I had a further talk with Mr. Gandhi this afternoon. He began by telling me that he had, as requested by me yesterday, sent a telegram to Bombay saying that he had been informed that picketing was taking a serious form and was in danger of leading to violence, and that that kind of thing must be stopped. He promised to let me know the result.
          He then proceeded to develop the points left over from yesterday beginning with :
          (1) Punitive Police. I told him that, as I had said yesterday, it was a new point to me and that I imagined the action of local Governments would be dictated by the circumstances of each case. I could imagine cases in which local Governments might be willing to withdraw them as also others in which such withdrawal would have to be postponed. We left it at the point that I said in the event of a settlement being reached I would draw local Governments' attention to the matter.
          (2) He developed an argument of which this was the gist. In districts where resort has been had to coercive processes for collection of taxes due, such further collection shall be suspended pending examination of cases by an officer through an enquiry, in which the people will be afforded an opportunity of stating their case. His point was that many of the coercive processes have been extra legal, and have imposed far greater material damage on the people than the value of the tax due to be collected. He was only asking for the right of proving such a case as would lead Government to redress real injustice.
          I said that without fuller knowledge of the facts and the issues involved I could express no opinion beyond telling him that it seemed the kind of thing in which serious difficulty would be likely to arise. I told him that in my view, as in the case we were discussing yesterday of enquiries into police excesses, I regarded the whole state in which we now found ourselves as that of something very like a state of war. Under such conditions no doubt great hardship was unavoidable, but it had by no means been confined to one side. His presentment of the case seemed to me to suggest that we were dealing with unjustifiable departures from a state of affairs which had in other respects been normal, and appeared to rest on the assumption that Government was in the dock and under the necessity of justifying its action to people who had themselves been wholly free from blame. He would not expect me to accept that kind of interpretation of the present position.
         He answered this by reverting to his original arugment that he was pleading for no more than redress of what he believed he could show to be a manifest excess of administrative action leading to real injustice.
          (3) Salt. Here he developed the romantic side of the salt campaign, dwelling much on the inhumanity of depriving families who had natural opportunities of doing so, of taking advantage of them to manufacture salt. (I am not sure whether it confined to salt for their own use or not.) What he desired was that Government should either alter the law or acquiesce in its breach, by way of not prohibiting such private action. He instanced the Sarda Act and the Age of Consent Act as examples of Government looking the other way in matters of administration.
          I told him that there was a wide distinction in my view between Government administering a particular law with discretion,through instructions communicated to its own officers, and Government advertising to the world that it was prepared to condone such breaches.The latter really amounted to an invitation to all and sundry to commit them. If, as he said, such informal breaches of the Salt Law had been in the habit of taking place before, I had no reason to suppose that Government would wish to administer the Salt Law any more or any less strictly than had been the case hitherto.
          He said that he was not asking for any public declaration, but for a private assurance that Government would not interfere with private breaches of the law; he had not in mind raids on salt depots or anything on that scale.
          I told him that I felt considerable difficulty about his propositon having regard to the fact that the circumstances surrounding private breaches of the law had greatly altered since his salt campaign.
          (4) Peaceful picketing. He asked me whether I took any objection to its continuance. I told him that peaceful picketing appeared to me a misnomer. I had a long list of cases on my table showing the violent results that had flowed from so-called peaceful picketing, and I found it impossible to believe that peaceful picketing could fail to produce similar results in future. I quoted Benares, Amritsar, etc. I further said that I could not tolerate interference with legitimate trade, as evinced by Congress intimidation in the matter by way of sealing foreign cloth, mock funerals and all the rest. Lastly, I said that picketing as a political weapon was objectionable and its continuance was quite incompatible with Congress coming into Conference discussions. He was really setting about his principal purposes of swadeshi and temperance in the wrong way by pursuing a policy at once negative and belligerent; why could he not apply himself to the positive and pacific programme of preaching swadeshi and temperance without interference with personal liberty?
          To all this he said he had no wish to do more than peacefully persuade; he only attached importance to it as a social and economic business, not primarily political. He and the Congress would prohibit violence, mock funerals and all such forms of pressure; but he could not see why people might not stand near a grog-shop in the endeavour to reform the drunkard; if violence or molestation occurred, it could be dealt with under the ordinary law.
          I told him that experience was against him in this matter, and that I feared it would not be easily possible for him to get the subtle distinction present to his own mind observed in practical action by many different people in different parts of the country.
