advised Congress workers and others to organise individual and mass Civil Disobedience when the mass of the people have been sufficiently trained in the methods of non-violence. It called upon all students and the staff of national institutions to join the national volunteer corps. And, in view of the impending arrest of a large number of workers, the Congress, while requiring the ordinary machinery to remain in tact and to be utilised in the ordinary manner whenever feasible, appointed Mahatma Gandhi as the sole executive authority of the Congress and invested him with the full authority of the All-India Congress Committee and also with the power to appoint a successor in emergency, save that Mahatma Gandhi or any of his successors could not conclude any terms of peace with the Government without the previous sanction of the All-India Congress Committee to be finally satified by the Congress and that he could not change the creed. A resolution moved by Maulana Hasrat Mohani for a change in the creed of the Congress, so as to make complete independence the goal of the Congress, was thrown out by a large majority.
Intensive Repression.—In the following months, the repression policy of the Government was given full play and thousands of volunteers were sent to jail. Many of the leaders in several of the Provinces were also imprisoned and are still in jail. The history of these months is a history of unbridled arrests and incarcera-
protest, except that of violence and disorder, which is open to them, who have neither votes nor representation, is that of passive resistance. Can we find fault with them for that? Let him who blames them say what he would do in similar circumstances. Is there one of us who, out of respect for the law, would submit meekly and without protest to deprivation of rights and social degradation?” Lord Ampthill in his introduction to Doke’s Life of Gandhi.
