And they tried. Look at the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the salt raids, the mass imprisonments. But the point wasn’t to wait for mercy, it was to make the cost of control so high, through sheer non-cooperation, that ruling became practically impossible. The system depends on participation. Remove that, and power collapses under its own weight. It’s not about violence, nor about moral appeals. It’s about leverage. When millions stop obeying, even bullets can’t fix the math.
If that was true, the British would have had their puppets shoot and starve them until they were governable.
And they tried. Look at the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the salt raids, the mass imprisonments. But the point wasn’t to wait for mercy, it was to make the cost of control so high, through sheer non-cooperation, that ruling became practically impossible. The system depends on participation. Remove that, and power collapses under its own weight. It’s not about violence, nor about moral appeals. It’s about leverage. When millions stop obeying, even bullets can’t fix the math.