          2. I then took up a few general matters. First of all I explained to him that in everything I had said I was only speaking personally for myself, and that on many matters it would be necessary to consult local Governments or the Secretary of State, and on all matters it would be necessary for me to consult my own council. This he recognized. I then told him that I had heard of the probability of himself and Vallabhbhai Patel visiting Gujarat. I could have little doubt that, if they went there, they would stimulate the civil disobedience movement, in which the Government of Bombay could evidently not acquiesce. I asked him therefore to keep himself and Vallabhbhai away for the present at all events. He told me that he had just summoned Vallabhbhai to come here and went on to say that, if our negotiations succeeded, no difficulty would arise; if they failed, I understood him to say that he and his friends had decided, or might decide, to offer themselves for rearrest. It would then be for Government to do what they wished, but he would certainly when his work was finished here wish to go to Gujarat and could not do otherwise.
          3. I finally told him that everything I had said about possibilities of reciprocal action by Government was dependent upon the effective abandonment of the civil disobedience campaign. He asked me what this meant; it would be impossible for him to agree to a period of ten days or fifteen days before reciprocal action was taken by Government. I said I had not that in mind; what I was rather concerned with was that before Government [took] reciprocal action they should be satisfied that the Working Committee's instructions had in fact reached local organizations and that they were being loyally carried out. There was no question of impugning the trustworthiness of the Working Committee, who might reach an agreement with Government here; on the other hand, it was not unreasonable that Government should be satisfied that the agreement honourably reached by the Working Committee was in fact being honourably given effect to by the local organizations.
          He appeared to accept this.
          4. I then recurred to the question we had discussed yesterday as to the contingent resumption by Congress of civil disobedience. I said that it would be an impossible position for me to recommend to His Majesty's Government to take all the steps we had been discussing if they were at any moment in the course of subsequent discussions liable to be told by Congress that the provisional conclusions arrived at, at any stage, were unpalatable and they therefore broke up and went back to their campaign. Could he give me any assurance on the point?
          He said that, as he had explained yesterday and as I had accepted, Congress could not pledge themselves, either for all time or in this particular matter, not again to have resort to civil disobedience; but if they went into the Conference he would be prepared to say that they went in meaning to strain every nerve to make it a success. He did not however wish to conceal from me that, if, when the discussions had concluded, the scheme was still unsatisfactory to them, they must reserve their liberty to return to civil disobedience. He could not anticipate what their decision might be; circumstances might alter, they might desire to wait and see what happened in Parliament; but in no case would he anticipate recurrence to civil disobedience while the discussions were proceeding; and he hoped that it would never be necessary at all.
          5. I asked him whether he thought, in spite of the attitude I had felt necessary to adopt as regards salt, peaceful picketing, enquiries into excesses and other matters on which I had been unable to meet him, it would be desirable to have a somewhat more formal discussion? In such event I should contemplate that we might have invited Sastri, Sapru, Jayakar, Shafi, Chhatari, possibly a non-official European from the Assembly, another non-official Moslem, Malaviya, Ansari, Bikaner and Bhopal. He appeared to welcome the idea rather warmly, saying that he thought Malaviya was indispensable, but added that he might like to bring one or two of his own and instanced Jawaharlal, Vallabhbhai and Sen Gupta. He might have liked, he added, to have had Subhas Bose, but he was at present in prison. I said that in such case I should propose to reinforce myself by representatives of my Government.
          I told him that I would consider this and let him know, if I could, tomorrow, adding that I thought, if such further talks were held, a formal communique should be issued after each meeting to avoid public misunderstanding. He agreed and said that he would hold himself at my disposal.
          6. The general impression I gathered was that, though there are a good many snags still in the road, he is disposed to co-operate. The principal snags evidently are the question of the scope of further discussions and of contingent resumption of the campaign. On the latter however I believed it to be impracticable to get any greater measure of assurance than he was willing to give me in our final interview this evening.
          In conclusion and not connected with the above, he mentioned the case of Bhagat Singh. He did not plead for commutation, although he would, being opposed to all taking of life, take that course himself. He also thought it would have an influence for peace. But he did ask for postponement in present circumstances. I contented myself with saying that, whatever might be the decision as to exact dates, I could not think there was any case for commutation which might not be made with equal force in the case of any other violent crime. The Viceroy's powers of commutation were designed for use on well-known grounds of clemency, and I could not feel that they ought to be invoked on grounds that were admittedly political.

                                                                                                      (SD.) IRWIN

 C.W.M.G : Vol. 51