Oral history transcript 24

Sharma :  Who where your friends who worked with you?

Chavan :  A very large number of them. In the course of time some of them went to jail. Doiphode was a good friend of mine, who went to jail with me in 1932, from my hometown. He had a small business which he left. We were tried together and convicted at the same trial. Gaurihar Sinhasane, Kashinath Deshmukh, They were the people who were all working together.

Sharma :  Did they stay in public life ?

Chavan :  Most of them stayed in public life. There were some others who were my colleagues in the student movement in 1930. Many of them left because it was a young association. But the names I mentioned, they remained in public life.

Sharma : I am asking you this because as a young man one responds to certain events, it is a youthful exuberance, you desire to do something but them you fade out.

Chavan :  It happens like that in many cases. But some of them did remain active even after that also.

Sharma : After Gandhiji came back from the Round Table Conference, in the U.P., The U.P. C.C. started a no-rent campaign. Was there any such thing in Maharashtra?

Chavan :  No, there was no such organised thing as no-tax campaign in Maharashtra, or was there any oppressior against the people, excepting in some areas where in 1930, the satyagraha had taken an intense form. There was some sort of discontentment. Younger people were critical of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. They were talking about the failure or R.T.C. In the meanwhile, Lord Willingdon had taken over as Governor-General and there was a feeling that he would start repression in India again and try to recover the prestige which Lord Irwin had lost by having arrived at an agreement with Gandhiji. So that group was expecting some trouble after Gandhiji's return.