[In India after returning from South Africa]

"The Report of the Hunter Committee, when it came out, struck him as little better than ‘thinly disguised whitewash'."

Immediately after the massacre, martial law was declared throughout Punjab and a reign of terror was let loose. However the terror failed to crush the movement and the ‘moral effect' which Dyer hoped to create failed to materialize. As a member of the non-official committee to enquire into the genesis of the Punjab disturbances, Gandhiji learned the truth about the martial law regime in the Punjab. He discovered shocking instances of high-handedness based on incontrovertible evidence which he himself scrupulously sifted. The fanciful image of the British Empire as a merciful dispensation of Providence that he had cherished seemed to crumble to the ground.

The Report of the Hunter Committee, when it came out, struck him as little better than ‘thinly disguised whitewash’. Almost painfully, Gandhiji was driven to the conviction that the system of government which he had been trying to mend needed to be ended.

Besides the ‘Punjab wrong’, the ‘Khilafat Betrayal’ had contributed to this conversion. The Khilafat movement under the leadership of Gandhiji and the Ali brothers became part of the Indian Nationalist movement, specially when the Indian National congress in its special session in September, 1920 accepted the non-cooperation programme. He toured the country with the Ali brothers and Hindu-Muslim cordiality reached a high point. Gandhiji was heard with reverence by Hindus as well as Muslims. The aims of the Non-cooperation movement were to redress the wrongs done to Punjab and Turkey and the attainment of Swaraj. It was to proceed in stages, beginning with the renunciation of titles to be followed by the boycott of the legislatures, law courts and educational institutions and the campaign for non-payment of taxes.