By the end of May, Gandhi could no

longer keep silent. "I have refrained

from saying anything in public because I
had no reliable data," he
wrote the viceroy. "I was not prepared to
condemn martial law as such.
. . . But. . . [t]he secrecy that has
surrounded the events in the Punjab has
given rise to much hostile criticism. The
complete gagging of the Indian
Press has created the greatest
resentment."15 He urged the viceroy to
appoint
an "impartial and independent committee
of inquiry." That would
take a while longer, coming only after the
secretary of state intervened,
with Congress later appointing its own
committee and Gandhi himself as
its chair.
Lord Hunter, former solicitor-general of
Scotland, was appointed to
head a special Punjab Committee that fall,
whose six members included
two Indian judges, Sir Chimanlal Setalvad,
and Sahibzada Sultan Ahmed.

1
The viceroy announced the special inquiry
at the opening session of his Imperial
Legislative Council, and Gandhi welcomed
the inauguration of a full
judicial investigation of the Punjab
atrocities. It soon seemed clear, however,
that the official committee would not
conduct as extensive an investigation
of Indian claims and charges, or the needs
of indemnity of survivors,
as hoped for. Gandhi readily supported
Congress's cry for the appointment
of an independent Indian Committee to
inquire into the Punjab atrocities.
"The people's case is this," he wrote in his
"New Life" Gujarati weekly,
Navajivan, "that Sir Michael O'Dwyer
proved himself unfit as Governor
... If he had not prevented me from going
to Delhi, the disturbances would
not have taken such a violent turn."16 The
people's case, Gandhi argued,
"is so sound that it requires little adorning
... it is spoilt. . . only through
our anger or our apathy."
Gandhi asked the viceroy to lift the

2
restraining order issued in April
that prevented Gandhi from visiting
Punjab, and on October 15, 1919, he
was permitted to enter that province. "The
scene that I witnessed on my arrival
at Lahore can never be effaced from my
memory," Gandhi recalled.
"The railway station was from end to end
one seething mass of humanity.
The entire populace had turned out of
doors ... as if to meet a dear rela-
[ 102 ]
Postwar Carnage and Nationwide
Satyagraha
tion after a long separation, and was
delirious with joy."17 Pandits Malaviya
and Motilal Nehru, as well as Swami
Shraddhanand, were waiting to
welcome him to Lahore. It was his first
"close personal contact" with Jawaharlal
Nehru's father, who presided over the
Congress that December in
Amritsar and was soon to become one of
Gandhi's major supporters,
though never a disciple, as Jawaharlal
was to be for a decade. The decision

3
was then taken by both Pandits, the
Swami, and the Mahatma to boycott
the Hunter Committee. They appointed
instead a nonofficial committee of
inquiry on behalf of the Congress. Gandhi
was to chair the Congress Committee,
on which Motilal Nehru and C. R. Das, the
great lawyer leader of
Bengal and Subhas Chandra Bose's guru,
agreed to serve, along with several
others. Charlie Andrews was also there,
his "ceaseless work" continuing,
as Gandhi wrote "unobtrusively. ... his
service is the purest charity
given in secret."18