LABURNUM ROAD,GAMDEVI, BOMBAY,
June 27, 1919
MY DEAR HENRY,
I am dictating this after 11 p.m. You will not therefore expect anything lengthy from me. I hope you received my cable in fairly good time. Here is a copy of my cable to Mr. Montagu.1 I delayed sending it for four days. I enclose copy of instructions2 issued by me to be followed after my incarceration. By the time this reaches you, many things would have happened here. The only thing therefore that I need say to you is that I am embarking on civil disobedience because I am no longer able to bear the agony of remaining free while the Rowlatt Act is on the Statute-book; add to this the events in the Punjab, the martial law proceedings, the heavy sentences, the iniquitous conviction of Babu Kalinath Roy. The only thing that deterred me from offering civil disobedience was the recrudescence of violence and it is that fear which has made me restrict civil disobedience to myself. To send others to jail would have caused less stir, but it would not have been satyagraha. The more I think into the thing, the more truly I perceive the beauty and the strength of my own statement that one satyagrahi, if he is a genuine article is enough for a win.
Please show this to Mr. Shastriar to whom also I sent the cable that I sent to you. Remember me to everybody. My love to you and Millie. The Transvaal Bill1 is wretched. I have written to the Viceroy. It is too terrible for words.
1. Vide "Cable to E. S. Montagu", 24-6-1919.
2. Vide "Instructions for Satyagrahis", 30-6-1919.