independent India – even among those who believed the rhetoric of
departure was false, and knew the struggle was still to be a long, hard
one.
Sections of moderate opinion decided to accept the new Montagu–
Chelmsford reforms, as they came to be called. The British tactics of
winning over the moderate sections of Indian opinion by apparent
concessions, and isolating more radical voices by making them seem
unreasonable, appeared to be working, claiming among its more notable
victims Mrs Annie Besant. This was the parting of ways between two
old allies: Motilal Nehru rejected the new reforms. This left him in
a situation of relative political isolation, as he was now distanced from
many Moderates, and still far from inclined to throw in his lot with the
Extremists (his attempt to run a newspaper called The Independent– a name
that underlined his isolation at the time of its founding – came to grief in
a few years, despite energetic help from his son, Jawaharlal, due in large
measure to bad management).
Promises of benevolent supervision of a transition to self-government
were not all there was to British rule after the war. There was a stick to
go with the carrot, as a reminder to those who were tempted to imagine
that British rule would now be a gentler beast. It had been assumed
that emergency repressive legislation put in place during the war would
now be removed, especially with the rhetoric focused on friendship
and eventual independence. This was not to be. In 1919, the Anarchical
and Revolutionary Crimes Act (the Rowlatt Act) was passed, allowing
wartime provisions for arbitrary arrests and imprisonment to continue
after the war.
This was the opportunity for Gandhi’s first campaign on a national
stage. Gandhi called for an all-India Satyagraha to resist the Act: delib-
erate civil disobedience of the Rowlatt Act, including allowing the
government to arrest the Satyagrahis, ‘courting arrest’, as it came to be
called in Indian political life. Working with some existing organisations,
Gandhi also set up a Satyagraha Sabha, a ‘truth force committee’, to
coordinate the campaign. Gandhi held meetings with Motilal Nehru
in Allahabad regarding a political strategy to campaign against the Act,
but there was no meeting of minds. Jawaharlal, on the other hand, was
greatly attracted by the Satyagraha Sabha, which seemed at last to provide
an opportunity for meaningful political activity. His father was not so
certain: politically, he was sceptical that going to jail would put any36 THE YOUNG GANDHIAN