Page:Sketch of the Non-cooperation Movement by Babu Rajendra Prasad.pdf/24

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inaugurated there. Mr. Gidwani was appointed Principal of the College which started with 500 students. There was a strike at Benares among the students of the Hindu University. Early in December, Mahatma Gandhi visited Bihar and advised the opening of a National College which was done at Patna on the 5th of January, 1921. Tilak Mahavidyalaya was opened at Poona on the 11th of December.

The Nagpur Congress.—Things were going on in this way, when the Congress met again in its annual session at Nagpur under the presidentship of Mr. Vijiaraghavachariar. It changed its creed into the “attainment of Swarajya by the people of India by peaceful and legitimate means” and reaffirmed the resolution of Non-violent Non-co-operation, passed in Calcutta. It declared that the entire or any part of the scheme of Non-violent Non-co-operation with the renunciation of voluntary association with the present Government at one end and the refusal to pay taxes on the other should be put in force at a time to be determined by either the Indian National Congress or the All-India Congress Committee and that, in the meanwhile, to prepare the country for it effective steps should continue to be taken in that behalf by calling upon the guardians and parents of children under the age of 16 years and upon students of the age of 16 or over to withdraw them from Government-controlled educational institutions; by calling upon lawyers to make greater efforts to suspend their practice and to devote their attention to national service, including the boycott of law courts by fellow lawyers and litigants; by carrying out gradual boycott of foreign trade relations by encouraging hand spinning and hand weaving and generally calling upon every section and every man and woman in the country to