E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life &TimesWritten by: Louis FischerFirst published by Jonathan Cape in London in 1951Price: Rs. 360/-Published by:Bharatiya Vidya BhavanK. M. Munshi Marge, Mumbai 400 007Email: brbhavan@bom7.vsnl.net.inWebsite: www.bhavans.info

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThis common pool of literature, it is hoped, will enable the reader, eastern orwestern, to understand and appreciate currents of world thought, as also themovements of the mind in India, which though they flow through differentlinguistic channels, have a common urge and aspiration.Fittingly, the Book University's first venture is the Mahabharata, summarised byone of the greatest living Indians, C. Rajagopalachari; the second work is on asection of it, the Gita, by H. V. Divatia, an eminent jurist and student ofphilosophy. Centuries ago, it was proclaimed of the Mahabharata: "What is notin it, is nowhere." After twenty-five centuries, we can use the "same wordsabout it. He who knows it not, knows not the heights and depths of the soul; hemisses the trials and tragedy and the beauty and grandeur of life.The Mahabharata is not a mere epic; it is a romance, telling the tale of heroicmen and women and of some who were divine; it is a whole literature in itself,containing a code of life, a philosophy of social and ethical relations, andspeculative thought on human problems that is hard to rival: but above all, ithas for its core the Gita, which is, as the world is beginning to find out, thenoblest of scriptures and the grandest of sagas in which the climax is reached inthe wondrous Apocalypse in the Eleventh Canto.Through such books alone the harmonies underlying true culture, I amconvinced, will one day reconcile the disorders of modern life.I thank all those who have helped to make this new branch of the Bhavan'sactivity successful.www.mkgandhi.org Page 3

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesPART Iwww.mkgandhi.org Page 4

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter IDeath Before PrayersAT 4.30 p.m., Abha brought in the last meal he was ever to eat; it consisted ofgoat's milk, cooked and raw vegetables, oranges and a concoction of ginger,sour lemons and strained butter with juice of aloe. Sitting on the floor of hisroom in the rear of Birla House in New Delhi, Gandhi ate and talked with SardarVallabhbhai Patel, Deputy Prime Minister of the new government ofindependent India. Maniben, Patel's daughter and secretary, was also present.The conversation was important. There had been rumours of differencesbetween Patel and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. This problem, like so manyothers, had been dropped into the Mahatma's lap.Abha, alone with Gandhi and the Patels, hesitated to interrupt. But she knewGandhi's attachment to punctuality. Finally, therefore, she picked up theMahatma's nickel-plated watch and showed it to him. 'I must tear myself away,'Gandhi remarked, and so saying he rose, went to the adjoining bathroom andthen started towards the prayer ground in the large park to the left of thehouse. Abha, the young wife of Kanu Gandhi, grandson of the Mahatma's cousin,and Manu, the granddaughter of another cousin, accompanied him; he leanedhis forearms on their shoulders. 'My walking sticks', he called them.During the daily two-minute promenade through the long, red-sandstonecolonnade that led to the prayer ground, Gandhi relaxed and joked. Now, hementioned the carrot juice Abha had given him that morning.'So you are serving me cattle fare,' he said, and laughed. 'Ba used to call ithorse fare', Abha replied. Ba was Gandhi's deceased wife.'Isn't it grand of me,' Gandhi bantered, 'to relish what no one else wants?''Bapu (father),' said Abha, 'your watch must be feeling very neglected. Youwould not look at it today.''Why should I, since you are my timekeepers?' Gandhi retorted.www.mkgandhi.org Page 5

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'But you don't look at the timekeepers,' Manu noted. Gandhi laughed again.By this time he was walking on the grass near the prayer ground. Acongregation of about five hundred had assembled for the regular eveningdevotions. 'I am late by ten minutes,' Gandhi mused aloud. 'I hate being late. Ishould be here at the stroke of five.'He quickly cleared the five low steps up to the level of the prayer ground. Itwas only a few yards now to the wooden platform on which he sat duringservices. Most of the people rose; many edged forward; some helped to clear alane for him; those who were nearest bowed low to his feet. Gandhi removedhis arms from the shoulders of Abha and Manu and touched his palms togetherin the traditional Hindu greeting.Just then, a man elbowed his way out of the congregation into the lane. Helooked as if he wished to prostrate himself in the customary obeisance of thedevout. But since they were late, Manu tried to stop him and caught hold of hishand. He pushed her away so that she fell and, planting himself about two feetin front of Gandhi, fired three shots from a small automatic pistol.As the first bullet struck, Gandhi's foot, which was in motion, descended to theground, but he remained standing. The second bullet struck; blood began tostain Gandhi's white clothes. His face turned ashen pale. His hands, which hadbeen in the touch-palm position, descended slowly and one arm remainedmomentarily on Abha's neck.Gandhi murmured, 'Hey Rama (Oh, God)'-A third shot rang out. The limp bodysettled to the ground. His spectacles dropped to the earth. The leather sandalsslipped from his feet.Abha and Manu lifted Gandhi's head, and tender hands raised him from theground and carried him into his room in Birla House. The eyes were half closedand he seemed to show signs of life. Sardar Patel, who had just left theMahatma, was back at Gandhi's side; he felt the pulse and thought he detecteda faint beat. Someone searched frantically in a medicine chest for adrenalinbut found none.www.mkgandhi.org Page 6

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAn alert spectator fetched Dr. D. P. Bhargava. He arrived ten minutes after theshooting. 'Nothing on earth could have saved him,' Dr. Bhargava reports. 'He hadbeen dead for ten minutes.'The first bullet entered Gandhi's abdomen three and a half inches to the rightof a line down the middle of the body and two and a half inches above thenavel and came out through the back. The second penetrated the seventhintercostal space one inch to the right of the middle line and likewise came outat the back. The third shot hit one inch above the right nipple and four inchesto the right of the middle line and embedded itself in the lung.One bullet, Dr. Bhargava says, probably passed through the heart and anothermight have cut a big blood vessel. 'The intestines,' he adds, 'were also injured,as next day I found the abdomen distended.'The young men and women who had been Gandhi's constant attendants sat nearthe-body and sobbed. Dr. Jivraj Mehta arrived and confirmed the death.Presently a murmur went through the group: 'Jawaharlal' Nehru had rushedfrom his office. He knelt beside Gandhi, buried his face in the bloody clothesand cried. Then came Devadas, Gandhi's youngest son, and Maulana Abul KalamAzad, Minister of Education, followed by many prominent Indians.Devadas touched his father's skin and gently pressed his arm. The body was stillwarm. The head still lay in Abha's lap. Gandhi's face wore a peaceful smile. Heseemed asleep. *We kept vigil the whole of that night,' Devadas wrote later. 'Soserene was the face and so mellow the halo of divine light that surrounded thebody that it seemed almost sacrilegious to grieve....'Diplomats paid formal visits; some wept.Outside, a vast multitude gathered and asked for one last view of the Mahatma.The body was accordingly placed in an inclined position on the roof of BirlaHouse and a searchlight played upon it. Thousands passed in silence, wrungtheir hands and wept.www.mkgandhi.org Page 7

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesNear midnight, the body was lowered into the house. All night mourners sat inthe room and, between sobs, recited from the Bhagavad-Gita and other holyHindu scriptures.With the dawn arrived 'the most unbearably poignant moment for all of us',Devadas says. They had to remove the large woollen shawl and the cottonshoulder wrap which the Mahatma was wearing for warmth when he was shot.These pure white clothes showed clots and blotches of blood. As they unfoldedthe shawl the shell of a cartridge dropped out.Gandhi now lay before them dressed only in the white loincloth as they and theworld had always known him. Most of those present broke down and criedwithout control. The sight inspired the suggestion that the body be embalmedfor at least a few days so that friends, co-workers and relatives who lived at adistance from New Delhi might see it before it was cremated. But Devadas,Pyarelal Nayyar, Gandhi's chief secretary, and others objected. It was againstHindu sentiment, and 'Bapu would never forgive us.' Also, they wished todiscourage any move to preserve the Mahatma's earthly remains. It was decidedto burn the body the next day.In the early hours of the morning disciples washed the body according toancient Hindu rites and placed a garland of handspun cotton strands and achain of beads around its neck. Roses and rose petals were strewn over theblanket that covered all but the head, arms and chest. 'I asked for the chest tobe left bare,' Devadas explained. 'No soldier ever had a finer chest than Bapu's.'A pot of incense burned near the body.During the morning, the body was again placed on the roof for public view.Ramdas, third son of Gandhi, arrived by air from Nagpur, in the CentralProvinces of India, at 11 a.m. The funeral had waited for him. The body wasbrought down into the house and then carried out to the terrace. A wreath ofcotton yarn encircled Gandhi's head; the face looked peaceful yet profoundlysad. The saffron-white-green flag of independent India was draped over thebier.www.mkgandhi.org Page 8

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesDuring the night, the chassis of a Dodge 15-hundred-weight army weaponcarrierhad been replaced by a new superstructure with a raised floor so thatall spectators could see the body in the open coffin. Two hundred men of theIndian Army, Navy and Air Force drew the vehicle by four stout ropes. Themotor was not used. Non-commissioned officer Naik Ram Chand sat at thesteering wheel. Nehru, Patel, several other leaders and several of Gandhi'syoung associates rode on the carrier.The cortege, two miles long, left Birla House on Albuquerque Road in New Delhiat 11.45 a.m., and, moving forward inch by inch through dense masses ofhumanity, reached the JumnaRiver, five and a half miles away, at 4.20 p.m. A million and a half marchedand a further million watched. Branches of New Delhi's splendid shade treesbent under the weight of persons who had climbed upon them to get a betterview. The base of the big white monument of King George V, which stands inthe middle of a broad pond, was covered with hundreds of Indians who hadwaded through the water.Now and then, the voices of Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs, Parsis and Anglo-Indiansmingled in loud shouts of 'Mahatma Gandhi ki jai (Long Live Mahatma Gandhi)'.At intervals, the multitude broke into sacred chants. Three Dakota aircraft flewover the procession, dipped in salute and showered countless rose petals.Four thousand soldiers, a thousand airmen, a thousand policemen and ahundred sailors, in varied and vari-coloured uniforms and head-dress, marchedbefore and after the bier. Prominent among them were mounted lancersbearing aloft red and white pennants — the body-guard of Governor-GeneralLord Mountbatten. Armoured cars, police and soldiers were present to maintainorder. In charge of the death parade was Major-General Roy Bucher, anEnglishman chosen by the Indian government to be the first commander-inchiefof its army.By the holy waters of the Jumna, close to a million people had stood and satfrom early morning waiting for the cortege to arrive at the cremation grounds.www.mkgandhi.org Page 9

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe predominant colour was white, the white of women's saris and men'sgarments, caps and turbans.Several hundred feet from the river, at Rajghat, stood a fresh funeral pyremade of stone, brick and earth; it was about two feet high and eight feetsquare. Long thin sandalwood logs sprinkled with incense had been stacked onit. Gandhi's body was laid on the pyre with the head to the north and the feetto the south. In this position Buddha had met his end.At 4.45 p.m. Ramdas set fire to his father's funeral pyre. The logs burst intoflame. A groan went up from the vast assemblage. Women wailed. Withelemental force, the crowd surged towards the fire and broke through themilitary cordon. But in a moment the people seemed to realize what they weredoing and dug in their bare toes and prevented an accident.The logs crackled and seethed and the flames united in a single fire. Now therewas silence... Gandhi's body was being reduced to cinders and ashes.The pyre burned for fourteen hours. All the while prayers were sung; the entiretext of the Gita was read. Twenty-seven hours later, when the last embers hadgrown cold, priests, officials, friends and relatives held a special service in theguarded wire enclosure around the pyre and collected the ashes and thesplinters of bone that had defeated the fire. The ashes were tenderly scoopedinto a homespun cotton bag. A bullet was found in the ashes. The bones weresprinkled with water from the Jumna and deposited in a copper urn. Ramdasplaced a garland of fragrant flowers around the neck of the urn, set it in awicker basket filled with rose petals and, pressing it to his breast, carried itback to Birla House.Several personal friends of Gandhi asked for and received pinches of his ashes.One encased a few grains of ash in a gold signet ring. Family and followersdecided against gratifying the requests for ashes which came from all the sixcontinents. Some Gandhi ashes were sent to Burma, Tibet, Ceylon and Malaya.But most of the remains were immersed in the rivers of India exactly fourteendays after death — as prescribed by Hindu ritual.www.mkgandhi.org Page 10

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAshes were given to provincial prime ministers or other dignitaries. Theprovincial capitals shared their portion with lesser urban centres. Everywherethe public display of the ashes drew huge pilgrimages and so did the finalceremonies of immersion in the rivers or, as at Bombay, in the sea.The chief immersion ceremony took place at Allahabad, in the UnitedProvinces, at the confluence of the sacred Ganges, the Jumna and theSaraswati. A special train of five third-class carriages left New Delhi at 4 a.m.on February 11; Gandhi had always travelled third. The compartment in themiddle of the train containing the urn of ashes and bones was piled almost tothe ceiling with flowers and guarded by Abha, Manu, Pyarelal Nayyar, Dr.Sushila Nayyar, Prabhavati Narayan and others who had been Gandhi's dailycompanions. The train stopped at eleven towns en route; at each, hundreds ofthousands bowed reverently, prayed and laid garlands and wreaths on thecarriages.In Allahabad, on the 12th, the urn was placed under a miniature woodenpalanquin and, mounted on a motor truck, it worked its way through a throngof a million and a half people from the city and the surrounding countryside.Women and men in white preceded the truck singing hymns. One musicianplayed on an ancient instrument. The vehicle looked like a portable rosegarden; Mrs. Naidu, Governor of the United Provinces, Azad, Ramdas and Patelwere among those who rode on it. Nehru, fists clenched, chin touching hischest, walked.Slowly, the truck moved to the river bank where the urn was transferred to anAmerican military 'duck' painted white. Other 'ducks' and craft accompanied itdownstream. Tens of thousands waded far into the water to be nearer Gandhi'sashes. Cannon on Allahabad Fort fired a salute as the urn was turned over andits contents, fell into the river. The ashes spread. The little bones flowedquickly towards the sea.Gandhi's assassination caused dismay and pain throughout India. It was asthough the three bullets that entered his body had pierced the flesh of tens ofmillions. The nation was baffled, stunned and hurt by the sudden news that thiswww.mkgandhi.org Page 11

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesman of peace, who loved his enemies and would not have killed an insect, hadbeen shot dead by his own countryman and co-religionist.Never in modern history has any man been mourned more deeply and morewidely.The news was conveyed to the country by Prime Minister Nehru. He was shaken,shocked and cramped with sorrow. Yet he went to the radio station shortlyafter the bullets struck and, speaking extemporaneously, driving back tears andchoking with emotion, he said:'The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere and I donot quite know what to tell you and how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu aswe call him, the father of our nation, is no more. Perhaps, I am wrong to saythat. Nevertheless, we will not see him again as we have seen him these manyyears. We will not run to him for advice and seek solace from him, and that is aterrible blow not to me only but to millions and millions in this country. And itis difficult to soften the blow by any advice that I or anyone else can give you.'The light has gone out, I said, and yet I was wrong. For, the light that shone inthis country was no ordinary light. The light that has illumined this country forthese many years will illuminate this country for many more years, and athousand years later that light will still be seen in this country, and the worldwill see it and it will give solace to innumerable hearts. For, that lightrepresented the living truth, and the eternal man was with us with his eternaltruth reminding us of the right path, drawing us from error, taking this ancientcountry to freedom.'All this has happened. There is so much more to do. There was so much morefor him to do. We could never think that he was unnecessary or that he haddone his task. But now, particularly, when we are faced with so manydifficulties, his not being with us is a blow most terrible to bear.A madman has put an end to his life....'On January 30, 1948, the Friday he died, Mahatma Gandhi was what he hadalways been: a private citizen without wealth, property, official title, officialwww.mkgandhi.org Page 12

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timespost, academic distinction, scientific achievement, or artistic gift. Yet menwith governments and armies behind them paid homage to the little brown manof seventy-eight in a loin-cloth. The Indian authorities received 3441 messagesof sympathy, all unsolicited, from foreign countries. For, Gandhi was a moralman, and a civilization not richly endowed with morality felt still furtherimpoverished when the assassin's bullets ended his life. 'Mahatma Gandhi wasthe spokesman for the conscience of all mankind,' said General George C.Marshall, United States Secretary of State.Pope Pius, the Dalai Lama of Tibet, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the ChiefRabbi of London, the King of England, President Truman, Chiang Kai-shek, thePresident of France, indeed the political heads of all important countries(except Soviet Russia) and most minor ones publicly expressed their grief atGandhi's passing.Leon Blum, the French Socialist, put on paper what millions felt. 'I never sawGandhi,' Blum wrote, 'I do not know his language. I never set foot in his countryand yet I feel the same sorrow as if I had lost someone near and dear. Thewhole world has been plunged into mourning by the death of this extraordinaryman.''Gandhi had demonstrated,' Professor Albert Einstein asserted, 'that a powerfulhuman following can be assembled not only through the cunning game of theusual political manoeuvres and trickeries but through the cogent example of amorally superior conduct of life. In our time of utter moral decadence he wasthe only statesman to stand for a higher human relationship in the politicalsphere.'The Security Council of the United Nations paused for its members to paytribute to the dead man. Philip Noel-Baker, the British representative, praisedGandhi as 'the friend of the poorest and the loneliest and the lost'. Gandhi's'greatest achievements', he predicted, 'are still to come'. Other members of theSecurity Council extolled Gandhi's spiritual qualities and lauded his devotion topeace and non-violence. Mr. Andrei Gromyko of the Soviet Union, called Gandhi'one of the outstanding political leaders of India' whose name 'will always bewww.mkgandhi.org Page 13

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeslinked with the struggle of the Indian people for their national liberation whichhas lasted over such a long period.' Soviet Ukraine delegate Tarasenko alsostressed Gandhi's politics.The U.N. lowered its flag to half-mast.Humanity lowered its flag.The worldwide response to Gandhi's death was in itself an important fact; itrevealed a widespread mood and need. 'There is still some hope for the worldwhich reacted as reverently as it did to the death of Gandhi,' Albert Deutschdeclared in the New York newspaper PM. 'The shock and sorrow that followedthe New Delhi tragedy shows we still respect sainthood even when we cannotfully understand it.'Gandhi 'made humility and simple truth more powerful than empires', U.S.Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg said. Pearl S. Buck, novelist, described Gandhi'sassassination as 'another crucifixion'. Justice Felix Frankfurter called it 'a cruelblow against the forces of good in the world'.General Douglas MacArthur, supreme Allied military commander in Japan, said:'In the evolution of civilization, if it is to survive, all men cannot fail eventuallyto adopt Gandhi's belief that the process of mass application of force to resolvecontentious issues is fundamentally not only wrong but contains within itselfthe germs of self-destruction.' Lord (Admiral) Mountbatten, last British Viceroyin India, expressed the hope that Gandhi's life might 'inspire our troubled worldto save itself by following his noble example'. The spectacle of the general andthe admiral pinning their faith on the little ascetic would certainly seem tojustify the verdict of Sir Hartley Shawcross, British Attorney General, thatGandhi was 'the most remarkable man of the century'.To the statesmen and politicians who eulogized him Gandhi was at least areminder of their own inadequacies.A California girl of thirteen wrote in a letter: 'I was really terribly sad to hearabout Gandhi's death. I never knew I was that interested in him but I foundmyself quite unhappy about the great man's death.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 14

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIn New York, a twelve-year-old girl had gone into the kitchen for breakfast. Theradio was on and it brought the news of the shooting of Gandhi. There, in thekitchen the girl, the maid and the gardener held a prayer meeting and prayedand wept. Just so, millions in all countries mourned Gandhi's death as apersonal loss. They did not quite know why; they did not quite know what hestood for. But he was 'a good man' and good men are rare.'I know no other man of any time or indeed in recent history', wrote Sir StaffordCripps, 'who so forcefully and convincingly demonstrated the power of spiritover material things. This is what the people sensed when they mourned. Allaround them, material things had power over spirit. The sudden flash of hisdeath revealed a vast darkness. No one who survived him had tried so hard —and with so much success — to live a life of truth, kindness, self-effacement,humility, service and non-violence throughout a long, difficult struggle againstmighty adversaries. He fought passionately and unremittingly against Britishrule of his country and against the evil in his own countrymen. But he kept hishands clean in the midst of battle. He fought without malice or falsehood orhate.www.mkgandhi.org Page 15

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter IIThe Beginnings of An Extraordinary ManGANDHI belonged to the Vaisya caste. In the old Hindu social scale, the Vaisyasstood third, far below the Brahmans who were the number one caste and theKshatriyas, or rulers and soldiers, who ranked second. The Vaisyas, in fact,were only a notch above the Sudras, the working class. Originally, they devotedthemselves to trade and agriculture.The Gandhis belonged to the Modh Bania subdivision of their caste. Bania is asynonym in India for a sharp, shrewd businessman. Far back, the Gandhi familywere retail grocers; 'Gandhi' means grocer. But the professional barriersbetween castes began to crumble generations ago, and Gandhi's grandfatherUttamchand served as prime minister to the princeling of Porbandar, a tinystate in the Kathiawar peninsula, western India, about half way between themouth of the Indus and the city of Bombay. Uttamchand handed the officedown to his son Karamchand who passed it to his brother Tulsidas. The job hadalmost become the family's private property.Karamchand was the father of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the Mahatma.The Gandhis apparently got into trouble often. Political intrigues forcedgrandfather Uttamchand out of the prime ministership of Porbandar and intoexile in the nearby little state of Junagadh. There he once saluted the rulingNawab with his left hand. Asked for an explanation, he said: 'The right hand isalready pledged to Porbandar.' Mohandas was proud of such loyalty: 'Mygrandfather', he wrote, 'must have been a man of principle.'Gandhi's father likewise left his position as prime minister to Rana SahebVikmatji, the ruler of Porbandar, and took the same office in Rajkot, anotherminiature Kathiawar principality 120 miles to the north-west. Once, the BritishPolitical Agent spoke disparagingly of Thakor Saheb Bawajiraj, Rajkot's nativeruler. Karamchand sprang to the defence of his chief. The Agent orderedKaramchand to apologize. Karamchand refused and was forthwith arrested. Butwww.mkgandhi.org Page 16

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi's father stood his ground and was released after several hours.Subsequently, he became prime minister of Wankaner.In the 1872 census, Porbandar state had a population of 72,077, Rajkot 36,770and Wankaner 28,750. Their rulers behaved like petty autocrats to theirsubjects and quaking sycophants before the British.Karamchand Gandhi 'had no education save that of experience', his son,Mohandas, wrote; he was likewise ‘innocent' of history and geography; "but hewas incorruptible and had earned a reputation for strict impartiality in hisfamily as well as outside.' He was a lover of his clan, truthful, brave andgenerous, but short-tempered. To a certain extent, he might have been evengiven to carnal pleasures. For he married for the fourth time when he was overforty'. The other three wives had died.Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was the fourth and last child of his father'sfourth and last marriage. He was born at Porbandar on October 2, 1869. Thatyear the Suez Canal was opened. Thomas A. Edison patented his first invention,France celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the birth of NapoleonBonaparte, and Charles W. Eliot became president of Harvard University. KarlMarx had just published Capital, Bismarck was about to launch the Franco-Prussian War, and Victoria ruled over England and India.Mohandas was born in the dark, right-hand corner of a room, 11 feet by 19.5feet and 10 feet high, in a three-storey humble house on the border of thetown. The house is still standing.The little town of Porbandar, or Porbunder, rises straight out of the ArabianSea and 'becomes a vision of glory at sunrise and sunset when the slanting raysbeat upon it, turning its turrets and pinnacles into gold', wrote Charles FreerAndrews, a British disciple of the Mahatma. It and Rajkot and Wankaner werequite remote, at the time of Gandhi's youth, from the European and Westerninfluences which had invaded less isolated parts of India. Its landmarks were itstemples.www.mkgandhi.org Page 17

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi's home life was cultured and the family, by Indian standards, was wellto-do.There were books in the house; they dealt chiefly with religion andmythology. Mohandas played times on a concertina purchased especially forhim. Karamchand wore a gold necklace and a brother of Mohandas had a heavy,solid gold armlet. Karamchand once owned a house in Porbandar, a second inRajkot and a third in Kutiana. But in his last three years of illness he livedmodestly on a pension from the Rajkot prince. He left little property.Gandhi's elder brother Laxmidas practised law in Rajkot and later became atreasury official in the Porbandar government. He spent money freely andmarried his daughters with a pomp worthy of petty Indian royalty. He ownedtwo houses in Rajkot. Karsandas, the other brother, served as sub-inspector ofpolice in Porbandar and ultimately of the princeling's harem. His income wassmall.Both brothers died while Mohandas K. Gandhi was still alive. A sister, Raliatben,four years his senior, survived him. She remained resident in Rajkot.Mohania, as the family affectionately called Mohandas, received the specialtreatment often accorded to a youngest child. A nurse named Rambha wasengaged for him and he formed an attachment to her which continued intomature life. His warmest affection went to his mother Putlibai. He sometimesfeared his father, but he loved his mother and always remembered her'saintliness' and her 'deeply religious' nature. She never ate a meal withoutprayer, and attended temple services daily. Long fasts did not dismay her, andarduous vows, voluntarily made, were steadfastly performed. In the annualChaturmas, a kind of Lent lasting through the four-month rainy season, shehabitually lived on a single meal a day and, one year, she observed, in addition,a complete fast on alternate days. Another Chaturmas, she vowed not to eatunless the sun appeared. Mohandas and his sister and brothers would watch forthe sun, and when it showed through the clouds they would rush into the houseand announce to Putlibai that now she could eat. But her vow required her tosee the sun herself and so she would go out of doors and by then the sun waswww.mkgandhi.org Page 18

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeshidden again. 'That does not matter,' she would cheerfully comfort herchildren. 'God does not want me to eat today.'As a boy, Mohandas amused himself with rubber balloons and revolving tops. Heplayed tennis and cricket and also 'gilli danda', a game, encountered in so manywidely separated countries, which consists in striking a short, sharpenedwooden peg with a long stick: 'peggy' or 'pussy' some call it.Gandhi started school in Porbandar. He encountered more difficulty inmastering the multiplication table than in learning naughty names for theteacher. 'My intellect must have been sluggish and my memory raw,' the adultMahatma lays charge against the child of six. In Rajkot, whither the familymoved a year later, he was again a 'mediocre student', but punctual. His sisterrecalls that rather than be late he would eat the food of the previous day ifbreakfast was not ready. He preferred walking to going to school by carriage.He was timid: 'my books and lessons were my sole companions'. At the end ofthe school day, he ran home. He could not bear to talk to anybody; 'I was evenafraid lest anyone should poke fun at me.' When he grew older, however, hefound some congenial mates and played in the streets. He also played by thesea.In his first year at the Alfred High School in Rajkot, when Mohandas was twelve,a British educational inspector named Mr.Giles came to examine the pupils.They were asked to spell five English words. Gandhi mis-spelled 'kettle'.Walking up and down the aisles, the regular teacher saw the mistake andmotioned Mohandas to copy from his neighbour's slate. Mohandas refused. Laterthe teacher chided him for this 'stupidity' which spoiled the record of the class;everybody else had written all the words correctly.The incident, however, did not diminish Gandhi's respect for his teacher. 'I wasby nature blind to the faults of elders ... I had learned to carry out the ordersof elders, not to scan their actions.' But obedience did not include cheatingwith teacher's permission.Perhaps the refusal to cheat was a form of self-assertion or rebellion. In anycase, compliance at school did not preclude revolt outside it. At the age ofwww.mkgandhi.org Page 19

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timestwelve, Gandhi began to smoke. And he stole from elders in the house tofinance the transgression. His partner in the adventure was a young relative.Sometimes both were penniless; then they made cigarettes from the porousstalks of a wild plant. This interest in botany led to the discovery that the seedsof a jungle weed named dhatura were poisonous. Off they went to the jungleon the successful quest. Tired of life under parental supervision, they joined ina suicide pact. They would die, appropriately in the temple of God.Having made their obeisances, Mohandas and his pal sought out a lonely cornerfor the final act. But perhaps death would be long in coming and meanwhilethey might suffer pain. Perhaps it was better to live in slavery. To salvage avestige of self-respect they each swallowed two or three seeds.Presently, serious matters claimed the child's attention.Mohandas K. Gandhi married when he was a high school pupil — aged thirteen.He had been engaged three times, of course without his knowledge. Betrothalswere compacts between parents, and the children rarely learned about them.Gandhi happened to hear that two girls to whom he had been engaged —probably as a toddler — had died. 'I have a faint recollection', he reports, 'thatthe third betrothal took place in my seventh year,' but he was not informed. Hewas told six years' later, a short time before the wedding. The bride wasKasturbai, the daughter of a Porbandar merchant named Gokuldas Makanji. Themarriage lasted sixty-two years.Writing about the wedding more than forty years later, Gandhi remembered allthe details of the ceremony, as well as the trip to Porbandar where it tookplace. 'And oh! that first night,' he added. Two innocent children all unwittinglyhurled themselves into the ocean of life.' Kasturbai, too, was thirteen. 'Mybrother's wife had thoroughly coached me about my behaviour on the firstnight. I do not know who had coached my wife.' Both were nervous and 'thecoaching could not carry me far', Gandhi wrote. 'But no coaching is reallynecessary in such matters. The impressions of the former birth are potentenough to make all coaching superfluous. Presumably, they remembered theirexperiences in an earlier incarnation.www.mkgandhi.org Page 20

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe newlyweds, Gandhi confesses, were 'married children' and behavedaccordingly. He was jealous and 'therefore she could not go anywhere withoutmy permission' for, 'I took no time in assuming the authority of a husband'. Sowhen the thirteen-year-old wife wanted to go out to play she had to ask thethirteen-year-old Mohandas; he would often say no. The restraint was virtuallya sort of imprisonment. And Kasturbai was not the girl to brook any such thing.She made it a point to go out whenever and wherever she liked.' The littlehusband got 'more and more cross'; sometimes they did not speak to each otherfor days.He loved Kasturbai. His 'passion was entirely centred on one woman' and hewanted it reciprocated, but the woman was a child. Sitting in the high schoolclassroom he daydreamed about her. 'I used to keep her awake till late at nightwith my idle talk.''The cruel custom of child marriage', as Gandhi subsequently castigated it,would have been impossible but for the ancient Indian institution of the jointfamily: parents and their children and their sons' wives and children, sometimesthirty or more persons altogether, lived under one roof; newlywed adolescentstherefore had no worry about a home, furniture, or board. Later, British law,seconding Indian reformers, raised the minimum marriage age. In its time theevil was mitigated by enforced separations for as much as six months in a yearwhen the bride went to live with her parents. The first five years of Gandhi'smarriage — from thirteen to eighteen — included only three years of commonlife.The 'shackles of lust' tormented Gandhi. They gave him a feeling of guilt. Thefeeling grew when sex seemed to clash with the keen sense of duty whichdeveloped in him at an early age. One instance of such a conflict impresseditself indelibly. When Mohandas was sixteen his father Karamchand becamebedridden with a fistula. Gandhi helped his mother and an old servant to tendthe patient; he dressed the wound and mixed the medicines and administeredthem. He also massaged his father's legs every night until the sufferer fellasleep or asked his son to go to bed. 'I loved to do this service,' Gandhi recalls.www.mkgandhi.org Page 21

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesKasturbai had become pregnant at fifteen and she was now in an advancedstage. Nevertheless, 'every night whilst my hands were busy massaging myfather's legs', Gandhi states in his autobiography, 'my mind was hovering about(my wife's) bedroom — and that too at a time when religion, medical scienceand common sense alike forbade sexual intercourse.'One evening, between ten and eleven, Gandhi's uncle relieved him atmassaging Karamchand. Gandhi went quickly to his wife's bedroom and wokeher. A few minutes later the servant knocked at the door and urgentlysummoned Gandhi. He jumped out of bed, but when he reached the sick roomhis father was dead. 'If passion had not blinded me,' Gandhi ruminated fortyyears later, 'I should have been spared the torture of separation from my fatherduring his last moments. I should have been massaging him and he would havedied in my arms. But now it was my uncle who had had this privilege.'The 'shame of my carnal desire at the critical moment of my father's death... isa blot I have never been able to efface or forget', Gandhi wrote when he wasnear sixty. Moreover, Kasturbai's baby died three days after birth andMohandas, blamed the death on intercourse late in pregnancy. This doubled hissense of guilt.Kasturbai was illiterate. Her husband had every intention of teaching her, butshe disliked studies and he preferred lovemaking. Private tutors also gotnowhere with her. Yet Gandhi took the blame upon himself and felt that if hisaffection 'had been absolutely untainted with lust, she would be a learned ladytoday'. She never learned to read or write anything but elementary Gujarati,her native language.Gandhi himself lost a year at high school through getting married. Modestly heasserts he 'was not regarded as a dunce'.Every year he brought home a report on study progress and character; it wasnever bad. He even won some prizes but that, he says, was only because therewere few competitors.www.mkgandhi.org Page 22

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesWhen Mohandas merited a teacher's rebuke it pained him and he sometimescried. Once he was beaten at school. The punishment hurt less than beingconsidered worthy of it: 'I wept piteously.'Gandhi neglected penmanship and thought it unimportant. Geometry wastaught in English, which was then a new language for him, and he had difficultyin following. But 'when I reached the thirteenth proposition of Euclid the uttersimplicity of the subject was suddenly revealed to me. A subject which onlyrequired a pure and simple use of one's reasoning powers could not be difficult.Ever since 'that time geometry has been both easy and interesting for me'. Helikewise had trouble with Sanskrit, but after the teacher, Mr. Krishnashanker,reminded him that it was the language of Hinduism's sacred scriptures, thefuture Mahatma persevered and succeeded.In the upper grades, gymnastics and cricket were compulsory. Gandhi dislikedboth. He was shy, and he thought physical exercises did not belong ineducation. But he had read that long walks in the open air were good for thehealth, and he formed the habit. 'These walks gave me a fairly hardyconstitution.'Mohandas envied the bigger, stronger boys. He was frail compared with hisolder brother and especially compared with a Moslem friend named SheikMehtab who could run great distances with remarkable speed. Sheik Mehtabwas spectacular in the long and high jump as well. These exploits dazzledGandhi.Gandhi regarded himself as a coward. 'I used to be haunted', he asserts, lay thefear of thieves, ghosts and serpents. I did not dare to stir out of doors at night.'He could not sleep without a light in his room; his wife had more courage thanhe and did not fear serpents or ghosts or darkness. 'I felt ashamed of myself.'Sheik Mehtab played on this sentiment. He boasted that he could hold livesnakes in his hand, feared no burglars and did not believe in ghosts. Whence allthis prowess and bravery! He ate meat. Gandhi ate no meat; it was forbiddenby his religion.www.mkgandhi.org Page 23

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe boys at school used to recite a poem which went:-Behold the mighty Englishman,He rules the Indian small,Because being a meat-eaterHe is five cubits tall.If all Indians ate meat they could expel the British and make India free.Besides, argued Sheik Mehtab, boys who ate meat did not get boils; many oftheir teachers and some of the most prominent citizens of Rajkot ate meatsecretly, and drank wine, too.Day in, day out, Sheik Mehtab propagandized Mohandas, whose older brotherhad already succumbed. Finally, Mohandas yielded.At the appointed hour the tempter and his victim met in a secluded spot on theriver bank. Sheik Mehtab brought cooked goat's meat and bread. Gandhi rarelytouched baker's bread (the substitute was chappatis, an unleavened doughcushion filled with air) and he had never even seen meat. The family wasstrictly vegetarian and so, in fact, were almost, all the inhabitants of theGujarat district in Kathiawar. But firm in the resolve to make himself aneffective liberator of his country, Gandhi bit into the meat. It was tough asleather. He chewed and chewed and then swallowed. He became sickimmediately.That night he had a nightmare: a live goat was bleating in his stomach.However, 'meat-eating was a duty, and, in the midst of the terrible dream,therefore, he decided to continue the experiment.It continued for a whole year. Irregularly throughout that long period he metSheik Mehtab at secret rendezvous to partake of meat dishes, now tastier thanthe first, and bread. Where Sheik got the money for these feasts Gandhi neverknew.The sin of consuming and liking meat was made the greater by the sin of lying.In the end he could not stand the dishonesty and, though still convinced thatwww.mkgandhi.org Page 24

