Page:Sketch of the Non-cooperation Movement by Babu Rajendra Prasad.pdf/12



The Hartal and the Disturbunces.—The result of forcing the Act was some members of the Imperial Legislative Council resigned their seats in protest against this high-handed action of the Government, and when Mahatma Gandhi declared his intention of leading a Satyagraha campaign, he only voiced the feeling of India smarting under an insult and humiliation which was as undeserved of India as it was unbecoming and ungrateful of the British Government to offer. The Satyagraha pledge which began to be signed in large numbers required the signatory to affirm that they would refuse civilly to obey those laws and such other laws as the Committee to be appointed later on might think fit and further that “in this struggle we will faithfully follow the truth and refrain from violence to life, person, or property.” On the 23rd of March, Mahatma Gandhi issued his manifesto fixing the 6th of April for the observance of an All-India Hartal and as a day of fasting, prayer and penance. Under some mistake, the Hartal was observed at Delhi on the 30th March. And, as a result of a quarrel between some demonstrator on the one hand and the stall keeper at the Railway Station on the other, a riot ensued. Military police and a small military force were brought out, and some people were shot. In other parts of the country, the Hartal on the 6th April passed off quietly without any untoward incident. It was a first demonstration in which all, rich and poor, high and low, educated or uneducated, village folks and town people took part. The people of India seemed to have broken their slumber of centuries and to have awakened to a sense of their hidden power. In one word, they re-discovered their soul.