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 LALA LAJPAT RAI

LETTER TO MAHATMA GANDHI.

The following is the text of Lala Lajpatrai's letter to Mahatma Gandhi just on the eve of Lalaji's arrest:—

Dear Mahatmaji,—I am writing this to you so early as in all probability I will be arrested by this evening. I am sorry I may look to have disregarded your wishes but the circumstances are such as leave me no alternative. We have called a meeting of the Punjab Provincial Congress Committee for to-day 2 p.m. The Deputy Commissioner calls it a public meeting. Yesterday we received a notice from him asking us for the agenda and an assurance that no business not in the agenda would be transacted. We have refused to comply, maintaining that the meeting is not public and that it does not come within the Act. Most probably he will prohibit the meeting. He has also served us with a notice calling ward meetings of ward Congress Committees also public. This means an entire stoppage of work. His orders are illegal, and if we had the option of fighting we might have won. But this is not to be.