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Bardoli : town in Surat district of Gujarat. The Khilafat Agitation, having led to riots & massacres, was put down by the British Govt. in November 1921. At the annual Congress the next month at Ahmedabad, Gandhi was unanimously voted the sole national executive authority of INC. In 1922, he launched a ‘constructive programme’ from Bardoli. In a private letter Sri Aurobindo called this ‘constructive programme’, a “narrow & rigid cadre…which seems to me to construct nothing” but create a “fetish-worship of non-cooperation as an end in itself rather than a means” which is not “favourable for the wide & complex action necessary to prepare the true Swarājya”. When Gandhi’s satyagrahis in Chauri-Chaura, Uttar Pradesh, burned down the police station along with the policemen in retaliation for police atrocities against them, Gandhi called off the programme – to the chagrin of his amazed lieutenants like Nehru (see his Autobiography). ― Extract from a talk with Sri Aurobindo on 21 Aug.1926: Disciple: Perhaps he would have succeeded if he had continued his Satyagraha in Bardoli? Sri Aurobindo: No, that would have ended in a miserable failure. There would have been massacres & India’s political progress would have been checked for decades. Gandhi had the right inspiration when he stopped it; he saw he was going beyond his depths. – So it was only pretence when he stopped civil disobedience at Bardoli? – It was not pretence. It was actually something behind his mind which, without his knowledge, stopped him; his mind only supplied the justifications. [“Conversations”, Sri Aurobindo Circle, No. 39, 1983]