INDIVIDUAL CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

AS the most important change made by the All-India Congress Committee in the Bardoli resolutions is as regards individual civil disobedience, importance attaches to Mahatma Gandhi’s observations in regard to it at the interview he gave to a Press representative at Delhi than to those on any other subject. These observations fall under two groups, those in which he answers the criticism that the All-India Congress Committee has in sanctioning individual civil disobedience gone against the letter and spirit of the Bardoli resolutions, and those in which he answers critics who imagine that because the All-India Congress Committee has sanctioned individual civil disobedience, it must be re-commenced immediately. As regards the first, Gandhi says that the Working Committee had not intended the suspension of individual civil disobedience to be otherwise than temporary, that the very language of its resolution shows that it treated individual civil disobedience on a different footing as compared with mass civil disobedience, inasmuch as while the latter was postponed indefinitely, the former was suspended only till the All-India Congress Committee had met and discussed the matter, and that all that the All-India Congress Committee has now done is that instead of itself fixing the time for re-embarking upon individual civil disobedience, it has thrown that responsibility on the Provincial Congress Committee. As a statement of facts, this is correct. The Working Committee had only suspended individual civil disobedience until further instructions, and has specifically provided that its resolution on the subject, like several other resolutions, was subject to confirmation by the special meeting of the All-India Congress Committee which was being convened for discussing the whole situation.