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

292 THE INDIAN STRUGGLE (3) the boycott of foreign cloth and of British goods of all kinds. The most important resolution was one emphatically condemning the White Paper proposals. Before the meeting ended, large contingents of police arrived on the scene, arrested Mrs. Sengupta and 250 others, including 40 ladies and dispersed the meeting by force. The following extract from the speech of the President-elect, the venerable Pandit Malaviya, reflects the feeling of the country at the time: 'It is estimated that nearly 120,000 persons including several thousand women and quite a number of children have been arrested and imprisoned during the last fifteen months. It is an open secret that when the Government started repression, the official expectation was that they would crush the Congress in six weeks' time. Fifteen months have not enabled the Government to achieve that object. Twice fifteen months will not enable it to do so.' This was not the review made by a young hot-head but by one of the oldest and most moderate leaders of the Congress. Consequently, the response made by the country to the Congress appeal in 1932 and 1933, in spite of lack of prepara- tion, in spite of the sudden arrest of the organisers and financiers of the Party early in January 1932, and in spite of the diversion caused by the Mahatma's fast in September 1932 and the anti-untouchability campaign thereafter—can by no means be regarded as unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, the country was startled one fine morning in May to hear that the Mahatma had suspended the civil-disobedience campaign. While in prison the Mahatma had decided to go on a three weeks' fast¹ as a penance, because his followers outside had not made sufficient progress with the anti-untouchability campaign. The object of the fast was to bring about a change of heart—not in the bureaucracy but in his countrymen— who were responsible for the sad plight of the untouchables. The Government had no objection to a fast of that kind and ¹ After the famous September fast, the Mahatma had fasted once again in December, but that fast had been a short one. The present fast was described by him as a 'heart-prayer for purification of myself and my associates for greater vigilance and watchfulness in connection with the Harijan cause.'