MAHATMA - Volume 3 (1930-1934) - Mahatma Gandhi

MAHATMA - Volume 3 (1930-1934)
Peshawar where huge mass demonstrations were held on April 23. The next
day, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the leader of the newly formed Khudai
Khidmatgar—Servants of God—or the Red Shirts, was arrested. Thousands of
people surrounded the place of his detention, and there was a mammoth
demonstration in Peshawar. The armoured cars were sent to cow down angry
demonstrators; one armoured car was burnt, its occupants escaping; thereupon
wholesale firing on the crowds was followed by hundreds of deaths and
casualties. Two platoons of the Second Battalion of the 18th Royal Garhwali
Rifles, Hindu troops in the midst of a Muslim crowd, refused to fire and broke
ranks, and a number of them handed over their arms. Immediately after this,
the military and the police were completely withdrawn from Peshawar; from
April 25 to May 4, the city was in the hands of the people, until powerful British
forces, with air squadrons, were concentrated to "recapture" Peshawar city;
there was no resistance. Seventeen men of the Royal Garhwali Rifles were
subjected to heavy sentences.
Writing in Young India on the "Black Regime", Gandhi reviewed the outstanding
events : "If the Government neither arrest nor declare the salt free, they will
find people marching to be shot rather than be tortured. I appeal to those who
believe in violence not to disturb the free flow of nonviolent demonstration."
While the events were taking a sharp turn, the Viceroy promulgated on April 27
an ordinance, reviving the Press Act of 1910. "Whether we realize it or not, for
some days past, we have been living under a veiled form of martial law,"
commented Gandhi. "The pressmen, if they are worthy of the public opinion,
will not be frightened by the ordinance. Let us realize the wise dictum of
Thoreau, that it is difficult, under tyrannical rule, for honest men to be
wealthy. If we have decided to hand over our bodies without murmur to the
authorities, let us also equally be ready to hand over our property to them and
not sell our souls." He promptly asked the manager of the Navajivan Press to
allow the press to be forfeited rather than deposit security, if the Government
demanded it.
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