द इण्डियन स्ट्रगल / भारतीय स्वाधीनता संग्राम (नेताजी सुभाष चन्द्र बोस - ऐतिहासिक विश्लेषण)

146 THE INDIAN STRUGGLE
The most encouraging sign of the year was the awakening
among the youth all over the country. They were disgusted
with the narrow sectarianism of the older generation and
wanted to chasten public life with the pure breath of
nationalism. The youth movement appeared under different
names in different provinces, but the impulse behind it was
the same everywhere. There was a feeling of impatience and
revolt at the rotten state of affairs—a sense of self-confidence
and a consciousness of the responsibility which they had
towards their country. In Punjab the movement appeared
under the name of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha and was to
play an important rôle in the years to come. In Nagpur, the
capital of the Central Provinces, the youths started on their
own responsibility, a movement called the Arms Act Satya-
graha.. The object of this campaign was to defy the Arms Act
which prohibited Indians from possessing or bearing arms,
and it was started by a popular local Congress leader, Mr.
Awari, who was given the title of ‘General’ by his followers.
It was announced at the commencement of the campaign,
that the Satyagraha movement was being started as a protest
against the conduct of the Government who had imprisoned
without trial a large number of public workers in Bengal.
Taking advantage of the weakness of the Congress in 1926,
the Government continued its reactionary policy in 1927,
though since April 1926, India had a new Viceroy in Lord
Irwin, who was of a totally different stamp from his pre-
decessor Lord Reading. The report of the Skeen Committee
was published in April 1927 and it provided that one-half of
the cadre of the Indian Army would be completely Indianised
in twenty-five years. The report of the Committee was
disappointing and it was not signed by Pandit Motilal Nehru
who had resigned his membership of the Committee before
the report was drafted. But even the meagre recommendations
of the Committee, which by the way was presided over by the
Chief of Staff of the Indian Army, were not given effect to,
at the instance of the Secretary of State for India, Lord
Birkenhead. The mala fides of the Government will be all
the more evident from the fact that during Sir Tej Bahadur
Sapru's tenure of office as member of the Viceroy’s Executive