Item 4 - Copy of a telegram from Lord Reading to Edwin Montagu

(Official.) The All-India Congress Committee has confirmed the modified resolution made by the Working Committee at Bardoli, but has further resolved that, under certain circumstances, individual civil disobedience may be begun by provincial committees, and it author-ised the bona fide picketting of foreign cloth. The Congress Committee insists that the resolu-tions of the Working Committee do not mean that non-co-operation has been abandoned, but it considers that an atmosphere of necessary mass civil disobedience can be established by workers concentrating upon the constructive programme framed at Bardoli. The Congress Committee made further observations on the justification for civil disobedience and the distinctions between mass and individual, and defensive and aggressive, disobedience.

(Mechanical copy of typed original.)