Page 101 - GANDHI A Biography for Children and Beginners

GANDHI – A Biography for children and beginners

lead processions or hold meetings were mercilessly lathi charged or shot at.

Machine guns were used. Unarmed crowds were fired upon from the air. A reign

of terror was launched. Collective fines were imposed. Villagers were forced to
patrol tracks at night, on penalty of arrest and collective fines. Women were

maltreated. At many places, police entered villages and indulged in orgies of

rape and shooting. Prisoners were treated with cruelty. Many were tortured.

Even leaders like Jayaprakash Narayan were subjected to torture.

There was unprecedented, deliberate, barbarous repression. In some States like

Bengal, Bihar and Maharashtra, parallel governments were set up in villages and
Tahsils, and the supporters and henchmen of the Government were subjected

to corporal 'punishment'. Gandhi came to know of all this only much later. In

the meanwhile, the Government launched an intense campaign to malign

Gandhi and the Congress leaders. They blamed Gandhi for the violent
demonstrations and 'sabotage', and accused Gandhi of having sanctioned them

or connived at them, if he had not plotted them. They suggested that he had

given up his faith in nonviolence. Some implied that his non-violence was a

ploy, and that he was indulging in downright hypocrisy when he talked of non-
violence. They tried to spread these stories all over the world.

Gandhi was in prison. He had no way of answering these allegations in public
and countering the calumny that was put out. He wrote to the Viceroy and the

Government on these allegations. He charged the Government with having

precipitated the struggle, isolating the leaders from the people with a midnight

sweep; provoking the people and unleashing a reign of "leonine violence"
against the people. If he had not been arrested and isolated, he would have

appealed to the people to stick strictly to the path of non-violence. It was most

likely that he would have succeeded. His faith in non-violence was the breath

of his life. It was no ploy. He had often declared that he did not care for an
independence that was won through violence, because it would not signify the

freedom of the common man. It seemed as though the Government had lost all

sense of propriety, fair play or justice. How else could they level such grave
allegations against him and yet not give him a chance to answer the

www.mkgandhi.org Page 100