There can be no doubt on that point at all, for we have also the letter
written by Pandit Kunzru to Mr. Jinnah, in which he states that Mr.
Gandhi declared explicitly at the conference that the enrolment and
training of volunteers for starting civil disobedience must be
continued. Very well then, what we are asked to do is this: To declare
that the volunteer corps enrolled and trained for civil disobedience are
lawful associations. Do those who urge us to take this step regard civil
disobedience as a lawful form of political activity? If they do not, by
what process of reasoning, do they argue that the agency by which civil
disobedience is to be carried out should be declared by Government to be
a lawful agency?
Now let us consider for a moment what the Non-co-operators mean by civil
disobedience in its most developed form. It has been explained by Mr.
Dip Narayan Singh a leading Non-co-operator of Behar. The procedure is
to be as follows;--The chief civil officer in the area selected for its
operation is to be given seven days to hand over the district to the
Non-co-operators. The residents in the area are then to be ordered to
disobey all the orders and laws of the Government and to refuse to pay
taxes, register documents, and so on. At the same time the police
station and courts are to be surrounded and the officials to be told to
deposit their uniforms and other badges of office. The police stations
and courts will then be treated as Swaraj property.
You well see that this bears out to the full declaration made by Mr.
Gandhi, in moving the civil disobedience resolution at the meeting of
the All-India Congress Committee on November 4th, that his programme of
civil disobedience constitutes a civil revolution, which, wherever
practised, will mean the end of the Government's authority and the open
defiance of Government and its laws. Again I would ask, to those who
wish these volunteers to be declared to be lawful wish to see this
programme put into operation without a resort to violence, which will
drench the country in blood?