The only piece of practical advice we received from Mr. Madan was that
propaganda should be met by counter propaganda. But there are
difficulties.
First how many of the hon. members would be willing to take up the task
of propaganda? Secondly, how many of them would be listened to if they
did? How many of these would be able to obtain a hearing? I confess it
seems to me, when Hon. members have protested that Government do not
publish all the facts, that the time may come when every district and
Sub-Divisional Magistrate ought to be his own publicity officer. In the
last week we should have had stories in the papers of ladies being
insulted in Monghyr, pushed into the road, and spat upon. We should have
read of the wife of a settlement Officer, with her sister-in-law, being
insulted by school-boys one of the ladies having her head cut with a
stone; and from many districts we should have heard that pitiful tale of
little children whose lips can hardly lisp the popular war cry being
taught to shout it, not as a tale of admiration for an ascetic idealist,
nor as reverence for a person of mystic magnetism, but as a mark of
racial hatred, a hymn of hate. We could have published instances from
Muzaffarpur and Champaran of the insults to Europeans, of mob roaming
about shouting and committing mischief. Hon. members would have heard of
Magistrates unable to hold trials because of the noise in the Court
compounds. All these and more should have been done in the way of
counter propaganda, exposing the methods of what is in fact a
revolutionary movement, but would much good have been done thereby? Is
it not more important to take steps to prevent such things happening? I
ask the hon. members to remember that every vote given in favour of this
resolution is a direct encouragement to the non-co-operation party they
profess to abhor.