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

90 THE INDIAN STRUGGLE civil-disobedience campaign. To sound the order of retreat just when public enthusiasm was reaching the boiling-point was nothing short of a national calamity. The principal lieutenants of the Mahatma, Deshbandhu Das, Pandit Motilal Nehru and Lala Lajpat Rai, who were all in prison, shared the popular resentment. I was with the Deshbandhu at the time and I could see that he was beside himself with anger and sorrow at the way Mahatma Gandhi was repeatedly bungling. He was just beginning to forget the December blunder when the Bardoli retreat came as a staggering blow. Lala Lajpat Rai was experiencing the same feelings and it is reported that in sheer disgust he addressed a seventy-page letter to the Mahatma from prison. In semi-official circles another explanation has been given of the sudden volte-face of the Mahatma. It is alleged that elaborate arrangements had been made by the Government in secret to render his no-tax campaign at Bardoli a debacle and that a large portion of the next instalment of taxes had been already collected. Official circles, sympathetic to the Mahatma, conveyed secret information to him regarding the counter-measures adopted by the Government and warned him of the possibility of a failure, in case he launched the campaign. When Mahatma Gandhi was brought face to face with these facts, he realised the hopelessness of the situation and thinking that without a successful campaign at Bardoli, he could not work up the movement in the country, he decided to use the Chauri-Chaura incident as a pretext for calling off the civil-disobedience movement. Those who know the Mahatma more intimately will not, however, accept this explanation. While the followers were fretting and fuming against the Dictator, the astute ex-Lord Chief Justice of England was not idle. Throughout 1921 he had given the Mahatma a long rope, but since the Ahmedabad Congress he began to look for an opportunity for putting a stop to his activities. In his weekly paper Young India, the Mahatma had written some articles—the finest he has ever written and which will rank for all time among his inspired writings—which the Govern- ment held to be seditious. They could therefore arrest him