 He opposed the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms, fearing that his efforts in recruitment through the rural leaders would be destroyed by increasing powers to “urban elites”.From mid-March 1919, under O’Dwyer's orders, the CID in Amritsar kept a close surveillance of two Gandhian non-violent Indian nationalists, the Muslim barrister Saifuddin Kitchlew and the Hindu physician Dr. Satyapal.O'Dwyer subsequently summoned them both to Deputy Commissioner Miles Irving's house in the Civil Lines on 10 April 1919, from where they were arrested and secretly escorted to Dharamasala, at the foot of the Himalayas to be kept under house arrest.