Page:Sketch of the Non-cooperation Movement by Babu Rajendra Prasad.pdf/28

 Resignation of titles were few, but after all the title holders form a class from whom from the nature of their position much was not to be expected. But there can be no doubt that nothing had lowered these titles in the estimation of the people so much as this movement. One thing which was not mentioned in the Congress resolution was spontaneously taken up by the people. People started a campaign against the evils of drink and a most marvellous progress was visible in all parts of the country, resulting in a great loss to the Government from Excise Revenue. Under the reformed constitution elections had, in the meantime, taken place, and His Royal Highness, the Duke of Connaught, landed at Madras on 8th January and opened the Legislative Council there on the 12th. Under the Congress resolution, Mahatma Gandhi had advised a boycott of the Duke’s visit, not by away of offering an insult to His Royal Highness, but as an expression of protest against the persistent refusal of the Government to listen to people’s demands. Wherever the Duke went, the masses as a body and amongst the middle classes also most of those who were not directly concerned or connected with the Government observed hartals. His Royal Highness, after opening some of the Provincial Legislative Councils and the new Legislature at Delhi, left the country.

Non-violence.—Mahatma Gandhi had insisted on Non violence as an essential feature of the movement and it was this insistence which had kept the people in spite of the great upheaval and the great indignation from committing acts of violence. Some incidents, however, occurred which, though not directly due to the N. C. O. movement, were, nevertheless, attributed to the stir and the a wakening created by it. One of the earliest of these