Noncooperation with evil

Gandhi:  "I believe that I have rendered a service to India and England by showing in noncooperation the way out of the unnatural state in which both are living. In my opinion, noncooperatioin with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good. But in the past, noncooperation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evil-doer. I am endeavoring to show to my countrymen that violent noncooperatioin only multiplies evil, and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence.
     Nonviolence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for noncooperation with evil. I am here, therefore, to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is deliberate crime, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen. The only course open to you, the judge and the assessors, is either to resign your posts and thus dissociate yourselves from evil, if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil, and that in reality I am innocent, or to inflict on me the severest penalty, if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good for the people of the country, and that my activity is, therefore, injurious to the common weal."




Source: Gandhi the Man by Eknath Easwaran