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesmeat-eating was 'essential' for patriotic reasons, he vowed to abjure it until hisparents' death enabled him to be a carnivore openly.By now Gandhi developed an urge to reform Sheik Mehtab. This prolonged therelationship. But the naive and younger Gandhi was no match for the shrewd,moneyed wastrel who offered revolt and adventure. Sheik also knew how toarrange things. Once he led Gandhi to the entrance of a brothel. The institutionhad been told and paid in advance. Gandhi went in. 'I was almost struck blindand dumb in this den of vice. I sat near the woman on her bed, but I wastongue-tied. She naturally lost patience with me and showed me the door, withabuses and insults.' Providence, he explains, interceded and saved him despitehimself.About that time—Mohandas must have been fifteen—he pilfered a bit of goldfrom his older brother. This produced a moral crisis. He had gnawing pangs ofconscience and resolved never to steal again. But he needed the cleansingeffect of a confession: he would tell his father. He made a full, writtenstatement of the crime, asked for due penalty, promised never to steal againand, with emphasis, begged his father not to punish himself for his son'sdereliction.Karamchand sat up in his sick bed to read the letter. Tears filled his eyes andfell to his cheeks. Then he tore up the paper and lay down. Mohandas sat nearhim and wept.Gandhi never forgot that silent scene. Sincere repentance and confessioninduced by love, rather than fear, won him his father's 'sublime forgiveness' andaffection.Lest he give pain to his father, and especially his mother, Mohandas did not tellthem that he absented himself from temple. He did not like the 'glitter andpomp' of the Hindu temples. Religion to him meant irksome restrictions likevegetarianism which intensified his youthful protest against society andauthority. And he had no 'living faith in God'. Who made the world; whodirected it, he asked. Elders could not answer, and the sacred books were sounsatisfactory on such matters that he inclined 'somewhat towards atheism'. Hewww.mkgandhi.org Page 25

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeseven began to believe that it was quite moral, indeed a duty, to kill serpentsand bugs.Gandhi's anti-religious sentiments quickened his interest in religion and helistened attentively to his father's frequent discussions with Moslem and Parsifriends on the differences between their faiths and Hinduism. He also learnedmuch about the Jain religion. Jain monks often visited the house and went outof their way to accept food from the non-Jain Gandhis.When Karamchand died in 1885, Mohandas's mother Putlibai took advice onfamily matters from a Jain monk named Becharji Swami, originally a Hindu ofthe Modh Bania sub-caste. Jain influence was strong in the Gujarat region. AndJainism prohibits the killing of any living creature, even insects. Jain priestswear white masks over their mouths lest they breathe in, and thus kill, aninsect. They are not supposed to walk out at night lest they unwillingly step ona worm.Gandhi was always a great absorber. Jainism, as well as Buddhism, perceptiblycoloured Gandhi's thoughts and shaped his works. Both were attempts to reformthe Hindu religion,India's dominant faith; both originated in the sixth century B.C. in northeasternIndia, in what is now the province of Bihar.The Jain monk, Becharji Swami, helped Gandhi to go to England. Aftergraduating from high school Gandhi enrolled in Samaldas College in Bhavnagar,a town on the inland side of the Kathiawar peninsula. But he found the studiesdifficult and the atmosphere distasteful. A friend of the family suggested that ifMohandas was to succeed his father as prime minister he had better hurry andbecome a lawyer; the quickest way was to take a three-year course in England.Gandhi was most eager to go. But he was afraid of law; could he pass theexaminations? Might it not be preferable to study medicine? He was interestedin medicine.Mohandas's brother objected that their father was opposed to the dissection ofdead bodies and intended Mohandas for the bar. A Brahman friend of the familywww.mkgandhi.org Page 26

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesdid not take the same dark view of the medical profession; but could a doctorbecome prime minister?Mother Putilbai disliked parting with her last-born. 'What will uncle say? He isthe head of the family; now that father is no more.' And where will the moneycome from?Mohandas had set his heart on England. He developed energy and unwontedcourage. He hired a bullock cart for the five-day journey to Porbandar wherehis uncle lived. To save a day, he left the cart and rode on a camel; it was hisfirst camel ride.Uncle was not encouraging; European-trained lawyers forsook Indian traditions;cigars where never out of their mouths; they ate everything; they dressed 'asshamelessly as Englishmen'. But he would not stand in the way. If Putlibaiagreed, he would, too.So Mohandas was back where he had started. His mother sent him to uncle anduncle passed him back to mother. Meanwhile, Gandhi tried to get a scholarshipfrom the Porbandar government. The British administrator of the state rebuffedhim curtly without even letting him present his case.Mohandas returned to Rajkot. Pawn his wife's jewels? They were valued at twoto three thousand rupees. Finally, his brother promised to supply the funds, butthere remained his mother's doubts about young men's morals in England. HereBechaiji Swami, the Jain monk, came to the rescue. He administered an oath toMohandas who then solemnly took three vows: not to touch wine, women ormeat. Therewith, Putlibai consented.Joyfully, in June 1888, Gandhi left for Bombay with his brother, who carriedthe money. That did not end his tribulations. People said the Arabian Sea wastoo rough during the summer monsoon season; one ship had sunk in a gale.Departure was delayed. Meanwhile, the Modh Banias of Bombay heard aboutthe projected trip. They convened a meeting of the clan and summonedMohandas to attend. No Modh Bania had ever been to England, the elderswww.mkgandhi.org Page 27

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesargued; their religion forbade voyages abroad because Hinduism could not bepractised there.Gandhi told them he would go nevertheless. At this, the headman ostracizedMohandas. 'This boy shall be treated as an outcast from today,' the elderdeclared.Undaunted, Gandhi bought a steamer ticket, a necktie, a short jacket andenough food, chiefly sweets and fruit, for the three weeks to Southampton. OnSeptember 4, he sailed. He was not yet eighteen. Several months earlier,Kasturbai had borne him a male child and they called it Harilal. Now the voyageto England gave Gandhi 'a long and healthy separation' from his wife.www.mkgandhi.org Page 28

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter III'M. K. Gandhi, Attorney-At-Law'GANDHI had himself photographed shortly after he arrived in London in 1888.His hair is thick, black and carefully combed with the parting slightly to theright of centre. The ear is large. The nose is big and pointed. The eyes and lipsare the impressive features. The eyes seem to mirror puzzlement, fright,yearning; they seem to be moving and looking for something. The lips are full,sensuous, sensitive, sad and defensive. The face is that of a person who fearscoming struggles with himself and the world. Will he conquer his passions, hewonders; can he make good? He has either been injured or is afraid of injury.In an out-of-doors group picture of the 1890 Vegetarians' Conference atPortsmouth, Gandhi was wearing a white tie, hard white cuffs and a white dresshandkerchief in his front pocket. His hair is neatly dressed. He used to spendten minutes every morning combing and brushing it.Dr. Sachchidananda Sinha, an Indian then a student in London, recalls meetingGandhi in February 1890, in Piccadilly Circus; Gandhi, he says, 'was wearing atthe time a high silk top hat "burnished bright", a stiff and starched collar(known as a Gladstonian), a rather flashy tie displaying all the colours of therainbow, under which there was a fine stripe silk shirt. He wore as his outerclothes a morning coat' double-breasted waistcoat, and dark striped trousersmatch, and not only patent-leather shoes but spats over them.He also carried leather gloves and a silver-mounted stick, but wore nospectacles. His clothes were regarded as the very acme of fashion for youngmen about town at that time, and were largely in vogue among the Indianyouth prosecuting their studies in law at one of the four institutions called the'Inns of Court.'There were four Inns of Court: Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, the Middle Temple andthe Inner Temple, and the last, where Gandhi had enrolled, was, saysDr. Sinha, considered by Indians 'the most aristocratic.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 29

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi says his 'punctiliousness in dress persisted for years'. His top hat, hewrites, was expensive, and he spent ten pounds for an evening dress suittailored to order in Bond Street. He asked his brother to send him a doublewatch chain of gold. He abandoned his ready-made cravat and learned to tieone himself. Further 'aping the English gentleman', he invested three pounds ina course of dancing lessons. But 'I could not follow the piano' or 'achieveanything like rhythmic motion'. Adamant and logical, he thought he woulddevelop an ear for music by mastering the violin. He purchased an instrumentand found a teacher. But he gave up the effort and sold the violin. He acquiredBell's Standard Elocutionist and took elocution lessons. Very soon he abandonedthat too.Playing the gentleman would, Gandhi mistakenly thought, bring him into keywith the dominant note in British life. He always needed harmony, and theneed helped him to develop delicate antennae of leadership.Throughout life, Gandhi concentrated on man's day-to-day behaviour. InLondon, his central concern was the day-to-day behaviour of M. K Gandhi. Hisautobiographical reminiscences of London student days deal entirely with hisfood, clothes, shyness, relations with acquaintances and his religious attitude.George Santayana, the American philosopher of Spanish descent, visited Londonas a young man when Gandhi was there. Decades later, in The Middle Span, thesecond volume of his memoirs, he described the visit and commented on thequality of the theatre, the character of Englishmen and the appearance ofLondon houses, parks and streets; there are references to literature andphilosophy. Santayana, the artist, attempts to reconstruct a life and an era.Gandhi, the reformer, omits the cultural and historical background and dissectshimself for the instruction of others.Experiences are the interaction between self and the objective world. ButGandhi's autobiography is called Experiments in Truth; an experiment in thissense is induced by the objective world, but it is essentially an operation withinand upon oneself. To the end of his days, Gandhi attempted to master andremake himself.www.mkgandhi.org Page 30

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi always focused attention on the personal. English friends tried topersuade Gandhi to eat meat. One of them read to him from Bentham's Theoryof Utility. 'These abstruse things are beyond me,' Gandhi pleaded; he would notbreak the vow he had given his mother.Gandhi's 'capacious stomach' demanded filling, but the family with whom helived served no more than two or three slices of bread at each meal. Later thetwo daughters of the household gave him a few extra slices; he could have donewith a loaf. 'I practically had to starve'. He found a vegetarian eating house inFarringdon Street, near Fleet Street, not far from the Inner Temple. Heinvested a shilling in Henry Salt's A Plea for Vegetarianism which was being soldat the entrance. Inside, he ate his first hearty meal in England: 'God had cometo my aid'.The Salt treatise made him a vegetarian by choice. In the beginning was theact, and only then the conviction. Frugal eating led to frugal spending. Evenduring the brief spree of 'aping the gentleman', Gandhi kept minutely accurateaccounts of all outlays for food, clothing, postage, bus fares, newspapers,books, etc. Before going to bed each night he balanced his finances. Now, afteran experiment in boarding with a family, he found lodging about half an hour'swalk from school. He thus saved on fares as well as rent and, to boot, got someexercise. He walked eight to ten miles a day.The example of poor Indian students in London and the guilty sense of beingprodigal with his brother's money impelled Gandhi to economise still further.He abandoned his suite and moved to one room. He cooked his own breakfast ofoatmeal porridge and cocoa. For lunch he went to his favourite vegetarianrestaurant; dinner consisted of bread and cocoa prepared at home. Food costhim one and three pence a day.All the while sweets and spices had been coming to him by sea from India. Hediscontinued this luxury. He began to eat, and enjoy, boiled spinach with nocondiments. 'Many such experiments', he remarked, 'taught me that the realseat of taste was not the tongue but the mind,' and Gandhi had commencedthat remarkable lifelong task of changing his mind.www.mkgandhi.org Page 31

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesUnder the influence of food reformers Gandhi varied his menu, giving upstarches for a period, or living on bread and fruit, and again on cheese, milkand eggs for weeks at a time. He had become a member of the executivecommittee of the Vegetarian Society of England. An expert convinced him thateggs were not meat; the consumption of eggs injured no living creatures. Aftera while, however, Gandhi thought better of it. His mother, he reasoned,regarded eggs as meat, and since she had received his vow, her definition wasbinding. He gave up eggs; he gave up dishes, cakes and puddings made witheggs, even when they were served at the vegetarian restaurant. This was anadditional privation, but satisfaction in observing the vow produced 'an inwardrelish distinctly more healthy, delicate and permanent' than food.Gandhi had reduced his weekly budget to fifteen shillings. He learned toprepare English dishes. Carrot soup was a speciality. Sometimes he invitedNarayan Hemchandra to partake of a meal in his room. Narayan was a youngIndian who had just arrived from home after having earned a reputation as awriter. 'His dress was queer,' Gandhi reports.Gandhi's English was still far from perfect but Narayan's was worse, andMohandas began giving him lessons. Once Narayan arrived at Gandhi's homeclothed in a shirt and a loincloth. When the landlady opened the door she ranback in fright to tell Gandhi that 'a madcap' wanted to see him. 'I was shockedat Narayan's clothes' Gandhi wrote.Narayan planned to learn French and visit France, to learn German and visitGermany, and to travel to America. He did go to France and translated Frenchbooks. Gandhi revised several of the translations. Narayan also visited America,where he was arrested for indecent exposure.Stirred by Narayan Hemchandra, Gandhi crossed the Channel in 1890 to see thegreat Paris Exhibition. 'I had heard of a vegetarian restaurant in Paris. So Iengaged a room there and stayed seven days,' Gandhi recalls. 'I managedeverything veiy economically... I remember nothing of the Exhibition except itsmagnitude and variety. I have a fair recollection of the Eiffel Tower as Iascended it twice or thrice. There was a restaurant on the first platform, andwww.mkgandhi.org Page 32

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesjust for the satisfaction of being able to say that I had my lunch at a greatheight, I threw away seven shillings on it.'Count Leo Tolstoy had called the Eiffel Tower a monument to man's folly.Gandhi read this disparaging remark and concurred. 'The Tower', Gandhi felt'was a good demonstration of the fact that we are all children attracted ytrinkets'; neither beauty nor art recommended it, only its size and novelty.However, Gandhi did enjoy the grandeur and peace of the ancient churches ofParis, notably Notre-Dame with its elaborate interior decorations andsculptures. After the noisy, frivolous streets and boulevards, Gandhi founddignity and reverence in the houses of God. French people kneeling before astatue of the Virgin were ‘not worshipping mere marble’ but rather ‘the dignityof which it is symbolic’.Gandhi made no comment on British churches. In England, he played bridge,wore his ‘visiting suit’ on occasions and evening dress for festivities, and tookan active organizational part in several vegetarian societies. But he could notmake the most informal remarks, and had to write out his views and ask othersto read them. ‘Even when I paid a social call the presence of half a dozen ormore people would strike me dumb.’The purpose for which Gandhi came to England receives only a few lines in hisreminiscences, far fewer than his dietetic adventures. He was admitted as astudent at the Inner Temple on November 6, 1888, and matriculated at LondonUniversity, in June 1890. He learned French and Latin, physics and Common andRoman law. He read Roman law in Latin and bought many books. He improvedhis English. He had no difficulty in passing the final examinations. Called to thebar on June 10, 1891, he enrolled in the High Court on June 11, and sailed forIndia on June 12. He had no wish to spend a single extra day in England.Gandhi does not seem to have been happy in England. It was a necessaryinterim period; he had to be there to get professional status. His chief Englishcontacts were a group of aged, crusading vegetarians who he later declared,‘had the habit of talking of nothing but food and nothing but disease’. Heneither received nor gave warmth.www.mkgandhi.org Page 33

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi did not yet feel at home in English. Later, as a Mahatma, he constantlystressed the importance of studying and speaking in one’s native tongue;otherwise one lost much mental effort bridging the gulf of language. British lifewas very foreign to him.At first, Gandhi had thought he could become an ‘Englishman’. Hence thefervor with which he seized the instruments of conversion; clothes, dancing,elocution, lessons, etc. Then he realized how high the barrier was. Heunderstood he would remain Indian. Therefore he became more Indian.Gandhi’s two years and eight months in England came at a formative phase ofhis life and must have shaped his personality. But their influence was probablyless than normal. For, Gandhi was not the student type; he did not learnessential things by studying. He was the doer, and he grew and gainedknowledge through action. Books, people and conditions affected him. But thereal Gandhi, the Gandhi of history, did not emerge, did not even hint of hisexistence in the years of schooling and study. Perhaps it is unfair to expect toomuch of the frail provincial Indian transplanted to metropolitan London at thegreen age of eighteen. Yet the contrast between the mediocre, unimpressive,handicapped, floundering M. K. Gandhi, barrister-at-law, who left England in1891, and the Mahatma, leader of millions, is so great as to suggest that untilpublic service tapped his enormous reserves of intuition, will power, energyand self-confidence, his true personality lay dormant. To be sure, he fed itunconsciously; his loyalty to the vow of no meat, no wine, no women, was ayouthful exercise in will and devotion which later flowered into a way of life.But only when it was touched by the magic wand of action in South Africa didthe personality of Gandhi burgeon. In Young India of September 4, 1924, hesaid his college days were before the time ‘when… I began life’.Gandhi advanced to greatness by doing. The Gita, Hinduism’s holy scripture,therefore became Gandhi’s gospel, for, it glorifies action.www.mkgandhi.org Page 34

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter IVGandhi And The GitaAT one time, Gandhi lived in the Bayswater district of London. There heorganized a neighbourhood vegetarian club and became its secretary. Dr. JosiahOldfield, bearded editor of The Vegetarian, was elected president, and SirEdwin Arnold, vice-president. Sir Edwin had translated the Gita from Sanskritinto English and published it under the title of The Song Celestial in 1885, just afew years before Gandhi met him.Gandhi first read the Gita in Sir Edwin Arnold's translation while he was asecond-year law student in London. He admits it was shameful not to have readit until the age of twenty, for the Gita is as sacred to Hinduism as the Koran isto Islam, the Old Testament to Judaism, and the New Testament toChristianity.Subsequently, however, Gandhi read the original Sanskrit of the Gita and manytranslations. In fact, he himself translated the Gita from Sanskrit, which he didnot know very well, into Gujarati and annotated it with comments. His Gujaratitranslation was in turn translated into English by Mahadev Desai.Gita or song is short for Bhagavad-Gita, the song of God, the song of Heaven.Gandhi ascribed great virtues to it. When doubts haunt me, whendisappointments stare me in the face, and I see not one ray of light on thehorizon,' Gandhi wrote in the August 6, 1925 issue of YOUNG INDIA magazine, 'Iturn to the Bhagavad-GITA, and find a verse to comfort me; and I immediatelybegin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. My life has been full ofexternal tragedies and if they have not left any visible or invisible effect onme, I owe it to the teaching of the BHAGAVAD-GITA'. Mahadev Desai declaredthat 'every moment of (Gandhi's) life is a conscious effort to live the message ofthe GITA.'The Bhagavad-Gita is an exquisite poem of seven hundred stanzas. Most stanzasconsist of two lines; a few ran to four, six or eight lines. The entire book iswww.mkgandhi.org Page 35

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesdivided into eighteen discourses or chapters; each, according to an appendedcolophon, deals with a specific branch of the science of yoga. The Gita is thus abook on the science and practice of yoga.The Bhagavad-Gita is part of a much bigger book, the Mahabharata, thegreatest Indian epic and the world's longest poem, seven times as long as theIliad and Odyssey combined. The Mahabharata sings of men and wars in thedistant past, ten centuries before Christ. Like European classics, it describesbattles in which gods mix with humans until it is impossible to know who washistorical, who mythological. It contains fables, philosophical dissertations,theological discussions; and it contains the Gita, its brightest gem.The Bhagavad-Gita was written by one person. Scholars agree that it came intoexistence between the fifth and second centuries B.C. It is a conversationbetween Krishna and Arjuna. Krishna, the hero of the Bhagavad-Gita, and ofthe Mahabharata as well, is worshipped in India as God; many Hindu homes andmost Hindu temples have statues or other likenesses of Lord Krishna. In thestory of Krishna's life, legend competes with hazy prehistoric fact. He wasapparently the son of a king's sister. Lest a rival for the throne arise, the kinghad been killing all newborn royal children. But God incarnated himself in thewomb of the king's sister, and Krishna, having thus been born without theintervention of man, was secretly transferred by divine hand to the family of alowly herdsman in place of its own infant daughter. As a child, Krishnamiraculously defeated all the nether world's efforts to destroy him. Later, hetended the cows with other youngsters. Once -during a flood he lifted up amountain with his little finger and held it so for seven days and nights that thepeople might save themselves and their animals. Not suspecting his divinity, allthe village maidens loved him and he danced with them. Grown to youngmanhood, Krishna killed his tyrant uncle and won renown throughout the land.After many adventures, Krishna retired into a forest where a hunter, mistakinghim for a deer, shot an arrow into his heel. As the huntsman drew near herecognised Krishna and was stricken with grief, but Krishna smiled, blessed himand died.www.mkgandhi.org Page 36

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesKrishna is Lord Krishna. 'The representation of an individual as identical withthe Universal Self is familiar to Hindu thought', writes Sir SarvepalliRadhakrishnan, a Hindu philosopher and Oxford professor who also translatedthe Gita. 'Krishna', he says, 'is the human embodiment of Vishnu', the SupremeGod.The opening couplets of the Gita find Krishna on the battlefield as the unarmedcharioteer of Arjuna, chief warrior of a contending faction. Opposite areArjuna's royal cousins arrayed for the fratricidal fray. Aijuna says:As I look upon these kinsmen, O Krishna, assembled here eager to fight, mylimbs fail, my mouth is parched, a tremor shakes my frame and my hair standson end.Gandiva slips from my hand, my skin is on fire,I cannot keep my feet, and my mind reels.Gandiva is Arjuna's bow.I have unhappy forebodings, O Keshava,and I see no good in slaying kinsmen in battle.I seek not victory, nor sovereign power, nor earthly joys, what good aresovereign power, worldly pleasures, and even life to us, O Govinda!Keshava and Govinda are among the many names of Lord Krishna.Rather than murder members of his own family, Arjuna would let them kill him:'Happier far would it be for me if Dhritarashtra's sons, weapons in hand, shouldstrike me down on the battlefield, unresisting and unarmed.'With a firm 'I will not fight', Arjuna now stands speechless awaiting Krishna'sreply. The Lord remonstrated:Thou mournest for them whom thou shouldst not mourn,and utterest vain words of wisdom. The wise mourn neitherfor the living nor for the dead.www.mkgandhi.org Page 37

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesFor never was I not, nor thou nor these kings; nor will any of us cease to behereafter.The Atman or soul, Krishna explains, is external and unattainable by man'sweapons of destruction. Calling the soul 'This', Krishna says.This is never born nor ever dies, nor having been will ever not be any more;unborn, eternal, everlasting, ancient, This is not slain when the body is slain...As a man casts off worn-out garments and takes others that are new, even sothe embodied one casts off worn-out bodies and passes on to others new.Here, succinctly, is the Hindu doctrine of the transmigration of This, of Atman,the soul. Krishna adds:This no weapons wound, This no fire burns; This no waters wet; This no winddoth dry ...For certain is the death of the born, and certain is the birth of the dead;therefore what is unavoidable thou shouldst not regret.Moreover, Krishna insists, Arjuna is a member of the Kshatriya warrior caste,and therefore he must fight: 'Again, seeing thine own duty thou shouldst notshrink from it; for, there is no higher good for a Kshatriya than a righteous war.'Interpreting these texts literally, Orthodox Hindus regard the Gita as thehistoric account of a battle in which one martial leader sought to avoidbloodshed but was soon reminded by God of his caste obligation to commitviolence.Gandhi, apostle of non-violence, obviously had to propound a different version.On first reading the Gita in 1888-89, Gandhi felt that it was 'not a historicalwork'. Nor, he wrote later, is the Mahabharata. The Gita is an allegory, Gandhisaid. The battlefield is the human soul wherein Arjuna, representing higherimpulses, struggles against evil. 'Krishna', according to Gandhi, 'is the Dwellerwithin, ever whispering to a pure heart... Under the guise of physical warfare',Gandhi asserted, the Gita 'described the duel that perpetually went on in thehearts of mankind ... Physical warfare was brought in merely to make thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 38

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesdescription of the internal duel more alluring.' Gandhi often questioneddoctrinal, and temporal, authority.The Gita was Gandhi's 'spiritual reference book', his daily guide. It condemnedinaction, and Gandhi always condemned inaction. More important, it showedhow to avoid the evils that accompany action; this, Gandhi asserted, is the'central teaching of the Gita'. Krishna says:Hold alike pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, and gird up thyloins for the fight; so doing thou shalt not incur sin.That is one facet of yoga; selflessness in action.'Act thou, 0 Dhananjaya (Arjuna), without attachment, steadfast in Yoga, evenmindedin success and failure. Even-mindedness is Yoga.'Then has the yogi no reward? He has, Gandhi replies. 'As a matter of fact hewho renounces reaps a thousandfold. The renunciation of the Gita is the acidtest of faith. He who is ever brooding over results often loses nerve in theperformance of duty. He becomes impatient and then gives vent to anger andbegins to do unworthy things; he jumps from action to action, never remainingfaithful to any. He who broods over results is like a man given to objects ofsenses; he is ever distracted, he says good-bye to all scruples, everything isright in his estimation and he therefore resorts to means fair and foul to attainhis end.' Renunciation gives one the inner peace, the spiritual poise, to achieveresults.But Aijuna could renounce fruit and not hanker after fruit yet obey Krishna andkill. This troubles Gandhi.Let it be granted,' he wrote in 1929 in an introduction to his Gujaratitranslation of the Gita, 'that according to the letter of the Gita it is possible tosay that warfare is consistent with renunciation of fruit. But after forty years'unremitting endeavour fully to enforce the teaching of the Gita in my own life,I have, in all humility, felt that perfect renunciation is impossible withoutperfect observance of ahimsa (non-violence) in every shape and form'. Gandhiwww.mkgandhi.org Page 39

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesdecides that loyalty to the Gita. entitles him to amend it. He often refused tobe bound by uncongenial texts, concepts and situations.The Gita says, in effect: since only the body dies and not is, the soul, why notkill when it is your soldierly duty to do so! Gandhi says: since we are all bits ofGod who is perfect, how can we and why should we kill?Apart from the summons to action, violent according to The Gita and nonviolentaccording to Gandhi, the core of the Gita is the description of the manof action who renounces its fruits. Arjuna, still puzzled, asks for thedistinguishing marks of the yogi. How does he talk? How sit? How move?'Krishna says: 'When a man puts away, O Partha, all the cravings that arise inthe mind and finds comfort for himself only from Atman, then is he called theman of secure understanding.'Gandhi comments: 'The pleasure I may derive from the possession of wealth,for instance, is delusive; real spiritual comfort or bliss can be attained only if Irise superior to every temptation even though troubled by poverty and hunger.'Krishna continues his definition of the Yogi:Whose mind is untroubled in sorrow and longeth not for joys, who is free frompassion, fear and wrath — he is called the ascetic of secure understanding.The man who sheds all longing and moves without concern, free from the senseof T and 'Mine' — he attains peace.Yet a person might 'draw in his senses from their objects' and 'starve his senses'and nevertheless brood about them. In this case, attachment returns;'attachment begets craving and craving begets wrath'. Hence, Krishna teaches,'The Yogi should sit intent on Me.''This means', Gandhi notes, 'that without devotion and the consequent grace ofGod, man's endeavour is vain. Above all, Gandhi says, there must be mentalcontrol, for a man might hold his tongue yet swear mentally, or curb sex andcrave it. Repression is not enough. Repression must be without regrets;ultimately, repression should yield to sublimation.www.mkgandhi.org Page 40

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'He, O Arjuna,' Krishna teaches, 'who keeping all the senses under control of themind, engages the organs in Karma yoga, without attachment — that manexcels.'Soon after reading the Gita, and especially in South Africa, Gandhi began hisstrivings to become a Karma yogi. Later, defining a Karma yogi, Gandhi wrote,'He will have no relish for sensual pleasures and will keep himself occupied withsuch activity as ennobles the soul. That is the path of action. Karma yoga is theyoga (means) which will deliver the self (soul) from the bondage of the body,and in it there is no room for self-indulgence.'Krishna puts it in a nutshell couplet; 'For me, O Partha, there is naught to do inthe three worlds, nothing worth gaining that I have not gained; yet I am ever inaction.'In a notable comment on the Gita, Gandhi further elucidates the ideal man orthe perfect Karma yogi: 'He is a devotee who is jealous of none, who is a fountof mercy, who is without egotism, who is selfless, who treats alike cold andheat, happiness and misery, who is ever forgiving, who is always contented,whose resolutions are firm, who has dedicated mind and soul to God, whocauses no dread, who is not afraid of others, who is free from exultation,sorrow and fear, who is pure, who is versed in action yet remains unaffected byit, who renounces all fruit, good or bad, who treats friend and foe alike, who isuntouched by respect or disrespect, who is not puffed up by praise, who doesnot go under when people speak ill of him, who loves silence and solitude, whohas a disciplined reason. Such devotion is inconsistent with the existence at thesame time of strong attachments.'The Gita defines detachment precisely:Freedom from pride and pretentiousness; non-violence, forgiveness,uprightness, service of the Master, purity, steadfastness, self-restraint.Aversion from sense-objects, absence of conceit, realization of the painfulnessand evil of birth, death, age and disease.www.mkgandhi.org Page 41

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAbsence of attachment, refusal to be wrapped up in one's children, wife, homeand family, even-mindedness whether good or evil befall....By practising these virtues, the yogi will achieve 'union with the Supreme' orBrahman, 'disunion from all union with pain', and 'an impartial eye, seeingAtman in all beings and all beings in Atman.'Gandhi summarized it in one word: 'Desirelessness'.Desirelessness in its manifold aspects became Gandhi's goal and it createdinnumerable problems for his wife and children, his followers and himself.But there is a unique reward. The great yogis, the Mahatmas or 'Great souls',Krishna declares, 'having come to Me, reach the highest perfection; they comenot again to birth, unlasting and an abode of misery'. Thus, the yogi's highestrecompense is to become so firmly united with God that he need never againreturn to the status of migrating mortal man. Several times during his lifeGandhi expressed the hope not to be born anew.In the end, having learned the art of yoga from Krishna, the Supreme, who is'Master of Yoga', Arjuna abandons doubt. Now he understands the innermostsecrets of action without attachment. Now therefore he can act. 'I will do thybidding,' he promises.There are devout Hindus, and mystic Hindus, who sit and meditate and fast andgo naked and live in Himalayan caves. But Gandhi aimed to be ever active, everuseful, and ever needless. This was the realization he craved. Like everybodyelse, Gandhi had attachments. He sought to slough them off.Hindu detachment includes but also transcends unselfishness; it connotes thereligious goal of auto-disembodiment or non-violent self-effacement wherebythe devotee discards his physical being and becomes one with God. This is notdeath; it is Nirvana. The attainment of Nirvana is a mystic process which eludesmost Western minds and is difficult of achievement even by Hindus whoassume, however, that mortals like Buddha and some modern mystics haveaccomplished the transformation. Gandhi did not accomplish it.www.mkgandhi.org Page 42

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi did, however, achieve the status of yogi. A yogi may be a man ofcontemplation, or he may be a man of action. Both yogi and commissar maydevote their lives to action. The difference between them is in the quality andpurpose of their acts and the purpose of their lives.The Gita concentrates attention on the purpose of life. In the West a personmay ponder the purpose of life after he has achieved maturity and materialsuccess. A Hindu if moved by the Gita, ponders the purpose of life when he isstill on its threshold. Gandhi was very much moved by the spirit of the Gita.www.mkgandhi.org Page 43

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter VIndian InterludeIN London, Gandhi never got beyond Leviticus and Numbers; the first books ofthe Old Testament bored him. Later in life he enjoyed the Prophets, Psalmsand Ecclesiastes. The New Testament was more interesting, and the Sermon onthe Mount 'went straight to my heart'. He saw similarities between it and theGita.'But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee onthy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man take away thy coatlet him have thy cloak too.' These words of Christ 'delighted' Gandhi. Otherverses struck a sympathetic chord in the Mahatma-to-be: 'Blessed are the meek... Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you and persecute you ... whosoeveris angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment ...Agree with thine adversary quickly ... whosoever looketh on a woman to lustafter her hath committed adultery already in his heart ... Love your enemies,bless them that curse you ... forgive men their trespasses ... Lay not up foryourselves treasures upon earth ... For where your treasure is, there will yourheart be also ....'It was thanks to a Bible salesman in England that Gandhi read the Old and NewTestaments. At the suggestion of a friend, he read Thomas Carlyle's essay onthe prophet Mohammed. Having met Madame H. P. Blavatsky and Mrs. AnnieBesant in London, he studied their books on theosophy. Gandhi's religiousreading was accidental and desultory. Nevertheless, it apparently met a need,for he was not a great reader and, apart from law tomes, had not read much,not even a history of India.Gandhi refused to join Britain's new theosophist movement, but he rejoiced inMrs. Besant's renunciation of godlessness. He himself had already traversed 'theSahara of atheism' and emerged from it thirsty for religion.www.mkgandhi.org Page 44

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIn this state he returned to India in the summer of 1891. He was more worldlybut no more articulate. He quickly recognized his failures yet stubbornlyinsisted on having his way. He was self-critical and self-confident,temperamentally shy and intellectually sure.On landing at Bombay, his brother told him that Putlibai, their mother, wasdead. The news had been kept from Mohandas because the family knew hisdevotion to her. He was shocked, but his grief, greater than when his fatherdied, remained under control.Gandhi's son Harilal was four; his brothers had several older children, boys andgirls. The returned barrister led them in physical exercises and walks, andplayed and joked with them. He also had time for quarrels with his wife; once,in fact, he sent her away from Rajkot to her parents' home in Porbandar; hewas still jealous. He performed all the duties of a husband except support hiswife and child; he had no money.Laxmidas Gandhi, a lawyer in Rajkot, had built high hopes on his youngerbrother. But Mohandas was a complete failure as a lawyer in Rajkot as well asin Bombay where he could not utter a word during a petty case in court.Laxmidas, who had financed Gandhi's studies in England, Was even moredisappointed at his brother's failure to carry out a delicate mission for him.Laxmidas had been the secretary and adviser of the heir to the throne ofPorbandar. He was thus destined, it seemed, to follow in his father's andgrandfather's footsteps and become prime minister of the little state. But helost favour with the British Political Agent. Now Mohandas had casually met theagent in London. Laxmidas therefore wanted his brother to see the Englishmanand adjust matters. Gandhi did not think it right to presume on a slightacquaintance and ask an interview for such a purpose. But he yielded to hisbrother's importuning. The agent was cold: Laxmidas could apply through theproper channels if he thought he had been wronged. Gandhi persisted. Theagent showed him the door; Gandhi stayed to argue; the agent's clerk ormessenger took hold of Gandhi and put him out.www.mkgandhi.org Page 45

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe shock of the encounter with the British agent, Gandhi declares in hisautobiography, 'changed the course of my entire life'. He had been doing oddlegal jobs for the ruling prince. He and his brother hoped he would finallyobtain a position as judge or minister in the government which might lead tofurther advancement in the tradition of the family. But his altercation with theagent upset these plans. Only a sycophant could succeed and get on. Theepisode intensified his dislike of the atmosphere of petty intrigue, palace pompand snobbery which prevailed in Porbandar, Rajkot and the other miniatureprincipalities of the Kathiawar peninsula. It was poison to character. Gandhiyearned to escape from it.At this juncture a business firm of Porbandar Moslems offered to send him toSouth Africa for a year as their lawyer. He seized the opportunity to see a newcountry and get new experiences; "I wanted somehow to leave India". So, afterless than two unsuccessful years in his native land, its future leader boarded aship for Zanzibar, Mozambique and Natal. He left behind him his wife and twochildren; on October 28, 1892, a second son named Manilal had been born. 'Byway of consolation', Gandhi assured Kasturbai that 'we are bound to meet againin a year'.In Bombay, Gandhi had met Raychandbhai. 'No one else,' Gandhi said, 'has evermade on me the impression that Raychandbhai did.' Raychandbhai was ajeweller-poet with a phenomenal memory. He was rich, a connoisseur ofdiamonds and pearls, and a good business man. Gandhi was impressed by hisreligious learning, his upright character and his passion for self-realization.Raychandbhai's, deeds, Gandhi felt, were guided by his desire for truth andgodliness. Gandhi trusted him completely. In a crisis, Gandhi ran toRaychandbhai for confession and comfort. From South Africa, Gandhi soughtand obtained Raychandbhai's advice. Nevertheless, Gandhi did not acceptRaychandbhai as his guru. Hindus believe that every man should acknowledge aguru, a superior person, near or far, living or dead, as one's teacher, guide, ormentor. But Raychandbhai lacked the perfection that Gandhi sought in a guru.Gandhi never did find a guru; 'The throne has remained vacant,' he said. For awww.mkgandhi.org Page 46

