CHAPTER IV
A NEW PORTENT
In 1919-20 a new chapter opened in India's his-
tory. Satyagraha movement on a national scale was-
born. During World War I, instead of taking advantage
of the difficulty of her alien rulers, India decided to co-
operate in the war, but at the end of it instead of freedom:
she got the Rowlatt Act which, under the ostensible object
of putting down seditious crime, embodied the most arbi-
trary suppression of civil liberties that India had ever
known. It turned Gandhiji who had hitherto prided him-
self on being the * loyalist subject* of the British Empire
into a declared rebel and an open enemy of British rule
in India. He launched a countrywide Satyagraha move-
ment against it. The Government replied by proclaiming
martial law in the Punjab which culminated in General
Dyer's massacre at Amritsar. The movement against the-
Rowlatt Act thereafter merged and broadened into the non-
violent non-co-operation movement under Gandhiji's lea-
dership for the redress of the " triple wrong " of the Punjab
Martial Law atrocities, violation of the Khilafat * and the
denial of Swaraj, which India claimed as her birthright. A
miracle then happened. Hindus and Muslims so long kept
asunder by the ' Divide and Rule ' policy inherent in any
foreign Government, decided to bury the hatchet and for
* The Turkish Sultan used to be regarded by the Muslim world as
their Caliph or spiritual head. During World War I, the British Pre-
mier, Lloyd George, gave a pledge that the integrity of Turkey
would be maintained and the sacred places of Islam would re-
main with the acknowledged head of the Muslim religion. But after
the war, the Turkish Empire was dismembered and deprived of her
Arabian provinces. This meant violation of the Caliphate or the
Khilafat since the Islamic law required that the Caliph must exercise-
temporal power over the " Island of Arabia" in order to be able
to protect the holy places of Islam. This was regarded by the Indian
Muslims as a breach of faith and constituted the * Khilafat Wrong'.
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