“I should suspend civil disobedience if I were so convinced.”
“What do you mean? You told Mr. Bowring that you would proceed to the Punjab the moment you were released.”
“Yes, I wanted to do so by the next available train. But it is out of the question today.”
“If you will be patient, the conviction is sure to grow on you. Do you know what is happening in Ahmedabad? And what has happened in Amritsar? People have everywhere gone nearly mad. I am not yet in possession of all the facts. The telegraph wires have been cut in some places. I put it to you that the responsibility for all these disturbances lies on you.”
“I assure you I should readily take it upon myself wherever I discovered it. But I should be deeply pained and surprised, if I found that there were disturbances in Ahmedabad. I cannot answer for Amritsar. I have never been there, no one knows me there. But even about the Punjab I am certain of this much that, had not the Punjab Government prevented my entry into the Punjab, I should have been considerably helpful in keeping the peace there. By preventing me they gave the people unnecessary provocation.”
And so we argued on and on. It was impossible for us to agree. I told him that I intended to address a meeting on Chaupati and to ask the people to keep the peace, and took leave of him. The meeting was held on the Chaupati sands. I spoke at length on the duty of nonviolence and on the limitations of satyagraha, and said: “Satyagraha is essentially a weapon of the truthful. A satyagrahi is pledged to nonviolence, and, unless people observe it in thought, word and deed, I cannot offer mass satyagraha.”
Anasuyabehn, too, had received news of disturbances in Ahmedabad. Someone had spread a rumour that she also had been arrested. The mill-hands