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

THE BENGAL SITUATION 337 to the first, the short-sighted policy of the Government has served to strengthen the arguments of the revolutionaries. The reforms introduced at the end of the Great War were so meagre as to cause widespread discontent. The revolutionary who came out of prison at the end of the war after years of confinement, found that the promised liberty was an empty dream and there was no opening for serving his country along peaceful and constructive lines. Nevertheless, in response to the appeal made by Mahatma Gandhi and Deshbandhu C. R. Das, they promised to eschew the path of violence and give a trial to the new method of non-violent non-co-operation and it must be admitted that the vast majority did keep their promise. But what did the Government do? On the plea that some stray acts of violence had been committed in a corner of a great province, the Government rounded up a large number of men from all over the province in 1923 and again in 1924, and kept them in prison for a number of years without trial. The public feeling at the time was that there were over-zealous officers in the Intelligence Branch of the Bengal Police who in order to justify their existence and the existence of their department, imagined more than they actually saw. And it was even believed that agents provocateur were employed for the purpose of entrapping innocent young men. It will not do to ignore such complaints with an official sneer, for if one really desires to go to the root of the problem, he should investigate all such complaints with an open mind. After some years, that is in 1927 and 1928, the Government again began to release the détenus. But as in 1919-20, so also in 1927-28, a real amnesty did not take place. Both before and after his release, every détenu was harassed so much by the police that the release instead of producing a sense of relief, left bitterness in his mind. If the releases had been ordered as a stroke of generous-hearted statesman- ship, the effect would have been quite different. The 1930-34 phase of the revolutionary movement in Bengal could have been possibly avoided if some special circumstances had not cropped up. Firstly, the attitude of Mahatma Gandhi at the Calcutta Congress had a very unfavourable effect on the minds of the youths. It gave them the impression that the Y