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hold a Town Hall meeting at a subsequent date, to be convened by the Sheriff, in which representatives from the mofussil were to be asked to take part. A requisition was duly signed and presented to the Sheriff. The date of the meeting was fixed and Sir Rash Behari Ghose was to preside.

All of a sudden the public learnt that the meeting had been forbidden by the Government. The principal requisitionists were invited by the Hon. Mr. Cumming to meet him, and the orders of Government were communicated to them. One of the aston- ishing reasons for the prohibition of the meeting was that the orders of the Government of one province could not be allowed to be criticized by the people of another province. This new doctrine of inter-provincial amenity had never been heard of before. Every- body laughed at it; everybody knew that that was not the real explanation, which was withheld under a plea, the hollowness of which was transparent. The explanation was the subject of ridicule in the newspapers. It certainly did not improve the position of the Government, but added to the public discontent. We were at the time in Bombay attending a meeting of the All-India Congress Committee. I sent a wire urging the summoning of a conference on our return, and we hurried back as fast as we could.

The Conference was held on the day after my return to Calcutta; and it was largely attended. There was, alas, one prominent perso- nality who was absent and who was never again to appear in our public meetings. Two days before, Mr. Rasool had died suddenly of heart failure, while he was in the thick of the preparations for the wedding of his only daughter. Many of us were thus assembled at the Conference under the shadow of a personal bereavement. I was in the chair. The excitement was great, and it grew as the discussion proceeded. Everybody who spoke vowed that he was prepared to resist the order of Government and go to jail if neces- sary. Obviously, if the forbidden meeting were held, a collision between the promoters and the police would be inevitable.

At last, after a good deal of animated discussion, it was resolved that six of us should retire and formulate a method of action, which was to be accepted by the Conference without demur. The gentle- men thus honoured were the elders of the Conference. They were Sir Rash Behari Ghose, Babu Motilal Ghose, Mr. Byomekesh Chakravarti, Mr. C. R. Das, Mr. Fazlul Huq and myself. We with- drew to an ante-room for about an hour, and unanimously agreed that we should wait in deputation upon Lord Ronaldshay at Dacca,