24. Violence preferred to Cowardice

Gandhiji always made it clear that his creed of non-violence was of the brave. But where the choice was between cowardice and violence, he was definite that he would prefer violence to cowardice. "Thus, when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence," wrote Gandhiji in Young India.