Simla, Britain, India

Abstract

As early as 1915, Andrews wrote that ‘Simla is the meeting place for all the wrongs and injustices and tyrannies of all the millions of all India.’ Gandhi wrote in Navajivan on 26 October 1919: ‘The gulf between the rulers and the ruled has been widened’, concluding that ‘the hope of India lies in Satyagraha’. The Rowlatt Bills and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre had catapulted Gandhi’s movement to an all-India political struggle. The Hunter Committee Report, published in May 1920, and its endorsement by the government, created a swell of discontent. Andrews wrote to Gandhi: ‘We are living as it were on the edge of a volcano and the crust on which we are standing is very thin.’