"To the British Government, with all its apparatus of
legality and power, there still were loyal the European
population, the Indian sepoys, who wear its uniform, a few of
the merchant princes, and the older generation of the Moslem
minority.
"The rest of Bombay's population has transferred its
allegiance to one of the British Government's too numerous
prisoners: Mahatma Gandhi."
Carefully Briton Brailsford described the system of
parallel government in Bombay, whereby members of the Indian
National Congress themselves marshal and police their
demonstrations. He reported that the Gandhiwomen who picket
shops selling British goods, and who fling themselves down to be
trodden on by any Indian determined to enter, will stand aside
for occidental shoppers. "The shopkeepers themselves signed a
requisition to the effect that they made no complaint against
this peaceful picketing, and for a time there were few arrests."
In and around Bombay, Ahmedabad, Delhi and Benares, Mr.
Brailsford examined many Indian men and women bearing "wounds on
the feet or bruises on the stomach, made with the butt end of a
rifle...one man with a terribly swollen arm, fractured or
dislocated, hanging in a sling...a woman (with) a badly swollen
face caused by a blow."
In the opinion of Briton Brailsford, "cold English brains"
devised the system whereby bands of native police, especially in
the rural districts, set upon individual Indian men & women and
beat them. "The execution (of this plan) was left to hotter
heads and rougher hands," notably to Mohuntal Shah, chief Indian
official of the Borsad Taluka in Kaira District, who, Mr.
Braisford reports, has not only presided at numerous pouncings
and beatings, but also "occasionally assisted with a heavy
walking stick."
