XIV

THE CONGRESS REPORT

NATIONALIST India lies under a deep debt to the Commissioners appointed by the Punjab SubCommittee of the Indian National Congress for their devoted labours which have fructified in the Report upon the Disturbances in India last year.

"We have postponed comment upon this great work until both volumes of the Report could come under our readers' investigations, while in our issue of May 7 we gave copious extracts from Volume I and on May 14 further extracts from Volume II, Volume I opens with the forwarding letter from the Commissioners, Messrs. Gandhi, Das, Abbas Tyabji and Jayakar, in the course of which occurs the following statement, evidential of the spirit of grave responsibility in which they undertook their task :—

We examined the statements of over 1,700 witnesses and we have selected for publication about 650 statements, which will be found in the accompanying volumes of our report. The statements excluded were mostly statements proving (the) same class of facts.

Every admitted statement was verified by one of us and was accepted only after we were satisfied

as to the bona fides of the witness. This does not apply to a few statements from Manianwala and neighbourhood, which were mostly brought at our request by Mr. Labh Singh, M.A., Barrister-at-law. Every such statements bears his name at the foot thereof. No statements was accepted without sufficient cross-examination of the witness.

It will be observed that many witnesses are men of position and leaders in their own districts or villages.

It will be further observed that some of the witnesses have made very serious allegations against officials. In each and every case the witnesses were warned by us of the consequences of making those allegations, and they were admitted only when the witnesses adhered to their statements, in spite of the knowledge of the risk they personally ran and the damage that may ensue by reason of exaggeration or untruth. We have, moreover, rejected those statements which could not be corroborated, although in some cases we were inclined to believe the witnesses. Such, for instance, were the statements regarding (the) ill-treatment of

women.

Needless to say that our enquiry was confined to the Martial Law area and to the districts in which

it was proclaimed. The principal places were personally visited by us."

The rest of Volume I is divided into six parts, of which a brief historical and geographical descrip tion of the Punjab is the first. A summary of Sir Michael O'Dwyer's Administration is the second. There follow chapters on the Rowlatt Bills and the Satyagraha movement. The great bulk of Volume I, however, is comprised of descriptions of Martial Law in a score or so of places; the sixth part of the volume is the general conclusion reached by the Commissioners. Photographs of victims and plans of the Jallianwalla Bagh and the Crawling Order Lane add to its value.

Volume II consists of 946 pages of evidence. It is indicative of the promptitude which animated the Commission that the various sections of this bulky volume were printed at no less than eight different presses in Bombay. The Commission are much to be congratulated upon the measures they have taken to place their Report before the British and Indian peoples before the Hunter Report's belated appearance. Unlike the Hunter Report, the Congress Report is unanimous in its findings, there being not even any minute of dissent. The amount of evidence furnished is a tremendous tribute to the

energy, patience, and hard work of the Commissioners, to say nothing of the encouraging effect that the mere presence of such men must have been in the Punjab, stupefied by the brutalities of her War Lords.

Of the tone of the Report it is difficult to speak too highly. It is not too much to say that it is a really spiritual production which rises to great heights of nobility. There is an absence of vengeful spirit, a calm moderation throughout and an avoidance of all vituperation which is reminiscent of the grandeur of the closing stages of the life of Socrates. It is small wonder that already in the Punjab the Report is christened "The Saint's Report." It is the Report not only of one Saint, but of a deeply spiritual people whom suffering has ennobled, not degraded. It makes one feel that the glories of India's past will be as nothing to the glories of India's future. The measure of the nobility of India's own Report is also the measure of the failure of the Hunter Majority Report-aye, there's the rub! and not only of the Hunter Report, but of the disgraceful ex parte White Paper on the Punjab Disturbances on which we commented strongly some weeks ago. It has been objected in some quarters that it was improper for Mr. Gandhi

to have been a member of the Commission, in as much as one of the subjects under review being the Satyagraha movement which he led it would have been difficult for the Commission to have come to a condemnatory conclusion regarding that movement, had there been a tendency shown in that direction. We cannot deny that there is something in the contention. But upon consideration of the alternative, that Mr. Gandhi should not have been a member, it will at once be seen that the remedy would have been much worse than the disease. The manifestations of an unique, and in modern times unprecedented, movement could not very profitably have been examined and considered apart from the mentality and personality of its originator; whilst the influence of his clarifying and restraining guidance is obvious at every point. On the whole, the Report has gained enormously by Mr. Gandhi's membership of the Commission, and we are confident that had he felt at any moment that his presence was conducive to undue favours to himself, he would instantly have withdrawn, or resigned. The Report has gained far more by his presence than it would have done by his absence.

It must be borne in mind that the Report has not