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

90 THE INDIAN STRUGGLE
civil-disobedience campaign. To sound the order of retreat
just when public enthusiasm was reaching the boiling-point
was nothing short of a national calamity. The principal
lieutenants of the Mahatma, Deshbandhu Das, Pandit Motilal
Nehru and Lala Lajpat Rai, who were all in prison, shared
the popular resentment. I was with the Deshbandhu at the
time and I could see that he was beside himself with anger
and sorrow at the way Mahatma Gandhi was repeatedly
bungling. He was just beginning to forget the December
blunder when the Bardoli retreat came as a staggering blow.
Lala Lajpat Rai was experiencing the same feelings and it is
reported that in sheer disgust he addressed a seventy-page
letter to the Mahatma from prison.
In semi-official circles another explanation has been given
of the sudden volte-face of the Mahatma. It is alleged that
elaborate arrangements had been made by the Government
in secret to render his no-tax campaign at Bardoli a debacle
and that a large portion of the next instalment of taxes had
been already collected. Official circles, sympathetic to the
Mahatma, conveyed secret information to him regarding the
counter-measures adopted by the Government and warned
him of the possibility of a failure, in case he launched the
campaign. When Mahatma Gandhi was brought face to face
with these facts, he realised the hopelessness of the situation
and thinking that without a successful campaign at Bardoli,
he could not work up the movement in the country, he
decided to use the Chauri-Chaura incident as a pretext for
calling off the civil-disobedience movement. Those who
know the Mahatma more intimately will not, however, accept
this explanation.
While the followers were fretting and fuming against the
Dictator, the astute ex-Lord Chief Justice of England was not
idle. Throughout 1921 he had given the Mahatma a long
rope, but since the Ahmedabad Congress he began to look
for an opportunity for putting a stop to his activities. In his
weekly paper Young India, the Mahatma had written some
articles—the finest he has ever written and which will rank
for all time among his inspired writings—which the Govern-
ment held to be seditious. They could therefore arrest him