The Critics Answered
There can be no doubt on that point at all, for we have also the letter written by Pandit Kunzru to Mr. Jinnah, in which he states that Mr. Gandhi declared explicitly at the conference that the enrolment and training of volunteers for starting civil disobedience must be continued. Very well then, what we are asked to do is this: To declare that the volunteer corps enrolled and trained for civil disobedience are lawful associations. Do those who urge us to take this step regard civil disobedience as a lawful form of political activity? If they do not, by what process of reasoning, do they argue that the agency by which civil disobedience is to be carried out should be declared by Government to be a lawful agency?
Now let us consider for a moment what the Non-co-operators mean by civil disobedience in its most developed form. It has been explained by Mr. Dip Narayan Singh a leading Non-co-operator of Behar. The procedure is to be as follows;—The chief civil officer in the area selected for its operation is to be given seven days to hand over the district to the Non-co-operators. The residents in the area are then to be ordered to disobey all the orders and laws of the Government and to refuse to pay taxes, register documents, and so on. At the same time the police station and courts are to be surrounded and the officials to be told to deposit their uniforms and other badges of office. The police stations and courts will then be treated as Swaraj property.
You well see that this bears out to the full declaration made by Mr. Gandhi, in moving the civil disobedience resolution at the meeting of the All-India Congress Committee on November 4th, that his programme of civil disobedience constitutes a civil revolution, which, wherever practised, will mean the end of the Government's authority and the open defiance of Government and its laws. Again I would ask, to those who wish these volunteers to be declared to be lawful wish to see this programme put into operation without a resort to violence, which will drench the country in blood?