years
only, and the title of the bill was amended to show clearly that its
application would be confined to clearly anarchical and revolutionary
crimes. It was further modified in form in the committee stage, but the
opposition within the Council remained unmoved, and outside the Council
grew more and more fierce. The Extremists who had shrunk from no efforts
to misrepresent the purpose of the bills received a great accession of
strength when Mr. Gandhi instituted the vow of _Satyagraha_, or passive
resistance, under which, if the bills became law, he and his followers
would "severally refuse to obey these laws and such other laws as a
committee to be thereafter appointed might see fit," whilst they would
"faithfully follow the truth and refrain from violence to life, person,
or property." The Moderate leaders at Delhi at once issued a manifesto
condemning _Satyagraha_, but Government stuck to its guns, the bills
being finally passed on March 18, after very hot discussion. Mr. Gandhi,
having formed his committee, proclaimed a _Hartal_, _i.e._ a
demonstrative closing of shops and suspension of business for March 30.
This _Hartal_ at Delhi started a terrible outbreak which spread with
unexpected violence over parts of the Bombay Presidency and the greater
part of the Punjab, with sporadic disturbances in the North-West
Frontier Province, and even in Calcutta.

The Delhi _Hartal_ brought for the first time into full relief the close
alliance into which the Mahomedan Extremists had been brought with the
Hindu Extremists, as well as the influence which both had acquired over
a considerable section of the lower classes in the two communities. The
political leaders had fallen into line in the Indian National Congress
and the All-India Moslem League during the 1916 and 1917 sessions, when
they united in demanding Home Rule for India, and they had united since
then in rejecting as totally inadequate the scheme of reforms
foreshadowed in the Montagu-Chelmsford Report. But not till towards the
conclusion of the war did the Mahomedan Extremists discover a special
grievance for their own community in the peace terms likely to be
imposed upon a beaten Turkey. That was a grievance far more likely to
appeal to their co-religionists than the political grievances which had
formed the stock-in-trade of Hindu Extremism, if they could be worked
upon to believe that Great Britain and her allies were plotting not
merely against the temporal p