Its Rising Tide
I must not devote any more chapters here to a description of the further progress of khadi. It would be outside the scope of these chapters to give a history of my various activities after they came before the public eye, and I must not attempt it, if only because to do so would require a treatise on the subject. My object in writing these chapters is simply to describe how certain things, as it were spontaneously, presented themselves to me in the course of my experiments with truth.
To resume, then, the story of the noncooperation movement. Whilst the powerful Khilafat agitation set up by the Ali brothers was in full progress, I had long discussions on the subject with the late Maulana Abdul Bari and the other ulemas, especially, with regard to the extent to which a Mussalman could observe the rule of nonviolence. In the end they all agreed that Islam did not forbid its followers from following nonviolence as a policy and further, that, while they were pledged to that policy, they were bound faithfully to carry it out. At last the noncooperation resolution was moved in the Khilafat conference, and carried after prolonged deliberations. I have a vivid recollection how once at Allahabad a committee sat all night deliberating upon the subject. In the beginning the late Hakim Saheb was sceptical as to the practicability of nonviolent noncooperation. But after his scepticism was overcome he threw himself into it heart and soul, and his help proved invaluable to the movement.
Next, the noncooperation resolution was moved by me at the Gujarat Political Conference that was held shortly afterwards. The preliminary contention raised by the opposition was that it was not competent to a provincial conference to adopt a resolution in advance of the Congress.