714 NON-CO-OPERATION
decision based on the then diagnosis, nor could I possibly conceal the demands especially in the teith of the Viceregal declaration at Calcutta that nothing was to be expected in the matters of the Khilafat and the Punjab and that as the reforms had only just been granted no advance was to be expected. I would have been unfair to the Viceroy as also to the Moderate friends if I had not said that our demands were emphatic and clear edit. To have then suspended mass civil disobedience would have been a weakness. But Chauri Chaura darkened the horizon and I discovered a new diagnosis. It would have been idiotic on my part not to have declared in the clearest possible language that the patient required a drastic change of treatment. Not to have suspended after Chauri Chaura would have been unpardonable weakness. I assure the reader that Bardoli's un preparedness had nothing to do with the decision. For Bardoli in my opinion was quite able to give battle. I have stated several times in the column of Young India and Nava Jivan that I considered Bardoli to be quite ready for the fray.
The fact is that the critics do not realise the impli- cations of civil disobedience. They seem unconsciously tp ignore the potent adjective ' civil.'
The more I think of the Bardoli decision and the more I rehearse the debates and the talks at Delhi, the more convinced I am of the correctness of the decision and of the necessity of Provinces stopping ail offensive activities for the time being even at the risk of being considered weak and forfeiting popular applause aud support.
A correspondent from Lahore writes under date, 3rd March:
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