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesHindu, this is tremendously significant and for Gandhi it is endlessly revealing.In the presence of prominent men he felt respect, humility and awe, but,wrapped in these sentiments, he sometimes became impervious to theirthoughts. With all his diffidence he was spiritually independent. Ideas came tohim occasionally through books but chiefly through his own acts. He remadehimself by tapping his own inner resources.Gandhi was a self-remade man and the transformation began in South Africa. Itis not that he turned failure into success. Using the clay that was there heturned himself into another person. His was a remarkable case of second birthin one lifetime.www.mkgandhi.org Page 47

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter VITowards GreatnessTHEN Gandhi landed at Durban, Natal, in May 1893, This mission was simply towin a lawsuit, earn some money and perhaps, at long last, start his career: 'Trymy luck in South Africa,' he said. As he left the boat to meet his employer, aMoslem business man named Dada Abdulla Sheth, Gandhi wore a fashionablefrock coat, pressed trousers, shining shoes and a turban.South African society was sharply divided by colour, class, religion andprofession, and each group jealously defended the words and symbols whichdemarcated it from the others. Englishmen called all Indians 'coolies' or 'samis',and they referred to 'coolie teachers', 'coolie merchants', 'coolie barristers, etc.forgetting, deliberately, that if coolie meant anything it meant manuallabourer. To rise above the coolie level, Parsis from India styled themselvesPersians, and Moslems from India chose to be regarded as 'Arabs' which theywere not. A turban was officially recognized as part of the costume of an 'Arab'but not of a Hindu.Several days after arriving, Gandhi went to court. The magistrate ordered himto remove his turban. Gandhi demurred and left the court. To obviate furthertrouble, he decided to wear an English hat. No, said Dada Abdulla Sheth, a haton a coloured man is the symbol of a waiter.The lawsuit required Gandhi's presence in Pretoria, the capital of Transvaal.First class accommodations were purchased for him at Durban where heboarded the train for the overnight journey. At Maritzburg, the capital of Natal,a white man entered the compartment, eyed the brown intruder, and withdrewto reappear in a few moments with two railway officials who told Gandhi totransfer to third class. Gandhi protested that he held a first class ticket. Thatdidn't matter; he had to leave. He stayed. So they fetched a policeman whotook him off with his luggage.www.mkgandhi.org Page 48

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi could have returned to the train and found a place in the third classcar. But he chose to remain in the station waiting room. It was cold in themountains. His overcoat was in his luggage which the railway people wereholding; afraid to be insulted again, he did not ask for it. All night long, he satand shivered, and brooded.Should he return to India? This episode reflected a much larger situation.Should he address himself to it or merely seek redress of his personalgrievance, finish the case, and go home to India? He had encountered the dreaddisease of colour prejudice. It was his duty to combat it. To flee, leaving hiscountrymen in their predicament, would be cowardice. The frail lawyer beganto see himself in the role of a David assailing the Goliath of racialdiscrimination.Many years later, in India, Dr. John R. Mott, a Christian missionary, askedGandhi, 'What have been the most creative experiences in your life?' In replyGandhi told the story of the night in the Maritzburg station.Why, of all people, did it occur to Gandhi to resist the evil? Tne next morningIndians he met recounted similar experiences. They made the best ofconditions; "You cannot strike your head against a stone wall'. But Gandhiintended to test its hardness. His father and grandfather had defied authority.His own meagre contacts with it in India were unhappy. He had rejected theauthoritative, time-and-tradition- honoured version of the Bhagavad-Gita forhis own. Was it this inherent anti-authoritarianism that made him rebel againstthe government colour line? Was he more sensitive, resentful, unfettered andambitious because his life, so far, had been a failure? Did he aspire to be strongmorally because he was weak physically? Did challenging immoral practices inan uncrowded arena present greater opportunities for service than the pursuitof personal gain in crowded courts? Was it destiny, heritage, luck, the Gita, orsome other immeasurable quantity?That bitter night at Maritzburg the germ of social protest was born in Gandhi.But he did nothing. He proceeded on his business to Pretoria.www.mkgandhi.org Page 49

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe Charlestown-to-Johannesburg lap was negotiated by stage coach. Therewere three seats on the coach box, usually occupied by the driver and the'leader' of the trip. On this occasion, the 'leader' sat inside and told Gandhi toride with the driver and a Hottentot. There was space for Gandhi inside, but hedid not want to make a fuss and miss the coach so he mounted to the driver'sperch. Later, however, the 'leader' decided he wanted to smoke and get someair; he spread a piece of dirty sacking at the driver's feet on the footboard andinstructed Gandhi to sit on it. Gandhi complained; why could he not go inside!At this, the 'leader' began to curse and tried to drag him off the coach. Gandhiclung to the brass rail though he felt that his wrists would break. But he did notrelax his hold. The 'leader' continued alternately to pummel and pull him untilthe white passengers intervened: 'Don't beat him', they shouted. 'He is not toblame. He is right'. The 'leader', yielding to the customers, relented, andGandhi entered the coach.The next day, Gandhi wrote to the coach company and received a writtenassurance that he would not be molested again.In Johannesburg, Gandhi went to a hotel, but failed to get a room. Indianslaughed at his naivete. 'This country is not for men like you,' a rich Indianmerchant said to him. 'For making money we do not mind pocketing insults, andhere we are.' The same person advised Gandhi to travel third class to Pretoriabecause conditions in the Transvaal were much worse than in Natal. But Gandhiwas obdurate. He ordered the railway regulations to be brought to him, readthem, and found that the prohibition was not precise. He therefore penned anote to the station master stating that he was a barrister and always travelledfirst (it was his ninth day and first journey in South Africa) and would soonapply in person for a ticket.The station master proved sympathetic. He sold Gandhi the ticket on conditionthat he would not sue the company if the guards or the passengers ejected him.The collector came to examine the tickets and held up three fingers. Gandhivehemently refused to move to third class. The sole other passenger, anwww.mkgandhi.org Page 50

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesEnglishman, scolded the guard and invited Gandhi to make himselfcomfortable.'If you want to travel with a coolie, what do I care,' the guard grumbled.At the station in Pretoria, Gandhi asked a railway official about hotels, but gotno helpful information. An American Negro, who overheard the conversation,offered to take Gandhi to an inn run by an American: Johnston's Family Hotel.Mr. Johnston cheerfully accommodated him but suggested, with apologies, thatsince all the other guests were white, he take dinner in his room.Waiting for his food, Gandhi pondered the adventures he had had on thisstrange trip. Not everybody was prejudiced; some whites felt uncomfortableabout it all. Presently Mr. Johnston knocked and said, 'I was ashamed of havingasked you to take your dinner here, so I spoke to the other guests about you,and asked them if they would mind your having and the dining room They saidthey had no objection, and they did not mind your staying here as long as youliked.'Gandhi enjoyed the meal downstairs. But lodgings in private home werecheaper than Mr. Johnston's hotel.Within a week of his arrival Gandhi summoned all the Indians in Pretoria to ameeting. He wanted 'to present to them a picture of their condition.' He wastwenty-four. This was his first public speech. The audience consisted of Moslemmerchants interspersed with a few Hindus. He urged four things: Tell the trutheven in business; Adopt more sanitary habits; Forget caste and religiousdivisions; Learn English. A barber, a clerk and a shopkeeper accepted his offerof English lessons. The barber merely wished to acquire the vocabulary of histrade. Gandhi dogged them for months and would not let them be lazy or lax intheir studies.Other meetings followed, and soon Gandhi knew every Indian in Pretoria. Hecommunicated with the railway authorities and elicited the promise that'properly dressed' Indians might travel first or second class. Though open towww.mkgandhi.org Page 51

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesarbitrary interpretation, this represented progress. Gandhi was encouraged.The Pretorian Indians formed a permanent organization.The lawsuit for which Gandhi came to South Africa brought him into contactwith Roman Catholics, Protestants, Quakers and Plymouth Brethren. Some ofthem tried to convert him to Christianity. Gandhi did not discourage theirefforts. He promised that if the inner voice commanded it he would embracethe Christian faith. He read the books they gave him and tried to answer theirsearching questions about Indian religions. When he did not know the answershe wrote to friends in England and to Raychandbhai, the jeweller-poet ofBombay.Once Michael Coates, a Quaker, urged Gandhi to discard the beads which, as amember of the Hindu Vaishnava sect, he always wore around his neck.'This superstition does not become you,' Coates exclaimed. 'Come, let me breakthe necklace.''No, you will not,' Gandhi protested. 'It is a sacred gift from my mother.''But do you believe in it?' Coates questioned.'I do not know its mysterious significance,' Gandhi said, defensively. 'I do notthink I should come to harm if I did not wear it. But I cannot, without sufficientreason, give up a necklace which she put round my neck out of love and in theconviction that it would be conducive to my welfare. When, with the passage oftime, it wears away, and breaks of its own accord, I shall have no reason to geta new one. But this necklace cannot be broken. Later in life he did not wearbeads.Gandhi's Christian friends taught him the essence of Christianity. They said if hebelieved in Jesus he would find redemption. 'I do not seek redemption from theconsequences of sin,' Gandhi replied. 'I seek to be redeemed from sin itself.'They said that was impossible. Nor could Gandhi understand why, if God hadone son, He could not have another. Why could he go to Heaven and attainsalvation only as a Christian? Did Christianity have a monopoly of Heaven? WasGod a Christian? Did He have prejudices against non- Christians?www.mkgandhi.org Page 52

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi liked the sweet Christian hymns and many of the Christians he met. Buthe could not regard Christianity as the perfect religion or the greatest religion.'From the point of view of sacrifice, it seemed to me that the Hindus greatlysurpassed the Christians.' And Raychandbhai assured him that Hinduism wasunexcelled in subtlety and profundity. On the other hand, Gandhi doubtedwhether the sacred Hindu Vedas were the only inspired word of God. 'Why notalso the Bible and the Koran?’ He recoiled from the competitiveness of religionsHe also disliked the competitiveness of lawyers. His client, Dada Abdulla Shethand the opposing party, Tyeb Sheth, were lves' and the cost of the litigation,dragging out for more than a year, was ruining both. Gandhi suggested acompromise out of court. Finally, the plaintiff and defendant agreed on anarbitrator who heard the case and decided in favour of Dada Abdulla. Now anew problem confronted Gandhi. Tyeb was called upon to pay thirty-seventhousand pounds and cost. This threatened him with bankruptcy. Gandhiinduced Dada Abdulla to permit the loser to pay in installments stretched overa very extended period.In preparing the case, Gandhi learned the secrets of bookkeeping and some ofthe fine points of law. Above all, it reinforced his opinion that settlements outof court were preferable to trials. He followed this practice during his twentyyears as a lawyer: 'I lost nothing thereby — not even money, certainly not mysoul.'The lawsuit settled, Gandhi returned to Durban and prepared to sail for India.He had been in South Africa almost twelve months. Before his departure, hisassociates gave him a farewell party. During the festivities someone handedhim the day's Natal Mercury, and in it he found a brief item regarding the Natalgovernment's proposed bill to deprive Indians of their right to elect members ofthe legislature. Gandhi stressed the necessity of resisting this move. His friendswere ready but they were 'unlettered, lame' men, they said, and powerlesswithout him. He consented to stay a month. He remained twenty years fightingthe battle for Indian rights. He won.www.mkgandhi.org Page 53

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter VIIA Mob SceneNATAL, in 1896, had 400,000 Negro inhabitants, 50,000 whites, and 51,000Indians. The Cap£ of Good Hope Colony had 900,000 Negroes, 400,000Europeans and 10,000 Indians; the Transvaal Republic, 650,000 Negroes,120,000 whites and about 5,000 Indians. Similar proportions obtained in otherareas. In 1914, the five million Negroes easily outnumbered a million and aquarter whites.Indians or no Indians, the whites were a permanent minority in South Africa.But the Indians were thrifty, able and ambitious, and they worked hard. Givennormal opportunities, they became rivals of the whites in business, agriculture,law and the other professions.Is that why the Indians were persecuted?The Dutch, who first settled in South Africa in the sixteenth century, broughttheir slaves from Malaya, Java and other Pacific islands; they concentrated inTransvaal and the Orange Free State. The British arrived much later. In Natal,they found they could grow sugar cane, tea and coffee. But the Negroes werereluctant to work for them. Arrangements were accordingly made for theshipment of indentured labourers from India. 'The Indian had come to SouthAfrica', wrote Chancellor Jan H. Hofmeyer of the Witwaterstrand University inJohannesburg, 'because it was deemed to be in the white man's interest that heshould. It seemed to be impossible to exploit the Natal coastal belt withoutindentured labour. So the Indians came - and brought prosperity to Natal.'The first Indian contract workers landed in Natal on November 16, 1860. Thatwas the genesis of the Gandhi saga in South Africa.The indentured Indians were term serfs. They came from India voluntarily or,frequently, involuntarily and not knowing where they were going; many wereuntouchables snatched from semi-starvation. The system tied them for fiveyears to private farms. They were given free board and lodging for themselveswww.mkgandhi.org Page 54

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesand their families and ten shillings a month in the first year and an additionalshilling a month each year after. At the end of five years the contractor paidtheir passage back to India. He did likewise if they remained an additional fiveyears as free labourers. In numerous cases, the indentured labourers chose tobecome permanent residents.When Gandhi had been in South Africa just over twelve months — on August 18,1894 — these conditions were altered. At the end of the first five-year period,the indentured labourer was obliged to return to India or agree to be a serf inSouth Africa for ever. But if he wished to stay as a free working man, he had topay an annual tax of three pounds for himself and for each of his dependents.Three pounds was the equivalent of six months' pay of an indentured labourer.This aroused a storm at the centre of which stood Gandhi. Indentured Indianimmigration drew after it thousands of free Indians who came as hawkers,tradesmen, artisans and members of the professions, like Gandhi. Theynumbered perhaps fifty thousand in 1900. The pedlars carried their wares ontheir backs hundreds of miles into Zulu villages where no white man would tryto do business. Gradually, many of them acquired riches and property. Indianseven owned steamship lines.In 1894, 250 free Indians in Natal, being subjects of Her British Majesty, QueenVictoria, and having met the wealth qualification, enjoyed the right to vote.But that year the Natal legislature passed a law explicitly disfranchisingAsiatics.This was the second serious Indian complaint.Throughout Natal, an Indian had to carry a pass to be in the streets after 9 p.m.Persons without passes were arrested. The Orange Free State, a Boer republic,forbade Indians to own property, to trade, or to farm. In the Crown Colony ofZululand, Indians were not allowed to own or buy land. The same proscriptionapplied in the Transvaal where, moreover, Indians had to pay a three-pound feefor the right to reside; but residence was restricted to slums. In the CapeColony, some municipalities prohibited Indians from walking on footpaths.Elsewhere, Indians avoided footpaths and pavements because they might bewww.mkgandhi.org Page 55

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeskicked off. Gandhi himself was once so kicked. Indians in South Africa werelegally barred from buying South African gold. They were described in statutebooks as 'semi-barbarous Asiatics.'In three years in South Africa, Gandhi had become a prosperous lawyer and theoutstanding Indian political figure. He was widely known as the champion ofindentured labourers. He addressed conferences, drafted memorials togovernment ministers, wrote letters to newspapers, circulated petitions (onewas signed by ten thousand Indians), and made many friends among whites,Indians and Negroes. He learned a few Zulu words and found the language 'verysweet'. He also achieved some knowledge of Tamil, a Dravidian tongue spokenby natives of Madras and other South-Indian provinces. When work permitted heread books, chiefly on religion. He published two pamphlets: An Appeal toEvery Briton in South Africa and The Indian Franchise, an Appeal.'Appeal' was the key to Gandhi's politics. He appealed to the common sense andmorality of his adversary. 'It has always been a mystery to me', he says in hisautobiography, 'how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation oftheir fellow- beings.' This was the essence of Gandhi's appeal.Gandhi's struggle in South Africa did not aim to achieve equal treatment for theIndians there. He recognized that the whites thought they needed protectionagainst a coloured majority consisting of Indians and Negroes. He also knew, ashe wrote in a letter to the Times of India of June 2, 1918, that 'prejudicescannot be removed by legislation... They will yield only to patient toil andeducation.'Nor were the Indians protesting against segregation. 'They feel the ostracismbut they silently bear it', Gandhi wrote.This too was a long-range problem.Gandhi's immediate quarrel with the white governments of Natal, Transvaal,the Orange Free State and Cape Colony was 'for feeding the prejudice bylegalizing it'. At least the laws must be just; often they are not. 'I refuse tobelieve in the infallibility of legislators,' he said. 'I believe that they are notwww.mkgandhi.org Page 56

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesalways guided by generous or even just sentiments in their dealings withunrepresented classes.' They may react to non-existent perils; they may servethe interests of white merchants irked by Indian competitors.Gandhi wished to establish one principle: that Indians were citizens of theBritish Empire and therefore entitled to equality under its laws. He did notexpect fair administration of the laws; the whites would always be favoured.But once the principle of legal equality was fixed he would be content to letlife work out its own complicated pattern, trusting honest citizens to brightenthe design. If, however, the Indians supinely acknowledged their inferioritythey would lose dignity and deteriorate. So would the whites who imposed theinferiority.Gandhi aimed to save the dignity of Indians and whites. Thus far in SouthAfrica, Gandhi had displayed unflagging energy, an inexhaustible capacity forindignation, an eagerness to serve the community, honesty which inspiredtrust, and a talent for easy personal relations with the lowly and theprominent. Zeal and a cause dissolved his timidity and loosened his tongue.Though there was only slight visible evidence, as yet, of the great Gandhi ofhistory, he had proved himself an effective leader and an excellent organizer.His Indian co-workers felt acutely, and he could not fail to see, that withouthim the struggle for Indian rights would collapse or at least lag.Gandhi accordingly took six months' leave and went to India to fetch his family.Arrived in the homeland in the middle of 1896, the twenty- seven-year-old manwith a mission developed a furious activity. In Rajkot, Gandhi spent a month inthe bosom of his family writing a pamphlet on Indian grievances in South Africa.Bound in green and consequently known as 'The Green Pamphlet', it was printedin ten thousand copies and sent to newspapers and prominent Indians. Manypublications reviewed it. To mail the rest of the edition Gandhi, always eagerto keep down expenses, mobilized the children of the neighbourhood whowrote the addresses, licked the wrappers and pasted the stamps when therewas no school. He rewarded them with used stamps and his blessing. Thechildren were delighted. Two of them grew up to be Gandhi's close disciples.www.mkgandhi.org Page 57

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAt this juncture, the bubonic plague appeared in Bombay and Rajkot was inpanic. Gandhi volunteered his services to the State and joined the officialcommittee in charge of preventive measures. He stressed the need ofsupervising toilets and accepted that task himself. 'The poor people', heremarks in his memoirs, 'had no objection to their latrines being inspected and,what is more, they carried out the improvements suggested to them. But whenwe went to the houses of the upper ten, some of them even refused usadmission. It was our common experience that the latrines of*the rich weremore unclean.' Next, Gandhi urged that the committee investigate theuntouchables' quarter. Only one committee member would go with him. It wasGandhi's first visit to the slums. He had never known how outcasts lived. Hediscovered that they did not have latrines or any enclosed facilities. But theirhouses were clean.From Rajkot, Gandhi went to Bombay to arrange a public meeting on SouthAfrica. He introduced himself to the leading citizens and enlisted their support.Meanwhile he nursed his sister's husband who was ill, and later moved the dyingpatient into his own room. Gandhi always boasted of an 'aptitude for nursingwhich gradually developed into a passion.'The Bombay meeting was a tremendous success because of the sponsors andthe topic. Gandhi had a written speech but could not make himself heard in thebig hall. Somebody on the platform read it for him.At Poona, inland from Bombay, Gandhi interviewed two of the great men ofIndia: Gopal Krishna Gokhale, President of the Servants of India Society, andLokmanya Tilak, a giant intellect and towering political leader. Tilak, Gandhisaid later, was like the ocean and you could not readily launch yourself on it;Gokhale was like the Ganges in whose refreshing, holy waters one longed tobathe. He fell in love with Gokhale but did not take him as his guru. Gandhidescribed a guru in Young India of October 6, 1921, as a rare combination of'perfect purity and perfect learning'. Gokhale, as Gandhi saw him, failed tomeet those requirements. He did, however, become Gandhi's political guru, hisideal in politics.www.mkgandhi.org Page 58

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'They treat us as beasts,' Gandhi cried out at a mass meeting in Madras onOctober 26, 1896. 'The policy is to class us with the Kaffir whenever possible,'he said. South Africa depressed the living standards of Indians and locked themup in insanitary districts; then the whites condemned the dirty Indian habits.'Submission' to these 'insults and indignities', Gandhi told the meeting, 'meansdegradation'. He urged resistance. He urged, too, that if no amelioration tookplace emigration from India to South Africa be suspended.At the Bombay, Poona and Madras meetings, Gandhi quoted from the 'GreenPamphlet' and asked the audience to buy it on the way out. In Madras, theproud author, noting the brochure's success, brought out a second ten thousandedition which, at first, 'sold like hot cakes'; but he had overestimated themarket and was left with a remainder.Gandhi hoped to repeat the performance in Calcutta and talked withnewspaper editors and eminent citizens. But a cable recalled him to Natal,South Africa, to cope with an emergency. He therefore rushed back to Bombaywhere, with his wife, two sons and the widowed sister's only son, he boardedthe S.S. Courland, a ship belonging to his client, Dada Abdulla Sheth, who gavethe whole family a free trip. The S.S. Naderi sailed for Natal at the same time.The two ships carried about eight hundred passengers.Gandhi's efforts to arouse Indian public opinion on the South African issue hadbeen reported, with exaggeration, in the South African press. Now he wasarriving with eight hundred free Indians. This provoked fierce resentmentamong the whites: Gandhi, they charged, intended to flood Natal and theTransvaal with unwanted, unindentured coloured people. Gandhi was of courseinnocent of recruiting or encouraging the travellers.At first, the ships were kept in quarantine, ostensibly because of the plague inBombay. But after the five-day quarantine period, nobody was permitted tocome ashore. In Durban, meetings of whites demanded that the ships and theirpassengers, including Gandhi, be returned to India. Dada Abdulla receivedoffers of reimbursement of losses if he sent the steamers back. The offers wereaccompanied by veiled threats. He stood firm.www.mkgandhi.org Page 59

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesOn January 13, 1897, at the end of twenty-three days' rocking outside theharbour (following a three-week voyage from Bombay) the Courland and Naderiwere permitted to dock. But Mr. Harry Escombe, Attorney-General of the Natalgovernment, who had openly participated in the anti-Gandhi agitation, sent amessage to Gandhi to land at dusk to avoid trouble. Mr. F. A. Laughton, anEnglishman and legal counsellor of Dada Abdulla, advised against thisprocedure. Nor did Gandhi wish to enter city by stealth. Mrs. Gandhi who waspregnant, and the two boys accordingly disembarked in normal fashion andwere driven to the home of an Indian named Rustomji, while, by agreement,Gandhi and Laughton followed on foot. The clamouring crowds had dispersed;but two small boys recognized Gandhi and shouted his name. Several whitesappeared. Fearing a fight, Laughton hailed a Negro-drawn rickshaw. Gandhi hadnever used one and was reluctant to do so now. The rickshaw boy, in any casefrom fright ran away. As Gandhi and Laughton proceeded, the crowd swelled,and became violent. They isolated Gandhi from Laughton and threw stones,bricks and eggs at him. Then they came closer, seized his turban and beat andkicked him. Gandhi fainted from pain but caught hold of the iron railings of ahouse. White men continued to smack his face and strike his body. At thisjuncture, Mrs. Alexander, the wife of the Police Superintendent, who knewGandhi, happened to pass and she intervened and placed herself between themaddened mob and the miserable Gandhi.An Indian boy summoned the police. Gandhi refused asylum in the policestation but accepted a police escort to Rustomji's house. He was bruised allover and received immediate medical attention.The city now knew Gandhi's whereabouts. White gangs surrounded Rustomji'shome and demanded that Gandhi be delivered to them. "We'll burn him,' theyyelled. Superintendent Alexander was on the scene and tried, vainly, to calm ordisperse the howling mob. To humour them, Alexander led the singing ofAnd we'll hang old GandhiOn the sour apple tree,www.mkgandhi.org Page 60

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesbut he sensed that the temper of the mob was rising and that the house/withall its inmates might be set on fire. Night has set in. Alexander secretly sent amessage to Gandhi to escape in disguise. The Superintendent put twodetectives at Gandhi's disposal. Gandhi donned an Indian policeman's uniformand a headgear that looked like a helmet while the two white detectivespainted their skins dark and dressed themselves as Indians. The three then leftby the rear of the house and, treading their way through side streets, reachedthe police station.When Alexander knew that Gandhi was safe, he informed the crowd of the fact.This new situation required diplomatic handling and fortunately the police chiefproved equal to it.Gandhi remained in the safety of the police station for three days.News of the assault on Gandhi disturbed London. Joseph Chamberlain, BritishSecretary of State for Colonies, cabled the Natal authorities to prosecute theattackers. Gandhi knew several of his assailants but refused to prosecute. Hesaid it was not their fault; the blame rested on the community leaders and onthe Natal government. 'This is a religious question with me,' Gandhi toldAttorney-General Escombe, and he would exercise 'self-restraint'.Gandhi ought to have hated every white face to the end his life,' wroteProfessor Edward Thompson of Oxford. But and hi forgave the whites in Durbanwho assembled to lynch - and he forgave those who mauled and beat him. Hissoul kept no record of past sins against his body. Instead of prosecuting theguilty he pursued the more creative task of lightening his countrymen's lot.Gandhi had been called back to South Africa to seize a happy opportunity.Under pressure exerted from London by the Colonial Secretary, JosephChamberlain, and from the British government in India, the Natal legislaturewas debating a law to annul racial discrimination and replace it by aneducational test. This had been Gandhi's goal. The Natal Act, passed in 1897,met his demand of equal electoral rights for British subjects, Indians included;the attempt to disfranchise the few hundred Indians was abandoned. Gandhifelt some satisfaction. Tempers cooled and tensions relaxed.www.mkgandhi.org Page 61

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter VIIIGandhi Goes To WarIN the Boer War, which was waged in South Africa from 1899 to 1902 betweenDutch settlers and the British, Gandhi's personal sympathies 'were all with theBoers'. Yet he volunteered to serve with the British. 'Every single subject of astate,' he explained, 'must not hope to enforce his opinion in all cases. Theauthorities may not always be right, but as long as the subjects owe allegianceto a state, it is their clear duty generally to accommodate themselves, and toaccord their support, to the acts of the state.'This is not the language or sentiment of a pacifist. Although the Indians, Gandhiknew, were 'helots in the Empire', they were still hoping to improve theircondition within that empire and here was 'a golden opportunity' to do so bysupporting the British in the Boer War.The Indians' claim for equal rights and fair treatment in South Africa, lawyerGandhi submitted, was based on their status as British subjects, and since theysought the advantages of British citizenship they should also accept itsobligations.Then Gandhi made a fine point: it could be said that this war and any war wasimmoral or anti-religious. Unless, ever, a person had taken that position andactively for before the war he could not use it as a justification or abstentionafter hostilities had commenced.Gandhi would have been more popular with his countrymen had he advocated ado-nothing neutral policy. But it was unlike Gandhi to be evasive. Heaccordingly offered to organize Indians as stretcher bearers and medicalorderlies at the front or for menial work in hospitals. The Natal governmentrejected the offer. Nevertheless, Gandhi and other Indians began, at their ownexpense, to train as nurses. They conveyed this information to the authoritiestogether with certificates of physical fitness. Another rejection came. But thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 62

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesBoers were advancing, the dead were piling up on the battlefield, and thewounded were receiving inadequate care.After much procrastination from prejudice, Natal sanctioned the formation ofan Indian Ambulance Corps. Three hundred free Indians volunteered togetherwith eight hundred indentured labourers furloughed by their masters. Englandand South Africa were impressed.Gandhi led the corps. A photograph taken at the time shows him in khakiuniform and broad-brimmed, jaunty, felt cowboy hat seated in the centre oftwenty-one men similarly dressed. Gandhi has a drooping moustache and, likethe others, wears a Red Cross armband. He looks stern and small. Next to is Dr.Booth, a bulky English doctor with goatee who trained the volunteers. The manstanding above Gandhi has both hands on Gandhi's shoulders.The corps members were African-born and Indian-born Hindus, Moslems andChristians who lived together in natural amity. Their relations with theTommies were very friend. The public and the army admired the endurance andcourage of Gandhi's corps. In one sanguinary engagement at Spion kop inJanuary 1900, the British were being forced to retire General Buller, thecommanding officer, sent through message saying that although, by the termsof enlistment, Indians were not to enter the firing line he would be thai1 ifthey came up to remove the wounded. Gandhi led his on to the battlefield. Fordays they worked under the fire of enemy guns and carried soldiers back tobase hospital. The Indians sometimes walked as much as twenty-five miles aday.Mr. Vere Stent, British editor of the Pretoria News, wrote an article in the July1911 issue of the Johannesburg Illustrated Star about a visit to the front duringthe Spion Kop battle. 'After a night's work, which had shattered men with muchbigger frames,' he reported, T came across Gandhi in the early morning sittingby the roadside eating a regulation army biscuit. Every man in Buller's forcewas dull and depressed, and damnation was invoked on everything. But Gandhiwas stoical in his bearing, cheerful and confident in his conversations, and hada kindly eye. He did one good. It was an informal introduction and it led to awww.mkgandhi.org Page 63

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesfriendship. I saw the man and his small undisciplined corps on many abattlefield during the Natal campaign. When succour was to be rendered theywere there. Their unassuming dauntlessness cost them many lives andeventually an order was published forbidding them to go into the firing line.'Later in 1900 seasoned units arrived from England, fortune smiled on Britisharms and the Indian Ambulance Corps was disbanded. Gandhi and severalcomrades received the War Medal, and the corps was mentioned in dispatches.Gandhi hoped that the fortitude of the Indians in war would appeal to SouthAfrica's sense of fair play and help moderate white hostility towards colouredAsiatics. Perhaps the two communities would slowly grow closer together. Hehimself had no unspent belligerence and no further plans or ambitions in SouthAfrica; nothing foreshadowed the epic opportunity for leadership andrealization that awaited him there. He yearned to go home to India, and did-atthe end of 1901. He took his family. He settled down in Bombay to practise lawand enter Politics.Gandhi was forging ahead in both fields. In fact, he was beginning to tread apath which led to the routine success of a mediocre lawyer who made money,joined committees and grew a paunch, when a telegraphic summons from SouthAfrica asked him to return. He had promised to return if called. It pained himto break up his new life but it pleased him to be needed. Kasturbai and theboys remained in Bombay. Gandhi estimated that he might be away fourmonths to a year.Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, was making a trip to South. Africawhich the Indian community regarded as fateful, and they wanted theirgrievances presented to him by Gandhi. Hence the summons.Gandhi arrived in Durban near the end of 1902.Chamberlain, Gandhi assumed, had come to get a gift of thirty-five millionpounds from South Africa and to cement the post-war bonds between Boers andBritish. The Colonial Secretary certainly did not propose to antagonize theBoers. On the contrary, every possible concession would be made to them. Verywww.mkgandhi.org Page 64

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timessoon, in fact, General Louis Botha, the Boer leader, became Prime Minister ofthe British-dominated Union of South Africa and Jan Christian Smuts, anotherBoer general and lawyer, its Minister of Finance and Defence. Britain wastending Boer wounds and did not intend, therefore, to wound Boersusceptibilities by redressing Indian grievances. In British Natal, accordingly,Chamberlain received an Indian delegation, listened to Gandhi's plea andanswered with chilling evasiveness; in the former Boer republic of TransvaalGandhi was not even admitted into Chamberlain's presence, and those Indianrepresentatives who were admitted got no greater satisfaction than seeing him.From repeated rumblings in the Transvaal it seemed that a political volcanomight any day erupt and wipe out the entire Indian settlement. Gandhitherefore pitched his tent close to the crater; lie became a resident ofJohannesburg, the largest city of the Transvaal, opened a law office there and,without objection from the bar association, won the right to practise beforethe Supreme Court.The Transvaal government established an Asiatic Department to deal withIndians. This in itself was ominous; it suggested a racial approach. TheDepartment, which Gandhi charged with corruption, was manned, in the main,by British army officers who had come from India during the Boer War andelected to stay. Their mentality was that of the white Sahib in a colony ofcoloured inferiors.One of the top Asiatic Department ideologues was Lionel Curtis, AssistantColonial Secretary of the Transvaal, who later attained wider fame as a liberalapologist of imperialism. Gandhi went to see him in 1903 and Mr. Curtis wrotesubsequently: 'Mr. Gandhi was, I believe, the first Oriental I ever met'; butignorance has ever facilitated policy-making. Gandhi, Curtis says, 'started bytrying to convince me of the good points in the character of his countrymen,their industry, frugality, their patience'. Still the same Gandhian hope ofwinning friends by disproving calumnies! But Curtis replied, "Mr. Gandhi, youare preaching to the converted. It is not the vices of Indians that Europeans inthis country fear but their virtues.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 65

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIf the Indians in South Africa had consented to be 'hewers of wood and drawersof water' they would have had no trouble. But the whites, unprepared to acceptthe Indians as equals, used their monopoly of political power to handicap thebrown men from another part of the Empire. The purpose was unmistakablebecause frankly avowed. General Botha put it bluntly in an election speech atStanderton in January 1907, when he declared, 'If my party is returned to officewe will undertake to drive the coolies out of the country within four years.1And Smuts asserted in October 1906, The Asiatic cancer, which has alreadyeaten so deeply into the vitals of South Africa, ought to be resolutelyeradicated'. These were the Asiatic Department's marching orders.Gandhi stopped the whites far short of this goal.Throughout 1904, 1905 and the first part of 1906, the Transvaal AsiaticDepartment diligently carried out all anti- Indian regulations and showedspecial aptitude in inventing new ones. It looked as though the existence of theten thousand Indians of the Transvaal and of the more than one hundredthousand in South Africa was in jeopardy; the threats of Botha and Smutsappeared on the eve of being translated into actuality.Gandhi was now the recognized leader of South Africa's Indian community.Tension between whites and Indians was growing. Nevertheless Gandhi forsookthe political arena when the Zulu 'rebellion' occurred in the first half of 1906and joined the British army with a small group of twenty-four Indian volunteersto serve as stretcher bearers and sanitary aids. Gandhi said he joined becausehe believed that 'the British Empire existed for the welfare of the world'; hehad a 'genuine sense of loyalty to it.The 'rebellion' was really a punitive expedition or 'police action' which openedwith the exemplary hanging of twelve Zulus and continued to the last as aghastly procession of shootings and floggings. Since white physicians and nurseswould not tend sick and dying Zulus, the task was left to the Indians whowitnessed all the horrors of black men whipped till their skin came off in strips.Gandhi's party sometimes came on the scene five or six days after the whiteswww.mkgandhi.org Page 66

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeshad passed by and found the victims suffering agony from open, suppuratingwounds. The Indians marched as many as forty miles a day.After a month's service, the Indian unit was demobilized and each manhonoured with a special medal. Gandhi had held the rank of sergeant-major. Allmembers wore khaki uniform, this time with puttees.When Gandhi returned from this expedition he was obliged to plunge into acold war with the British which ended in an historic victory for moral force andbrought him honour in India and fame throughout the world.www.mkgandhi.org Page 67

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter IXThe Transformation BeginsTHE Gandhi who worsted the South African government in prolonged combathad first conquered himself and transformed his living habits and inner essence.That altered his relations with Kasturbai and their children.A photograph of Mrs. Gandhi on her first arrival in South Africa in 1897—attwenty-eight—shows her a beautiful woman, elegantly dressed in a rich, silksari. The fine oval face with eyes wide apart, well-formed nose, delicatelycurved lips and perfectly shaped chin must have made her very attractiveindeed. She was not as tall as Gandhi. He was photographed on the sameoccasion in a European suit, stiff white collar and stiff white shirt, a gay,striped necktie and a round button in his lapel buttonhole. On his head is a thinskull-cap. In a second exposure he is without head-dress. His full lips begin toreflect the will-power tempered by powerful emotional self- control which theylater expressed so eloquently. But on the whole he looks the average Indian,Europeanized by constant imitation of the white world.Hiralal and Manilal, their two sons who came with them to South Africa, weredressed in knee-length coats and long, Western trousers. They wore shoes andstockings; they had not worn them in India. Neither had Kasturbai. All threedisliked them and complained to the head of the family that their feet feltcramped and the stockings stank. But Gandhi used his authority to compelobedience. He also inflicted the Western torture of knives and forks at meals;finger-eating had been so much more comfortable and tasty.Gandhi earned five to six thousand pounds a year from his legal work—a verybig income in those days in South Africa. At one time, in Durban, he rented anEnglish villa at the beach a few doors from the Attorney-General's home, andalways his life resembled that of the professional man who had made good.Before going to study law in London, Gandhi had yearned to be a doctor, and ineffect he always was. He offered free medical advice to most of his legalwww.mkgandhi.org Page 68

