The Arms Act

Sarojini Naidu

    Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, who was asked by the

    President, to speak on the Besolution on 

    the “'Arms Act ” at the Lucknow Congress of 1916, said : —



    Your Honour, President and unarmed citizens of India,

    It may seem a kind of paradox that I should be asked

    to raise my voice on behalf of the disinherited manhood

    of the country, but it is suitable that I who represent

    the other sex, that is, the mothers of the men whom

    we wish to make men and not emasculated machines 

    should raise a voice on behalf of the future 

    mothers of India to demand that the birthright 

    of their sons should be given back to them, 

    so that to-morrow’s India may be once more worthy 

    of its yesterday, that their much- valued birthright 

    be restored to the Hindus and Mussahnans of India, 

    to the disinherited martial Rajput and the Sikh 

    and the Pathan. The refusal of the privilege, 

    that gifted privilege and inalienable right to 

    carry arms, is to insult the very core of their 

    valiant manhood. To prevent to-day millions of brave

    young men willing to carry arms in the cause of the 

    Empire is to cast a slur on the very ideals of

    the Empire. (Hear, hear.) In your I name, O citizens

    of India, I appeal to the representative of the 

    great Emperor of this great Indian Empire to plead

    for our rights to support us in our claims, to grant

    to the children of to-morrow the right that their I

    forefathers of yesterday possessed. ( Cheers.)

    Who but a woman shall raise a voice for you who have 

    not been able in all these years to speak for yourselves 

    with any effect. ( Cries of ‘ Shame ’.) I come from a 

    city where every man is privileged to carry arms

     — the Africian, the Rohilla, and the Sikh do carry arms 

    there — and never has it been said in my city of

    Hyderabad that all these various armed elements have

    ever been disloyal to the sovereign power. Shall not 

    the greater portion of India, f British India, take a 

    lesson from that one native state that knows how to 

    trust the loyalty of its subjects. (Hear, hear.)

    Have we not, the women of India, sent our sons

    ;and brothers to shed their blood on the

    battlefields of Flanders, France, Gallipoli’

    and Mesopotamia ? When the hour comes for thanks,

    shall we not say to them for whom they afought

    ‘when the terror and tumult of hate shall cease and 

    life is refashioned, and when there is peace, and

    you offer memorial thanks to the comrades that fought

    in the dauntless ranks, and you honour the deeds of

    deathless ones,’ remember the blood of martyred sons,

    and remember the armies of India and restore to India

    her lost manhood. (Loud cheers).


    

Sarojini Naidu's, "Love and Death" comes from her collection "The Bird of Time"