A letter to the editor
Sir, — when Mr. Gandhi suspended the civil disobedience movement in July last, he did so, I trust, under the full belief, that the leaders in this Province and elsewhere who had advised him not to resume the Satyagraha campaign, would do their part of the work and strain every nerve by the orderly methods of agitation and secure the repeal of the Rowlatt laws. It is nearly 2 months since the movement is kept, when Mr. Gandhi will resume it. But there is no doubt that he will offer Satyagraha, so long the Rowlatt laws are in the Indian statute book. His unbending attitude is clearly manifest to the whole nation by the illuminating letters he wrote recently to Messrs. Arundale, and Abdul Aziz and the most thoughtful reply he sent to the “Pennsylvanian” in the “Times of India”. The articles which appear in the “Young India” also reveal to us more and more the nature in which Satyagraha will be offered, when it will be resumed. In reply to the untenable positions taken by Mr. Montague recently when he said in the House of Commons that he believed that the powers given to the Executive by Rowlatt Acts were necessary, Mr. Gandhi wrote in the columns of the “Young India,” that if the Rowlatt Act is to be persisted in, the Government must we prepared for Civil Resistance of a stubborn character – a resistance which shall be perfectly respectful but which shall be unbending. So from all these statements, we are all to know clearly and well, Mr. Gandhi’s altitude to-wards the laws. The suspension of the Civil Disobedience movement also is explained by him in his letter to Mr. Arundale. He has said therein ``that the suspension is designed to demonstrate its true nature and to throw the responsibility for the removal of the Rowlatt legislation on the Government as also the leaders who have advised me to suspend it.”
V.A. Sundaram