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesclients. One of them, Lutavasinh, was asthmatic. Gandhi induced him to fastand give up smoking. Later, Gandhi put him, on a diet of rice, milk andmarmalade for a month. 'At the end of the month,' Gandhi boasted years later,'he was free from asthma.'An Indian business man's son became ill suddenly; the doctor advised anoperation. Gandhi was summoned. To calm the father, Gandhi agreed to bepresent at the operation. The child died under the knife; Gandhi never shookoff the impression.Gandhi was also Kasturbai's midwife. He had studied a popular work onchildbirth, which constituted a full course in obstetrics and infant care, and,when labour came too swiftly for professional help to be fetched, Gandhihimself delivered his fourth son, Devadas, on May 22, 1900. 'I was not nervous,'he said. For two months after the birth of Devadas and also for a while afterthe birth of Ramdas, his third son, in South Africa in 1897, Gandhi employed anurse; she helped Kasturbai in the household. But caring for infants 'I didmyself, Gandhi writes.Gandhi was constantly interfering in household matters; that incensedKasturbai. He considered himself her teacher, which annoyed her. He imposednew, rigid rules of behaviour. The 'blind, infatuated' love he gave Kasturbai wasa diminishing recompense for these tribulations. But 'A Hindu wife', Gandhideclared, 'regards implicit obedience to her husband as the highest religion. AHindu husband regards himself as the lord and master of his wife who must everdance attendance upon him.' Gandhi, in this period, was a very Hindu husband.He thought himself 'a cruelly kind' spouse. At times, Kasturbai would have failedto notice the kindness.Frequently, Gandhi's friends and his law clerks and assistants, whom he treatedlike sons, stayed with him. Among these non-paying boarders was Sheik Mehtab,his athletic, meat-eating boyhood friend. Gandhi had brought him along on hissecond trip from India. Mehtab had hardly settled in the Gandhi householdwhen he began secretly to introduce prostitutes into his room. Gandhi wasinformed but he refused to believe it until on one occasion he caught Mehtab inwww.mkgandhi.org Page 69

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesthe act. Mehtab had to leave the house. Later Mehtab married and reformedand wrote mediocre inspirational verse for the Gandhian passive resisters; hiswife went to prison as a passive resister.There was no running water in the Gandhi home; each room had a chamberpot. Gandhi would not employ an untouchable 'sweeper' who in India does all'unclean' tasks. He and Kasturbai carried out the pots. She had no choice; heinsisted. But one clerk had been an untouchable himself and had become aChristian in order to escape the ugly disabilities which Hindus inflict on their'outcasts'. To the orthodox Kasturbai, however, he remained an untouchableand she balked at cleaning his pot. In fact she hated the whole business and didnot see why she, or her husband for that matter, should perform such tasks.Gandhi compelled her to °hey; he considered it part of her 'education'. But shecried and her eyes were red with anger and tears. He protested; not only mustshe do this work but she had to do it cheerfully and when he saw her weep, heshouted, 'I will not have this nonsense in my house.''Keep your house to yourself and let me go,' she screamed.Gandhi grabbed her by the hand, dragged her to the gate, opened it and wasabout to push her out.'Have you no shame!' she exclaimed through copious tears. 'Where am I to go? Ihave no parents or relatives here. For Heaven's sake, behave yourself and shutthe gate. Let us not be found making scenes like this.'This brought Gandhi to his senses. He possessed a temper and temperament,and his subsequent Mahatma-calm was the product of training.In 1901 Gandhi decided to return to India. On the eve of his departure—with hisfamily—the Indian community outdid itself in concrete demonstrations ofgratitude. He was presented with numerous gold and diamond ornaments. ForKasturbai there was a very valuable gold necklace.Gandhi had received gifts when he left for India in 1896. They were not likethese; they were small, personal tokens of appreciation which he had acceptedeasily in that spirit. Since then, moreover, his view of personal possessions hadwww.mkgandhi.org Page 70

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesbeen gradually changing. He was beginning to see danger in wealth andproperty. He had been pleading with people to conquer their infatuation forjewellery. Yet now he himself owned more than anybody whom he had tried toconvert.After the presentation party he went home and spent a sleepless night. Thegifts might be construed as payment for services which he had rendered with nothought of material gain. He wanted to give them up. But he saw the advantageof retention. Torn between the yearning for financial security and the desirefor the freedom derived from owning nothing he paced up and down for hoursarguing with himself. He was also aware that he faced a family crisis if hedecided to return the gifts. Kasturbai would protest; he would be making herunhappy. But by morning his mind was made up: the gifts must go.He had won his own battle. Could he convince Kasturbai?First, in order to make the renunciation a fact beyond family dispute, hedrafted a letter which elaborated a plan of using the gifts to create acommunity fund. Then he proceeded to recruit Hiralal and Manilal, his first andsecond born. They were readily persuaded. They had no interest in jewels andno objection to his emerging new philosophy of austerity. Besides, Papa was acompelling debater.'Let's return them,' they agreed.'Then you will plead with your mother, won't you!' Gandhi hinted.'Certainly,' the young boys said with alacrity. 'Just leave it to us. She does notneed ornaments. She would want them for us, and if we don't want them whyshould she not part with them!'But the boys failed to move Kasturbai. Gandhi came to their aid.'It's all very well for you,' Kasturbai started calmly. You don't care for jewels.You don't wear them. And it's easy enough for you to influence the boys. They'llalways dance to your tune. As for me, I have already obeyed your order not towear trinkets. After all the talking you've done about other people not wearingjewels it would not do for me to wear them. But what about my daughters-in-www.mkgandhi.org Page 71

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeslaw!' she said with bitterness and growing determination. 'They will be sure towant them.''Well'; Gandhi put it mildly, 'the children aren't married yet. We've always saidthey must not marry young. When they are grown up they can take care ofthemselves. And surely we will not choose brides for our sons who are fond ofjewellery.'Young things like pretty things,' argued Kasturbai.Gandhi tried to soothe. 'Well,' he said, 'if they do, if after all we have toprovide them with ornaments, I shall be here. You will ask me then.'That infuriated Kasturbai. 'Ask you! I know you by this time. You took myjewellery away from me. Imagine you offering to get jewels for your daughtersin-law!You, who are trying to make monks of my boys.'No,' she shouted, 'the ornaments will not be returned.'The Hindu wife was defiant. 'Besides,' she exclaimed, 'the necklace is mine. Youhave no right to return that.' This was a retreat. She had given up hope of theirkeeping all the jewels. At least, the necklace.Eager to mollify her, Gandhi nevertheless was hard. Was the necklace given toyou for your service or for my service!' he asked rhetorically.Kasturbai burst into tears. 'It's the same thing,' she sobbed. 'Service rendered byyou is as though rendered by me. I have toiled and moiled for you day andnight. Is that no service? You forced all and sundry guests upon me, making meweep bitter tears and I slaved for them.'Gandhi knew this was a just reproach. But he did not admit it at the moment.He was determined to return the jewels and create the community fund. Hewas 'definitely of the opinion that a public worker should accept no costly gifts'.He was beginning to believe that he should own nothing costly, whether givenor earned. Against this powerful impulse which would soon reach full flowerand alter his entire mode of life, Kasturbai had no argument. Hers was theinstinctive, million-year-old female desire for adornment and the fear, equallywww.mkgandhi.org Page 72

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesprimitive, of material want. But a plea for acquisitiveness could not standagainst Gandhi's penchant for renunciation, nor could Kasturbai induce him toprefer self- enrichment to community service. In the end, he simply assertedhis male authority and announced that the 1901 gifts and those of 1896, wouldbe surrendered to trustees. So it was, and the fund, augmented from othersources, served South African Indians for decades thereafter.Shortly after this episode, Gandhi, having returned to India and rented a homeand chambers in Bombay, received a call at this office from an Americaninsurance agent. The agent had a 'pleasant countenance' and 'a sweet tongue.'He discussed Gandhi's future 'as though we were old friends'. In America, theagent said, 'a person like you would always carry insurance; life is uncertain'.Moreover, 'It's a religious duty to be insured'. This impressed Gandhi; he hadbelieved that faith in God made an insurance policy superfluous. 'And whatabout your family?' the agent continued. Gandhi knew that his surrender of thefortune in jewels had intensified Kasturbai's insecurity. What would happen toher and the boys if he died; would it be right again to burden his generousbrother who had already spent so much money on them? So Gandhi took out aninsurance policy for ten thousand rupees or, roughly, a thousand pounds invalues of that time. The glib American agent subverted the future Mahatma.The future Mahatma had not yet solved his psychological problems.Hardly had the family found itself in Bombay than Manilal, aged ten, went downwith a severe case of typhoid complicated, before long, by pneumonia. Atnight, the boy had a very high temperature.A Parsi doctor was called. He said there was no effective ftiedicine. Everythingdepended on proper diet and good nursing. He recommended chicken broth andeggs.'But we are absolute vegetarians,' Gandhi told the doctor.Your son's life is in danger,' the doctor cautioned. "We could give him milkdiluted with water but that will not provide enough nourishment.' The Parsiphysician said many of his Hindu patients were vegetarians but in seriousillnesses they obeyed his instructions.www.mkgandhi.org Page 73

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi replied, 'Even for life itself we may not do certain things. Rightly orwrongly it is part of my religious conviction that man may not eat eggs andmeat. It is in crises such as this that a person's faith is truly tested.' To be avegetarian in normal circumstances and take meat when the body is understress would mock vegetarianism. Gandhi accordingly told the doctor he wouldpersist. 'I propose, in addition,' Gandhi declared, 'to try some hydropathicremedies which I happen to know.' He had been reading pamphlets on watercure by a Dr. Kuhne of Leipzig.Gandhi informed Manilal about this conversation. The boy was too weak to domore than assent. The father now assumed complete charge of the patient. Hegave Manilal several three-minute hot hip baths a day and starved him on adiluted orange juice for three days.But the temperature remained at 104. Manilal was delirious. Gandhi worried.He worried about what people would say, what his elder brother Laxmidas, nowthe head of the family, would say. And Kasturbai was anxious and angry. Shouldhe try another physician, or perhaps consult an expert in ancient Indianayurvedic medicine?On the other hand, he said to himself, 'the thread of life is in God's hand; andGod must be pleased by my adherence to vegetarianism and natural cures'.The boy's condition became extremely critical. Gandhi decided to give him awet pack. He dipped a bedsheet in water, wrung it out, wrapped it aroundManilal's body, covered him with two blankets, and put a wet towel to thehead.Manilal's body was hot and dry. Gandhi was frantic. The boy was not perspiring.Kasturbai fretted. Gandhi put her in charge, telling her strictly not to alteranything; he himself felt he had to leave the house to lessen the tension withinhim. He walked the streets and prayed, calling, 'God, God, God, God, pleaseGod.'Excited, exhausted, he returned home.'It is you Bapu,' Manilal said to his father.www.mkgandhi.org Page 74

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesYes, darling,' Gandhi replied.'I am burning, take me out.''Just a few more minutes, son. You are perspiring. You will soon be well.''No Bapu, I cannot stand it any longer. I am burning up.''Another minute. It will relieve you.'Gandhi opened the sheet and wiped the body dry. Then they both fell asleep inthe same bed. Next morning the fever was down. Gradually, it disappeared.Gandhi kept the boy on diluted milk and fruit juices for forty days until he wascompletely recovered.Was it hydropathy? Or diet! It happens that Gandhi did the right thing from themedical point of view. Orange juice and milk were at least as good as, perhaps- better than, eggs and chicken. But Gandhi ascribed Manilal's delivery to 'God'sgrace'.'God saved my honour,' he said.Gandhi had settled down in Bombay, but in 1902 he was again recalled to SouthAfrica. He now realized that he would ere for a long time and sent for his wifeand three boys; Harilal, the eldest, remained in India. Gandhi resumed hislucrative law practice in Johannesburg.Gandhi insisted that his clients tell him the whole truth; he dropped many caseswhen he discovered that he had been deceived. The lawyer's duty, he held, wasnot to prove the guilty innocent but to help the court to arrive at the truth.If a person, wishing to retain him, made a confession of wrong-doing, Gandhiwould say, Why don't you plead guilty and take the penalty?' He thought therewas too much litigation for community health and individual morality. 'A truelawyer', he declared, 'is one who places truth and service in the first place andthe emoluments of the profession in the next place only.' But the true lawyer,he found, was a rarity. Lawyers often lied, money talked, and witnessesconsciously perjured themselves.www.mkgandhi.org Page 75

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesEven as a lawyer his primary impulse was to change men. He respected noprecedent, tradition, enactment, or habit that obstructed a change he aspiredto introduce. He changed his own habits with the greatest alacrity.Gandhi suffered from occasional rheumatic inflammation, headaches andconstipation. Though a vegetarian he was a heavy eater. He concluded that heoverate. Having heard of the formation in England (Manchester) of a No-Breakfast Association, he dispensed with the morning meal and the headachesand other physical ailments disappeared. Thereafter he took no more laxativesor medicines. Instead, if necessary he applied a poultice of clean earthmoistened with cold water to his abdomen; this worked alimentary -miracles.Simultaneously, he adopted a diet based on sun-baked fruits and nuts. Grapesand almonds, according to his researches, were adequate nourishment for thetissues and nerves.He walked to and from his law office. As long as the family was in Johannesburgthe children accompanied him — a distance of five miles in all. In the office hebecame an expert typist.Once a white barber refused to cut Gandhi's hair. Without blaming the barber('There was every chance of his losing his custom if he should serve black men.We do not allow our barbers to serve our untouchable brethren'). Gandhibought a pair of clippers and thenceforth cut his own hair and that of the boys.Gandhi wore stiff white collars, but the laundry was expensive and, besides, itreturned work so slowly that he had to have several dozen collars. He took towashing and starching them himself. The first time he did it he used too muchstarch and the iron was not hot enough. In court, the starch began dropping offthe collar and Gandhi's colleagues laughed. 'But in the course of time I becamean expert washerman'. He saw 'the beauty of self help'.In 1903 Gandhi joined a group of Christians and Theosophists called the Seeker'sClub. They frequently read the Bhagavad- Gita together. Spurred by thisactivity Gandhi began studying the Gita again. His morning toilet requiredthirty-five minutes, 'fifteen minutes for the toothbrush', an old Indian custom,and twenty minutes for bathing. While cleaning his teeth, he memorized thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 76

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGita. Its outstanding lesson to him now was 'non-possession'. Straightaway heallowed his Bombay- American insurance policy to lapse. 'God would take care'of the family.But 'were not wife and children possessions?'The discussions at the Seekers led him to introspection. He concluded that hisemotions were undisciplined and that he lacked 'equability'. To be equable hewould have to treat family, friend and foe alike. This was Gita 'detachment'.One evening Gandhi went to an 'At Home' of the Proprietress of his favouritevegetarian restaurant. There he met a young man named Henry S. L. Polak,born at Dover in 1882, who had become a vegetarian after reading CountLeo Tolstoy. Polak also knew Odolf Just's Return to Nature, a treatise on naturecures which Gandhi cherished. They talked, found much in common andbecame friends. Polak was assistant editor of the Transvaal Critic. He had 'awonderful faculty', Gandhi said, 'of translating into practice anything thatappealed to his intellect. Some of the changes he had made in his life were asprompt as they were radical.' This description of what Gandhi liked in Polak is adescription of Gandhi.Some months earlier, in 1903, Gandhi had helped to start a weekly magazinecalled Indian Opinion. The paper was in difficulties, and to cope with them atfirst hand Gandhi took a trip to Durban where the magazine was published.Polak saw him off at the station and gave him a book to read for the longjourney. It was John Ruskin's Unto This Last.Ruskin's influence during his lifetime was very great, as art critic, essayist andwriter on ethics, sociology and economics. His monumental Fors Clavigera, ineight volumes published between 1871 and 1874, preached the dignity ofmanual labour, urged the simple life, and stressed the debilitating complexitiesof the modern economic system.Ruskin was sometimes contemptuous of the society in which he lived. 'Howmuch', he demanded in Sesame and Lilies, 'do you think we spend on libraries,public and private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?... Or, to gowww.mkgandhi.org Page 77

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeslower still, how much do you think the contents of the book-shelves of theUnited Kingdom, private and public, would fetch, as compared with thecontents of its wine- cellars?'The same iconoclastic spirit permeates Unto This Last: Four Essays on the FirstPrinciples of Political Economy, first published serially in the London CornhillMagazine and in Harper's, New York, in 1860 and later in book form. Of thiswork, forty years later, Gandhi said that it was written with 'blood and tears'.'Riches', Ruskin declared, 'are a power like that of electricity, acting throughinequalities or negations of itself. The force of the guinea you have in yourpocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbour's pocket. Ifhe did not want it, it would be of no use to you.' When he is poor and long outof work the guinea is more valuable to you. Therefore, 'what is really desired,under the name of riches, is essentially, power over men'.Consequently, men should seek 'not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; nothigher fortune but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, selfpossession;and honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuitsof peace'.Remembering that 'what one person has, another cannot have', the rich shouldabstain from luxuries until all, the poorest too, shall have enough, 'until thetime come and the kingdom, when Christ's gifts of bread and bequest of peaceshall be unto this last as unto thee...'To Gandhi it meant: only that economy is good which conduces to the good ofall. This Gandhi had known. The second lesson, which he had 'dimly realized',was that 'a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's, inasmuch as allhave the same right of earning their livelihood for their work'. Gandhi derivedthis interpretation from one sentence in Ruskin's book: 'A labourer serves hiscountry with his spade, just as a man in the middle rank of life serves it withthe sword, the pen, or the lancet.' But Ruskin did not say, as Gandhi did, thatthe work of all lias the same value'. On the contrary, Ruskin stressed, morethan anything else, 'the impossibility of Equality' between men. He merelycontended that the underprivileged must find protection in the morality of thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 78

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesfortunate. Ruskin hoped to alleviate the hardships of inequality by an appeal tothe conscience of the devout.The third lesson of Unto This Last-'that the life of labour, that is, the life of thetiller of the soil and the handicraftsman, is the worth living"—was completelynew to Gandhi. But these are Gandhi's words; the teaching, though not alien toRuskin, is scarcely to be found in the four essays. Ruskin merely suggested, infootnote, that the rich would be healthier with 'lighter dinner and more work'while the poor could do with more dinner and lighter work.Gandhi, who had never read Ruskin, started reading Unto This Last the momentthe train left Johannesburg and read all night. 'That book,' he said in October1946, 'marked the turning point in my life'. He immediately decided 'to changemy life in accordance with the ideals of the book'. He would go to live on afarm with his family and associates.As Gandhi read his deepest convictions into the Gita, so he wove his ownnotions into Ruskin. Those books appealed to him most which were closest tohis concept of life and, where they deviated, he brought them closer byinterpreting them. 'It was a habit with me'. Gandhi once wrote, 'to forget what Idid not like and to carry out in practice whatever I liked.'Ruskin, Gandhi observed in 1932, 'was content to revolutionize his mind' butlacked the strength to change his life. Gandhi suffered from no such deficiency.Bent on establishing a Walden on the veldt, he acted quickly. He bought a farmnear Phoenix, a town fourteen miles from Durban. Situated on a hill, itconsisted of a hundred acres with a well, some orange, mulberry and mangotrees and one dilapidated cottage. It cost a thousand pounds. Several richIndians helped with money. One Indian friend contributed quantities ofcorrugated iron for houses. Gandhi would have preferred mud huts withthatched roofs, but his colleagues vetoed that.Without delay, the presses and offices of Indian Opinion were transferred tothe farm. Albert West, the British editor of the magazine, whom Gandhi hadmet in a vegetarian restaurant, gave instant agreement to this startlingproject. They fixed a monthly allowance of three pounds for editor, errand boywww.mkgandhi.org Page 79

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesand compositor. That was in 1904. The magazine is still published in the sameplace by Manilal Gandhi.For a while, Gandhi's law practice required his presence in Johannesburg. Hecould not yet liberate himself for the new life at Phoenix. He wrote much ofthe matter that went into Indian Opinion and personally covered most of itsdeficits, which amounted to many pounds a month. He did a great deal of legalwork for Indians who entrusted him not only with their litigations but also withtheir savings. The Indian indentured labourers knew Gandhi as their championwith the authorities and in the courts. He also doctored them. Those whobecame free and accumulated wealth often gave him their money to keep; theyhad no knowledge of banking and little faith in the whites.A proprietor was seeking funds to expand a vegetarian dining room. Gandhi hada large sum belonging to Badri, a former serf. 'Badri,' said Gandhi, 'may I useyour money to help this restaurant? It requires a thousand pounds.''Brother,' Badri replied, 'give away the money if you like. I know nothing inthese matters. I know only you.'Gandhi lent the proprietor the money. In three months the restaurant failed.Gandhi paid back the money out of his own pocket.Henry Polak was assisting with the magazine, but Gandhi needed him in his lawbusiness too, and so Polak, who had settled on the Phoenix farm, came to livein Gandhi's 0 annesburg home which always resembled an Indian joint âmilyexcept that in the Gandhi household not only blood ives but friends, coworkers,employees and political associates resided under one roof. Gandhipaid the expenses.Polak Wanted to get married; he had postponed it for financial reasons. Buthaving made him a member of the joint Gandhi family, Gandhi urged him tomarry. 'You are now mine,' Gandhi said. Your concern about yourself and yourchildren is my concern. It is I who am marrying you and I do not see anyobjection to your marrying immediately.' Polak brought his bride from England.She was a Christian, Polak a Jew, but their real religion, Gandhi said, 'was thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 80

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesreligion of ethics'. Ever shaping others' lives, Gandhi also persuaded Albert Westto marry. West went to Scotland and returned with a wife, a mother-in-law anda sister. They were embraced in the joint family. At this stage of his life,Gandhi was interested in marrying off all his bachelor friends.The expanding Johannesburg household adopted the practice of maximummanual self-service. Instead of buying bread, unleavened wholemeal biscuitswere baked at home after a recipe of the remote but omnipresent Dr. Kuhne ofLeipzig, author of The New Science of Healing. For health and economyreasons, the flour was ground in a handmill with a huge iron wheel. Gandhi, thechildren and the Polaks took turns at this arduous labour. 'Good exercise for theboys,' said their exacting father. The boys also did the chamberpot chores.During 1904 and 1905, Gandhi, Kasturbai and their sons lived now inJohannesburg, now at Phoenix Farm. In both places, the problem of restraintand self-control preoccupied him. He began to fast, like his mother, wheneveran occasion presented itself. On the other days, he ate two meagre meals offruits and nuts. But after a fast he enjoyed his food more and wanted to eatmore. Fasts therefore could lead to indulgence! Gandhi's goal was the'disembodiment' and 'desirelessness' which, in Hindu thought, conduces to unionwith God. Mere abstention does not meet the Gita ideal; craving too must beabsent. If reduced food consumption stimulated the appetite the restraint wasnegatived.His task, therefore, was to conquer the palate. As a minimum, he dispensedwith spices and seasoning. Now began his lifelong search for a diet which, whilesustaining animal man lifted the mind above the animal.If he did not curb his passion for food, how could he curb stronger passions:anger, vanity and sex? We live, Gandhi argued, not in order to provide food,clothing and shelter for the body. We provide food, clothing and shelter for thebody in order to live. Material things are only the means to a spiritual end.When they become the end, the sole end, as they usually are, life loses contentand discontent afflicts mankind. The soul, alas, needs a temporary abode, but aclean mud hut will do as well as a palace, much better in fact. The body mustwww.mkgandhi.org Page 81

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesbe kept alive, not pampered. To achieve release for the spirit, the body mustbe subjected to the discipline of the mind.The denial of ordinary pleasures is masochism, a Westerner might say. Yet theChristian ethic is ascetic, and sainthood in all religions is related to self-denial.The year 1906 marked a crisis in Gandhi's struggle with his passions. He hadgiven up the house in Johannesburg, sent the family to Phoenix Farm, andvolunteered for medical work in the Zulu 'war'. The suppression of thetribesmen, with its insensate cruelty of man to man, depressed him. The longtreks to the hamlets of the suffering Negroes afforded ample opportunity forself-analysis; he must do more to make a better world. Also, he had apremonition of further discriminatory measures against Indians in South Africa.He must dedicate himself completely to public service.To Gandhi, selfless service did not mean the sacrifice of Part of one's assets; itrequired the investment of all of one's being. A dedicated person could notbelong to wife or children, for if he did, then they and not the work would bethe first consideration. To lead others he had to be immune to all temptationsand in command of all his desires.Gandhi accordingly resolved to give up sexual intercourse. Twice before, hehad tried to become continent. Kasturbai was willing. They began to sleep inseparate beds and he never retired until he was physically exhausted. Bothtimes he succumbed to temptation.This time, however, he took a vow.On his return from the Zulu uprising, Gandhi went to the farm and toldKasturbai of his pledge to forswear sex. She made no protest. 'She was neverthe temptress,' Gandhi asserted; he determined the character of their intimaterelations.Gandhi remained celibate from 1906, when he was thirty- seven, until his deathin 1948.The Indian word for continence is 'Brahmacharya', and a celibate man is calleda 'Brahmachari'. Brahmacharya 'fully and properly understood', Gandhi wrote inwww.mkgandhi.org Page 82

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times1924, 'means search after Brahma', or God. 'Brahmacharya', he added, 'signifiescontrol of all the senses at all times and at all places in thought, word anddeed'. It thus includes yet transcends sexual restraint; it embraces restraint indiet, emotions and speech. It rules out hate, anger, violence and untruth. Itcreates equability. It is desirelessness.'Perfect Brahmacharis', Gandhi wrote, 'are perfectly sinless. They are thereforenear to God. They are like God.' To that he aspired. It was the ultimate in selftransformation.It is difficult to plumb Gandhi's motives; it was difficult even for him to knowthem. Gandhi believed his celibacy was 'a response to the calls of public duty\On the other hand, 'My main object was to escape having more children.'But why avoid additional children? Phoenix Farm was one big joint family intowhich Gandhi invited many adults and children. Their care was a commonresponsibility and expense. More of his own would not have increased theburden.Kasturbai was anaemic. She was near death from internal haemorrhage. Agynecological operation, performed without chloroform because she was tooemaciated, brought relief but no cure.Brahmacharya is encountered frequently in Indian lore and life. But it isunusual for a married man to take the vow at the early age at which Gandhiadopted it. Kasturbai's health and Hinduism are part of the explanation. Thesight of women', he admitted in the Harijan magazine of June 15, 1947, 'hadceased to arouse any sexual urge in me in South Africa.' That was a third factor.Perhaps, too, he harked back to his behaviour while his father was dying.In retrospect, Gandhi naturally did not attribute the chastity vow to his ownphysiology or to Kasturbai's, nor to his psychology. On the contrary, heidentified effect with motive and the effect was spiritual. The chaste lifeapparently reinforced his passion and determination to sacrifice for thecommon weal. Less carnal, he became less self centered. He seemed suddenlylifted above the material. A new inner drive possessed him. Storms continuedwww.mkgandhi.org Page 83

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesto rage within, but now he could harness them for the generation of morepower.A new Gandhi faced the South African government.www.mkgandhi.org Page 84

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XSeptember 11, 1906"NEARLY three thousand persons filled the Imperial Theatre in Johannesburg.The big hall throbbed with the din of voices which spoke the Tamil and Telugulanguages of southern India, Gujarati and Hindi. The few women wore saris.The men wore European and Indian clothes; some had Hindu turbans and caps,some Moslem headgear. Among them were rich merchants, miners, lawyers,indentured labourers, waiters, rickshaw boys, domestic servants, hucksters andpoor shopkeepers. Many were delegates representing the eighteen thousandIndians of the Transvaal, now a British colony; they were meeting to decidewhat to do about pending discriminatory enactments against Indians. AbdulGani, chairman of the Tansvaal British-Indian Association and manager of a bigbusiness firm, presided. Sheth Haji Habib delivered the main address. MohandasK. Gandhi sat on the platform.Gandhi had convened the meeting. On returning from service to the Zulus, andafter acquainting Kasturbai with his celibacy vow, he had rushed off toJohannesburg in answer to a summons from the Indian community. TheTransvaal Government Gazette of August 22, 1906, had printed the draft of anordinance to be submitted to the legislature. 'If adopted, Gandhi decided, 'itwould spell absolute ruin for the Indians of South Africa. Better die than submitto such a law'.'But how are we to die?' Gandhi wondered. He had no idea what to do. He onlyknew that the ordinance must be resisted; nowhere in the world, he believed,had free men been subjected to such humiliating, restrictive legislation.The proposed ordinance required all Indian men and women, and children overeight, to register with the authorities, submit to finger-printing and accept acertificate which they were to carry with them at all times. A person whofailed to register and leave his fingerprints lost his right of residence and couldbe imprisoned, fined, or deported from the Transvaal. An Indian apprehendedwww.mkgandhi.org Page 85

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeson the street or anywhere without certificate could likewise be imprisoned,fined or deported even though he owned valuable property or engaged inimportant commercial transactions.The Indians were incensed. This act was directed specifically against Indiansand was therefore an affront to them and to India. If passed it would be thebeginning of similar laws in other parts of South Africa; in the end, no Indiancould remain in South Africa. Moreover, the ordinance would permit a policeofficer to accost an Indian woman on the street or enter her home and ask forher registration document. In view of the complete or partial aloofness inwhich Indian women lived, this feature of the measure was highly offensiveboth to Moslems and Hindus. 'If anyone came forward to demand a certificatefrom my wife,' exclaimed an irate Indian at a preliminary committee meetingattended by Gandhi, 'I would shoot him on the spot and take the consequences.'That was the mood of the mass meeting in the Imperial Theatre.Orchestra, balcony and gallery were crowded long before e chairman openedthe proceedings. Angry speeches in four languages stirred the volatile audienceto a high emotional Patch and then Sheth Haji Habib read a resolution, which nhi had helped to prepare, demanding non-compliance the registrationprovisions. Haji Habib called on the assembly to adopt it, but not in the usualmanner. They must he urged, 'with God as their witness'.Gandhi started. A sensitive ear and a keen intuition quickly told him that thiswas an extraordinary event. An action with God as witness was a religious vowwhich could not be broken. It was not the ordinary motion passed by a show ofhands at a public function and immediately forgotten.Gandhi then spoke. He begged them to consider coolly what they were doing.'Notwithstanding the differences of nomenclature in Hinduism and Islam,' hedeclared, 'we all believe in one and the same God. To pledge ourselves or totake an oath in the name of God or with Him as a witness is not something tobe trifled with. If having taken such an oath we violate our pledge we are guiltybefore God and man. Personally, I hold that a man who deliberately andknowingly takes a pledge and breaks it forfeits his manhood ... A man whowww.mkgandhi.org Page 86

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeslightly pledges his word and then breaks it becomes a man of straw and fitshimself for punishment here as well as hereafter.'Having warned them, he tried to stir them. If ever a crisis in community affairswarranted a vow, now was the time. Caution had its place but also its limits.'The government has taken leave of all sense of decency. We will be revealingour unworthiness and cowardice if we cannot stake our all in the face of theconflagration that envelops us ...The purpose of the resolution was not to impress the outside world. A vote infavour constituted a personal vow and each one of them had to decide whetherhe possessed the inner strength to keep it. In consequence of the vow, theymight be jailed; in prison they might be beaten and insulted. They might gohungry and be exposed to heat and cold. They might lose their jobs, theirwealth. They might be deported. The struggle might last a long time, years.'But I can boldly declare and with certainty', Gandhi exclaimed, 'that so long asthere is even a handful of men true to then* pledge, there can be only one endto the struggle—and that is victory.'The audience applauded. He lowered his voice. Many in the hall, moved by theenthusiasm and indignation which dominated the meeting, might pledgethemselves that evening and repent the next morning or the next month.Perhaps only a handful would be left to face the final contest with the powerfulgovernment. To him it would make no difference. 'There is only one courseopen to me', Gandhi asserted, 'to die but not to submit to the law. Even if theunlikely happened and everyone else flinched, leaving me to face the musicalone, I am confident that I will never violate my pledge. Please do notmisunderstand me. I am not saying this out of vanity. But I wish to put you andespecially the leaders on the platform, on your guard ... If you have not thewill or the ability to stand firm even when you are perfectly isolated you mustnot only not take pledge but you must declare your opposition before theresolution is put ... Although we are going to take the pledge in a body, no onemay imagine that default on the part of one or of many can absolve the restwww.mkgandhi.org Page 87

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesfrom their obligation. Everyone must be true to his pledge even unto death, nomatter what others do.'Gandhi sat down. The chairman added his sobering words. Then the vote wastaken. Everyone present rose, raised his hand and swore to God not to obey theproposed anti-Indian ordinance if it became law.The next day, September 12, the Imperial Theatre was completely destroyed byfire. Many Indians regarded it as an omen that the ordinance would meet asimilar fate. To Gandhi it was a coincidence. He did not believe in such omens.Fate ld not beckon to Gandhi with mute signs. The future spoke in him throughthat awesome, Himalayan self-assurance which he displayed at the meeting. Heknew he could stand alone.www.mkgandhi.org Page 88

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XIGandhi Goes ToTHERE was nothing passive about Gandhi. He disliked the term 'PassiveResistance'. Following the collective vow at the Imperial Theatre, Gandhioffered a prize for a better name for this new kind of mass-yet-individualopposition to government unfairness.Maganlal Gandhi, a second cousin of Gandhi who lived at Phoenix Farm,suggested 'Sadagraha'; 'firmness in a good cause'. Gandhi amended it to'Satyagraha'; satya is truth, which equals love and agraha is firmness or force.'Satyagraha', therefore, means truth force or love-force. Truth and love areattributes of the soul.This became Gandhi's target; to be strong not with the strength of the brutebut with the strength of the spark of God.Satyagraha, Gandhi said, is 'the vindication of truth not by infliction of sufferingon the opponent but on one's self. That requires self-control. The weapons ofthe Satyagrahi are within him.Satyagraha is peaceful. If words fail to convince the adversary perhaps purity,humility and honesty will. The opponent must be 'weaned from error bypatience and sympathy', weaned, not crushed; converted, not annihilated.Satyagraha is the exact opposite of the policy of an-eyefor-an-eye-for-an-eyefor-an-eye,which ends in making everybody blind.You cannot inject new ideas into a man's head by chopping it off; neither willyou infuse a new spirit into his heart by piercing it with a dagger.Acts of violence create bitterness in the survivors and brutality in thedestroyers; Satyagraha aims to exalt both sides.Gandhi hoped that if he practised the Sermon on the Mount, Smuts would recallits precepts. Satyagraha assumes a constant beneficent interaction betweenwww.mkgandhi.org Page 89

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timescontestants with a view to their ultimate reconciliation. Violence, insults andsuperheated propaganda obstruct this achievement.Several days after the spiritual baptism in Satyagraha at the Imperial Theatre,the Transvaal government released Asiatic women from the necessity ofregistration under the 'Black Act'. This may or may not have been a result of thenew Indian movement, but Indians felt encouraged by the success of Gandhi'stactics.Before confronting the government with Satyagraha, Gandhi thought itdesirable to go to London. Transvaal was a Grown Colony; the King could, onadvice of his ministers, withhold royal assent from legislation. Accompanied bya Moslem soda water manufacturer named H. O. Ali, Gandhi sailed for England.It was his first visit since his shy law-student days. Now he was the vocallobbyist. He interviewed Lord Elgin, the Secretary of State for the Colonies andMr. John Morley, Secretary of State for India and, like many champions ofcauses before and since, addressed a meeting of M.P.s, in committee room ofthe House of Commons- It gave Gandhi special Pleasure to work with DadabhaiNaoroji, The Grand Old Man of India’. Dadabhai, as everybody called him, wasPresident of the London Indian Society for more than fifty years, a teacher ofGujarati in University College, London, a past president of the Indian NationalCongress party, and on July 6, 1892, at the age of sixty-one, was elected to theBritish Parliament as the Liberal Member for Central Finsbury by a majority ofthree votes. Before the poll, Lord Salisbury, the British Prime Minister, hadsaid, 'I doubt if we have got to that point of view where a British constituencywould elect a black man'. The gibe gave Dadabhai his seat and fame. As astudent in the Inner Temple, Gandhi once sat, reverent and silent, at the feetof Dadabhai. Now, autumn 1906, Gandhi and Dadabhai were associates in apolitical enterprise.Throughout the six weeks' sojourn, Englishmen assisted Gandhi in winningfriends, arranging meetings, licking stamps, pasting envelopes, etc. Theirgenerous co-operation led him to remark that 'benevolence is by no meanspeculiar to the brown skin'.www.mkgandhi.org Page 90

