48 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
of nonviolent noncooperation advocated by the Gandhian Congress
included the triple boycott of legislatures, law courts, and educational
institutions.
The Montagu- Chelmsford constitutional reforms of 1919—so
named after the secretary of state and the viceroy of India—aimed at
pacifying Indian protest and at diverting Indian po lit i cal attention to
local and provincial arenas, while keeping real power firmly in British
hands at the center. Even at the provincial level, there was to be a sys-
tem known as “diarchy” in which the more im por tant departments of
government would be reserved for the British governor and his civil
servants. Indian ministers drawn from the elected members of the pro-
vincial legislative council could be put in charge of less sensitive de-
partments. The Congress party had chosen to shun the elections to
these councils, and was determined to subvert the colonial attempt to
provincialize Indian politics. It wanted to instigate an all- India move-
ment that would broaden the po lit i cal arena far beyond the limited
sphere of British- sponsored institutions.
The spirit of the reforms had been swiftly contravened in March
1919 by the passage of the Rowlatt Act, which transformed wartime
ordinance into peacetime legislation enabling the British to hold Indi-
ans in detention without trial. Protests against this lawless law had
been answered on April 13, 1919, with the Amritsar Massacre in Pun-
jab, which left at least 379 innocent men, women, and children dead
and some 1,200 wounded. To add insult to injury, the of fi cial Commit-
tee of Enquiry had not indicted the perpetrators of the crime, and the
House of Lords had even congratulated Reginald Dyer, the military of-
fi cer who ordered the shooting. The flouting of the pledge made by
Lloyd George, the British prime minister, not to dismember Turkey
and not to take over the holy lands in the Hejaz had angered many In-
dian Muslims. The resolve to right the Punjab wrong and the Khilafat
wrong had galvanized Hindus and Muslims to come together under
Gandhi’s leadership to challenge the might of the British raj.
Amid the po lit i cal ferment and the socioeconomic discontent of
the postwar years, C. R. Das was quick to harness the talents of young
Subhas in the ser vice of the noncooperation movement in Bengal. Sub-
has was put in charge of publicity for the Bengal provincial congress