We are once more engaged in fighting an agitation for civil disobedience. I suppose that the world at large must look on this fact with something of amazement. We have just welcomed Congress to our Round Table Conference and we have just made lavish promises to India of the introduction of a responsible government. Within a month we are putting every member of Congress in prison by means of regulations, ordinances and all manner of things that to the outside world must reek of the middle ages … We cannot avoid a combat, yet I suppose there are few of us who really like it.

I frankly cannot grasp the British policy. It seems to me a sheer muddle to put the Congress in gaol, to alienate the Moderates, and yet to think of going forward with the grant of a new Constitution … I can appreciate frank reaction or the Strong Hand. I can also appreciate a more or less liberal policy of Trust … But what is this monstrosity, which now keeps in gaol the people who must necessarily work the new Constitution?