If the Indian National Congress had not accepted his basic tenet ofnon-violence in 1920, he would have had nothing to do with its struggle forliberation from British rule. 'I would like to repeat to the world, timeswithout number', Gandhi said in 1931, 'that I will not purchase my country'sfreedom at the cost of non-violence.' Nine years later, in the midst of theSecond World War, when he was asked what he would do if India became independentduring his lifetime, he replied: 'If India became free in my lifetime and I havestill energy left in me ... I would take my due share, though outside theofficial world, in building up the nation strictly on non-violent lines.' Wemust remember that Gandhi applied his method of non-violent resistance not onlyagainst foreign rule, but against social evils such as racial discrimination anduntouchability. Indeed, he claimed that non-violence lay at the root of everyone of his activities, and his mission in life was not merely the freedom ofIndia but the brotherhood of man. His satyagraha was designed not only forIndia, but for the whole world; it could transform relations betweenindividuals, as well as between communities and nations. In the early 1920s,when he had just emerged as the stoutest champion of nationalism in Asia, Gandhiunequivocally subscribed to the ideal of a world federation. 'The better mind ofthe world desires today', he told the Belgaum Congress in 1924, 'not absolutelyindependent states warring against each other but a federation of friendlyinterdependent states.' In the late 1930s, when the forces of violence weregathering momentum in Europe, he reaffirmed his faith in non-violence.Throughthe pages of his weekly paper, Harijan, he expounded his approach topolitical tyranny and military aggression. He advised weaker nations to defendthemselves by offering non-violent resistance to the aggressor. A non-violentAbyssinian, he argued, needed no arms and no succour from the League of Nations;if every Abyssinian man, woman, and child refused cooperation with the Italians,willing or forced, the latter would have to walk to victory over the dead bodiesof their victims and to occupy their country without the people. The motivepower of Nazi and Fascist aggression was the desire to carve out new empires,and behind it all was a ruthless competition to annex new sources of rawmaterials and fresh markets. In Gandhi's opinion, wars were thus rooted in theoverweening greed of men as also in the purblind tribalism that placednationalism above humanity. In the ultimate analysis, to shake off militarism,it was necessary to end the competitive greed and fear and hatred which fed it.