Non-violence and murder

CR Das has made as good a defence of the action of the Bengal Provincial Conference in passing what has come to be known as the Gopinath Saha resolution as it was possible for anyone to make. Still, it is a poor defence, and except on one point to which we shall presently refer, it does not meet any of the objections which Mahatma Gandhi raised against the resolution. Those objections were: (1) Murder is inconsistent with non-violence even when regarded purely as a policy; (2) non-violent suffering in one person and violent injury to another cannot both be patriotic at the same time; the patriotism of every lover of his country demands that whilst his country pursues a policy of non-violence, he does not disturb it by committing murder; (3) if anybody does so, those pledged to non-violence are duty-bound not only to dissociate themselves from such acts, but to condemn them in unmeasured terms, if only because they must be thus cultivating public opinion against them to discourage such murder; and (4) this condemnation is necessary even though the motive is the purest imaginable, because in practical politics, it is action that counts and not mere motives or mental attitudes bereft of acts or results. What is Mr Das’s reply to these objections? To the first, he gives no reply beyond pointing out that the Conference did condemn the murder. That is perfectly true. But what was the value of this condemnation, asks Mahatmaji, if in the same breath the Conference praised Saha’s patriotism, which only consisted in the act of murder, and not in the capital punishment he underwent, which was the natural consequence of that act?