This day 100 years ago

11 April 1920

Gandhi, in his journal Navajivan, wrote about the importance of cultivating good habits early on in childhood. He notes, “improvement can easily be effected in schools through the teachers.” And if the school-going boys can command courage they can rid their homes of unclean habits, Gandhi concluded.

Gandhi wrote a letter to The Bombay Chronicle, a newspaper started by Pherozeshah Mehta, a prominent lawyer and founding member, and later President, of the Indian National Congress. In this letter, Gandhi informed the readers of the publication that The Jallianwala Bagh Memorial Fund, which was set up in the memory of those who died during the tragic Amritsar massacre in April 1919, had received over three lacs in contribution. He told his readers that the objective was to collect ten lacs in total from the then Bombay Presidency, which also included other trade centres like Karachi and Ahmedabad and was counting on the people of Bombay to contribute more. In the article, he pointed out that the objective of the fund was not to perpetuate the memory of the atrocity but of the innocent victims:

“The nation will not forgive the deed if it cannot find harmless scope for perpetuating the memory of the victims. The best way of checking hatred, therefore, is to teach the nation to isolate the memory of the dead, which is a sacred trust, from the ‘frightfulness’ which should be forgiven even if it cannot be forgotten.”