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

50 THE INDIAN STRUGGLE
orders, public floggings and other indescribable humiliations.
I discovered, too, that the plighted word of the Prime Minister
to the Mussalmans of India regarding the integrity of Turkey
and the holy places of Islam was not likely to be fulfilled.
But in spite of the foreboding and the grave warnings of
friends, at the Amritsar Congress in 1919, I fought for
co-operation and working the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms,
hoping the Prime Minister would redeem his promise to the
Indian Mussalmans, that the Punjab wound would be healed
and that the Reforms, inadequate and unsatisfactory though
they were, marked a new era of hope in the life of India.
But all that hope was shattered. The Khilafat promise was
not to be redeemed. The Punjab crime was whitewashed
and most culprits were not only unpunished but remained
in service and some continued to draw pensions from the
Indian revenue, and in some cases were even rewarded. I
saw, too, that not only did the reforms not mark a change of
heart, but they were only a method of further draining India
of her wealth and of prolonging her servitude.'
As already indicated in Section III of the Introduction on
'The New Awakening in India,' the new legislation, popularly
known as the Rowlatt Act,¹ was enacted on March 18th, 1919,
for conferring permanently on the Government of India
extraordinary powers for the arrest of individuals and their
imprisonment without trial, when the war-time emergency
ordinances lapsed. In February, 1919, Mr. Gandhi started
an agitation against the Rowlatt (or 'Black') Bill when it was
introduced in the Imperial Legislative Council.² In trying to
suppress this agitation in the Punjab, indescribable atrocities
were perpetrated by the forces of the Crown. At Jallianwalla
Bagh in Amritsar on April 13th, there was a massacre of
unarmed men, women and children who had gathered on the
occasion of a public meeting. This was followed by a reign
of terror under Martial Law, in the course of which many
people were publicly flogged, while others were forced to
crawl on their bellies when passing along certain streets.
¹ According to Sir Surendranath Bannerji, 'the Rowlatt Act was the
parent of the Non-co-operation movement.' (A Nation in Making, London,
1927, p. 300.)
² Now called the Indian Legislative Assembly.