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesWhen the ship on which they were returning to South Africa stopped at thePortuguese island of Madeira, Gandhi and Ali received a cable from Londonannouncing that Lord Elgin would not sanction the Transvaal anti-Asiatic bill. Inthe next two weeks on board ship, Gandhi and Ali were happy; they had won.It transpired, however, that Lord Elgin had employed a 'trick'. He had told theTransvaal Commissioner in London that the King would disallow the registrationordinance. But since the Transvaal would cease to be a Crown Colony onJanuary 1, 1907, it could then re-enact the ordinance without royal approval.Gandhi condemned this as a 'crooked policy'.In due course, Transvaal set up responsible government and adopted the AsiaticRegistration Act to go into effect on July 31, 1907. Indians stigmatized it as the'Black Act', morally black, aimed at black, brown and yellow men. Gandhi, whowas light brown, often referred to himself as 'black'.Gandhi confidently told the Indian community that 'even a crooked policy wouldin time turn straight if only we are true to ourselves'. The Indians prepared tooffer Satyagraha. Uneasy, Prime Minister General Botha sent them messagesaying he 'was helpless'; the white population insisted on the legislation.Therefore the Government would be firm.So would the Indians. One Moslem, Ahmad Mohammed Kachhalia, apparentlyspeaking for many Satyagrahis, said, "I swear in the name of God that I will behanged but I will not submit to this law.'Some Indians took out permits under the Act, but most did not. A number ofIndians were accordingly served with official notices to register or leave theTransvaal. Failing to do either, they were brought before a magistrate onJanuary 11, 1908. Gandhi was among them. He had attended the same court asa lawyer. Now he stood in the dock. Respectfully he told the judge that asleader he merited the heaviest sentence. Judge Jordan unobligingly gave himonly two months' simple imprisonment 'without hard labour'.It was Gandhi's first term in jail.www.mkgandhi.org Page 91

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi recorded this jail experience in an article printed at the time. Theprison authorities were friendly, the meals bad, the cells over-crowded. Gandhiwent in with four other Satyagrahis. From notes kept in prison with hiscustomary meticulousness, he knew how many joined them each day and thefigures are reproduced in the published account. By January 29, their numberhad risen to 155.Gandhi read the Gita in the morning and the Koran, in English translation, atnoon. He used the Bible to teach English to a Chinese Christian fellow prisoner.He also read Ruskin, Socrates, Tolstoy, Huxley, Bacon's essays and Carlyle's live.He was happy; he believed that 'whoever has a taste for reading good books isable to bear loneliness in any place great ease'. Indeed, he seemed to regretthat his sentence was so short for he had commenced to do a Gujaratitranslation of a book by Carlyle and of Ruskin's Unto This Last, and: 'I would nothave become tired even if I had got more than two months.'Reading and translating were interrupted by a visitor from the outside; he wasAlbert Cartwright, editor of the Johannesburg Transvaal Leader and a friend ofGandhi; he came as an emissary from General Jan Christian Smuts. Cartwrightbrought a compromise solution drafted by Smuts.Smuts's proposal required the Indians to register voluntarily. Then the 'BlackAct' would be repealed.On January 30, the Johannesburg Chief of Police came to the jail andpersonally conducted Gandhi to Pretoria for a meeting with Smuts. Theprisoner, in prison uniform, and the general had a long talk. Gandhi wantedassurances of the repeal and he stipulated that public mention be made of theIndians' resistance.Smuts said, 'I could never entertain a dislike for your people. You know I too ama barrister. I had some Indian fellow students in my time. But I must do myduty. The Europeans want this law ... I accept the alterations you havesuggested in the draft. I have consulted General Botha and I assure you that Iwill repeal the Asiatic Act as soon as most of you have undergone voluntaryregistration.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 92

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSmuts rose.Where am I to go?' Gandhi asked.You are free this very moment.'What about the other prisoners?' Gandhi asked.'I am phoning the prison officials to release the other prisoners tomorrowmorning'.It was evening and Gandhi did not have a copper in W8 pockets. Smut'ssecretary gave him the fare to Johannesburg.In Johannesburg Gandhi encountered stormy opposition. cyihy was not the Actrepealed first, before registration?' Indians demanded at a public meeting.That would not be in the nature of a compromise,' Gandhi replied."What if General Smuts breaks faith with us?' they argued.'A Satyagrahi', Gandhi said, 'bids goodbye to fear. He is therefore never afraidof trusting the opponent. Even if the opponent plays him false twenty times,the Satyagrahi is ready to trust him for the twenty-first time—for an implicittrust in human nature is the very essence of his creed.'Optimism about human nature was the starting post of all Gandhi's activities; itsometimes made him sound naive. His optimism sprang from a belief that 'mancan change his temperament, can control it' although he 'cannot eradicate it.God has given him no such liberty'. Change and control, therefore, requireconstant effort.Smuts had made the point that unless Indians in the Transvaal registered, therewould be no check on Indian immigration, and the State might be inundatedwith unwanted Asiatics. Gandhi accepted this and told the public meeting thatvoluntary registration would indicate that 'we do not intend to bring a singleIndian into the Transvaal surreptitiously or by fraud'.Gandhi took into consideration the pressure on the government from raceprejudicedwhites. Therefore he was ready to accept voluntary registration.But he objected to compulsory registration by statute because a governmentwww.mkgandhi.org Page 93

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesmust treat all citizens equally. He did not want Indians to bow to force; thatreduced the dignity and stature of individuals. On the other hand, Gandhiexplained to the meeting, collaboration freely given—in view of the opponent'sknown difficulties—was generous and hence ennobling. Smuts had withdrawnthe compulsion from registration; that changed the entire situation.A giant Pathan from the wild mountains of north-west India near the KhyberPass stood up and said, 'We have heard that you have betrayed the communityand sold it to General Smuts for fifteen thousand pounds. We will never givethe fingerprints nor allow others to do so. I swear with Allah as my witness thatI will kill the man who takes the lead in applying for registration.'Gandhi's book on Satyagraha records this charge for posterity. He defendedhimself against it, and declared, despite the threat, that he would be the firstto give his fingerprints. Then he added, 'Death is the appointed end of all life.To die by the hand of a brother, rather than by disease or in such other way,cannot be for me a matter of sorrow. And if even in such a case, I am free fromthe thought of anger or hatred against my assailant, I know that that willredound to my eternal welfare, and even the assailant will later on realize myperfect innocence.' The audience listened in silence; it could not have foreseena nearly fatal assault in the immediate future or the death of Gandhi, fortyyears later, at the hands of a brother.Gandhi arranged to register on February 10, the first to do so. He went to hislaw office in the morning as usual. Outside he saw a group of big Pathans.Among them was Mir Alam, a client of Gandhi's, six feet tall and a powerfulbuild. Gandhi greeted the Pathans, but their response was ominously cold.After a little while, Gandhi and several companions left the office andcommenced walking to the registration bureau- The Pathans followed closebehind. Just before Gandhi had reached his destination, Mir Alam steppedforward and said, Where are you going?''I propose to take out a certificate of registration,' Gandhi replied.www.mkgandhi.org Page 94

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesBefore he could finish the explanation a heavy blow struck Gandhi on the top ofhis head. 'I at once fainted with the words 'Hey, Rama' (Oh, God) on my lips,'reads his own account. Those were his last words on January 30, 1948 the dayhe died.Other blows fell on Gandhi as he lay on the ground; and the Pathans kicked himfor good measure.He was carried into an office. When he regained consciousness, the ReverendJoseph J. Doke, a bearded Baptist idealist, was bending over him. 'How do youfeel? said Doke.'I am all right,' Gandhi answered, 'but I have pains in the teeth and ribs. Whereis Mir Alam?''He has been arrested with the other Pathans,' Doke said.'They should be released,' Gandhi murmured. 'They thought they were doingright, and I have no desire to prosecute them.'Gandhi was taken to the Doke home, and the wounds in his cheek and lip werestitched. He asked that Mr. Chamney, the Registrar for Asiatics, be brought tohim so that he could give his fingerprints without delay. The process hurtGandhi Physically; every movement was painful. Chamney began to weep. 'I hadoften to write bitterly against him,' Gandhi declared, 'but this showed me howman's heart may be softened by events.'Gandhi remained under the tender care of the 'godly family' ten days. Severaltimes, Gandhi, feeling the need of I^m!°rt' asked Olive, the little Dokedaughter, to sing, 'Lead, y Light'. It was one of this favourite Christian hymns.After recovering, Gandhi indefatigably preached loyalty to his registrationsettlement. Kasturbai and the boys had worried about him after Mir Alam'sattack; Gandhi visited them at Phoenix Farm and spent most of the time therewriting for Indian Opinion in explanation of his compromise with Smuts forvoluntary fingerprinting. Many Indians followed Gandhi without really agreeing,and he tried to convince them.www.mkgandhi.org Page 95

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesWhat was Gandhi's embarrassment, therefore, when Smuts refused to fulfill hispromise to repeal the 'Black Act'. Instead, Smuts offered the legislature a billwhich validated the voluntary certificates but kept the compulsory-registrationlaw.'There you are,' the Indians taunted Gandhi. 'We have been telling you that youare very credulous.'In a charitable and objective mood two decades later, when Satyagraha inSouth Africa was published, Gandhi asserted, 'It is quite possible that inbehaving to the Indians as he did in 1908, General Smuts was not guilty of adeliberate breach of faith.' But in the heat of the battle, in 1908, Gandhicontributed articles to Indian Opinion under the caption, 'Foul Play', and calledSmuts a 'heartless man'.The Indian community's temper gradually rose to fever pitch. A meeting wascalled at the Hamidia Mosque in Johannesburg at four o'clock in the afternoonon August 16, 1908. A large iron cauldron resting on four curved legs was placedconspicuously on a raised platform.The speeches finished, more than two thousand registration certificatescollected from the spectators were thrown into the cauldron and burned inparaffin as a mighty cheer went up from the brown throng. The London DailyMail correspondent in Johannesburg compared it with the Boston Tea Party.The issue between the Indians and the government was now joined.Under the Smuts-Gandhi compromise, most of the permanent residentsregistered voluntarily. Thereafter, any Indian discovered without a registrationcertificate would be subject to deportation as a new, illegal entrant. Thecompromise thus stopped immigration, and that was the original purpose of the'Black Act'.Then why did Smuts now reintroduce compulsory registration? 'To insult us', theIndians said. 'To stress our inequality. To force us to admit our inferiority.'This, Gandhi declared, is one of the virtues of Satyagraha; it uncoversconcealed motives and reveals the truth. It puts the best possiblewww.mkgandhi.org Page 96

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesinterpretation on the opponent's intentions and thereby gives- him anotherchance to discard baser impulses. If he fails to do so, his victims see moreclearly and feel more intensely, while outsiders realize who is wrong.The Indians now decided not to register under compulsion and to defy the banon immigration into the Transvaal.For the impending contest with the government of the Transvaal, Gandhicommenced to muster his resources. His law office at the corner of Rissik andAnderson Streets in Johannesburg had now been converted, largely, into aSatyagraha headquarters. It consisted of two small and meagrely furnishedrooms, an outer one for a secretary and an inner one where Gandhi workedamidst photographs of his ambulance unit, of Mrs. Annie Besant, and someIndian leaders, and a picture of Jesus. Gandhi also had an office at PhoenixFarm, and he spent more time there than before because he needed thesupport of the Natal Indians who far outnumbered the thirteen thousand of theTransvaal. At the farm, he led a chaste, frugal, Spartan existence. Except whenit rained he slept in the open on a thin cloth. He eschewed 'A Pleasures, andconcentrated on the coming battle. ‘A satyagrahi’, he said, ‘has to be, ifpossible, even more Single-minded than a rope dancer.'To the Johannesburg office and Phoenix Farm came a steady stream of Indiansand whites. Gandhi's circle of friends was large; he attracted people and theyusually remained loyal to him.Olive Schreiner, author of The Story of an African Farm and Dreams, was one ofGandhi's best friends in Cape Colony. 'Love was written in her eyes', he said.Though she came of a rich, distinguished and learned family, 'she was so simplein habits that she cleansed utensils in her house herself, and did her owncooking and sweeping. 'Such physical labour', Gandhi held, 'stimulated herliterary ability'. Colour prejudice was repugnant to her. She lent her greatinfluence in South Africa to the cause of fairness-to-Indians. So did her brother,Senator W. P. Schreiner, the Attorney-General and, at one time, the PrimeMinister of the Colony. Other prominent persons and high officials openly aidedGandhi's movement. Many Christian clergymen supported him. They sawwww.mkgandhi.org Page 97

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSatya¬graha as Christianity in action against a system that merely called itselfChristian. Gandhi worked through moral conversion. He preferred it to physicalcoercion and even to moral coercion. No true devotee of Christ could resistthis. Christian 1 editors, idealists and ministers atoned for the white man's ]sins by helping the little brown Hindu.Of all Gandhi's South African collaborators—Indian or white —the most intimate,he said, were Henry S. L. Polak, Herman Kallenbach, an extremely wealthyJohannesburg architect, and Sonya Schlesin, who came from Scotland.Kallenbach was a tall, thick-set, square headed German Jew with a longhandlebar moustache and pince-nez. He met Gandhi by chance; a mutualinterest in Buddhism brought them closer together, and thereafter, untilGandhi returned to India, they were inseparable. If anybody can be calledGandhi's second-in-command of the Satyagraha movement it was Kallenbach.Gandhi characterized him as 'a man of strong feelings, wide sympathies, andchild-like simplicity'.When Gandhi needed a private secretary and typist Kallenbach recommendedMiss Schlesin, who was of Russian- jewish origin. Gandhi thought her 'noble' andthe finest person among his European associates. She wore boyish- bobbed hairand a collar and necktie. She never married. Though she was young, Indianleaders went to her for advice, and the Reverend Doke, when he ran IndianOpinion, liked her to comment on his editorials. Gandhi put her in charge ofSatyagraha's treasury and books.For the financing of the resistance movement, Indians and Europeans in SouthAfrica and Indians in India contributed considerable sums. Gandhi believed thatan organization whose cause is just and impersonal, and which operates in fullpublic view, will not lack money. He likewise believed in rigidly economicalspending and scrupulous, detailed accounting.Suggestions poured in on Gandhi to raise the entire question of Indiandisabilities in South Africa and to mobilize the whole Indian community of thecontinent. But he decided that it was against the principles of Satyagraha towww.mkgandhi.org Page 98

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesexpand or even to shift one's goal in the midst of battle. The issue was the rightof Indians to live in and enter the Transvaal, nothing else.Gandhi now made a move of arresting and dramatic simplicity. A Parsi Indianfrom Natal named Sorabji Shapuiji Adajania, who spoke English and had nevervisited the Transvaal, was chosen, at his own request, to test the bar °nimmigrants. He was to notify the Government of his intentions, present himselfat the Transvaal frontier station of Volksrust, and court arrest. But the borderauthorities let lrtl in and he proceeded unmolested to Johannesburg.When their astonishment subsided, the Indians interpreted îs development asa triumph; the Government had refused fight. Even when Sorabji was sentencedto a month's imprisonment for not leaving the Transvaal, their enthusiasm forthe Gandhi method remained strong. It was accordingly decided that number ofEnglish-speaking Indians in Natal, including Hiralal, Gandhi's eldest son, whohad returned from India, should enter the Transvaal. They were arrested atVolksrust and given three months in jail. 'The Transvaal Indians', Gandhicomments, 'were now in high spirits .... The movement was now in full swing.'The movement fed on prison sentences.Gandhi was besieged by people seeking permission to be arrested. He gratifiedthe wish of some Natal Indians. Transvaal Indians applied for the sameprivilege; they had only to tell the police that they had no registrationcertificates.Gandhi too was arrested and confined in the Volksrust prison. His prison cardhas been preserved by Manilal. It is cream-coloured and two and seven-eighthsinches wide by three and one-eighth. His name is mistakenly given as 'M. S.Gandhi' instead of M. K. Gandhi. 'Trade: Solicitor'. No alias. 'Sentence and date:Twenty-five pounds or two months. October 10, 1908.' (Like all other Indians,Gandhi preferred prison to fines.) 'Due for discharge: December 13, 1908.' Onthe reverse side, under 'Prison Offences', is a blank. He was a model prisoner.Gandhi had seventy-five compatriots with him in jail, and he became theircook. 'Thanks to their love for me', he wrote in a contemporary article, 'mycompanions took without a murmur the half-cooked porridge I prepared withoutwww.mkgandhi.org Page 99

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timessugar. In addition he performed hard labour—digging the earth with a shovel—which blistered his hands. The blisters opened and caused pain.Once the warden wanted two men to clean the latrines- Gandhi volunteered.He had brought this suffering on himself and, by hi3 agitation, on others. Wouldit not be better to pay the fine and stay at home?'Such thoughts', Gandhi asserted, 'make one really a coward.' Besides, jail hasits good sides: only one warden whereas in the free life there are many; noworry about food; work keeps the body healthy; no 'vicious habits'; 'theprisoner's soul is thus free' and he has time to pray to God. The real road tohappiness', Gandhi proclaimed, 'lies in going to jail and undergoing sufferingsand privations there in the interest of one's country and religion'.This account of life and reflections in jail ends with a quotation from Thoreau'sfamous essay on 'Civil Disobedience' which Gandhi had borrowed from theprison library. 'I saw' Thoreau wrote, 'that if there was a wall of stone betweenme and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or breakthrough before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not feel for amoment confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar ...'As they could not reach me', Thoreau continued, 'they had resolved to punishmy body ... I saw that the state was half¬witted, that it was timid as a lonewoman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes,and I lost all my remaining respect for it and pitied it.'Gandhi cherished this excerpt from Thoreau. He studied the entire essay.It has often been said that Gandhi took the idea of Satyagraha from Thoreau.Gandhi denied this in a letter, dated September 10, 1935, and addressed to Mr.P. Kodanda of the Servants of India Society; Gandhi wrote, 'The statement thatI had derived my idea of Civil Disobedience from the writings of Thoreau iswrong. The resistance to authority in South Africa was well advanced before Igot the essay of Thoreau on Civil Disobedience. But the movement was thenknown as passive resistance. As it was incomplete I had coined the wordSatyagraha for the Gujarati readers. When I saw the title of Thoreau's greatwww.mkgandhi.org Page 100

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesessay, I began to use his phrase to explain our struggle to the English readers.But I found that even "Civil Disobedience" failed to convey the full meaning ofthe struggle. I therefore adopted the phrase Civil Resistance.'Nevertheless, Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience' essay did influence Gandhi; hecalled it a 'masterly treatise'; 'it left a deep impression on me', he affirmed.There is the imprint of Thoreau on much that Gandhi did. Thoreau had read theBhagauad-Gita and some of the sacred Hindu Upanishads; so had Ralph WaldoEmerson who was Thoreau's friend and frequent host. Thoreau, the NewEngland rebel, borrowed from distant India and repaid the debt by throwingideas into the world pool of thought; ripples reached the Indian lawyerpoliticianin South Africa.Henry David Thoreau, poet and essayist, was born in 1817 and died oftuberculosis at the age of forty-five. He hated Negro slavery and the individual'sslavery to the Church, the State, property, customs and traditions. With hisown hands he built himself a hut at Walden Pond outside Concord,Massachusetts, and dwelt there alone, doing all the work, growing his food andenjoying full contact with nature.Two years at Walden proved to Thoreau's own satisfaction that he had thecourage and inner strength to be free in isolation. He accordingly returned toConcord to discover whether he could be free inside the community. Hedecided that the least he could do was 'not lend myself to the wrong which Icondemn'. So he refused to pay taxes and was imprisoned. A friend paid the taxfor him, and Thoreau came out after twenty-four hours, but the experienceevoked his most provoking political essay, 'Civil Disobedience'.The only obligation which I have a right to assume Thoreau declared in 'CivilDisobedience', 'is to do at any time what I think right.' To be right, he insisted,is more honourable than to be law-abiding.Thoreau democracy was the cult of the minority. 'Why does (the Government)not cherish its wise minority?' he cried. Why does it always crucify Christ?'www.mkgandhi.org Page 101

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIt was 1849. Thoreau was thinking of Negro slavery and the invasion of Mexico.The majority which tolerated these measures was wrong, and he was right.Could he obey a government that committed such sins? He held that dissentwithout disobedience was consent and therefore culpable.Thoreau described civil disobedience in exact terms, as Gandhi understood it; 'Iknow this well,' Thoreau wrote, 'that if one thousand, if one hundred, if tenmen who I could name —if ten honest men only—ay, if one honest man, in thestate of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw fromthis copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be theabolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning mayseem to be: what is once well done is done forever. But we love better to talkabout it....'There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and war, who yet ineffect do nothing to put an end to them,' Thoreau continued. There are ninehundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to every virtuous man.' Thoreaudespised professions without actions. He asked, 'How does it become a man tobehave towards this American government today? In answer, that he cannotwithout disgrace be associated with it.' His Programme was 'peacefulrevolution'. 'All men recognize right to revolution,' he wrote, 'that is, the rightto refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government when its tyranny andefficiency are great and unendurable.'This is why Gandhi was in jail at the very moment he read Civil Disobedience.'Like Ruskin, Thoreau sought a closer correspondence between man's acts andman's goal. The artist in both required the integration of word and faith withdeed. The great poet, the great artist has integrity.Millions had read Ruskin and Thoreau and agreed with them. Many Hindus hadread them and agreed with them. But Gandhi took words and ideas seriously,and when he accepted an idea in principle he felt that not to practise it wasdishonest. How can you believe in a moral or religious precept and not live it?www.mkgandhi.org Page 102

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe gulf between word and belief is untruth. The dissonance between creedand deed is the root of innumerable wrongs in our civilization; it is theweakness of all churches, states, parties and persons. It gives institutions andmen split personalities.In attempting to establish a harmony between words, beliefs and acts Gandhiwas attacking man's central problem. He was seeking the formula for mentalhealth.www.mkgandhi.org Page 103

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XIILetter To A SonGANDHI'S second sentence ended on December 13, 1908, but, since civilresistance against the immigration ban continued, he received a third threemonthsentence and was back in Volksrust prison on February 25, 1909. Fivedays later, carrying a few possessions on his head and walking in heavy rain, hewas escorted to a train for Pretoria where he sat out his term in the newly builtlocal penitentiary. On arriving, the warden said, 'Are you the son of Gandhi?' Heapparently looked so youthful that the official mistook him for his son Hiralalwho was serving a six-month period in Volksrust. Gandhi was forty.In jail, Gandhi received a gift of two religious books from General Smuts; healso read Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Carlyle's French Revolution, andmany Indian religious volumes. My books saved me,' he wrote in hisreminiscences.From prison, Gandhi sent a letter to Manilal who has preserved it to this day. Itwas written by hand, with purple indelible ink pencil, on both sides of five longcream-coloured foolscap sheets of prison stationery and is in English. Normally,Gandhi would have addressed Manilal in Gujarati, Printed instructions in theleft-hand margin of each page say, in English, Dutch and Kaffir, thatcorrespondence must conducted in English, Dutch, German, French or Kaffir, heletter is dated March 25, 1909; Gandhi's number was ; the censor initialled ittwo days later.Manilal was seventeen and, since nobody else worried, he worried about hisprofession and future. He had had practically no formal education. Now he washis father's agent on the farm and in Indian Opinion, and probably a veryharassed young man.My dear son (Gandhi began), I have a right to write one letter per month andreceive also one letter per month. It became a question with me as to whom Ishould write. I thought of Mr. Ritch (the editor of Indian Opinion), Mr. Polakwww.mkgandhi.org Page 104

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesand you. I chose you because you have been nearest my thoughts in all myreading.As for myself I must not, I am not allowed to say much. I am quite at peace andnone need worry about me.I hope mother is now quite well. I know several letters from you have beenreceived but they have not been given to me. The Deputy Governor howeverwas good enough to tell me that she was getting on well. Does she walk aboutfreely! I hope she and all of you would continue to take sago and milk in themorning.And how is Chanchi (the nickname of Hiralal's wife, Gulab). Tell her I think ofher every day. I hope she has got rid of all the sores she had and that she &Rami (Hiralal's little daughter) are quite well.I hope Ramdas and Devadas are keeping well, learning their lessons and notcausing any worry. Has Ramdas got rid of his cough?I hope you all treated Willie well while he was with you. Any balance of thefood stuff left by Mr. Cordes I should wish you have returned to him.And now about yourself. How are you? Although I think that you are well able tobear all the burden I have placed on your shoulders and that you are doing itquite cheerfully> I have often felt that you required greater personal guidancethan I have been able to give you. I know too that you have sometimes felt thatyour education was being neglected. Now I have read a great deal in the prison.I have been reading Emerson, Ruskin and Mazzini. I have also been reading theUpanishads. All confirm the view that education does not mean a knowledge ofletters but it means character building. It means a knowledge of duty. Our own(Gujarati) word literally means training. If this is the true view, and it is to mymind the only true view, you are receiving the best education-training possible.What can be better than that you should have the opportunity of nursingmother & cheerfully bearing her ill temper, or than looking after Chanchi &anticipating her wants and behaving to her so as not to make her feel thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 105

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesabsence of Hiralal or again than being guardian to Ramdas and Devadas? If yousucceed in doing this well, you have received more than half your education.I was much struck by one passage in Nathuramji's introduction to theUpanishads. He says that the Brahmacharya stage—i.e., the first stage, is likethe last, i.e., the sanyasin (monk) stage. This is true. Amusement onlycontinues during the age of innocence, i.e., up to twelve years only. As soon asa boy reaches the age of discretion, he is taught to realize his responsibilities.Every boy from such age onward should practise continence in thought & deed,truth likewise and the not-taking of any life. This to him must not be anirksome learning and practice but it should be natural to him. It should be hisenjoyment. I can recall to my mind several such boys m Rajkot. Let me tell youthat when I was younger than you are my keenest enjoyment was to nurse myfather. Of amusement after I was twelve, I had little or none. If you- Practisethe three virtues, if they become part of your life, as I am concerned you willhave completed your education—your training. Armed with them, believe me,you will earn your bread in any part of the world & you will e paved the way toacquire a true knowledge of the soul, yourself and God. This does not meanthat you should not receive instruction in letters. That you should and you aredoing. But it is a thing over which you need not fret yourself. You have plentyof time for it and after all you are to receive such instruction in order that yourtraining may be of use to others.Remember please that henceforth our lot is poverty. The more I think of it themore I feel that it is more blessed to be poor than to be rich. The uses ofpoverty are far sweeter than those of riches.There follow one hundred and five lines of instructions, messages, andgreetings to persons at Phoenix Farm, then.And now again yourself. Do give ample work to gardening, actual digging,hoeing, etc. We have to live upon it in future. And you should be the expertgardener of the family. Keep your tools in their respective places andabsolutely clean. In your lessons you should give a great deal of attention tomathematics and Sanskrit. The latter is absolutely necessary for you. Bothwww.mkgandhi.org Page 106

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesthese studies are difficult in after life. You will not neglect your music. Youshould make a selection of all good passages, hymns and verses, whether inEnglish, Gujarati or Hindi and write them out in your best hand in a book. Thecollection at the end of a year will be most valuable. All these things you cando easily if you are methodical. Never get agitated and think you have toomuch to do and then worry over what to do first. This you will find out inpractice if you are patient and take care of your minutes. I hope you arekeeping an accurate account as it should be kept of every penny spent for thehousehold.The next paragraph is for a student at the farm. Continuing, Gandhi writes:Please tell Maganlalbhai that I would advise him to read Emerson's essays. Theycan be had for nine pence in Durham. There is a cheap reprint out. Theseessays are worth studying- He should read them, mark the important passagesand then finally copy them out in a notebook. The essays to my mind containthe teaching of Indian wisdom in a western guru. It is interesting to see our ownsometimes thus differently fashioned. He should also try to read Tolstoy'sKingdom of God is Within You—It is a most logical book. The English of thetranslation is very simple. What is more Tolstoy practises what he preaches.Gandhi told Manilal to make copies of this letter and send one to Polak, anotherto Kallenbach, and a third to a 'swami' who had left for India. He was to waitfor Polak's and Kallenbach's replies and incorporate them into his own which,however, 'should not contain any information about the struggle'. The censordid not allow that.In the last breath Gandhi asked for 'a copy of algebra. Any edition will do'.And now I close with love to all and kisses to Ramdas, Devadas & Rami,FromFather.Solicitude in the writer may be irritation to the recipient. Gandhi's warm andtender concern to mould Manilal into his own image probably sounded like asermon interlarded with countless obnoxious chores. Gandhi's selflesswww.mkgandhi.org Page 107

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesinjunctions were for his son's good, but the prospect of chastity, poverty andhard work under a strict taskmaster who wanted the tools stacked neatly in thestoreroom offered few thrills to the young man on the threshold of life.Married at thirteen, Gandhi never had a boyhood and therefore neverunderstood his own boys. The letter to Manilal showed this. As a blueprint ofthe future it had the virtue of truth, but the truth was forbidding. The fact thatfather had not enjoyed life from the age of twelve would be saddened asensitive son or, indeed, frightened him. Such a father- is difficult to live with.Such a father writes such e ter. The letter said, in effect, Tour life will remaintied to mine; you cannot go your own way'. Gandhi wanted a helper; Manilalwanted freedom. He thought of becoming a lawyer or doctor. His father wastraining him to be a minor saint.Eyes fixed on a distant, glorious goal, Gandhi, at this stage, sometimes failed tosee those who were nearest. He expected them to meet the exacting standardshe cheerfully imposed on himself. But he was not cruel; very likely, it neveroccurred to him that his letter conveyed anything but deep love and paternalcare.www.mkgandhi.org Page 108

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XIIITolstoy And GandhiIN central Russia, a slav aristocrat grappled with the same spiritual problemsthat occupied the Hindu lawyer in South Africa. Across continents, Count LeoTolstoy guided Mohandas K. Gandhi and found solace in his struggle.In Gandhi's law office there were several books by Tolstoy on religious subjects.But it was only during the leisure of jail that the Indian absorbed the greatRussian's teachings.War and Peace, probably the world's greatest novel, Resurrection, AnnaKarenina, and other works of art brought Tolstoy colossal success and universalrecognition. But his soul was always in torment. The discrepancy betweenChrist's message and man's way of life troubled him. Born in 1828 to wealth andan ancient title, Tolstoy abandoned high society and, at the age of fifty-seven,adopted the simple life: he went barefoot, wore a plain muzhik smock andtrousers, ploughed, harrowed and planted by the side of the peasants, gave upsmoking, meat-eating and hunting, and began to take long cross-country walksand bicycle rides. In 1891, in order to escape from 'intolerable luxury", he gavehis ample properties his wife and children and devoted himself to village a ion,famine relief and writing about vegetarianism, marriage and theology. Thoughhe excoriated church institutions men and women in search of a faith made hishome at Yasnaya Polyana their Mecca; Christians, Jews, Moslems and Buddhistsfrom the four corners of the earth came to sit at the feet of the famous,brilliant nobleman who had drunk his fill of material pleasures and now,nearing seventy, sought God. Among his guests from abroad were Jane Addams,of Hull House, Chicago; William Jennings Bryan subsequently United StatesSecretary of State; Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf of Philadelphia; George Kennan, anAmerican publicist who visited Siberia with the permission of the Tsaristauthorities and then denounced their cruelty to prisoners; Rainer-Maria Rilke,the German poet, and Thomas G. Masaryk, later President of Czechoslovakia.www.mkgandhi.org Page 109

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesTo these pilgrims, Tolstoy was the strong one who had renounced. Hisattraction was his attempt to create, in his own way of life, a synthesisbetween creed and conduct. This involved manual labour, minimum needs, noholding of property, no killing. He called landlordism 'a great sin', extolledHenry George's Single Tax, condemned military conscription, defendedconscientious objectors, helped the pacifist Dukhobors to emigrate to Canada,denounced the pogromists of Kishenev, praised William Lloyd Garrison's 'nonresistance',taught in a village primary school and refused the Nobel Prizebecause he did not accept money.The Orthodox Church of Russia excommunicated him.To a friend in prison Tolstoy wrote, "Unfortunately, I am not in prison....'The titles of his tracts reveal his mind: Thou Shalt Kill No One, Love OneAnother, Why Christian People in General and the Russian People Especially Fallinto Distress, The, Teachings of Christ for Children, Capital Punishment andChristianity, Religious Tolerance, Self-Perfection, and many more like these.Tolstoy died on November 20, 1910, after fleeing from his wife in the hope offinding peace in a monastery or a Tolstoyan settlement.Gandhi came to know Tolstoy through The Kingdom of God is Within You. Thename of the volume is the gospel of its author.'The history of the church', Tolstoy bluntly affirmed, 'is the history of crueltiesand horror .... Every Church, with its doctrines of redemption and salvation,and above all the Orthodox faith with its idolatry, excludes the doctrine ofChrist.' Impartially, and with icy logic and myriad quotations, Tolstoy proved tohis own satisfaction that all Christian churches try 'to conceal the true meaningof the doctrine of Christ.'Tolstoy was equally critical of government. From the dimmest ages, hedeclared, 'Peace unto you' has been man's greeting to man, yet in EuropeChristian nations keep twenty- eight million men under arms to settle problemsby killing. Approvingly, he quoted Guy de Maupassant, the French writer: 'It iswww.mkgandhi.org Page 110

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesstupefying that society does not revolt as a unit against the very sound of theword "War".Alexander Herzen, Russia's great literary critic, had said that mountingmilitarism made every modern government 'a Genghis Khan with telegraphicequipment'. Tolstoy concurred and added, 'In the matter of oppression, theChristian nations are worse than the pagans.''I believe it is Max Muller (foremost authority on Asia),' Tolstoy recalled, 'whodescribes the astonishment of an Indian converted to Christianity who, havinglearned the essence of hnstian doctrine, came to Europe and beheld the life ofChristians.' This was Tolstoy's, as it was Thoreau's, perpetual me: the chasmbetween doctrine and doing.What to do? Tolstoy's answer was simple: Live as a Christian should. Concretely,'A Christian enters into no dispute with his neighbour, he neither attacks noruses violence; on the contrary, he suffers himself, without resistance and by hisvery attitude towards evil not only sets himself free, but helps to free theworld at large from all outward authority.'The Gita and the Sermon on the Mount had led Gandhi to the same conclusion.Tolstoy preached peaceful, painful refusal to serve or obey evil governments.He specified: no oath of allegiance, no oath in court 'for an oath is distinctlyforbidden by the Gospel', no police duty, no military duty, no payment of taxes.'What are governments to do with these men?' Tolstoy inquired.That became Smuts's problem. He did not know what to do with the Indians.'The position of governments in the presence of men who profess Christianity',Tolstoy wrote, 'is so precarious that very little is needed to shake their powerto pieces.' Thoreau said the same thing.Gandhi began by freeing himself. It was an involved process. For man is boundby many chains, and the stoutest are forged in the inner smithy, not by Churchor State. 'The Kingdom of God is within you.' You are what you make yourself.You are not free because you do not free yourself.www.mkgandhi.org Page 111

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'The Kingdom of God', Tolstoy wrote, 'is attained by - sacrificing outwardcircumstances for the sake of truth.'Gandhi's path was strewn with the outward possessions and pleasures which hecast off en route to the kingdom of God within him.Gandhi's first personal contact with Tolstoy was in the form of a long letter,written in English dated Westminster Palace Hotel 4 Victoria Street, S.W.,London, October 1, 1909', and sent from there to Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, incentral Russia. In it, he acquainted the Russian novelist with the civildisobedience movement in the Transvaal.In Tolstoy's diary entry for September 24, 1909 (the Russian calendar was thenthirteen days behind the Western calendar), he wrote, 'Received a pleasantletter from a Hindu of the Transvaal.' Four days later, Tolstoy wrote a letter toVladimir G. Chertkov, his intimate friend and, later, the editor of his collectedworks, saying, 'The letter of the Transvaal Hindu has touched me.'Dating his letter from Yasnaya Polyana, October 7 (20), 1909, Tolstoy wrote areply to Gandhi in Russian. The Russian text was translated into English byTolstoy's daughter, Tatiana, who sent it to Gandhi. Tolstoy wrote, 'I have justreceived your most interesting letter, which has given me great pleasure. Godhelp our dear brothers and co-workers in the Transvaal. The same struggle ofthe soft against the harsh, of meekness and love against pride and violence, ismaking itself felt every year more and more among us here - I greet youfraternally and am happy to have contact with you. (signed) Tolstoy.Gandhi's second letter to Tolstoy was written in Johannesburg on April 4, 1910,and was accompanied by a copy of Gandhi's little book, Hind Swaraj or IndianHome Rule. In the letter Gandhi said, 'As humble follower of yours, send youherewith a booklet which I have written. It is my own ('English) translation of aGujarati writing... I am anxious not to worry you, but if your health permits it,and if you could find the time to go through the booklet, needles to say I shallvalue very highly your criticism of the writing.'April 19, 1910, Tolstoy wrote as follows in his diary:www.mkgandhi.org Page 112

