680 NON-CO-OPERATION
and which alone can justify mass disobedience which can be at all described as civil which means gentle* truthful, humble, knowing, wilful yet loving, never criminal and hateful.
He warned me in 1919 when the Rowlatt Act agitation was started. Ahmedabad, Viramgam, and Kheda erred ; Amritsar and Kasur erred, I retraced rny steps, called it a Himalayan miscalculation, humbled myself before God and man, and stopped not merely mass civil disobedience but even my own which I knew was intended to be civil and non-violent.
The next time it was through the events of Bombay that God gave a terrific warning. He made me eyewit- ness of the deeds of the Bombay mob on the 17th November. The mob acted in the interest of non-co- operation, I announced my intention to stop the mass civil disobedience which was to be immediately started in Bardoli. The humiliation was greater than in 1919. But it did me good. I am sure that the nation gained by the stopping. India stood for truth and non-violence by the suspension,
But the bitterest humiliation was still to come. Madras did give the warning, but I heeded it not. But God spoke clearly through Chaun Chaura. I under- stand that the constables who were so brutally hacked to death had given much provocation. They had even gone back upon the word just given by the Inspector that they would not be molested, but when the proces- sion had passed the stragglers were interfered with and abused by the constables. The former cried out for help. The mob returned. The constables opened fire* The little ammunition they had was exhausted and they retired to the Thana for safety. The mob, my informant
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