money, but roughly they amounted in all to no less than 130 million pounds or nearly 200 crores.
The Rowlatt Acts Report and After.—While India was making such immense sacrifices for the sake of the Empire believing in the King Emperor’s words that “the need of the Empire was India’s opportunity,” there were not signs wanting to the keen observer that the righteous war aims so pompously advertised were after all intended to secure the support of India in the war and would go the way of other similar declarations of British Policy in India in the past. The internment of Mrs. Besant gave a rude shock to the country at large and the internment and maltreatment of a large number of persons supposed to be dangerous, under the Defence of India Act without any trial awakened the country to a sense of the mistake it had committed in giving its tacit consent to the passing of that Act and the prostitution of its provisions to secure political purposes as distinguished from protection of the country from the enemy’s designs. On the top of it all came the Report of a Committee appointed under the Presidentship of Sir Sidney Rowlatt to report on the growth of revolutionary movement in the country and to suggest remedies.
The report was published on the 19th July, 1918 and recommended practically the perpetuation of the provisions of the Defence of India Act, taking away trials by juries and assessors in cases of seditious crimes, taking a way, the preliminary proceedings of commitment on the one hand and the right of appeal after conviction on the other, authorising trials in camera and admission of evidence not subjected to cross-examination and not recorded by the trial court under certain circumstances and, above all reserving to the Executive the right and power not
