NAUJAWAN BHARAT SABHA 19 independence could alone be the goal of the youth for which they must always be prepared to lay down their lives."2 India witnessed a mass upsurge in the early 1920's. For the first time the imperialist government was challenged on almost all fronts. The^ working class upsurge during and after the First World War; the unassuaged feelings of the Muslims over the Khilafat issue; the imperialist policies of forced army recruitment and raising of war funds; the false promises of democracy and self-determination by allied leaders; the Home Rule movement and the enthusiasm generated by the success of the Bolshevik Revolution; the Rowlatt Bill agitation and the atrocities of the Martial Law culminating in the Jallianvvala^B-igh massacre—all helped to produce new social forces ready to strike at the bastion of imperialism. The proletariat formed the bulk of these new social forces and mass upsurge. The non-cooperation movement launched by Gandhi was well set to canalise the mass discontent but the entire movement got stuck in the quagmire of emotional frustration when Gandhi called it off prematurely. "The country was plunged into the deepest gloom; the mountain, many felt, had brought forth a mous<*.'93 Ttie most disappointed section was the young cadre4 which remembered tlie slogan raised by Gandhi during the movement that "education may wait but Swaraj cannot/5 These young men saw nothing wrong in Chauri-Ghaura for ^in a country where a Jallianwala Bagh could happen, there could be a Ghauri-Chaura also. But the incident was more tlian this tender-hearted dictator (Gandhi) could bear."5 The Gandhian conception of combining politics with morality was severely criticized by them. "Gandhi had brought politics down to the masses, but he recoiled at the first glow of revolution."6 The Congress party was vacillating between the ideas of non-cooperation and cooperation, between Swaraj and dominion status. The liberal bourgeois nationalists with their class interests to protect had no ideology to offer to the struggling Indian people. The two substitutes—parliamentary politics of tlie Swarajists and the constructive programme of "no-changers"--offered by the facitous Congress leadership at the collapse of the non-cooperation movement were far from satisfying. The more they pondered over the prevailing pessimism, the more convinced they became of the erroneous strategy of the nationalists. An echo of the October Revolution had reached the country and the national press was carrying on a vigorous propaganda urging the people to adopt the Soviet methods of struggle to shake off their slavery.7