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThis morning two Japanese arrived. Wild men in ecstasy over Europeancivilization. On the other hand, the book and the letter of the Hindu reveal anunderstanding of all the shortcomings of European civilization and even of itstotal inadequacy.'Next day there was another entry in Tolstoy's diary: 'Yesterday I read Gandhi oncivilization. Very good.' And again the next day: 'Read a book about Gandhi.Very important. I must write to him.' The book about Gandhi was the Biographyof Gandhi, by J. J. Doke, which Gandhi had sent to Tolstoy.A day later, Tolstoy wrote a letter to his friend Chertkov in which he referredto Gandhi as 'a person very close to us, to me'.Tolstoy replied to Gandhi on April 25 (May 8), 1910 from Yasnaya Polyana. Hewrote:Dear Friend: I just received your letter and your book, Indian Home Rule. I readyour book with great interest because of the things and questions you treat init: passive resistance is a question of the greatest importance, not only forIndia, but for the whole of humanity.I cannot find your former letters, but came across your biography by J. Doss(this is a mistake made by Tolstoy) which too interested me much and gave methe possibility to know and understand your letter. I am not quite well atpresent and therefore abstain from writing to you all what I have to say aboutyour book and all your work, which I appreciate very much, but I will do it assoon as I will feel better. Your friend and brother, L. Tolstoy.This was the English translation, sent to Gandhi, of Tolstoy's perfect Russian.Gandhi's third letter to Tolstoy is dated '21-24 Court Chambers, corner Rissikand Anderson Streets, Johannesburg, August 15, 1910.' In it Gandhiacknowledged Tolstoy's letter of May 8, with thanks, and added: 'I shall lookforward to your detailed criticism of the work which you have been so good asto promise in your letter.' Gandhi also informed Tolstoy of the establishment ofTolstoy Farm by Kallenbach and himself. He said that Kallenbach was writing toTolstoy about the farm. The letters of Gandhi and Kallenbach, accompanied bywww.mkgandhi.org Page 113

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesseveral issues of Gandhi's weekly, Indian Opinion, heightened Tolstoy's interestin Gandhi. In his diary of September 6 (19), 1910 Tolstoy wrote, 'Pleasant newsfrom Transvaal about the passive resistance colony.' Tolstoy was at this time ina state of serious spiritual depression and physically ill. Nevertheless, hereplied to Gandhi's letter on the day he received it. Tolstoy dictated the letteron the evenings of the 5th and 6th of September (18th and 19th). On the 7th(20th), Tolstoy corrected the letter and sent it in Russian to Chertkov forEnglish translation.It was Chertkov who posted Tolstoy's letter to Gandhi. Chertkov included in theletter a letter of his own in which he said:My friend, Leo Tolstoy, has requested me to acknowledge the receipt of yourletter to him of August 15 and to translate into English his letter to you ofSeptember 7 (new style- 20 Sept.) written originally in Russian.All you communicate about Mr. Kallenbach has greatly interested Tolstoy, whohas asked me to answer for him Mr. kallenbach's letter. Tolstoy sends you andyour co-workers heartiest greetings and warmest wishes for the success of yourwork, his appreciation of which you will gather from for enclosed translation ofhis letter to you. I must apologize the my mistakes in English in the translation,but living in 0f Country in Russia, I am unable to profit by the assistance anyEnglishman for correcting my mistakes.With Tolstoy's permission his letter to you will be published in a small periodicalprinted by some friends of ours in London. A copy of the magazine with theletter shall be forwarded to you, as also some English publications of Tolstoy'swritings issued by 'The Free Age Press'.As it seems to me most desirable that more should be known in English aboutyour movement, I am writing to a great friend of mine and Tolstoy, Mrs. Mayo,of Glasgow, proposing that she should enter into communication with you ...Chertkov sent a separate letter to Mr. Kallenbach. Tolstoy's own letter toGandhi was the longest in the whole correspondence. Dated September 7 (20),1910, and translated into English by Chertkov, it was sent to an intermediary inwww.mkgandhi.org Page 114

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesEngland for posting to Gandhi. The intermediary was ill at the time and onlyposted the letter on November 1, so that Gandhi received the letter in theTransvaal several days after the death of Count Leo Tolstoy.Tolstoy said:The longer I live, and specially now when I vividly feel the nearness of death, Iwant to tell others what I feel so particularly clearly and what to my mind is ofgreat importance—namely, that which is called passive resistance, but which inreality is nothing else than the teaching of love, uncorrupted by the falseinterpretations.That love ... is the highest and only law of human life and in the depths of hissoul every human being (as we see most clearly in children) feels and knowsthis; he knows this until he is entangled by the false teachings of the world.This law was proclaimed by all, by the Indian as well as by the Chinese,Hebrew, Greek and Roman sages of the world...In reality, as soon as force was admitted into love, there was no more andthere could be no more love as the law of life, and as there was no law of love,there was no law at all, except violence—i.e., the power of the strongest. ThusChristian mankind has lived for nineteen centuries ...This was a very old man on the brink of death writing to a very young man;Gandhi was young, usually twenty five years younger in spirit than his age.Tolstoy was profoundly unhappy. Anyone with the insight of War and Peace yetconscious of humanity's refusal, or inability, to use the key to happinessavailable in Christ's teachings would have to be unhappy. Gandhi, however,believed he could reform himself and others. He was doing it. It made himhappy.www.mkgandhi.org Page 115

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XIVThe Shape Of Things To ComeGANDHI never despaired of the worst reprobate. During the South Africanstruggle, Gandhi learned that one of his close Indian associates was agovernment informer. Later the man openly opposed Gandhi, yet when hebecame ill and impecunious Gandhi visited him and gave him financial aid. Intime, the backslider repented.It was not easy for Gandhi to hold his followers. Government punitive measurescaused many Satyagrahis to abandon the movement. Some resisters weredeported to India with loss of property. Satyagraha put even the strongestcharacter to a withering test. At one time, of the thirteen thousand Indians inthe Transvaal, twenty-five hundred were in jail and six thousand had fled theprovince. Only as self-abnegating, high- minded, determined and indefatigablea leader as Gandhi could have kept the movement alive. The worst setbacks didnot shake his faith in victory. This faith, plus the fact that in and out of jail heshared his followers' hardships and thereby won their love, was the bindingcement of the loyal band which at times dwindled alarmingly. Some resistersserved five prison terms in quick succession, courting a new sentence themoment they finished the old one. They merely left the Transvaal for Natal andimmediately crossed into the Transvaal again. That, under the immigrationban, was their crime.Presently, a bigger danger loomed: a federal Union of South Africa wasprojected; it might, probably would enact anti- Indian legislation like that ofthe Transvaal. Gandhi decided to lobby in London. Generals Botha and Smutswere already there making arrangements for the creation of the Union.Gandhi always set his sights high. This time he won the active support of LordAmpthill, former Governor of Madras and acting Viceroy of India in 1904. Fromhis arrival in England on July 10, 1909, until his return to South Africa inwww.mkgandhi.org Page 116

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesNovember, Gandhi met editors, M.P.s, officials and private citizens of all races;his fervour fascinated and infected many of them.Liberal Englishmen regretted over colour discrimination in an empireoverwhelmingly non-white. Imperialistic Englishmen were concerned with theeffects of South African and anti- Indian legislation on India. While Gandhiworked in England, Henry Polak was in India explaining the Transvaal situationand stirring protests which echoed in Whitehall. The British government inLondon tried to reconcile the differences between Smuts and Gandhi; but thegeneral yielded too little. Smuts was ready to repeal the compulsoryregistration act and permit the immigration into the Transvaal of a limitednumber of English-speaking, educated, professional Indians to serve the Indiancommunity.Gandhi, however, asked for the removal of the 'badge of inferiority' and the'implied racial taint'; he wanted 'legal or theoretical equality in respect ofimmigration'. Small material concessions neither impressed nor mollified him.When, therefore, Lord Crewe, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies,informed Gandhi in writing that 'Mr. Smuts was unable to accept the claim thatAsiatics should be placed in a Position of equality with Europeans in respect ofright of entry or otherwise’, the militant barrister, admitting defeat indiplomatic negotiation, foresaw a renewal of civil disobedience.Gandhi's trip to England nevertheless made the South African-Indian question amajor imperial concern. Therein lay a seed of ultimate triumph in South Africa.Moreover, and apparently for the first time, Gandhi began during his Londonsojourn, to connect himself with the problem of India's independence. InEngland, he sought out Indians of all shades of political belief: nationalists,Home- Rulers, anarchists and advocates of assassination. While he debated withthem far into many nights, his own political views and philosophy were takingshape. Some of the tenets which later formed the tissue of the Mahatma's creedfound their first expression in a letter addressed to Lord Ampthill by Gandhi onOctober 9, 1909, from Westminster Palace Hotel.www.mkgandhi.org Page 117

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesJudging by the Indians in England, Gandhi wrote, impatience with British rulewas widespread in India as was Indian hatred of the British. Partisans ofviolence were gaining ground. Against this, repression would be futile. Yet, hefeared that 'the British rulers will not give liberally and in time. The Britishpeople seem to be obsessed by the demon of commercial selfishness. The faultis not of men but of the system ... India is exploited in the interests of foreigncapitalists. The true remedy lies, in my humble opinion, in England discardingmodern civilization ... which is a negation of the spirit of Christianity'. Onehears Tolstoy's gentle voice here and echoes, too, of the raucous voices ofIndian students in Bloomsbury.'But this is a large order,' Gandhi admits. The railways, machinery and thecorresponding increase of indulgent habits are the true badge of slavery of theIndian people, as they are of Europeans. I therefore, have no quarrel with therulers. I have every quarrel with their methods ... To me the rise of cities likeCalcutta and Bombay is a matter of sorrow rather than congratulations. Indiahas lost in having broken up a part of her village system.'Holding these views,' Gandhi continues, prophetically though unconsciouslyenunciating the programme of his entire career in India, 'I share the Nationalspirit, but I totally dissent from the methods, whether of the extremists or ofthe moderates, for either party relies on violence ultimately. Violent methodsmust mean an acceptance of modern civilization and therefore of the sameruinous competition we notice here and the consequent destruction ofmorality. I should be uninterested in the fact as to who rules. I should expectrulers to rule according to my wish, otherwise I cease to help them to rule me.I become a passive resister against them.'Long before Gandhi had any warrant to regard himself as a factor or leader inthe liberation of India he knew, and indicated in this letter to Ampthill, that hisaim was not merely substitution of Indian rule for British rule. Not governmentsbut methods and objectives interested him, not whether a William or a Chandrasat in the seat of power but whose deeds were more civilized.www.mkgandhi.org Page 118

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThis is what distinguished Gandhi from other politicians. The argument—WasGandhi a saint or politician?—is endless yet barren. Polak quotes Gandhi ashaving said in South Africa, 'Men say I am a saint losing myself in politics. Thefact is that I am a politician trying my hardest to be a saint.' The important factis that in politics Gandhi always cleaved to religious and moral considerations,and as a saint he never thought his place was in a cave or cloister but rather inthe hurly-burly of the popular struggle for rights and right, andhi's religioncannot be divorced from his politics. His religion made him political. His politicswas religious.When Gandhi returned from England to South Africa at e end of 1909, politicalnecessity forced him to establish co-operative commonwealth' on a diminutivescale re civil resisters 'would be trained to live a new and simple life inharmony with one another'. There he took further steps towards sainthood,mahatma-ship, and Gita detachment.Previously, when Satyagrahis were imprisoned, the organization attempted tosupport their dependants in their accustomed style of living. This led toinequality and sometimes to fraud. Gandhi consequently decided that themovement needed a rural commune for civil resisters and their families.Phoenix Farm was thirty hours by train and hence too remote from theepicentre of the Transvaal struggle.Accordingly, Herman Kallenbach bought 1100 acres of land at Lawley, twentyonemiles outside Johannesburg and, on May 30, 1910 gave it to the Satyagrahisfree of any rent or charge. Here religion was wed to politics. Gandhi called itThe Tolstoy Farm.The farm had over a thousand orange, apricot and plum trees, two wells, aspring and one house. Additional houses were built of corrugated iron. Gandhiand his family came to live on the farm and so did Kallenbach.'I prepare the bread that is required on the farm,' Gandhi wrote to a friend inIndia. 'The general opinion about it is that it is well made. We put in no yeastand no baking powder. We grind our own wheat. We have just prepared somemarmalade from the oranges grown on the farm. I have also learned how towww.mkgandhi.org Page 119

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesprepare caramel coffee. It can be given as a beverage even to babies. Thepassive resisters on the farm have given up the use of tea and coffee, andtaken to caramel coffee prepared on the farm. It is made from wheat which isfirst baked in a certain way and then ground. We intend to sell our surplusproduction of the above three articles to the public later on. Just at present,we are working as labourers on the construction work...' There were noservants.Gandhi was baker and caramel and marmalade maker and much more besides.Kallenbach went to stay in a Trappist monastery for German Catholic monks tomaster the art of and sandal making. This he then taught to Gandhi who taughtit to others. Surplus sandals were sold to friends. As an architect, Kallenbachknew something of carpentry and headed that department. Gandhi learned tomake cabinets, chests of drawers and school benches. But they had no chairsand no beds; everybody slept on the ground and, except in inclement weather,in the open. Each person got two blankets and a wooden pillow. Gandhilikewise sewed jackets for his wife and he later boasted that she wore them.Gandhi was general manager. The population of the farm, which varied witharrests and other circumstances, consisted originally of forty young men, threeold men, five women and between twenty and thirty children, of whom fivewere girls. There were Hindus, Moslems, Christians and Parsis among them,vegetarians and meat-eaters, smokers and non- smokers and they spoke Tamil,Telugu, Gujarati, etc. As if these conditions did not create enough problems,Gandhi created some more.Smoking and alcohol drinking were strictly prohibited. Residents could havemeat if they wished but, after a little propaganda from the general manager,none ever asked for it. Gandhi assisted in the cookhouse and kept the womenthere from quarrelling.He also supervised the sanitation, which was primitive, and taught people notto spit. 'Leaving nightsoil, cleaning the nose, or spitting on the road is a sinagainst God and humanity,' he told the community.www.mkgandhi.org Page 120

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesOccasionally, Kallenbach had business in town and Gandhi still had legal cases.The rule was that if you went on an errand or topping trip for the commune youcould travel by train, third class; but if the journey was private or for fun (children like to go on picnics to Johannesburg) you had to walk and, foreconomy, take dry refreshments with you.Gandhi frequently walked the twenty-one miles to the city starting at 2 a.m.and returning the same night. He said it did them all a lot of good. One day, herecalls, 'I walked fifty miles on foot.'Gandhi attributed his physical stamina and that of the other communards topure living and healthy diet. Breakfast was at 7, lunch at 11, dinner at 5.30,prayers at 7.30, bedtime at 9. All meals were light. But to make them lighterstill, Gandhi and Kallenbach resolved to avoid cooked food and limit themselvesto a 'fruitarian' menu of bananas, dates, lemons, peanuts, oranges and olive oil.Gandhi had read somewhere of the cruelties practised in India to make cowsand water buffaloes yield the maximum in milk. So he and Kallenbachdispensed with milk. Kallenbach, who owned a beautiful and spacious house ona hilltop above Johannesburg, and who always had lived in luxury, shared everydeprivation, chore and dietary experiment on the farm. He also divided withGandhi the task of teaching the children religion, geography, history,arithmetic, etc., and very rudimentary it all was.Gandhi's ideas on co-education were unconventional. He encouraged boys andgirls, some of them adolescents, to bathe at the spring at the same time. Forthe girls' safety, he was always present and 'My eyes followed the girls as amother's eye follows a daughter.' No doubt, the boys' eyes did likewise ( andless innocently. At night, everybody slept on an open veranda and the youngfolks grouped their sleeping places around Gandhi. Beds were only three feetapart. But Gandhi said the young folks knew he loved them 'with a motherslove', and hadn't he explained the duty of self-restraint to them?After an incident involving two girls, he searched for a method 'to sterilize thesinner's eye' of males. The quest kept him awake all night but in the morning hehad it: he summoned the girls and suggested that they shave their heads Theywww.mkgandhi.org Page 121

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswere shocked, but he had an irresistible way and finally they consented. Hehimself did the cutting.Years later, Gandhi explained this innocence by ignorance, but he did notexplain why he should have been ignorant. He dispelled some of the mystery byadding that his 'faith and courage were at their highest in Tolstoy Farm'.Boundless faith in human beings sometimes blinded him to their faults. It wasthe sort of blindness which blots out obstacles and thus leads to braveventures. He measured other people's capacities by his own. This often spurredthem to unwonted effort. It was good pedagogy if it worked; it worked betterwith adults and little children than with adolescents.In October 1912, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Professor of English and Economics,President of the Servants of India Society in India, came to South Africa for amonth in order to assess the Indian community's condition and assist Gandhi inameliorating it. Gokhale and Lokmanya Tilak were Gandhi's forerunners in pre-Gandhian India. Gokhale was a revered leader of the Indian Nationalistmovement, a brilliant intellectual and an impressive person. Gandhiacknowledged him an excellent judge of character. In South Africa, Gokhaleonce said to Gandhi, "You will always have your own way. And there is no helpfor me as I am here at your mercy.' The dictum was spoken in friendship and inearnest.Gandhi's selflessness fortified his assurance. Certain in his heart that he soughtneither material gain, nor power, nor Praise, he had none of the guilty anddeterring feeling which might have prevented him from insisting on his point ofview. Sure he was right, he was sure of victory. Then why yield? When Gokhaleasked for a list of the really reliable civil resisters, Gandhi wrote down sixty-sixnames. That was maximum. The number however, might sink to sixteen. Thiswas Gandhi's 'army of peace'. Yet, he never flinched; the government wouldsurrender.Gokhale's tour was a triumphal procession through South Africa. Gandhi wasalways by his side. In Cape Town where Gokhale landed, the Schreinerswelcomed him, and Europeans as well as Indians attended his big publicwww.mkgandhi.org Page 122

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesmeeting. From the Transvaal frontier to Johannesburg he travelled by specialtrain. At every town he stopped for a meeting over which the local mayorpresided. The principal railway stations had been decorated by Indians. At thePark Terminus in Johannesburg a large ornamental arch designed by Kallenbachwas erected. During his stay in Johannesburg Gokhale had the use of themayor's car. At Pretoria, capital of the Transvaal, the Government entertainedhim.The South African authorities wanted Gokhale to carry back a good impressionto India.After making many speeches and talking to many Indians and whites, Gokhalehad a two-hour interview with Generals Botha and Smuts, the heads, now, ofthe Union government. Gandhi, of his own accord, absented himself; he was acontroversial figure who might spoil the atmosphere.When Gokhale came back from the interview, he reported that the racial bar inthe Immigration Act would be removed together with the three-pound annualtax collected from indentured labourers who remained in South Africa but didnot continue their indenture.'I doubt it very much,' Gandhi retorted. You do not know the Ministers as I do'."What I have told you is bound to come to pass,' Gokhale cried. 'General Bothapromised me that the Black Act would be repealed and the three-pound taxabolished.. You must return to India within twelve months and I will not haveany of your excuses.'Gandhi was glad of the Government's promise; it proved the justice of theIndian cause. But he did not think his job in the Union of South Africa would becompleted before many more Indians, and he too, had again gone to prison.At Gokhale's request, Gandhi and Kallenbach took the teamer with him as faras Zanzibar in Tanganyika. On board, Gokhale talked at length about Indianpolitics, economics, superstitions, problems. He was introducing Gandhi to thefuture. Then Gokhale sailed on to India, and Gandhi and Kallenbach returned toNatal for the final struggle.www.mkgandhi.org Page 123

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAddressing an assembly in Bombay Town Hall in December 1912, Gokhale said'Gandhi has in him the marvellous spiritual power to turn ordinary men aroundhim into heroes and martyrs'. Gokhale, who looked critically at Gandhi andsometimes rebuked him, added that in Gandhi's presence one is 'ashamed to doanything unworthy'.Gandhi proved this to the hilt in the final chapter of the South Africa epic.www.mkgandhi.org Page 124

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XVThe VictorySMUTS precipitated the final contest by announcing in the House of Assemblythat the Europeans of Natal, who were the original employers of Indiancontract labour, would not permit the lifting of the three-pound annual tax onex-serfs. That was the signal for the renewal of civil disobedience. Indenturedlabourers and former indentured labourers considered this a breach of thepromise given to Professor Gokhale; they volunteered en masse for Satyagraha.Gandhi closed Tolstoy Farm. Kasturbai, Gandhi, the Gandhi children and severalothers moved to Phoenix Farm. Adults prepared to go to prison.There were two issues: the tax and the ban on Asiatic immigrants. Presently, athird was added. On March 14, 1913, a Justice of the Cape Colony SupremeCourt ruled that only Christian marriages were legal in South Africa. Thisinvalidated Hindu, Moslem, or Parsi marriages and turned all Indian wives intoconcubines without rights.For the first time, large numbers of women joined the resisters. Kasturbai alsojoined.As the opening move in the new campaign, a group women volunteers were tocross from the Transvaal into Natal and thereby court arrest. If the borderpolice ignored them, they would proceed to the Natal coal field at Newcastleand urge the indentured miners to go on strike. Simultaneously, 3 chosenhandful of Natal 'sisters', as Gandhi called them, would invite arrest by enteringthe Transvaal without permission.The Natal 'sisters' were arrested and imprisoned. Indignation flared and broughtnew recruits. The Transvaal 'sisters' were not arrested. They went to Newcastleand persuaded the Indian workers to put down their tools. Then theGovernment arrested these women, too, and lodged them in jail for threemonths. As a result, the miners' strike spread.www.mkgandhi.org Page 125

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi hurried from Phoenix Farm to Newcastle.The miners lived in company houses. The company turned off their light andwater.Gandhi believed the strike would last and therefore counselled the indenturedlabourers to leave their compounds, taking their blankets and some clothes,and pitch camp outside the home of Mr. and Mrs. D. M. Lazarus, a Christiancouple from India, who had invited Gandhi to stay with them despite the riskssuch hospitality entailed.The strikers slept under the sky. Newcastle Indian merchants contributed foodand cooking and eating utensils. Before long, five thousand strikers hadassembled within sight of the Lazarus house.Gandhi was astonished and baffled. What could he do with this multitude? Theymight be on his hands for months, decided to 'see them safely deposited in jail'in the Transvaal. He informed them of this prospect, described Prison at itsblackest and urged waverers to return to the mines. None did. It was thenagreed that on a fixed day they would all march the thirty-six miles fromNewcastle to Charlestown, on the Natal-Transvaal border, walk into theTransvaal thereby earn jail sentences. A few women with children, anddisabled men, were to travel by rail towards ne same goal.While plans were being made, more strikers arrived. Again Gandhi attempted,without success, to dissuade them from following him. Accordingly, October 13was set as the day of departure from Newcastle. He was able to furnish each'soldier' with a pound and a half of bread and an ounce of sugar. Instructionswere: Conduct yourselves morally hygienically and pacifically. Submit to policeflogging and abuse. Do not resist arrest.Charlestown was reached without incident. Preparations to receive the Gandhiarmy had been made in advance by Kallenbach and others. The Indianmerchants of Charlestown (normal population one thousand) contributed rice,vegetables, kitchen equipments, etc. Gandhi was chef and head waiter.Complaints about inadequate portions were met with an infectious smile and awww.mkgandhi.org Page 126

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesreport on the total amount of food available and the amount of each person'sequal ration.Women and children were accommodated in houses; the men slept in thegrounds of the local mosque.Before moving on, Gandhi communicated his intentions to the Government. Heand his people were coming into the Transvaal to demonstrate against thebreach of the Botha- Smuts pledge and to assert their self-respect; 'I cannotconceive a greater loss to a man than the loss of his self- respect'. Of course,he added, the Natal government could arrest them in Charlestown and thusspare them further treks. On the other hand, if the Government annulled thethree-pound tax, the strikers would resume the mining of coal.The Government did not oblige by arresting them at Charlestown nor did iteliminate the three-pound levy. In fact, Gandhi suspected that the authoritiesmight not stop the 'army’ even if it penetrated into the Transvaal. In that case,he contemplated advancing on Tolstoy Farm by eight day- marches of twentymiles each.How would he feed his peace troops on the road for eight days? A Europeanbaker at Volksrust, the Transvaal border town undertook to supply them inVolksrust and then to ship the necessary quantity of bread by rail each day toan appointed spot en route to the farm.Gandhi counted his forces. There were 2037 men, 127 women and 57 children.At 6-30 on the morning of November 6 1913, Gandhi recalls, 'we offered prayersand commenced the march in the name of God'.From Charlestown on the Natal side to Volksrust is one mile. A largedetachment of Transvaal mounted border guards was on emergency duty. Twodays earlier the Volksrust whites had held a meeting at which several speakersdeclared they personally would shoot any Indian who attempted to enter theTransvaal. Kallenbach, who attended to defend the Indians, was challenged toa duel. He was a pupil of the great Sandow, and an accomplished pugilist andwrestler, but the Gandhian German arose and said, 'As I have accepted thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 127

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesreligion of peace I may not accept the challenge... The Indians do not wantwhat you imagine... The Indians are not out to challenge your position asrulers. They do not wish to fight with you or to fill the country... They proposeto enter the Transvaal not with a view to settle there, but only as an effectivedemonstration against the unjust tax which is levied upon them. They are bravemen. They will not injure you in person or in property; they will not fight withyou, but enter the Transvaal they will, even in the face of your gunfire. Theyare not the men to beat a retreat from the fear of your bullets or spears. Theypropose to melt and I know they melt, your hearts by self-suffering.'Nobody shot anybody; perhaps Kallenbach's speech turned away the whitewrath. Perhaps the police reinforcements at the border sobered the hotheads.The guards let the IndiansThe first halt was made at Palmford, eight miles beyond Volksrust. Themarchers ate a meagre meal and stretched out on the earth for sleep. Gandhihad surveyed his slumbering resisters and was about to lie down when he heardsteps and a moment later saw a policeman approaching lantern in hand.'I have a warrant to arrest you' the officer said politely to Gandhi. 'I want toarrest you.''When?' Gandhi asked.'Now,' the policeman replied.'Where will you take me?''To the adjoining station first.' The officer explained democratically, 'and toVolksrust when there is a train.'Gandhi woke Mr. P.K. Naidoo, a faithful lieutenant, and gave him instrutions forcontinuing the march to Tolstoy Farm. Gandhi was transported to Volksrust andarraigned in court. The prosecutor demanded imprisonment, but the judgereleased Gandhi on bail furnished by Kallenbach. Gandhi had asked for releaseon bail because of his responsibilities to the marchers. Kallenbach, stationed inVolksrust to send on stragglers and new recruits, had a car ready and quicklydrove Gandhi back to the Indian 'army'.www.mkgandhi.org Page 128

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe next day the Indians halted at Standerton. Gandhi was handing out breadand marmalade when a magistrate stepped up and said to Gandhi, 'You are myprisoner'.'It seems I have been promoted,' Gandhi commented with a laugh, 'sincemagistrates take the trouble to arrest nxe instead of mere police officials.'Again Gandhi was freed on bail. Five co-workers were imprisoned.Two days later, November 9, as Gandhi and Polak were walking at the head ofthe long column, a cart came up the officer in it ordered Gandhi to go withhim. Gandhi passed the command to Polak. The officer permitted Gandhi toinform the marchers of his arrest, but when the little 'general' began to exhortthe Indians to remain peaceful, the officer exclaimed, ‘you are now a prisonerand cannot make any speeches.'In four days, Gandhi had been arrested three times.The march continued without the leader.On the morning of the 10th, on reaching Balfour, the Indians saw three specialtrains drawn up at the station to deport them from the Transvaal to Natal. Atfirst they refused to submit to arrest, and it was only through the co-operationof Polak, Ahmed Kachhalia and others that the police were able to herd themarchers into the trains.Polak was thanked for his services and arrested and confined in Volksrust jail.There he found Kallenbach.On November 14, Gandhi was brought to trial in Volksrust. He pleaded guilty.The court, however, 'would not convict a prisoner', Gandhi wrote, 'merely uponhis pleading guilty'. It therefore requested him to supply the witnesses againsthimself and Gandhi did so. Kallenbach and Polak testified against him.Twenty-four hours later, Gandhi appeared as a witness against Kallenbach andtwo days after that, Gandhi and Kallenbach testified against Polak. JudgeTheodore Jooste reluctantly gave each of them three months' hard labour in theVolksrust prison.www.mkgandhi.org Page 129

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesFresh prisoners kept Gandhi informed on Satyagraha developments outside. Thearrest of the leaders and marchers had stirred new enthusiasm and the numberof resisters throughout South Africa mounted fast. Occasionally, Gandhi couldsend messages to followers still at liberty. Meanwhile Gandhi rejoiced incongenial company. This was too much of good thing and the Governmentshifted him to Bloemfontein where he was with Europeans and Negroes, but noIndians.The striking miners met a worse fate. Trains carried them back to the mines,where they were forced into wire enclosed stockades and placed undercompany employees who had been sworn in as special constables. Despitewhips, sticks and kicks they refused to descend to the coal face.News of these events was cabled to India and England. India seethed withresentment; the authorities grew alarmed. Lord Hardinge, the British Viceroy,was impelled to deliver a strong speech at Madras in which, breakingprecedent, he trenchantly criticized the South African government anddemanded a commission of inquiry.Meanwhile, more indentured labourers left their work in sympathy with therebellious Newcastle miners. The State regarded such labourers as slaveswithout the right to strike, and sent soldiers to suppress them. In one placesome were killed and several wounded.The tide of resistance rose higher. Approximately fifty thousand indenturedlabourers were on strike; several thousand free Indians were in prison. FromIndia came a stream of gold. At a meeting in Lahore, in the Punjab, a Christianmissionary named Charles F. Andrews gave all the money he had to the SouthAfrica movement. Others made similar sacrifices.By arrangement, several leading Indians and Albert West, who edited IndianOpinion, and Sonya Schlesin, Gandhi's secretary, avoided arrest to conductpropaganda, handle finances and communicate with India and England. TheGovernment nevertheless arrested Mr. West. Thereupon, Gokhale sentAndrews-from India to replace him. He came with W. W. Pearson, another highmindedEnglishman.www.mkgandhi.org Page 130

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesCables between the Viceroy's office and London and between London and SouthAfrica hummed with voluminous official messages.Unexpectedly, the Government liberated Gandhi, Kallenbach ^d Polak onDecember 18, 1913. 'All three of us', Gandhi writes 'were disappointed upon ourrelease'. Civil disobedience, properly launched and inspired, needed no leaders.If Gandhi wanted to be free he need not have gone to jail at all' he could haverefrained from opposing the government. Going into and coming out of prisonhad to advance the cause and this time coming out did not. Under pressurefrom the Viceroy and the British authorities in Whitehall, a commission hadbeen appointed to investigate the grievances of the Indians in South Africa andit was hoped that the release of Gandhi and his colleagues would testify to thebona fides of Botha and Smuts in appointing it.But upon regaining his liberty Gandhi asserted in a public statement that thecommission 'is a packed body and intended to hoodwink the government andthe public opinion both of England and of India'. He did not doubt the 'integrityand impartiality' of the Chairman, Sir William Solomon, but Mr. Ewald Esselen,he said, was prejudiced. With regard to the third member, he had, in January1897, 'led a mob to demonstrate against the landing of Indians who had arrivedat Durban in two vessels, advocated at a public meeting the sinking of two shipswith all Indians on board and commending a remark made by another speakerthat he would willingly Put down a month's pay for one shot at the Indians... Hehas consistently been our enemy all these years.' Gandhi was injured in that1897 assault.Three days after leaving prison, Gandhi appeared at a mass meeting in Durban.He was no longer dressed in shirt and ungaree trousers. He wore a knee-lengthwhite smock, a wrapping around his legs (an elongated loincloth) and He hadabandoned Western clothing. He did so, he told the meeting, to mourncomrades killed during the miner's strike.Reviewing the situation, Gandhi advised 'still greater purifying suffering until atlast the Government may order the military to riddle us also with bullets.www.mkgandhi.org Page 131

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'My friends,' he exclaimed, 'are you prepared for this?'Yes, yes,' the audience shouted.'Are you prepared to share the fate of those of our countrymen whom the coldstone is resting upon today?'‘Yes, yes,' they shouted.'I hope,' Gandhi proceeded, 'that every man, woman and grown-up child will ...not consider their salaries, trades, or even families, or their own bodies....'The struggle, he emphasized, is 'a struggle for human liberty and therefore astruggle for religion'.After the meeting Gandhi wrote to Smuts condemning the choice of twomembers of the commission. 'Man', he philosophized, 'cannot change histemperament all at once. It is against the laws of nature to suppose that thesegentlemen will suddenly become different ...'Smuts replied three days later, rejecting Gandhi's proposal to add Indians orpro-Indians to the commission.Gandhi accordingly announced that on January 1, 1914, he and a group ofIndians would march from Durban, Natal, to court arrest. They would notagitate for free immigration into the Union, nor for political franchise in thenear future, he declared. They merely wished to regain lost rights.While this embarrassing threat of an Indian mass march hung over thegovernment's head, the white employees of all the South African railways wenton strike. Gandhi immediately called off his march. It was not part of thetactics of Satyagraha, he explained, to destroy, hurt, humble, or embitter theadversary, or to win a victory by weakening him.Civil resisters hope, by sincerity, chivalry and self-suffering, to convince theopponents' brain and conquer his heart. They never take advantage of thegovernment's difficulty or form unnatural alliances.www.mkgandhi.org Page 132

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesCongratulations poured in on Gandhi; Lord Ampthill wired from England, so didothers; messages of appreciation came from India and many points in SouthAfrica.Smuts, busy with the railway strike (martial law had been declared),nevertheless summoned Gandhi to a talk. The first talk led to another. TheGovernment had accepted the principle of negotiation. Gandhi's friends warnedhim against deferring the march again. They recalled Smuts's broken pledge in1908.'Forgiveness,' Gandhi replied, quoting the Sanskrit, 'is the ornament of thebrave.'Gandhi's knightly forbearance in cancelling the march created an atmospherefavourable to a settlement. Gandhi's hand, moreover, was strengthened by thearrival, on a fast, special steamer, of Sir Benjamin Robertson, extraordinaryenvoy of the viceroy who was worried about hostile reactions m India to SouthAfrican persecutions.Gandhi postponed the march a second time.Gandhi,' Smuts said at one of their interviews, 'this time We Want nomisunderstanding, we want no mental or other reservations, let all the cards beon the table and I want you to tel1 me wherever you think that a particularpassage or word does not read in accordance with your own reading.'This spirit, recognized as friendly by Gandhi, conduced to steady if slowprogress in the talks. You can't put twenty thousand Indians into jail,' Smutsdeclared in defence of his new conciliatory attitude.Smuts and Gandhi placed their cards and texts on the table. Memoranda passedfrom one side to the other. For weeks each word was weighed, each sentencesharpened for precision. On June 30, 1914, the two subtle negotiators finallyexchanged letters confirming the terms of a complete agreement.This document was then translated into the Indian Relief Bill and submitted tothe Union Parliament in Cape Town. Smuts pleaded with Members to approachwww.mkgandhi.org Page 133

