall
is when the light is shut off. Emit no light!
"And so will you defeat them. An army conquers only another
army that cooperates with it in murderous enterprise. But a disaffected
people, a thoroughly alienated people, above all a people who are not
afraid to die, and who stand only to fall, is a greater army and it
employs a weapon that none can withstand. We have an abhorrence
of killing and of blood-but not of our own blood.
If
it must be shed,
it
must be, as it has been shed before. I demand this of you. I will
be harsher with you than Bapu was, and drive you to that extreme
before which he always hesitated. The time is short and the time
demand-s it. We will attain the extreme of non-violence, where it
transcends all violence and overcomes
all
force, becoming itself the
greatest force!"
At the mention of Bapu's name, the crowd rose to its feet and
took up the cry "Bapu, Bapu, Bapu !"
"Despise and disobey!" cried Satya, again raising his voice above
the crowd and redirecting their attention to himself.
