Mr. Gandhi's Misstatements.
"_Mass civil disobedience is fraught with such danger to the State that
it must be met with sternness and severity._"
_So says the Government of India (Home Department) in the communique
published below in reply to Mr. Gandhi's manifesto offering a
postponement of civil disobedience on certain conditions which
Government regard as impossible._
_The Government statement makes it clear that the issue is between
lawlessness and the maintenance of civilised government._
The manifesto issued by Mr. Gandhi on the 4th February justifying his
determination to resort to mass civil disobedience contains a series of
misstatements. Some of these are so important that the Government of
India cannot allow them to pass unchallenged. In the first place they
emphatically repudiate the statement that they have embarked on a policy
of lawless repression and also the suggestion that the present campaign
of civil disobedience has been forced on the non-co-operation party, in
order to secure the elementary rights of free association, free speech
and of a free press. The Government of India desire to draw attention to
the fact that the decision to adopt a programme of civil disobedience
was finally accepted on the 4th November, before the recent notification
relating either to the Seditious Meetings Act or the Criminal Law
Amendment Act, to which Mr. Gandhi unmistakeably refers were issued. It
was in consequence of serious acts of lawlessness, committed by persons
who professed to be followers of Mr. Gandhi and the non-co-operation
movement, that the Government were forced to take measures, which are in
strict accordance with the law for the protection of peaceful citizens
in the pursuit of their lawful avocations.