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesthe problem 'in a non-controversial spirit'. The bill became South African law inJuly.The terms were:Hindu, Moslem and Parsi marriages are valid.The three-pound annual tax on indentured labourers who wish to remain inNatal is abolished; arrears are cancelled.Indentured labour will cease coming from India by 1920.Indians could not move freely from one province of the Union to another, butIndians born in South Africa might enter Cape Colony.Smuts promised publicly that the law would be administered 'in a just mannerand with due regard to vested rights' of Indians.The settlement was a compromise which pleased both sides. Gandhi noted thatIndians would still be 'cooped up' in their provinces, they could not buy gold,they could not hold land in the Transvaal, and they had difficulty in obtainingtrade licences. But he regarded the agreement as the "Magna Carta of SouthAfrican Indians. The gain, he told at a farewell banquet in Johannesburg—hewas feted at a dozen dinners —was not 'the intrinsic things' in the law but thevindication of the abstract principle of racial equality and the removal of the'racial taint'.The victory, moreover, was a vindication of civil resistance- is a force which,'Gandhi wrote in Indian Opinion, 'if it came universal, would revolutionize socialideals and do away with despotisms and the ever-growing militarism underwhich the nations of the West are groaning and are being almost crushed todeath, and which fairly promises to overwhelm even the nations of the East'.Having won the battle, Gandhi, accompanied by Mrs. Gandhi and Mr.Kallenbach, sailed for England on July 18, 1914. Gandhi was in Europeanclothes and looked gentle, thoughtful and tired. Kasturbai wore a white sariwith a gay flower design and showed signs of suffering as well as beauty. Likeher husband, she was forty-five.www.mkgandhi.org Page 134

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesJust before leaving South Africa for ever, Gandhi gave Miss Schlesin and Polak apair of sandals he had made in prison and asked that they be delivered toGeneral Smuts as a gift. Smuts wore them every summer at his own Doorhklooffarm at Irene, near Pretoria. In 1939, on Gandhi's seventieth birthday, hereturned them to Gandhi in a gesture of friendship. Invited to contribute to aGandhi memorial volume on that occasion, Smuts, by then a world-famousstatesman and war leader, complied and, graciously calling himself 'anopponent of Gandhi a generation ago', declared that men like the Mahatma'redeem us from a sense of commonplace and futility and are an inspiration tous not to weary in well doing ...The story of our clash in the early days of the Union of South Africa,' Smutswrote, 'has been told by Gandhi himself and is well known. It was my fate to bethe antagonist of a man for whom even then I had the highest respect ... Henever forgot the human background of the situation, never lost his temper orsuccumbed to hate, and preserved his gentle humour even in the most tryingsituations. His manner and spirit then, as well as later, contrasted markedlywith the ruthless and brutal forcefulness which is the vogue in our day …'I must frankly admit', Smuts continued, 'that his activities at that time werevery trying to me ... Gandhi .... showed a new technique ... His method wasdeliberately to break the law and to organize his followers into a massmovement In both provinces a wild and disconcerting commotion was created,large numbers of Indians had to be imprisoned for lawless behaviour and Gandhihimself received — what no doubt he desired—a period of rest and quiet in jail.For him everything went according to plan. For me—the defender of law andorder—there was the usual trying situation, the odium of carrying out a lawwhich had not strong public support, and finally the discomfiture when the lawwas repealed.'Speaking of Gandhi's present, Smuts remarked, 'I have worn these sandals formany a summer since then, even though I may feel that I am not worthy tostand in the shoes of so great a man.' Such humour and generosity proved himworthy of Gandhi's mettle.www.mkgandhi.org Page 135

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesPart of Gandhi's effectiveness lay in evoking the best Gandhian impulses of hisadversary.The purity of Gandhi's methods made it difficult for Smuts to oppose him.Victory came to Gandhi not when Smuts had no more strength to fight him butwhen he had no more heart to fight him.Professor Gilbert Murray wrote: 'Be careful in dealing with a man who caresnothing for sensual pleasures, nothing for comfort or praise or promotion, but issimply determined to do what he believes to be right. He is a dangerous anduncomfortable enemy because his body which you can always conquer gives youso little purchase over his soul.'That was Gandhi, the leader.Gandhi once recited these verses of Shelley to a Christian gathering in India:Stand ye calm and resolute,Like a forest close and mute,With folded arms and looks which areWeapons in unvanquished war.And if then the tyrants dare,let them ride among you there,Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew—What they like, that let them do.With folded arms and steady eyes,And little fear, and less surprise,Look upon them as they slayTill their rage has died away.Then they will return with shameTo the place from which they came,And the blood thus shed will speakwww.mkgandhi.org Page 136

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIn hot blushes on their cheek.Rise like lions after slumberIn unvanquishable number-Shake your chains to earth like dewWhich in sleep has fallen on you—Ye are many, they are few.Those were the followers, the Indian civil resisters in South Africa.In 1949, the Indian population of South Africa was a quarter of" a million, ofwhom two hundred thousand lived in the Province of Natal. Though they hadmultiplied and prospered, they still did not have the franchise or guaranteedcivil rights. They Were subject to white and Zulu violence. Their condition wasprecarious. Manilal Gandhi's Indian Opinion of February > noted that in 1914passive resistance was 'only suspended' and 'may have to be reintroduced'.Every generation re-enacts the battle for its rights—or it loses them. But whileindividuals in several continents have practised passive resistance, nobodyexcept Mohandas K. Gandhi has ever led a successful, non-violent, mass, civildisobedience campaign. He possessed the personal qualities which aroused thenecessary qualities in the community.www.mkgandhi.org Page 137

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XVIHome In IndiaDO I contradict myself?' Gandhi asked 'Consistency JLJ is a hobgoblin.' No ismheld him rigid in its grip. No theory guided his thoughts or actions. He strove tokeep his mind open. He reserved the right to differ with himself.His life, Gandhi said, was an unending experiment. He experimented even in hisseventies. There was nothing set about him. He was not a conforming Hindu ora conforming nationalist nor a conforming pacifist.Gandhi was independent, unfettered, unpredictable, hence exciting anddifficult. A conversation with him was a voyage of discovery: he dared to goanywhere without a chart.Under attack, he rarely defended himself. Happily adjusted in India, he nevercondemned anyone. Humble and simple, he did not have to pretend dignity.Thus relieved of uncreative mental tasks, he was free to be creative.Nor did he say or do anything merely to gain popularity 0r win or mollifyfollowers. He upset the applecart frequently. His inner need to perform a givenact took precedence over its possible effects on his supporters.Two days before Gandhi, Mrs. Gandhi and Kallenbach reached England fromSouth Africa, the First World War broke out. Gandhi felt that Indians ought todo their bit for Britain.He accordingly volunteered to raise an ambulance corps headed by himself.Eighty Indians, most of them university students in the United Kingdom,volunteered. Gandhi had no delusions: 'Those who confine themselves toattending to the wounded in battle cannot be absolved from the guilt of war'Then how, Gandhi's friends protested, could he, the man of non-violence,participate in a war?Gandhi answered in effect: I accept the benefits and protection of the BritishEmpire; I have not tried to destroy it; why should I allow it to be destroyed?www.mkgandhi.org Page 138

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesA modern nation is only quantitatively less violent in peacetime than in wartimeand unless one non-collaborates in peace-time one is merely salving one'sconscience by non- collaborating in war-time. Why pay taxes to make the armswhich kill? Why obey the kind of officials who will make a war? Unless yousurrender citizenship or go to jail before the war, you belong in the armyduring the war.Gandhi's support of the war was personally painful and politically harmful. Buthe preferred truth to comfort.While the minor tempest over his pro-war attitude raged around Gandhi's head,his pleurisy, aggravated by too much fasting, took a serious turn and the doctorordered him home to India. He arrived in Bombay with Kasturbai onJanuary 9, 1915. Kallenbach, being a German, was not permitted to travel toIndia and returned to South Africa.Except in his native Gujarat region, in the cities of Bombay and Calcutta and inthe Madras area, home of the many Tamil indentured labourers in South Africa,Gandhi's support of the war made little impression. He was not well known inIndia- Nor did he know India.Professor Gokhale accordingly 'commanded' Gandhi to spend the first year inIndia with ‘his ears open but his mouth shut'. What he learned in those twelvemonths about the Past and present, Gandhi matched against the hopes for thefuture which he had formulated as early as 1909 in his first book, 'Hind Swarajor Indian Home Rule. He wrote this brief volume Gujarati, using right and lefthands to do so, while returning from England to South Africa, and had itpublished in instalments in Indian Opinion and then printed as a book inGujarati and English. He allowed it to be republished in India in 1921 withoutchange and, in an introduction to still another edition in 1938, he said, 'I haveseen nothing to make me alter the views expanded in it.' The seventy-six-pagepamphlet, therefore, stands as his social credo.Indian Home Rule records discussions Gandhi had with Indians in London, one ofthem an anarchist, some of them terrorists. 'If we act justly,' Gandhi said tothem, 'India will be free sooner. You will see, too, that if we shun everywww.mkgandhi.org Page 139

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesEnglishman as an enemy, Home-Rule will be delayed. But if we are just tothem, we shall receive their support ... This was prophetic.Gandhi asked his interlocutors, whom he groups as 'Reader', how they see thefuture independence of India. 'As is Japan,' Reader replies, 'so must India be.We must own our own navy, our army and we must have our own splendour andthen will India's voice ring through the world'.In other words, Gandhi comments, you want 'English rule without theEnglishman. You want the tiger's nature without e tiger ... You would makeIndia English ... This is not the Swaraj I want.'Gokhale told Gandhi in South Africa that the booklet was ‘crude and hastilyconceived'. Some parts, notably those on British domestic politics, are. On theother hand, Count Leo Gandhi' Praised its philosophy. It has abiding interest forGandhi’s definition of Swaraj or Home-Rule. 'Some Englishmen', Gandhi wrote,‘state that they took and hold India by the sword. Both statements are wrong.The sword statements are wrong. The sword is entirely useless for holdingIndia. We alone keep them ... We like their commerce; they please us by theirsubtle methods and get what they want from us ... We further strengthen theirhold by quarrelling amongst ourselves ... India is being ground down not underthe British heel but under, that of modern civilization.' Then he inveighedagainst India's use of railways and machinery.Foreigners, and Indians, frequently challenged Gandhi on his hostility to themodern machine. The several editions of Hind Swaraj report some of thesediscussions. In 1924, for instance, Gandhi was asked whether he objected to allmachinery.'How can I,' he replied, 'when I know that even this body is a most delicatepiece of machinery; the spinning wheel is a machine; a little toothpick is amachine. What I object to is the craze for machinery, not machinery as such.''Today', Gandhi continued, 'machinery merely helps a few to ride on the back ofthe millions ... The machine should not tend to atrophy the limbs of man. Forinstance, I would make intelligent exceptions. Take the case of the Singerwww.mkgandhi.org Page 140

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timessewing machine. It is one of the few useful things ever invented and there is aromance about the device itself.' He had learned to sew on it.And would you not need big factories to produce little devices like Singers?Yes,' Gandhi agreed.Then, since he liked to close the circle of every argument and come back to hisstarting-point, Gandhi said, 'Ideally, * would rule out all machinery, even as Iwould reject this very body, which is not helpful to salvation and seek theabsolute liberation of the soul. From that point of view I would reject allmachinery, but machines would remain because, like the body, they areinevitable.' Thus, he upheld the principle yet admitted the contention.Gandhi was not anti-machine. He merely realized earlier than many others thedangers and horrors of a civilization in which the individual is somewhat in theposition of a savage who makes an idol and then makes sacrifices to appease it.The faster machines move, the faster man lives and the greater his nervoustensions and his cultural and social tributes to speed. Gandhi would have hadless objection to machinery if it merely served the body; he did not want it toinvade the mind and maim the spirit. He believed that India's mission was to'elevate the moral being.' Therefore, 'if the English become Indianized we canaccommodate them.'Such a thing has never happened, Reader objected.'To believe that what has not occurred in history will not occur at all,' Gandhireplied, 'is to argue disbelief in the dignity of man.' He had the soul of anEastern prophet and the spirit of a Western pioneer.Reader scorned Gandhi's moral preoccupations. He wanted India liberated fromthe British as Mazzini and Garibaldi had liberated Italy from Austria. Theanalogy enabled Gandhi to drive home the central thesis that guided him togreatness before and especially after India's independence.'If you believe that because Italians rule Italy the Italian nation is happy you aregroping in darkness ... According to Mazzini (freedom) meant the whole of thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 141

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesItalian people, that is, its agriculturists. The Italy of Mazzini still remains in astate of slavery ...'It would be folly to assume,' Gandhi added, 'that an Indian Rockefeller wouldbe better than an American Rockefeller.'Gandhi saw the flaws in Western culture, but he took much from it. His defenceof the individual against the community and of man against the machine is intime with Ruskin, Thoreau' Mazzini and the Utopian (not Marxist) socialists.Geologically, Gandhi stood with one foot in the deep individualistic current ofthe first half of Europe's nineteenth century and the other in the turbulentnationalistic current of the second half of that century; the two streamsmerged in him and he endeavoured to achieve the same synthesis in the Indianindependence movement.Gandhi asked England to quit India, but he did not want India to quit England.He cultivated cultural and other ties with Britain. In 1936, for instance, he gavean Indian student named Kamalnayan Bajaj a letter of introduction to HenryPolak in London in which he said, 'However much we may fight Great Britain,London is increasingly our Mecca ... I have advised him to take up a course inthe London School of Economics.' His nationalism lacked the usual concomitantsof nationalism: exclusiveness and hostility towards other countries. 'Mypatriotism,' Gandhi declared, 'is subservient to my religion.' He was tooreligious to serve one land, one race, one caste, one family, one person, oreven one religion. His religion was humanity.Gandhi planted these ideas as he moved up and down India during thatprobationary first year Gokhale had enjoined upon him; he studied and learned,but contrary to orders he talked. He talked at banquets celebrating his SouthAfrican exploits. He attended them with the silent Kasturbai whom he laudedas his helpful partner.At a dinner in April 1915, in Madras, he defended his recruiting campaign forthe British army; this speech was pro- West. 'I discovered,' he said, 'that theBritish Empire had certain ideals with which I have fallen in love and one "ofwww.mkgandhi.org Page 142

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesthose ideals is that every subject of the British Empire has the freest scopepossible for his energy and honour and whatever he thinks is due to hisconscience. I think that is true of the British government as it is true of noother government ... I have more than once said that that government is bestwhich governs least. I have found that it is possible for me to be governed leastunder the British Empire. Hence, my loyalty to the British Empire.'He took the unpopular side.Gandhi's speeches were delivered in a weak, unimpressive, conversational tone.He had been heralded as the hero of Natal and the Transvaal, the person whodefeated Smuts. The Indian nationalists had expected a new giant, a lion of aman who might lead them to independence (Gokhale died in 1915). They weredisappointed. Instead of a likely candidate for the succession, they saw a thinlittle figure dressed in a ridiculously large turban and flapping loincloth whocould scarcely make himself heard (there were no loudspeakers) and neitherthrilled nor stimulated his audience.Yet Gandhi would soon remake the entire nationalist movement of India.Simultaneously with Gandhi's departure from Phoenix Farm, his own family,with other families, also left South Africa for India. As the best place for thetemporary sojourn of the boys in this group Gandhi chose Shantiniketan, aschool in Bengal, eastern India, maintained by Rabindranath Tagore, India'sgreat novelist and poet laureate who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in1913.Gandhi and Tagore were contemporaries and closely linked as chief agents ofIndia's twentieth-century regeneration. But Gandhi was the wheat field andTagore the rose garden, Gandhi was the working arm, Tagore the singing voice,Gandhi the general, Tagore the herald, Gandhi the emaciated ascetic withshaven head and face, Tagore the large, white-maned, white-beardedaristocrat-intellectual with a face of classic, patriarchal beauty. Gandhiexemplified stark renunciation; Tagore felt 'the embrace of freedom in athousand bonds of delight'. Yet both were united by their love of India andwww.mkgandhi.org Page 143

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesmankind. Tagore wept at seeing his India 'the eternal rag picker at otherpeople's dustbins' and prayed for 'the magnificent harmony of all human races.'Tagore believed, with Gandhi, that India's shackles were self-made:Prisoner, tell me who was it that wrought this unbreakable chain?It was I, said the prisoner, who forged this chain very carefully.Tagore and Gandhi, the greatest Indians of the first half of the twentiethcentury, revered each other. It was Taggore, apparently, who conferred onGandhi, the title of Mahatma; 'The Great Soul in beggar's garb,' Tagore said.Gandhi caballed Tagore 'The Great Sentinel'. Sentimentally inseparable, soulmatesto the end, they waged verbal battles, for they were different. Gandhifaced the past and out of it made future history; religion, caste, Hindumythology were deeply ingrained in him. Tagore accepted the present, with itsmachines, its Western culture and, despite it, made Eastern poetry. Perhaps,since provincial origins are so important in India, it was the difference betweenisolated Gujarat and cosmopolitan Bengal. Gandhi was frugal. Tagore wasprodigal. 'The suffering millions', Gandhi wrote to Tagore, 'ask for one poioem,invigorating food.' Tagore gave them music. At Shantiniketan, Tagore's pupilssang and danced, wove garlands and made life sweet and beautiful. WhenGandhi arrived there, shortly after his return to India, to see how his PhoenixFarm boys were faring, he turned the place upside down. With the I of CharlesFreer Andrews and William W. Pearson, his friends in South Africa, Gandhipersuaded the entire community 125 boys and their teachers to run thekitchen, handle garbage, clean the latrines, sweep the grounds and, in general 'forsake the muse for the monk. Tagore acquiesced tolerantly and said, 'Theexperiment contains the key to Swaraj’ or Home-Rule. But austerity wasuncongenial and, when Gandhi left to attend Gokhale's funeral, the experimentcollapsed.Gandhi, however, sought his own hermitage or ashram where he, his family andfriends and nearest co-workers would make their permanent home in anatmosphere of renunciation and service. Gandhi's life now had no room forwww.mkgandhi.org Page 144

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesprivate law practice or private relations with wife and sons. A foreigner oncesaid to Gandhi, 'How is your family?''All of India is my family,' Gandhi replied.Thus dedicated, Gandhi founded the Satyagraha Ashram first at Kochrab andthen, permanently, at Sabarmati, across the Sabarmati River from the city ofAhmedabad. There, rooted in the soil and sand and people of India, Gandhigrew to full stature as the leader of his nation.Ahmedabad's textile magnates and Bombay's shipping barons supportedfinancially the inmates of Gandhi's ashram. The Sabarmati Ashram consists of agroup of low, whitewashed huts in a grove of spreading trees. A mile awaystands the Sabarmati prison where fighters for India's freedom were laterincarcerated. Below the ashram compound is the river in which women washtheir laundry, and cows and buffaloes wade. All around, the scene is gentlypastoral, but not too distant are the closely packed houses of Ahmedabadhedged in by ugly factory smokestacks.Gandhi's room is about the size of a cell; its one window has iron bars. Theroom opens on to a small terrace where Gandhi slept even in the coldest nightsand worked during the day. Except for intervals in prison, Gandhi occupied thatcell for sixteen years.On the high bank which slopes down sharply to the river, Gandhi held his dailyprayer meetings. Nearby is the grave of Maganlal Gandhi, the Mahatma's secondcousin, who managed the ashram and died in 1928. 'His death has widowed me-M. K. Gandhi', reads the inscription on the stone.With the years, new houses were erected to accommodate Indians who wishedto be Gandhi's disciples. Some of the most active leaders of the independencemovement began their political careers at the feet of the Mahatma inSabarmati. The population of the settlement fluctuated from 30 at the start toa maximum of 230. They tended the fruit trees, planted grain, spun, wove,studied and taught in surrounding villages.www.mkgandhi.org Page 145

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIn ancient India, ashrams and religious retreats for monks were well-knownphenomena. Pilgrimages to four ashrams in different parts of the land signifiedthat one's legs had proved the unity of India. Ashramites resigned from theworld and, contemplating themselves inside and out, waited for the end whiletorturing the body to hasten it. Gandhi and his ashram, however, remained inclosest contact with the world. The ashram, in fact, became the navel of India.Contemplating the ashram, Indians attached themselves to its first citizen. Nordid Gandhi ever purposely hurt his body. He had it massaged; he sleptadequately; he walked for strength; all his dietetic aberrations, queer to manyWesterners and even to many Indians, were designed to make him a biologicallyperfect instrument for the attainment of spiritual goals. Though he drasticallyreduced his food consumption he did not want to be famished, and in SouthAfrica he always carried chocolate-coated almonds to still sudden hunger. Heremained, until he was killed, a healthy specimen. Who but a very healthy mancould have fasted as often and as long as he did yet reach the age of seventyeight?A photograph taken shortly after his return to India shows him seated on aplatform, legs crossed, nude but for a short loincloth, making a speech whilearound him stand Indian politicians in European clothes. He soon told them toshed those garments. How could persons in Bond Street suits or Bombay coatsand trousers win peasant support?Peasants! Politicians had nothing to do with peasants. They were hoping topersuade the British to withdraw or, at least, to ameliorate the imperialregime; to achieve this end y°u either had to shoot well or appear in stripedtrousers to deliver petitions in impeccable English to English bureaucrats.India's Independence Hall, they thought, would be papered with petitions andmemorials addressed to a most gracious sovereign or the sovereign's satrap.But Gandhi told them to get out among the people. To do so they would haveto drop English and use the native languages of India: Hindi, Urdu, Tamil,Telugu, Malayalam, Kanarese, Bengali, Punjabi, etc., each spoken by manymillions who had had no benefit of Western education or perhaps anywww.mkgandhi.org Page 146

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeseducation. Village uplift was Gandhi's First Freedom. Over 80 per cent of Indialived in villages. India's liberation from England would be vain, he held, withoutpeasant liberation from poverty, ignorance and idleness. The British might go,but would that help the fifty to sixty million outcast untouchables, victims ofcruel Hindu discrimination? Independence must mean more than Indian officeholdersin the places and palaces of British office-holders.Gandhi wanted a new India today, not just a new India tomorrow.Gandhi's message touched India with a magic wand. Gradually, a new visionopened. The Indian's heart aches for the lost glory of his country. Gandhibrought it balm. Gandhi in loincloth, imperturbable, prayerful, seated amidtrees, not aping the British gentleman but resembling a saint of antiquity,reminded the nation that India had seen many conquerors and conquered themall by remaining true to itself. Gandhi kindled India's pride and faith. His magicwand became a ramrod.Gandhi's message stood the Indian National Congress party in good stead.The Congress, as Indians call it, was born in Bombay on December 28, 1885. Itsfather and first general secretary was an Englishman, Allan Octavian Hume,who had the blessing of Lord Dufferin, the British Viceroy. Hume at firstproposed that Indian politicians should meet regularly, under the chairmanshipof British governors, as a grievance court, but the Viceroy thought that Indianswould speak more freely if one of their member presided. Hume placed bothproposals before prominent Indians and they chose the Viceroy's variant. Thiswas the origin of the Congress. Hume remained secretary, sometimes alone,sometimes with Indian colleagues, until 1907. The Congress president for 1888was George Yule, an Englishman; for 1894, Alfred Webb, an Irish member of theBritish Parliament; for 1904, Sir Henry Cotton, a retired Indian Civil Serviceofficial; and for 1910, Sir William Wedderburn, former Secretary to theGovernment of Bombay. Gandhi praised Hume and Wedderburn for theirdevotion to India. They and all the Congressmen of this early period saw India'swelfare through constitutional reforms and administrative measures.www.mkgandhi.org Page 147

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe Congress was organized to channel popular protest into legal moderation.But into the channel flowed the fresh water of national revivalism, spurred, inthe second half of the nineteenth century, by the Tagore family, Sri Aurobindo,Swami Vivekananda, a dynamic, eloquent disciple of the mystic Ramakrishna,Dadabhai Naoroji and Raja Rammohan Roy, the first translator of theUpanishads into English. The world theosophist movement, which paidpermanent tribute to the ancient religious and cultural wealth of India, likewisefed that pride in the past which constituted the foundation of the movementfor national regeneration.Thanks in part to the unification and orderly administration of the country bythe British, Indian industrialists, Hindus and Parsis in particular, grew rich andbegan to buy out their British partners. The emergence of Indian capitalism andof a new Indian middle class gave a powerful impetus to the rule for selfgovernment.Under these multiple influences, the Congress slowly utgrew its collaborationistboyhood and became a demanding youth. The 'prayers' to British governorswere couched in firmer terms, though as late as 1921, Tagore complained oftheir 'correct grammatical whine'. Polite irritations supplanted olite invitationsto high imperial officials to attend Congress functions. Some speeches andresolutions pressed for ultimate Home-Rule. But only a few 'extremists' dreamtof converting the Congress into an active agent that would win Indianindependence by mass action.Gandhi too was a collaborationist when he returned to India in 1915. Yet therewas a revolutionary, anti-collaborationist potential in his yearning for an Indiathat was Indian instead of a replica of the West in clothing, language, modesand politics. Gandhi craved for his .country a cultural regeneration and spiritualrenaissance which would give it inner freedom and hence, inevitably, outerfreedom, for if the people acquired individual and collective dignity they wouldinsist on their rights and then nobody could hold them in bondage.The national metamorphosis Gandhi envisaged could not be the achievement ofa small upper class or the gift of a foreign power. This made him conscious andwww.mkgandhi.org Page 148

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timescritical of the shortcomings of the Congress. Before Gandhi sat securely in thesaddle of the Congress he was the burr under the saddle, and it got him, intotrouble.www.mkgandhi.org Page 149

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XVII'Sit Down, Gandhi'UNDER the impact of the First World War, the tide of India and even moderateCongressmen began to ask for Home-Rule. In September 1915, Mrs. AnnieBesant, a remarkable Englishwoman who has written her name permanentlyinto the history of modern India, announced the formation of a Home-RuleLeague and persuaded the veteran Dadabhai to become its president.Mrs. Besant was then approaching seventy. Born in 1847, she had lived a stormylife as atheist, socialist, women's rights advocate and theosophist. She regardedherself as a reincarnation of Hypathia of Alexandria and Giordano Bruno, bothof whom met violent deaths, and in her autobiography she says she longed tobe the ‘bride of Christ.' Though a foreigner, she was an accepted and respectedleader of India. An eloquent speaker, trenchant writer and brave politician, sheedited Indian publications and made India her home. She died in 1933.In 1892, Mrs. Besant started a school at Benares, the holy city on the Ganges,and in 1916 this institution, guided of Pandit Malaviya, was expanded into theHindu University Central College. An illustrious gathering of notables atten thethree-day opening ceremonies in February 1916- viceroy was there and so werenumerous bejewelled maharajas, maharanis, rajas and high officials in all theirdazzling panoply.On February 4 Gandhi addressed the meeting. It broke up before he couldfinish.India had never heard such a forthright, unvarnished speech. Gandhi spared noone, least of all those present. 'His Highness, the Maharaja, who presidedyesterday over our deliberations,' Gandhi said, 'spoke about the poverty ofIndia. Other speakers laid great stress upon it. But what did we witness in thegreat pandal in which the foundation ceremony was performed by the Viceroy(Lord Hardinge)? Certainly a most gorgeous show, an exhibition of jewellerywhich made a splendid feast for the eyes of the greatest jeweller who chose towww.mkgandhi.org Page 150

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timescome from Paris. I compare with the richly bedecked noblemen the millions ofthe poor. And I feel like saying to those noblemen: "There is no salvation forIndia unless you strip yourselves of this jewellery and hold it in trust for yourcountrymen in India."'Hear, hear,' students in the audience exclaimed. Many dissented. Severalprinces walked out.Gandhi was not deterred. Whenever I hear of a great palace rising in any greatcity of India', he went on, 'be it in British India or be it in the India ruled by ourgreat chiefs, I become jealous at once and say, "Oh, it is the money that hascome from the agriculturists"...There cannot be much spirit of self-government about us,' he exclaimed, 'if wetake away or allow others to take away or the peasants almost the whole of theresults of their labour. Our salvation can only come through the farmer.Neither the lawyers, nor the doctors, nor the rich landlords are going to secureit.' Congress beware!Gandhi was unfurling his flag before the mighty ones of was the flag of India. Itwas the flag of the lowly.'If you of the student world to which my remarks are supposed to be addressedthis evening,' Gandhi declared 'consider for one moment that the spiritual life,for which this country is noted and for which this country has no rival, can betransmitted through the lip, pray believe me you are wrong. You will never beable merely through the lip to give the message that India, I hope, will one daydeliver to the world ... I venture to suggest to you that we have now reachedalmost the end of our resources in speech-making and it is not enough that ourears be feasted, that our eyes be feasted, but it is necessary that our heartshave got to be touched and that our hands and feet have got to be moved.'It is a matter of deep humiliation and shame for us,' Gandhi continued, 'that Iam compelled this evening under the shadow of this great college, and in thissacred city, to address my countrymen in a language that is foreign to me.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 151

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'Suppose,' Gandhi mused, 'that we had been receiving education during the pastfifty years through our vernaculars, what should we be today? We should havetoday a free India, we should have our educated men not as if they wereforeigners in their own land, but speaking to the heart of the nation; theywould be working, amongst the poorest of the poor, and whatsoever they wouldhave gained during the past fifty years would be a heritage of the nation.'This sentiment provoked scattered applause.Turning to the essence of his philosophy, Gandhi, using words that shocked theassembled aristocrats, said, 'No paper contribution will ever give us selfgovernment.No amount of speeches will ever make us fit for self-government.It is only our conduct that will fit us for it. And how are we trying to governourselves? ... If you find me this evening speaking without reserve, prayconsider that you are only sharing the thoughts of a man who allows himself tothink audibly,and if you think that I seem to transgress the limits that courtedeposes upon me, pardon me for the liberty I may be taking. I visited theViswanath Temple last evening and as I was walking through those lanes thesewere the thoughts that touched me ... I speak feelingly as a Hindu. Is it rightthat the lanes of our sacred temple should be as dirty as they are? The housesround about are built anyhow. The lanes are narrow and tortuous. If even ourtemples are not models of roominess and cleanliness what can our selfgovernmentbe? Shall our temples be abodes of holiness, cleanliness and peaceas soon as the British have retired from India...?'Gandhi stayed close to earth; even the most delicate ears should hear the factsof life. 'It is not comforting to think,' he said, 'that people walk about thestreets of Bombay under the perpetual fear of dwellers in the storeyedbuildings spitting upon them.' Many Indian eyebrows were lifted. Was it rightfor an Indian to say this with Englishmen present? And what had spitting to dowith the Benares University or independence?Gandhi sensed the audience's antagonism, yet he was relentless. He travelled agood deal in third-class railway carriages, he said. Conditions were notaltogether the fault of the management. Indians spat where others had towww.mkgandhi.org Page 152

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timessleep. Students misbehave in the trains. 'They can speak English,' hecommented sarcastically, 'and they have worn Norfolk jackets and thereforeclaim the right to force their way in and command seating accommodation ... Iam setting my heart bare. Surely, we must set these things right in our Progresstowards self-government.'The day’s ration of unpalatable thoughts was still incomplete. There remainedthe unmentionable. 'It is my bounden duty,' Gandhi asserted, 'to refer to whatagitated our minds these two or three days. All of us have had many anxious ofwhile the Viceroy was going through the streets of Benares' there weredetectives stationed in many places.' A movement went through the invitedguests. This was not e talked about in public. It was for Gandhi. 'We werehorrified,' he revealed. 'We asked ourselves, "Why this distrust? Is it not betterthat even Lord Hardinge should die than live a living death?""But a representative of the mighty Sovereign may not. He might find itnecessary even to live a living death. But why was it necessary to impose thesedetectives on us?"Gandhi not only asked the unpalatable question. He gave the more unpalatablereply. 'We may foam, we may fret,' Gandhi said about the Indian reaction to thedetectives, 'we may resent, but let us not forget that the India of today in herimpatience has produced an army of anarchists. I am myself an anarchist, butof another type ... Their anarchism ... is a sign of fear. If we trust and fearGod, we shall have to fear no one, not Maharajas, not Viceroys, not thedetectives, not even King George.'The audience was growing unruly and arguments broke out in various parts ofthe assembly. Gandhi uttered a few more sentences when Mrs.Besant, whopresided, called out to him: 'Please stop it.'Gandhi turned around to her and said, 1 await your orders. If you consider that,by my speaking as I am, I am not serving the country and the empire I shallcertainly stop.'Mrs. Besant, coldly: 'Please explain your object.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 153

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi: 'I am explaining my object. I simply ...' He could not be heard abovethe din.'Go on,' some shouted.'Sit down, Gandhi,' others shouted.Decorum restored, Gandhi defended Mrs. Besant. It lS because 'she loves Indiaso well and she considers that I am erring in thinking audibly before you youngmen.' But he preferred to speak frankly. 'I am turning the searchlight towardsourselves ... It is well to take the blame sometimes.’At this moment, many dignitaries left the platform, the commotion mounted,and Gandhi had to stop. Mrs. Besant adjourned the meeting.From Benares Gandhi went home to Sabarmati.Distances are great in India and communications bad; few people can read andfewer possess radios. Therefore the ear of India is big and sensitive. In 1916,the ear began to catch the voice of a man who was courageous and indiscreet,a little man who lived like a poor man and defended the poor to the face of therich, a holy man in an ashram.Gandhi was not yet a national figure. The hundreds of millions did not knowhim. But the fame of the new Mahatma was spreading. India stands in awe ofpower and wealth. But it loves the humble servant of the poor. Possessions,elephants, jewels, armies, palaces win India's obedience. Sacrifice andrenunciation win its heart.Matthew Arnold wrote:The East bowed low before the blastIn patient, deep disdain.And it bowed low, with the same disdain, before the East that coveted richesand might.The Indian, therefore, understands as well as appreciates renunciation. Indiahas many monks and ascetics. But Gandhi's renunciation caused a larger echobecause he opposed renunciation 'for the mere sake of renunciation'. 'Awww.mkgandhi.org Page 154

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesmother', he observed in a letter, 'would never by choice sleep in a wet bed butshe would gladly do so in order to spare the dry bed for her child.'Gandhi renounced in order to serve.www.mkgandhi.org Page 155

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XVIII'Children of God’‘India', Jawaharlal Nehru said, 'contains all that is disgusting and all that isnoble.' Nothing it contains is more disgusting than 'the hideous system', asGandhi called it, of untouchability, the 'canker eating at the vitals of Hinduism'.Orthodox Hindus did not share this view, nor did they welcome Gandhi's effortto extirpate the evil.In attempting to eradicate untouchability, Gandhi was tugging at roots severalthousand years long. They originated in the prehistoric Aryan invasion of Indiaand grew into the hearts, superstitions and social habits of hundreds of millionsof people. Many Western nations have their 'untouchables, but the stubbornHindu phenomenon of untouchability stems from peculiar historic and economiccircumstances which are tied together into an ugly bundle by the sanction ofreligion.In the long, unchronicled night before the dawn of history a fair-skinned folkcalled Aryans inhabited an area north of India. Perhaps they hailed from thedistant Caucasian isthmus between the Caspian and the Black Sea, or fromTurkestan.' or even from the more remote Russian valleys of the Don and theTerek where exquisite gold ornaments of the ancient Scythians have beenunearthed. Nehru notes that Pathan dancing resembles Cossack dancing. Six orseven thousand years ago the Aryans began pushing south; one tide of;migration swept into India about 2000 or 3000 B.C., another moved into Iran; athird descended into Europe.Hence, the 'Indo-European' language family. There is an evident bond betweenthe Sanskrit of India and many Western tongues; Sanskrit pitri, Latin pater,Greek pater, English father; Sanskrit matri, Latin mater, Greek meter, Englishmother, Russian mat; Sanskrit duhirti, English daughter, German Tochter,Russian doch.www.mkgandhi.org Page 156

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGradually, the Aryans, which means 'noblemen', conquered north-west India.They found there an older civilization related to that of Babylon, Assyria andpresumably Egypt.In 1922, at a place called Mohenjo-daro, about two hundred miles north ofKarachi, an Indian archaeologist, examining the ruins of a comparatively newBuddhist temple seventeen hundred years old, found, beneath the temple,proof of a much more antique city. Scientific excavations at the site brought tolight a treasure of clay seals, beads, bricks, pots, utensils and ornaments. Onejar had a Sumero-Babylonian inscription in the hieroglyphic writing ofMesopotamia which dated it between 2800 and 2500 B.C. Many of thediscoveries at Mohenjo-daro and other excavated spots in the same arearesemble those at Ur of the Chaldees, Kish and Tell-Asmar in the region of theTigris and Euphrates. Explorers have since traced the abandoned caravan routesover which north-west India and the Biblical Near East exchanged goods andCulture.When the silt, sand and debris were carted away, the town of Mohenjo-daro,founded fifty-five hundred years ago and continuously inhabited for sixcenturies, was exposed. It covers more than 240 acres. One can now see itsprincipal avenue, which was thirty-three feet wide, and many broad, bricknorth-south, east-west streets once lined with burnt- hath two or more storey’shigh, that had wells and bathrooms. A sewage system using clay pipes helped tokeep the city clean.In a silver jar found under a floor lay a piece of cotton cloth, the oldest in theworld. Bronze razors, chairs, spoons cosmetic boxes, silver drinking cups, ivorycombs, bracelets nose studs for women, necklaces, bronze statuettes showingthat ladies wore skirts and girdles, gold beads, gambling djCe and thousands ofother historic objects have been retrieved from the dust of ages in this mostexciting unveiling of India's past.Either a flood or an epidemic destroyed this earliest known Indian civilization.The Aryans brought their own gods and goods and put a new stamp on thecountry. They used horses and chariots, battle-axes, bows and javelins.www.mkgandhi.org Page 157

