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

THE ANTI-CLIMAX 93
In October there was a General Election in England. The
Coalition Government broke up and the Conservatives came
into power with Mr. Bonar Law at their head and with
Viscount Peel and Lord Winterton as Secretary and Under-
Secretary of State for India respectively. The next month,
Sir Basil Blackett was sent out to India as the Finance
Member to the Government of India. The current of
reaction began to grow stronger and stronger in India. The
Indian Liberal leaders, who under the influence of Mr.
Montagu had been led to work the Constitution and to accept
office as Ministers, found their position increasingly difficult.
Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru had already resigned from the
Viceroy's Executive Council in April, following the resignation
of Mr. Montagu in March. And in March 1923, when the
situation became unbearable for him, Mr. Chintamani, the
Minister of Education in the United Provinces, resigned.
During the whole of 1922 the only decent acts which the
Government did was to concede the demands of the people
in Midnapore district in Bengal and of the Akali Sikhs in
Punjab. In Midnapore, the new Village Self-Government
Act, as a protest against which the no-tax campaign had been
started, was withdrawn, and in Punjab a new law was passed
under which all the Sikh shrines were taken out of the control
of the Mohants and handed over to popular committees.
We must now interrupt our narrative and enquire as to what
the leaders had been doing in the meantime. In the first
week of December 1921, Lala Lajpat Rai and most of his
principal colleagues had been rounded up by the police at a
meeting of the Punjab Congress Committee. A few days
later, Deshbandhu Das and most of his colleagues, including
the Secretary of the Bengal Congress Committee, Mr. B. N.
Sasmal and myself had been placed under arrest. Following
this, Pandit Motilal Nehru and most of the important Con-
gressmen in the United Provinces had been clapped into
prison. According to the rules of non-co-operation, no Con-
gressman could put up a defence before a British Court of
Law. Consequently, everywhere the prosecution had an easy
task. Most of the trials would not last more than a few
minutes and the same magistrate would dispose of hundreds