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

50 THE INDIAN STRUGGLE orders, public floggings and other indescribable humiliations. I discovered, too, that the plighted word of the Prime Minister to the Mussalmans of India regarding the integrity of Turkey and the holy places of Islam was not likely to be fulfilled. But in spite of the foreboding and the grave warnings of friends, at the Amritsar Congress in 1919, I fought for co-operation and working the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, hoping the Prime Minister would redeem his promise to the Indian Mussalmans, that the Punjab wound would be healed and that the Reforms, inadequate and unsatisfactory though they were, marked a new era of hope in the life of India. But all that hope was shattered. The Khilafat promise was not to be redeemed. The Punjab crime was whitewashed and most culprits were not only unpunished but remained in service and some continued to draw pensions from the Indian revenue, and in some cases were even rewarded. I saw, too, that not only did the reforms not mark a change of heart, but they were only a method of further draining India of her wealth and of prolonging her servitude.' As already indicated in Section III of the Introduction on 'The New Awakening in India,' the new legislation, popularly known as the Rowlatt Act,¹ was enacted on March 18th, 1919, for conferring permanently on the Government of India extraordinary powers for the arrest of individuals and their imprisonment without trial, when the war-time emergency ordinances lapsed. In February, 1919, Mr. Gandhi started an agitation against the Rowlatt (or 'Black') Bill when it was introduced in the Imperial Legislative Council.² In trying to suppress this agitation in the Punjab, indescribable atrocities were perpetrated by the forces of the Crown. At Jallianwalla Bagh in Amritsar on April 13th, there was a massacre of unarmed men, women and children who had gathered on the occasion of a public meeting. This was followed by a reign of terror under Martial Law, in the course of which many people were publicly flogged, while others were forced to crawl on their bellies when passing along certain streets. ¹ According to Sir Surendranath Bannerji, 'the Rowlatt Act was the parent of the Non-co-operation movement.' (A Nation in Making, London, 1927, p. 300.) ² Now called the Indian Legislative Assembly.