It looked like the British authorities had finally been cornered but, just as some form of victory seemed imminent, Gandhi unilaterally suspended the movement. The proximate reason for the decision was an incident in Chauri-Chaura where a mob of protesters set fire to a police station and killed several policemen. Gandhi argued that this incident had violated the principle of non-violence but it caused a permanent schism with the revolutionaries who saw it as hypocrisy. Why did Gandhi have to make such a fuss over a single incident of violence, they argued, when he had been recruiting soldiers
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