Non-cooperation and anarchical crime

Lahore, Tuesday, November 11, 1924

THE statements recently published by the Governor-General and the Government of Bengal in connection with the Bengal Ordinance throw a most interesting sidelight on the far-reaching effects of the non-cooperation movement, and conclusively prove the truth of the trite saying that the suppression of legitimate political agitation is the most potent instrument for driving political discontent underground and leading to anarchical and revolutionary crime. It is a well-known fact, which the government could not possibly deny, that during the years when the movement of non-violent non-cooperation was at its height, revolutionary crime had virtually disappeared and there was a lull in the activities of the anarchists. It is also a fact that as soon as Mahatma Gandhi’s movement grew weak and it was recognised that there was no immediate prospect of its success, there was a revival of anarchical outrages. Both these facts are amply admitted by the government, but it is averse to drawing the only legitimate and natural inference to which they point. The Bengal Government, in its resolution, states: “Terrorist leaders who had preached violence as the only road to independence naturally had no faith in non-violent non-cooperation. They realised, however, that the policy of non-violence had been generally accepted, and during 1920 and 1921, they were content to stand by and watch events…” The Governor-General expresses himself in the same strain: “Towards the end of 1922, the leaders of those (revolutionary) conspiracies, believing that their objects would not be attained by the methods of non-cooperation, decided to revert to the methods of violence.”