classes become involved in the promotion of anarchical movements, but
that the ranks were filled with men belonging to other social orders,
including the military, and that there was clear evidence of successful
tampering with the loyalty of the native troops. To combat this growing
disaffection, the Rowlatt committee recommended fresh repressive
legislation.

Impressed with the gravity of the committee's report, the Government of
India formulated a project of law officially known as the Anarchical and
Revolutionary Crimes Act, though generally known as the Rowlatt Bill. By
its provisions the authorities were endowed with greatly increased
powers, such as the right to search premises and arrest persons on mere
suspicion of seditious activity, without definite evidence of the same.

The Rowlatt Bill at once aroused bitter nationalist opposition. Not
merely extremists, but many moderates, condemned it as a backward step
and as a provoker of fresh trouble. When the bill came up for debate in
the Indian legislative body, the Imperial Legislative Council, all the
native members save one opposed it, and the bill was finally passed on
strictly racial lines by the votes of the appointed English majority.
However, the government considered the bill an absolute pre-requisite to
the successful maintenance of order, and it was passed into law in the
spring of 1919.

This brought matters to a head. The nationalists, stigmatizing the
Rowlatt law as the "Black Cobra Act," were unmeasured in their
condemnation. The extremists engineered a campaign of militant protest
and decreed the date of the bill's enactment, April 6, 1919, as a
national "Humiliation Day." On that day monster mass-meetings were held,
at which nationalist orators made seditious speeches and inflamed the
passions of the multitude. "Humiliation Day" was in fact the beginning
of the worst wave of unrest since the mutiny. For the next three months
a veritable epidemic of rioting and terrorism swept India, particularly
the northern provinces. Officials were assassinated, English civilians
were murdered, and there was wholesale destruction of property. At some
moments it looked as though India were on the verge of revolution and
anarchy.

However, the government stood firm. Violence was countered with stern
repression. Riotous mobs were mowed down wholesale by rifle and
machine-gun fire or were scattered by bombs dropped from low-flying
aeroplanes. The most noted of t