From the Archives (July 12, 1919): Civil Disobedience.

July 12, 2019 12:15 am | Updated 12:40 am IST

In reference to Mr. Gandhi’s fresh resolve to renew the Satyagraha campaign, Sir Narayan Chandravarkar, ex-Judge, Bombay High Court, and a Moderate Leader, through the medium of the press, makes a strong and earnest appeal to Mr. Gandhi [from Bombay, on July 11] to desist from starting the campaign. He says that Mr. Gandhi’s advice to the people to make no disturbance in case he is punished for offering civil disobedience as a protest against the Rowlatt Act and such pious advice condemning lawlessness and violence fail as the country knows to its cost and pain, because ignorant people are unable to distinguish between civil disobedience to laws, of a harmless character, and violent defiance of law and authority. In Sir Narayan’s opinion the real reason is afforded by the actual fact of revolutionary crime in India with which he became officially familiar in the course of his examination of the 806 cases of Bengal internments. He found to his amazement that the revolutionary organisations educated their members in certain literature of political dacoities, murders and other acts of violence.

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