to return these medals in pursuance of the scheme of non-co-operation inaugurated to-day in connection with the Khilafat movement.  Valuable as those honours have been to me, I cannot wear them with an easy conscience so long as my Mussalman countrymen have to labour under a wrong done to their religious sentiment.  Events that have happened during the past month have confirmed me in the opinion that the Imperial Government have acted in the Khilafat matter in an unscrupulous, immoral and unjust manner and have been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend their immorality.  I can retain neither respect nor affection for such a Government.

The attitude of the Imperial and Your Excellency’s Governments on the Punjab question has given me additional cause for grave dissatisfaction.  I had the honour, as Your Excellency is aware, as one of the congress commissioners to investigate the causes of the disorders in the Punjab during the April of 1919.  And it is my deliberate conviction that Sir Michael O’Dwyer was totally unfit to hold the office of Lieutenant Governor of Punjab and that his policy was primarily responsible for infuriating the mob at Amritsar.  Do doubt the mob excesses were unpardonable; incendiarism, murder of five innocent Englishmen and the cowardly assault on Miss Sherwood were most deplorable and uncalled for.  But the punitive measures taken by General Dyer, Col.  Frank Johnson, Col.  O’Brien, Mr. Bosworth Smith, Rai Shri Ram Sud, Mr. Malik Khan and other officers were out of all proportional to the crime of the people and amounted to wanton cruelty and inhumanity and almost unparalleled in modern times.  Your excellency’s light-hearted treatment of the official crime, your, exoneration of Sir Michael O’Dwyer, Mr. Montagu’s dispatch and above all the shameful ignorance of the Punjab events and callous disregard of the feelings of Indians betrayed by the House of Lords, have filled me with the gravest misgivings regarding the future of the Empire, have estranged me completely from the present Government and have disabled me from tendering, as I have hitherto whole-heartedly tendered, my loyal co-operation.

In my humble opinion the ordinary method of agitating by way of petitions, deputations and the like is no remedy for moving to repentence a Government so hopelessly indifferent to the welfare of its charges as the Government of India has proved to me.  In European countries, condonation of such grievous wrongs as the Khilafat and the Punjab would have resulted in a bloody revolution by the people.  They would have resisted at all costs national emasculation such as the said wrongs imply.  But half of India is to weak to offer violent resistance and the other half is unwilling to do so.