"One morning--it was at a mill-hands' meeting--while I was still
groping and unable to see my way clearly, the light came to me.
Unbidden and all by themselves the words came to my lips: 'Unless
the strikers rally,' I declared to the meeting, 'and continue the
strike till a settlement is reached, or till they leave the mills
altogether, I will not touch any food.'"


Gandhi insisted that the fast was not directed at the mill owners, but
was for the purification of himself and the strikers. He told the owners
that it should not influence their decision, and yet an arbitrator was
now appointed, and as he says, "The strike was called off after I had
fasted only for three days."[77] The efficacy of the fast was thus borne
in on Gandhi.

In the Kheda Satyagraha against unjust taxation, which was the first big
movement of the sort in India, Gandhi discovered that "When the fear of
jail disappears, repression puts heart into people." The movement ended
in a compromise rather than the complete success of Gandhi's program. He
said of it, "Although, therefore, the termination was celebrated as a
triumph of Satyagraha, I could not enthuse over it, as it lacked the
essentials of a complete triumph."[78] But even though Gandhi was not
satisfied with anything less than a complete triumph, he had learned
that when a people no longer fears the punishments that an oppressor
metes out, the power of the oppressor is gone.[79]

FOOTNOTES:

[74] _Ibid._, I, 268-269.