be ashamed of
perpetrating. In no other way is it possible for one to understand the
majority report of the Hunter Committee, the despatch of the Government
of India, and the reply thereto of the Secretary of State for India. In
spite of the energetic protests of a section of the Press to the
personnel of the committee, it might be said that on the whole the
public were prepared to trust it especially as it contained three Indian
members who could fairly be claimed to be independent. The first rude
shock to this confidence was delivered by the refusal of Lord Hunter's
Committee to accept the very moderate and reasonable demand of the
Congress Committee that the imprisoned Punjab leaders might be allowed
to appear before it to instruct Counsel. Any doubt that might have been
left in the mind of any person has been dispelled by the report of the
majority of that committee. The result has justified the attitude of the
Congress Committee. The evidence collected by it shows what lord
Hunter's Committee purposely denied itself.

The minority report stands out like an oasis in a desert. The Indian
members deserve the congratulation of their countrymen for having dared
to do their duty in the face of heavy odds. I wish that they had refused
to associate themselves even in a modified manner with the condemnation
of the civil disobedience form of Satyagraha. The defiant spirit of the
Delhi mob on the 30th March 1919 can hardly be used for condemning a
great spiritual movement which is admittedly and manifestly intended to
restrain the violent tendencies of mobs and to replace criminal
lawlessness by civil disobedience of authority, when it has forfeited
all title to respect. On the 30th March civil disobedience had not even
been started. Almost every great popular demonstration has been hitherto
attended all the world over by a certain amount of lawlessness. The
demonstration of 30th March and 6th April could have been held under any
other aegis us under that of Satyagrah. I hold that without the advent
of the spirit of civility and orderliness the disobedience would have
taken a much more violent form than it did even at Delhi. It was only
the wonderfully quick acceptance by the people of the principle of
Satyagrah that effectively checked the spread of violence throughout the
length and breadth of India. And even to-day it is not the memory of the
black barbarity of General Dyer that is keeping the undoubted
restlessness among