E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe press in England awoke to the Bardoli revolt. Questions were asked in theHouse of Commons where Lord Winterton was firmly in favour of 'enforcingcompliance with law and crushing the movement...' The Satyagrahis and Patelignored this 'sabre rattling'.From all over India, Gandhi was urged to start civil disobedience in otherprovinces. He counseled patience. The time has not yet come for even limitedsympathetic Satyagraha. Bardoli has still to prove its mettle. If it can stand thelast heat and if the Government go to the farthest limit, nothing I orVallabhbhai can do will stop the spread of Satyagraha or limit the issue ... Thelimit will then be prescribed by the capacity of India as a whole for selfsacrificeand self-suffering- Meanwhile, the people of Bardoli 'are safe in God'shands.The arrest of Patel was expected hourly. On August 2, accordingly, Gandhimoved to Bardoli. On August 6, the government capitulated. It promised torelease all prisoners, return all confiscated land, return the confiscated animalsor their equivalent, and, the essence, to cancel the rise in taxes- Patelpromised that the peasants would pay their taxes at the old rates. Both sideskept the agreement.Gandhi had shown Irwin and India that the weapon worked.Would he use it on a vaster scale?India was in turmoil. From February 3, 1928, when the Simon Commissionlanded at Bombay, India boycotted it. Gandhi's boycott was so complete that henever mentioned the Commission. For him, it did not exist. But othersdemonstrated against it. At a huge anti-Simon meeting in Lahore, Lajpat Rai,the chief political figure of the Punjab, a man of sixty-four whom Gandhi calledthe 'Lion of the Punjab', was struck with a lathi or four-foot wooden staff swungby the policeman in a charge, and died soon afterwards. About the same time,Jawaharlal Nehru was beaten with lathis during an anti-Simon protest meetingin Lucknow. In December 1928, several weeks after Lajpat Rai's death, AssistantPolice Superintendent Saunders of Lahore was assassinated. Gandhi brandedwww.mkgandhi.org Page 290