(As a retaliatory measure to Government’s repressive policy on December 28, 1931 the Congress Working Committee under the guidance of Mahatma Gandhi passed a resolution involving the general revival of the Civil Disobedience movement. The then Viceroy of India in a telegram warned the Mahatma that the Government would hold him and the Congress responsible for any untoward consequences which might ensue and also apprised him of the determination of the Government to suppress the movement by all possible means. To that telegram the Mahatma issued the following rejoinder:)
TIME ALONE WILL SHOW WHO WAS JUSTIFIED!
Thanks for your wire of even date. I cannot help expressing deep regret for the decision of His Excellency and his Government. Surely it is wrong to describe an honest expression of opinion as a threat. May I remind the Government that the Delhi negotiations were opened and carried on whilst civil disobedience was not given up but only discontinued. This position was reasserted and accepted by His Excellency and his Government in Simla in September last prior to my departure for London. Although I had made it clear that under certain circumstances the Congress might have to resume Civil Disobedience the Government did not break off negotiations.
That it was made clear by the Government that Civil Disobedience carried with it the penalty for disobedience merely proves what civil resisters bargain for but does not in any way effect my argument. Had the Government resented that attitude, it was open to them not to send me to London. On the contrary my departure had His Excellency’s blessings.
Nor is it fair or correct to suggest that I have ever advanced the claim that any policy of the Government should be dependent on my judgment. But I do not submit that any popular and constitutional Government would always welcome and sympathetically consider suggestions made by public bodies and their representatives and assist them with all available information about their Acts or Ordinances of which public opinion may disapprove. I claim that my messages have no other meaning.
Time alone will show whose position was justified. Meanwhile I wish to assure the Government that every endeavour will be made on the part of the Congress to carry on the struggle without malice and in a strictly non-violent manner. It was hardly necessary to remind me that the Congress and I, its humble representative, are responsible for all the consequences of our actions.