through my body could hardly have pained me more. I have said times without number that Satyagraha admits of no violence, no pillage, no incendiarism; and still in the name of Satyagraha we burnt down buildings, forcibly captured weapons, extorted money, stopped trains, cut off telegraph wires, killed innocent people and plundered shops and private houses. If deeds such as these could save me from the prison house or the scaffold I should not like to be so saved.
It is open to anybody to say that but for the Satyagrahacampaign there would not have been this violence. For this I have already done a penance, to my mind an unendurable one, namely, that I have had to postpone my visit to Delhi to seek re-arrest and I have also been obliged to suggest a temporary restriction of Satyagraha to a limited field. This has been more painful to me than a wound, but this penance is not enough, and I have therefore decided to fast for three days, i.e., 72 hours. I hope my fast will pain no one. I believe a seventy-two hours' fast is easier for me than a twenty-four hours' fast for you. And I have imposed on me a discipline which I can bear.
In consequence of the violence, he ordered a general suspension of the movement on the 18th April only to be resumed on another occasion which was soon to follow in the heels of the Punjab tragedy.
THE PUNJAB DISORDERS
Before passing to a consideration of the Khilafat question and Mr. Gandh1’s lead which made it such a potent and All-India agitation we must say a word on the aftermath of the Punjab tragedy. It is unnecessary to recount the extraordinary happenings in the Punjab as time and vigilant enquiries have laid bare the unscrupulous methods of that Government For over a year, the tale of the Punjab atrocities, the shooting down of a defenseless and unarmed gathering of some 2,000 men, women and children in cold blood at the Jallianwallah Bagh, the monstrous methods of martial law administered by Col. Johnson and Bosworth Smith, the outrageous indignities to which the poor people of the place were subjected, the callous disregard of life and respect with which Sir Michael O’Dwyer and Brigadier Dyer were inflicting some of the worst features of Prussianism on a helpless people—the crawling order and the public flogging—these have been the theme of countless articles and speeches. The Punjab revelations have shocked the conscience of the civilized world which could
