Reception of Montagu-Chelmsford Report in India. The Armistice in Nov. 1918 was the signal for general rejoicings in India, but ushered in a season of political strife and agitation which has proved very unfavourable for the peaceful introduction of the new constitution. The Montagu-Chelmsford report had been published in the previous July. Its publication widened the breach between the moderates and the extremists. The moder- ates, while affecting regret that the scheme did not go far enough, accepted it as a generous attempt to establish responsible institutions. The extremists rejected it as utterly inadequate to satisfy the claims and expectations of the country. In the Sept. session of the Legislative Council the report was referred for consideration to a committee of the non-official members and was approved by them, with certain qualifications, as affording a satisfactory basis for the constitutional development of India. Encouraged by this report, the moderate party held a special conference in Nov. at Bombay and accepted the general principle of the Montagu-Chelmsford scheme while urging that it should be enlarged in certain ways. On the other hand the National Congress, which had now become' the organ of the extreme national party, wholly condemned the scheme at the Dec. meet- ing, demanded full provincial autonomy at once and asserted India's right to self-determination. Unhappily another con- troversy now arose which was fated to overshadow and prejudice the constitutional question by the passions which it kindled and the bitterness which it imported into the relations of the people to the Government.
The Rowlatt Bill. The report of the Sedition Committee over which Mr. Justice Rowlatt presided had been before the public for some months and the intention of the Government of India to legislate in accordance with the committee's recom- mendations had been announced, without exciting much heat. In fact the impressive evidence which the report presented as to the existence of a revolutionary and anarchical conspiracy in Bengal and elsewhere and the ineffectiveness of the ordinary criminal law to deal with it, secured at first a favourable reception for the committee's proposals. But on the bills being published in Jan. 1910 a violent campaign was started against the report and its proposals by the nationalist press and nationalist poli- ticians. The object of the principal bill was to reenact in sub- stance the extra-judicial procedure for dealing with anarchical and revolutionary crime with which the Defence of India Act had equipped the executive and by means of which the Government of Bengal had at last got the upper hand of a very dangerous conspiracy. Its provisions were not to be put into force in any place unless the Governor-General in Council was satisfied of the existence there of anarchical and revolutionary movements and of the public safety being endangered by the prevalence of crime of that nature. The bill, however, was represented ds an attack upon the popular liberties, an attempt to invent crimes, a monstrous engine of tyranny and oppression, the forerunner of a policy of reaction and an unmerited slur upon the loyalty and law-abidingness of the Indian people. The extremists made it the occasion of a trial of strength with the autocratic power. Even the moderates disliked it and thought its introduction in- opportune and unnecessary. A whirlwind of excitement swept through the cities of upper India, a strange medley of ignorance and alarm, of political unrest and domestic discontents, of conscious exaggeration and mendacity. It was an epidemic of unreason, such as destroyed Walpole's Excise bill. Walpole stayed his hand because he saw that it would lead to bloodshed.
It is easy to be wise after the event, but had the Government of India realized the intensity of the opposition and foreseen the tragedy of Amritsar it is at least possible that they would have thought it prudent to bend, like Walpole, to the storm. In the Legislative Council the bill met with most determined opposition from extremists and moderates alike. The Government in vain made concessions one being to limit the duration of the measure to three years and only passed it by the official majority.
While the bills were before the Legislative Assembly Mr. M. K. Gandhi, a well-known social and religious reformer, revered in the Bombay Presidency as an ascetic and holy man,
initiated a passive resistance movement. Satyagraha, as he termed it, meant insistence on truth and a reliance on soul-force. He deprecated violence while preaching disobedience to the laws. The distinction, however obvious to a mystic of his temperament, was disregarded, as he afterwards regretfully acknowledged, by his followers. The nationalists took the movement in hand and organized branch societies in the larger towns of Bombay and northern India. On the Rowlatt bill receiving the Viceroy's assent Mr. Gandhi announced a day of general mourning and cessation of business. On March 30 a hartal, or closure of shops, took place at Delhi, the mob came into collision with the police and deaths occurred. A wave of excitement passed over the Punjab. Disturbances marked by grievous excesses broke out in Lahore, Amritsar and other centres when news came that Mr. Gandhi had been forbidden to enter the province and sent back to Bombay under arrest. Between April 10 and 15 mobs were in possession of these and other towns in the central Punjab. Disorder assumed the character of open rebellion, definitely anti-Government and anti-British, communications were cut and the civil authority was only maintained by military force. Martial law was proclaimed in Amritsar on April 14, was ex- tended subsequently to other districts, and was not finally with- drawn from every part of the province until June, although order was generally restored by the end of April. But the situation remained critical owing to the Afghan War, and it was thought prudent to run no risks.
The Amritsar " Tragedy." On April 13 " the tragedy of Amritsar " occurred. In that city banks and other buildings had been pillaged and burnt and Europeans murdered. The civil officers, finding themselves powerless to cope with the mobs in possession of the city, called upon the military to restore order. Brig.-Gen. Dyer, the officer commanding, deemed it necessary in the course of his operations to disperse forcibly an unlawful assembly held in the Jallianwala Bagh. Nearly 400 persons were killed by the fire of his troops and probably thrice that number wounded. His action aroused intense indignation among Indians of all shades of political opinion and became the subject of most bitter controversy. Other incidents, such as injudicious orders and degrading punishments awarded by officers administering martial law, the general severity with which martial law was administered, the heavy sentences passed by the summary courts on persons convicted by them, the confinement for extended periods of journalists and politicians suspected of having in- stigated the disturbances, 'the exclusion from appearing in the courts of counsel from other provinces, formed materials for an impassioned attack by the nationalist party on the policy and conduct of the Punjab Government and its head, Sir Michael O'Dwyer, and was not allayed by the appointment towards the end of the year of the Hunter Committee to inquire into the disturbances connected with the Rowlatt legislation.
The Punjab was not the only province in which the Satyagraha movement led to disturbances. In Bombay the news of Mr. Gandhi's arrest at Delhi was the occasion of an immediate out- break of disorder in Ahmadabad, the capital of Guzerat, and in neighbouring towns. The military had to be called in, but not before numerous acts of incendiarism and violence and some loss of life had occurred. The disturbances terminated on the arrival of Mr. Gandhi, who expressed great sorrow at the excesses of his followers and was allowed to address an enormous meeting and upbraid the people for their violence.
The Afghan War, 1919. Distorted reports of the disturbed state of the Punjab and of the nature of the Rowlatt Act found their way to Afghanistan and led the new Amir, Amanulla, to conclude that an invasion of India might prove a solution of his domestic differences. The murder of his father, the Amir Habibulla, on Feb. 20 1919 had brought him to the throne. But his succession was disliked by powerful factions. An invasion of India might increase his popularity with the army and the anti- British party and would appeal to the religious fanaticism of his Mahommedan subjects, deeply stirred as it was by the humiliation and defeat of Turkey and by the British conquest of Meso- potamia. His plan was to start with an anti-British propaganda
