It was when the British passed the Rowlatt Act in March 1919 suspending the rights of defendants in sedition trials that Gandhi, despite being seriously ill with dysentery, conceived of the satyagraha pledge that Jawaharlal Nehru signed in April. Motilal, though equally contemptuous of legislation that most educated Indians called ‘the Black Act’, and willing to challenge the law in the courts, was dismayed by his son’s willingness to disobey it in the streets. Father and son argued furiously about Motilal’s conviction that Jawaharlal should not break the law because doing so would make him a
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