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe Rig-Veda, consisting of 1028 hymns and written in liturgical Sanskrit,pictures the life of these conquering Indo-Aryans four to five thousand yearsago. Said to be the oldest book in the world, the Rig-Veda reveals the origin ofthe Hindu caste system and of the untouchable outcasts.No caste divisions, as far as can be ascertained, encumbered the Aryans ontheir arrival in India. But conquest brought social differentiation. Though thesubjugated territory was hardly the home of barbarians, or blacks, the Rig-Vedaspeaks of the inhabitants contemptuously as 'black-skinned', 'noseless' and'malignant', who did not know enough to appease the gods with burnt offeringsof animals. The Aryans employed these 'inferiors' to till their fields, tend theirherds, barter their products and fashion their tools and ornaments. Themerchants and farmers constituted the Vaisya or third caste, the craftsmen theSudra or fourth caste.Power and wealth sowed discord among the Aryans and they called upon a rajaor king to rule over their several districts. He and his courtiers and theirfighting men an their families constituted the master-warrior Kshatriya castewho were served by hymn-singing, Veda-writing, ritual performing, mythmaking,animal-sacrificing Brahmans or priests. Such was the ascendancy ofreligion and intelligence, however, that the Brahmans became the top caste,while the kshatriyas occupied the next rung down.The Aryans, who entered India poor in women, intermarried with the localpopulation. This healthy mixing of the blood continued even after theconquerors penetrated into south India where they subdued the Dravidians.These races had evolved an interesting culture of their own, but they weredark-skinned, and the colour-conscious Aryans consequently increased theheight of their caste barriers. Dravidians became Brahmans, Kshatriyas andVaisyas, but a larger percentage than in the north were impressed into theSudra caste, and millions were left outside all castes.The Aryan invasion frightened many natives into the hills and jungles wherethey lived by hunting and fishing. In time, they timidly approached the Aryanand Sudra villages to sell their wicker baskets and other handicraft products.www.mkgandhi.org Page 158

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesOccasionally, they were allowed to settle permanently on the edges of thesettlements and do menial tasks, such as handling dead animals and men,removing refuse, etc. These were the untouchables.Since modern times, vocation no longer follows caste. A Brahman can be a cabdriver, a Kshatriya a book keeper, and a Vaisya a prince's prime minister. Onthe other hand, the ban against marriage between castes is observed to thisday, and when Gandhi appeared on the scene in 1915 few violated it. Indeed,the four castes are divided into three to four thousand sub-castes, some ofthem resembling craft guilds, others the equivalent of blood or provincialgroups; sub Parents Preferred to find a wife for their son within the sub castes'Carriage of a caste member with an untouchable was, of course' unthinkable.Love marriages were considered by r indecent, certainly ill-omened. Marriageswere arranged parents; and why would a father demean his family by letting apariah bride into it?Untouchables were confined to tasks which Hindus spurned-street-cleaning,scavenging, tanning, etc. In some regions wheel-wrights, hunters, weavers andpotters are considered untouchables. To escape the humiliation, untouchableshave adopted Christianity or Islam. Yet forty or fifty million have chosen to stayin the fold even though they are kept outside the pale. Why?To perpetuate caste it has been clothed in the sacred formula of immutablefate: you are a Brahman or Sudra or untouchable because of your conduct in aprevious incarnation. Your misbehaviour in the present life might result in castedemotion in the next. A high-caste Hindu could be reborn an untouchable. Thesoul of a sinner might even be transferred to an animal. An untouchable couldbecome a Brahman.'The human birth', Mahadev Desai writes in his introduction to the Gita, 'isregarded by the Hindu as a piece of evolutionary good fortune which should beturned to the best and noblest account'; then he quotes an old Indian poem:I died as mineral and became a plant,I died as plant and rose to animal.www.mkgandhi.org Page 159

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesI died as animal and I was man.What should I fear? When was I less by dying?A woman might become a man in the next incarnation, and vice versa. SomeHindus would like to feel that at rebirth they will still be members of the samefamily though their relationship may be altered; a husband and wife may bebrother and sister, for instance, or sister and brother. Men with femininepropensities might turn into women in the coming incarnation; a person who isblood thirsty and vicious may fall to animal status; a spiritual merchant may bereborn a Brahman. A greedy Brahman may be reborn in tbe merchant caste.Thus conduct alters inheritance, but once caste rank is fixed in any oneincarnation it becomes destiny-According to this doctrine, an untouchable is merely doing penance; tointerrupt it by raising his status robs him of a possible ticket to a high caste inthe next incarnation. This prospect reconciles religious untouchables to theircurrent misery.An untouchable is exactly that; he must not touch a caste Hindu or anything acaste Hindu touches. Obviously, he should not enter a Hindu temple, home, orshop. In villages, the untouchables live on the lowest outskirts into which dirtywaters drain; in cities they inhabit the worst sections of the world's worstslums. If, by mischance, a Hindu should come into contact with an untouchableor something touched by an untouchable he must purge himself throughreligiously prescribed ablutions. Indeed, in some areas, this is incumbent uponhim even if the shadow of an untouchable falls on him, for that too pollutes. Onthe Malabar Coast, untouchables are warned by a loud noise to quit the roadand its immediate environs at the approach of a caste Hindu.Hindus are expected to bathe once a day, and water for washing the hands andprivate parts is available in the most primitive toilets. Hindus also take specialpride in the cleanliness of their personal pots, pans and drinking vessels. AHindu will smoke a huka water pipe or a cigarette through his fist withoutletting it touch his lips, and he often pours water into his mouth instead ofsipping it. 'This sense of cleanliness', Nehru notes, 'is not scientific and the manwww.mkgandhi.org Page 160

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswho bathes twice a day will unhesitatingly drink water that is unclean and fullof germs ... The individual Will keep his own fairly clean but throw all therubbish in the village street in front of his neighbour's house ...' Cleanliness, headds, is a religious rite, not an end in itself. If it were, Hindus would concernedwith the cleanliness of others, untouchables included.untouchability is segregation gone mad. Theoretically a device againstcontamination, it actually contaminates the country that allows it. MahatmaGandhi knew this and he fought untouchability for the sake of the castes aswell as the outcasts, but in fighting it he defied a thousand taboos and roused amillion fears, superstitions, hates and vested interests. Buddhism and manyHindu reformers had attacked untouchability; Gandhi said little against it untilhe had taken action against it.In his youth, Gandhi played with an untouchable boy, Putlibai forbade it.Though he loved her he disobeyed her, his first rebellion against authority. 'Iused to laugh at my dear mother', he wrote to Charles Freer Andrews, 'formaking us bathe when we brothers touched any pariah'. In South Africa, too, heassociated with untouchables. In May 1918, in Bombay, he went to a meetingcalled to improve the lot of untouchables. When he got up to deliver hisaddress, he said, 'Is there an untouchable here?' No hand was raised. Gandhirefused to speak.Now there came to Gandhi's ashram near Ahmedabad an untouchable familyand asked to become permanent members. He admitted them.A tempest broke.The presence of the untouchable father, mother and their little daughterLakshmi polluted the entire ashram, and how could the wealthy Hindus ofBombay and Ahmedabad finance a defiled place? They withdrew theircontributions. Maganlal, who kept the accounts, reported that he was out offunds and had no prospects for the next month.Then we shall go to live in the untouchable quarter,' Gandhi quietly replied.www.mkgandhi.org Page 161

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesOne morning a rich man drove up in a car and inquired whether the communityneeded money. 'Most certainly, Gandhi replied. Gandhi had met the man onlyonce and that casually.The next day the anonymous benefactor put thirteen thousand rupees in bigbills into Gandhi's hand and went away- That would keep the ashram for a year.This did not end Gandhi's troubles. The women of the ashram refused to acceptthe untouchable woman. Kasturbai, revolted at the idea of having Danibehn inthe kitchen cooking food and washing dishes, complained to her husband.Gandhi heard her patiently and appealed to her reason. But belief inuntouchability resides in some remote nervous recess where, with racialintolerance, dogma and colour prejudice among its neighbours, it eludescommon sense and humaneness. Gandhi therefore had to meet Kasturbai on herown terms: she was a loyal Hindu wife; did she wish to leave him and go to livein Porbandar? He was responsible for her acts; if he forced her to commit a sinit was his sin not hers and she would not be punished. Kasturbai was growingaccustomed to her husband's strange ways. She could never refute hisarguments. He had become a Mahatma; who was she, the almost illiterateGujarati woman, to question the man of God? He was now the loving teacher,no longer the lustful spouse. She resented him less and listened to him more.Within her nerve tissue, to be sure, the hostility to the untouchables continuedto twitch. But her mind was gradually learning hospitality to his ideas. In theworshipful air of India, husband became hero.Presently, Gandhi announced that he had adopted Lakshmi as his own daughter.Kasturbai thus became the mother of an untouchable! It was like bringing aNegro daughter-in-law into the pre-Civil War mansion of a Southern lady.Gandhi insisted that untouchability was not part of early Hinduism. Indeed, hiswar on the 'miasma' of untouchability was conducted in terms of Hinduism. 'I donot want to be re-born,’ he' stated, 'but if I have to be re-born I should be rebornan untouchable so that I may share their sorrows, sufferings and theaffronts levelled against them in order that I may endeavour to free myself andthem from their miserable condition.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 162

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIf this prayer of the Mahatma has been answered he is now an untouchablechild in India and his devout followers might be maltreating him.But before being transformed into an untouchable in the next incarnation hetried to live like one in this. So he took to cleaning the lavatories of theashram. His disciples voluntarily joined him. Nobody was an untouchablebecause everybody did the untouchable's work without considering themselvescontaminated thereby.The outcasts were called 'untouchables', 'pariahs', 'depressed classes','scheduled classes'. Gandhi understood psychology; he began calling them'Harijans' (Children of God), and later named his weekly magazine after them.Gradually, 'Harijan' was hallowed by usage.Fanatic Hindus never forgave Gandhi his love of untouchables and wereresponsible for some of the political obstructions he encountered during hiscareer. But to vast multitudes he was the Mahatma; they asked his blessing;they were happy to touch his feet; some kissed his footprints in the dust. Theyaccordingly had to overlook, they forgot, that he was as contaminated as anuntouchable because he did scavenging and lived with untouchables and hadadopted an untouchable as his daughter. Over the years, thousands of highcasteHindus came to Gandhi's ashram to interview him, to eat with him, tostay with him. A few undoubtedly purged themselves thereafter, but most ofthem could not be such hypocrites. Untouchability lost some of its curse.Gandhians began to use untouchables in their households; were they betterthan their saint? He taught by example.City life and industrialization have had the same effect of weakening thepersecution of Harijans. In a village, everybody knows everybody else. But theuntouchable does not look different, and in a trolley or train the caste Hindumight be sitting skin-to-skin with a pariah and not realize it. Inescapablecontact has reconciled Hindus to contact.Nevertheless, the poverty of the Harijans remained, and the discriminationagainst them was far from overcome by Gandhi's early actions, gestures andstatements in their behalf. He therefore continued his efforts unremittingly.www.mkgandhi.org Page 163

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesWhy did it fall to Gandhi, rather than to somebody else, to lead the movementfor the emancipation of untouchables?Many of the indentured labourers in South Africa were untouchables, and theywere the heroes of the final phase of the civil disobedience campaign in 1914.Gandhi's twenty- year struggle in South Africa, moreover, was directed againstan evil which, with all its economic overtones, was at bottom a colourprejudice. All men are born with unequal gifts but equal rights, and societyowes them an equal or at least unimpeded opportunity to develop their nativeabilities and live in liberty. How could Gandhi, fresh from his fight for theequality of Indians in South Africa, countenance a cruel inequality imposed byIndians on other Indians in India?The foundations of freedom are sapped where anybody is denied equal rightsbecause of his religion, the beliefs and defeds of his ancestors or relatives, theshape of his nose, the colour of his skin, the sound of his name, or the place orestate of his birth.Gandhi's concept of freedom for India excluded Hindu immorality as well asBritish administrators. 'Swaraj' or independence, he said in Young India on May25, 1921, 'is a meaningless term if we desire to keep a fifth of India underPerpetual subjection ... Inhuman ourselves, we may not plead before theThrone for deliverance from the inhumanity of others.'The simplest explanation of Gandhi's attitude towards untouchability is that hejust could not stand it. In fact, he loathed this 'inhuman boycott of humanbeings' so much that he said 'if it was proved to me that it is an essential part ofHinduism I for one would declare myself an open rebel against Hinduism itself.'No man who cared more for popularity than principle would have made such apublic statement in a country overwhelmingly and conservatively Hindu. But hemade it as a Hindu in an effort, he said, to purify his religion. He regardeduntouchability as an 'excrescence', a perversion of Hinduism.In Hinduism, however, an excrescence is difficult to distinguish from theessence. Hinduism is more than a doctrine and more than a religion. Certainly,it is not a one- day-a-week religion. It invades homes, farms, schools and shops.www.mkgandhi.org Page 164

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIt is a way of life which meshes with the mythological prehistory, the history,the economy, the geography and the ethnography of India. In India, religion isthe stun total of the national experience. Islam is less absorbent, but Hinduismis a sponge religion, hospitable and without fundamentalism. 'We have nouncontradictable and unquestionable documents, no special revelations, andour scriptures are not final...' writes Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar, a Hinduphilosopher. Hinduism is simultaneously monotheistic and idolatrous, because ithas, at different periods in history, drawn in populations that accepted one orthe other. The monotheists tolerate idols and the idolaters dance before gravenimages but pray to one God. Some Hindus sacrifice animals in their temples,and some hold it a religious duty not to kill a worm or germ. The reformmovements of Hinduism, like Buddhism and Jainism, have never broken away inschisms. They disappear into the general bloodstream. Hinduism is flexible,capacious, malleable. So is the thinking of many Hindus. So was Gandhi's. Hefought untouchability. He abhorred animal sacrifices; the flow of blood in thehouse of God sickened him- But Hindus who perpetrated these wrongs were hisbrothers and he was theirs.India, Nehru has said, is like a palimpsest. A palimpsest an ancient parchmentor canvas which has been written on or painted on and then varnished over at alater period and written on or painted on again and then varnished over andwritten on or painted on a third, fourth and fifth time. This economic use ofmaterials has unintentionally preserved some precious relics of the past, andexperts now know how to wash off the newer coats and reveal the old originalinscriptions or drawings. The difference is that in the case of India, the varnishhas, so to speak, dissolved, and all the words and figures of the several layersare visible at the same time as one intricate jumble. This explains thecomplexity of Indian civilization and of those Indians who are permeated by it.The human intellect', writes Sir Valentine Chirol, 'has indeed seldom soaredhigher or displayed deeper metaphysical subtlety than in the great system ofphilosophy in which many conservative Hindus still seek a peaceful refuge fromthe restlessness and materialism of the modern world.' No Indian can altogetherescape this cultural-intellectual heritage.www.mkgandhi.org Page 165

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAt times, however, only one layer of the palimpsest is visible; on such occasionsa modern, European-educated Hindu may vanish and become a worshipper ofcrude, primeval fetishes, even as a Western scientist may accept the irrationalabracadabra of a desert cult.Hinduism amalgamated Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, and Buddha whowere regarded as atheists or agnostics. Many Hindus accept Jesus andMohammed as religious guides. Yet m insane moments, Hindus, Sikhs andMoslems avidly daughter one another. Then they relax into apathetic France.Despite its insatiable hunger for oneness, however, Hinduism’s 'Live-and-Let-Live' only meant, 'Live separately', Hinduism has fostered endless divisions intoself-contained eve self-sufficient joint families comprising two, three, or evenour generations in one residence, and self-segregated castes and multitudinoussub castes whose members did not until recent times, intermarry or inter-dine.God-fearing Hindus were content to see the 'children of God' in degradingisolation.Yet, the Indian ideal of unity in diversity remains. The binding factors are thethree legs of the subcontinent's compact triangle, the unbroken line of culturefrom the dim past until today, the links of history and the bonds of blood andreligion.Blood connects Hindus with Moslems and Sikhs. Religion weakens theconnection. Geography connects; bad communications divide. The multiplicityof languages divides.Out of these elements, Gandhi and his generation undertook to forge a nation.www.mkgandhi.org Page 166

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XIXIndigoWHEN I first visited Gandhi in 1942 at his ashram in Sevagram, in central India,he said, 'I will tell you how it happened that I decided to urge the departure ofthe British. It was in 1917.'He had gone to the December 1916 annual convention of the Indian NationalCongress party in Lucknow. There were 2301 delegates and many visitors.During the proceedings, Gandhi recounted, 'a peasant came up to me lookinglike any other peasant in India, poor and emaciated', and said, "I am RajkumarShukla. I am from Champaran, and I want you to come to my district!" Gandhihad never heard of the place. It was in the foothills of the towering Himalayas,near the kingdom of Nepal.Under an ancient arrangement, the Champaran peasants were share-croppers.Rajkumar Shukla was one of them. He was illiterate but resolute. He had cometo the Congress session to complain about the injustice of the landlord systemm Bihar, and somebody had probably said, 'Speak to Gandhi'.Gandhi told Shukla he had an appointment in Cawnpore and was alsocommitted to go to other parts of India. Shukla accompanied him everywhere.Then Gandhi returned to his a am near Ahmedabad. Shukla followed him to theashram. For weeks he never left Gandhi's side.'Fix a date,' he begged.Impressed by the share-cropper's tenacity and story Gandhi said, 'I have to be inCalcutta on such-and-such a date. Come and meet me and take me from there.'Months passed. Shukla was sitting on his haunches at the appointed spot inCalcutta when Gandhi arrived; he waited till Gandhi was free. Then the two ofthem boarded a train for the city of Patna in Bihar. There Shukla led him to thehouse of a lawyer named Rajendra Prasad who later became President of theCongress party and of India. Rajendra Prasad was out of town, but the servantswww.mkgandhi.org Page 167

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesknew Shukla as a poor yeoman who pestered their master to help the indigoshare¬croppers. So they let him stay on the grounds with his companion,Gandhi, whom they took to be another peasant. But Gandhi was not permittedto draw water from the well lest some drops from his bucket pollute the entiresource; how did they know that he was not an untouchable?Gandhi decided to go first to Muzzafarpur, which was en route to Champaran,to obtain more complete information about conditions than Shukla was capableof imparting. He accordingly sent a telegram to Professor J. B. Kripalani, of theArts College in Muzzafarpur, whom he had seen at Tagore's Shantiniketanschool. The train arrived at midnight, April 15, 1917. Kripalani was waiting atthe station with a large body of students. Gandhi stayed there for two days inthe home of Professor Malkani, a teacher in a government school. 'It was anextraordinary thing in those days,' Gandhi commented, 'for a governmentprofessor to harbour a man like me.' In smaller localities, the Indians wereafraid to show sympathy for advocates of Home-Rule.The news of Gandhi's advent and of the nature of his mission spread quicklythrough Muzzafarpur and to Champara. Share-croppers from Champaran beganarriving on foot and by conveyance to see their champion. Muzzafarpur lawyerscalled on Gandhi to brief him; they frequently represented peasant groups incourt; they told him about their cases and reported the size of their fees.Gandhi chided the lawyers for collecting big fees from the share-croppers. Hesaid, 'I have come to the conclusion that we should stop going to law courts.Taking such cases to the courts does little good. Where the peasants are socrushed and fear-stricken, law courts are useless. The real relief for them is tobe free from fear.'Most of the arable land in the Champaran district was divided into large estatesowned by Englishmen and worked by Indian tenants. The chief commercial cropwas indigo. The landlords compelled all tenants to plant three-twentieths or 15per cent of their holdings with indigo and surrender the entire indigo harvest asrent. This was done by long-term contract.www.mkgandhi.org Page 168

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesPresently, the landlords learned that Germany had developed synthetic indigo.They thereupon obtained agreements from the share-croppers to pay themcompensation for being released from the 15 per cent arrangement.The share-cropping arrangement was irksome to the peasants, and many signedwillingly. Those who resisted, engaged lawyers; the landlords hired thugs.Meanwhile, the formation about synthetic indigo reached the illiterate Peasantswho had signed, and they wanted their money back.At this point Gandhi arrived in Champaran.He began by trying to get the facts. First he visited the secretary of the Britishlandlords' association. The secretary told him that they could give noinformation to an outsider.Gandhi answered that he was no outsider.Next Gandhi called on the British official commissioner of Tirhut division inwhich the Champaran district lay. 'The commissioner,' Gandhi reports,'proceeded to bully me and advised me forthwith to leave Tirhut.'Gandhi did not leave. Instead, he proceeded to Motihari the capital ofChamparan. Several lawyers accompanied him. At the railway station, a vastmultitude greeted Gandhi. He went to a house and, using it as headquarters,continued his investigations. A report came in that a peasant had beenmaltreated in a nearby village. Gandhi decided to go and see; the next morninghe started out on the back of an elephant. He had not proceeded far when thepolice superintedent's messenger overtook him and ordered him to return totown in his carriage. Gandhi complied. The messenger drove Gandhi homewhere he served him with an official notice to quit Champaran immediately.Gandhi signed a receipt for the notice and wrote on it that he would disobeythe order.In consequence, Gandhi received a summons to appear in court the next day.All night Gandhi remained awake. He telegraphed Rajendra Prasad to comefrom Bihar with influential friends. He sent instructions to the ashram. Hewired a full report to the Viceroy.www.mkgandhi.org Page 169

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesMorning found the town of Motihari black with peasants. They did not knowGandhi's record in South Africa. They had merely heard that a Mahatma whowanted to help them was in trouble with the authorities. Their spontaneousdemonstration, in thousands, around the courthouse was the beginning of theirliberation from fear of the British.The officials felt powerless without Gandhi's co-operation- He helped themregulate the crowd. He was polite and friendly. He was giving them concreteproof that their might hitherto dreaded and unquestioned, could be challengedby Indians.The government was baffled. The prosecutor requested the judge to postponethe trial. Apparently, the authorities wished to consult their superiors.Gandhi protested against the delay. He read a statement leading guilty. He wasinvolved, he told the court, in a 'conflict of duties': on the one hand, not to seta bad example as a lawbreaker; on the other hand, to render the 'humanitarianand national service' for which he had come. He disregarded the order to leave,'not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to the higher lawof our being, the voice of conscience'. He asked the penalty due.The magistrate announced that he would pronounce sentence after a two-horn:recess and asked Gandhi to furnish bail for those 120 minutes. Gandhi refused.The judge released him without bail.When the court reconvened, the judge said he would not deliver the judgementfor several days. Meanwhile he allowed Gandhi to remain at liberty.Rajendra Prasad, Brij Kishore Babu, Maulana Mazharul Huq and several otherprominent lawyers had arrived from Bihar. They conferred with Gandhi. Whatwould they do if he was sentenced to prison, Gandhi asked. Why, the seniorlawyer replied, they had come to advise and help him; if he went to jail therewould be nobody to advise and they would go home.What about the injustice to the share-croppers, Gandhi demanded. The lawyerswithdrew to consult. Rajendra Prasad has recorded the upshot of theirconsultations: 'They thought, amongst themselves, that Gandhi was totally awww.mkgandhi.org Page 170

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesstranger, and he was prepared to go to prison for the sake of the peasants; ifthey, on the other hand, being not only residents e adjoining districts but alsothose who claimed to have served these peasants, should go home, it would beshameful desertion.'They accordingly went back to Gandhi and told him they were ready to followhim into jail. The battle of Champaran is won,' he exclaimed. Then he took apiece of paper and divided the group into pairs and put down the order inwhich each pair was to court arrest.Several days later, Gandhi received a written communication from themagistrate informing him that the Lieutenant - Governor of the province hadordered the case to be dropped. Civil disobedience had triumphed, the firsttime in modern India.Gandhi and the lawyers now proceeded to conduct a far- flung inquiry into thegrievances of the farmers. Depositions by about ten thousand peasants werewritten down, and notes made on other evidence. Documents were collected.The whole area throbbed with the activity of the investigators and thevehement protests of the landlords.In June, Gandhi was summoned to Sir Edward Gait, the Lieutenant-Governor.Before he went he met his leading associates and again laid detailed plans forcivil disobedience if he should not return.Gandhi had four protracted interviews with the Lieutenant- Governor who, as aresult, appointed an official commission of inquiry into the indigo sharecroppers'situation. The commission consisted of landlords, governmentofficials, and Gandhi as the sole representative of the peasants.Gandhi remained in Champaran for an initial uninterrupted period of sevenmonths and then again for several shorter visits. The visit, undertaken casuallyon the entreaty of a" unlettered peasant in the expectation that it would last adays, occupied almost a year of Gandhi's life.www.mkgandhi.org Page 171

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe official inquiry assembled a crushing mountain 0 evidence against the bigplanters, and when they saw this they agreed, in principle, to make refunds tothe peasants. 'But how much must we pay?' they asked Gandhi.They thought he would demand repayment in full of the money which they hadillegally and deceitfully extorted from the share-croppers. He asked only 50 percent. 'There he seemed adamant', writes Reverend J. Z. Hodge, a Britishmissionary in Champaran who observed the entire episode at close range.'Thinking probably that he would not give way, the representative of theplanters offered to refund to the extent of 25 per cent, and to his amazementMr. Gandhi took him at his word, thus breaking the deadlock.'This settlement was adopted unanimously by the commission. Gandhi explainedthat the amount of the refund was less important than the fact that thelandlords had been obliged to sin-render part of the money and, with it, part oftheir prestige. Therefore, as far as the peasants were concerned, the plantershad behaved as lords above the law. Now, the peasant saw that he had rightsand defenders. He learned coin-age.Events justified Gandhi's position. Within a few years the British plantersabandoned their estates, which reverted to the peasants. Indigo share-croppingdisappeared.Gandhi never contented himself with large political or economic solutions. Hesaw the cultural and social backwardness m Champaran villages and wanted todo something about Jt immediately. He appealed for teachers. Mahadev Desaiand arhari Parikh, two young men who had just joined Gandhi as disciples, andtheir wives, volunteered for the work. Several cajne from Bombay, Poona andother distant parts of the land. Devadas, Gandhi's youngest son, arrived fromthe ashram and so did Mrs. Gandhi. Primary schools were opened Slx villages.Kasturbai taught the ashram rules on personal cleanliness and communitysanitation.Health conditions were miserable. Gandhi got a doctor to volunteer his servicesfor six months. Three medicines were available: castor oil, quinine and sulphurointment. Anybody who showed a coated tongue was given a dose of castor oil-www.mkgandhi.org Page 172

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesanybody with malaria fever received quinine plus castor oil- anybody with skineruptions received ointment plus castor oil.Gandhi noticed the filthy state of women's clothes. He asked Kasturbai to talkto them about it. One woman took Kasturbai into her hut and said, 'Look, thereis no box or cupboard here for clothes. The sari I am wearing is the only one Ihave.'During his long stay in Champaran, Gandhi kept a long distance watch on theashram. He sent regular instructions by mail and asked for financial accounts.Once he wrote to the residents that it was time to fill in the old latrinetrenches and dig new ones otherwise the old ones would begin to smell bad.The Champaran episode was a turning point in Gandhi's life. "What I did', heexplained, 'was a very ordinary thing. I declared that the British could not orderme about in my own country'.But Champaran did not begin as an act of defiance. It grew out of an attemptto alleviate the distress of large numbers of poor peasants. This was the typicalGandhi pattern: his politics was intertwined with the practical, day-to-dayproblems of the millions. His was not a loyalty to abstractions; it was a loyaltyto living, human beings.In everything Gandhi did, moreover, he tried to mould a new free Indian whocould stand on his own feet and thus make India free.Early in the Champaran action, Charles Freer Andrews* the English pacifist whohad become a devoted follower 0 tke Mahatma, came to bid Gandhi farewellbefore going on a tour of duty to the Fiji Islands. Gandhi's lawyer friendsthought it would be a good idea for Andrews to stay in Champaran and helpthem. Andrews was willing if Gandhi agreed. But Gandhi was vehementlyopposed. He said, you think that in this unequal fight it would be helpful if wehave an Englishman on our side. This shows the weakness of your heart. Thecause is just and you must rely upon yourselves to win the battle. You shouldnot seek a prop in Mr. Andrews because he happens to be an Englishman.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 173

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'He had read our minds correctly,' Rajendra Prasad comments, 'and we had noreply ... Gandhi in this way taught us a lesson, in self-reliance.'Self-reliance, Indian independence and help to share¬croppers were all boundtogether.www.mkgandhi.org Page 174

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XXFirst FastGANDHI would have remained to assist the share croppers of Champaran ingetting schools, health service, etc., but unrest among textile workers broughthim back to Ahmedabad.The millhands of Ahmedabad were underpaid and overworked. They wantedmore money and better conditions. Their case, Gandhi said, was strong.Gandhi was a close friend of Ambalal Sarabhai, the biggest textile manufacturerof Ahmedabad. Sarabhai was the leader of the millowners.Having studied the problem, Gandhi urged the factory owners to arbitrate thedispute. They rejected arbitration.Gandhi accordingly advised the workmen to go on strike. They followed hisadvice. Gandhi directed the strike. He was helped actively by Anasuya, sister ofAmbalal Sarabhai.Gandhi had exacted a solemn pledge from the workmen not to return to workuntil the employers accepted labour's demands or agreed to arbitration. Everyday Gandhi met the strikers under a spreading banyan tree by the banks of theSabarmati. Thousands came to hear him. He exhorted them to be peaceful andto abide by the pledge. From these meetings, they marched off into towncarrying banners which read, EK TEK (KEEP THE PLEDGE).Meanwhile, Gandhi remained in touch with the employers. Would they submitto arbitration? They again refused.The strike dragged on. The strikers began to weaken. Attendance at meetingsdropped, and when Gandhi asked them, as he did each day, to reaffirm thepledge, their reply sounded less resolute. Scabs had been working in some ofthe mills. Gandhi feared violence. He was also afraid that, pledgesnotwithstanding, the workers might return to the mills.www.mkgandhi.org Page 175

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesTo Gandhi it was 'inconceivable' that they should return. Was it pride,' heasked, 'or was it my love of the labourers and my passionate regard for truththat was at the back of this feeling—who can say?'Whatever the feeling, it overpowered Gandhi, and one morning, at the regularstrikers' open-air assembly under the banyan branches, he declared that if theydid not continue the strike until they won 'I will not touch any food.'He had not intended announcing the fast. The words just came to himspontaneously without previous thought. He was as surprised as his listeners.Many of them cried. Anasuya Sarabhai was beside herself with grief.'We wjll fast with you,' some workers exclaimed. No, said Gandhi, they needmerely stay out on strike. As for himself, he would eat nothing until the strikewas settled.Gandhi had fasted before for religious and personal reasons. This was his firstfast in a public cause.On the first day of the fast, Anasuya and several strike eaders fasted too. ButGandhi persuaded them to desist and look after the workmen. With theassistance of abhbhai Patel, a prosperous Ahmedabad lawyer, and others,temporary employment was found for some workers. A number of them helpedto erect new buildings at Gandhi's Sabarmati Ashram.Gandhi saw the dilemma in which the fast placed him. The fast was designed tokeep the workers loyal to their pledge but it constituted pressure on themillowners. Ambalal Sarabhai was a devoted follower of the Mahatma and sowas Ambalal's wife, Saraladevi. She, Gandhi wrote, 'was attached to me withthe affection of a blood-sister'.Gandhi told the millowners who called on him that they must not be influencedby his fast; it was not directed against them. He said he was a striker andstrikers' representative and should be treated as such. But to them he wasMahatma Gandhi. Three days after the fast commenced, the millownersaccepted arbitration, and the strike, which had lasted twenty- one days wascalled off.www.mkgandhi.org Page 176

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi thought he fasted to steady the strikers. The failure of the strike wouldcow these and other workers, and he disliked cowards. His sympathies werewith the poor and downtrodden in whom he wished to arouse a dignified,peaceful protest. Yet, he probably would have fasted against the workers hadthey opposed arbitration. The principle of arbitration is essential to Gandhi'sphilosophy; it eliminates violence and the compulsion which may be presenteven in peaceful struggles. It teaches people tolerance and conciliation. Gandhifasted not for anybody or against anybody, but for a creative idea.'Fasting for the sake of personal gain is nothing short of intimidation,' Gandhiaffirmed. Gandhi obviously had nothing personal to gain from the Ahmedabadfast. The employers knew that. Yet they were probably intimidated by it. Theydid not want to be the cause of Gandhi's death. But if it had been the Governorof Bombay who was fasting they might have said, 'Let him die'. 'I fasted toreform those who loved me,' Gandhi said on a subsequent occasion, and headded) you cannot fast against a tyrant'. The millowners were intimidatedbecause they had a deep affection for Gandhi, an when they saw his selflesssacrifice they might have felt ashamed of their own selfishness. A fast forpersonal benefit mild not arouse such emotions.'I can fast against my father to cure him of a vice,' Gandhi explained, 'but I maynot in order to get from him an inheritance.' Gandhi fasted not so much to raisewages as to cure the employers of their unwarranted objection to a system ofarbitration which would promote peace in the textile industry.The fast, in fact, brought into being a system of arbitration which survives tothis day; on a visit to Ahmedabad in 1948, I found capitalists and trade unionsconvinced of its efficacy. Gandhi had participated in its work as permanentmember of the panel of arbitrators.In September 1936, for instance, the Millowners Association of Ahmedabadasked the Textile Labour Association to accept a 20 per cent cut in wages.Labour refused, and the case went to arbitration. The employers appointed anowner named Kasturbhai Lalbhai as their representative and labour appointedMahatma Gandhi: the impartial umpire chairman was Sir Govindrao Madgavkar.www.mkgandhi.org Page 177

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe millowners submitted that their plants, employing approximately 80,000hands, were suffering from foreign competition and the world economicdepression and could not afford to pay existing rates.Having studied the industry's books and other pertinent data, Gandhi affirmedthat 'no cut should be made till the mills have ceased to make any profit andare obliged to fall back upon their capital for continuing the industry. There dbe no cut till the wages have reached the level adequate for maintenance. It ispossible to conceive a time it 6n. Workmen have begun to regard the industryas if ^were their own property and they would then be prepared P it out of acrisis by taking the barest maintenance consisting of a dry crust and workingnight and day. That would be a voluntary arrangement. Such cases areirrelevant to the present consideration.'Moreover, Gandhi wrote, 'It is vital to the well-being of the industry thatworkmen should be regarded as equals with the shareholders and that theyhave therefore every right to possess an accurate knowledge of the transactionsof the mills.'Finally, Gandhi suggested a register of all millhands 'acceptable to bothparties', after which 'the custom of taking labour through any agency other thanthe Textile Labour Association should be stopped.' This approximates to themodern, Western concept of the 'closed shop'.The impartial chairman agreed with Gandhi and ruled against the wagereduction which, accordingly, was not allowed.www.mkgandhi.org Page 178

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XXIGoat's MilkTHERE can be no partnership between the brave and the effeminate. We areregarded as a cowardly people. If we want to become free from that reproach,we should learn the use of arms.'Mahatma Gandhi spoke those words in July 1918, while recruiting Indians forthe British Army during the first World War. We should become partners of theEmpire,' he added; 'a dominion like Canada, South Africa and Australia. To bringabout such a thing,' he declared, 'we should have the ability to defendourselves, that is, the ability to bear arms and to use them ... If we want tolearn the use of arms with the greatest possible dispatch, it is our duty to enlistourselves in the Army.'Gandhi delivered this speech in Kheda district of his native Gujarat region inwestern India. In March, he had led a Satyagraha movement in Kheda for theremission of taxes 011 peasants who had suffered a crop failure. The civildisobedience campaign was partly successful: the well-to-do farmers paid taxesbut the poor did not.The peasants had followed him in civil resistance and fed f1 and given him theircarts for transportation. But now, en he came to recruit, they would not evenlet him hire a cart and they refused to feed him and his small party.Gandhi records their heckling: You are a votary of nonviolence, how can youask us to take up arms?' 'What good has the government done for India?''Partnership in the Empire is our definite goal,' he replied. 'We should suffer tothe utmost of our ability and even lay down our lives to defend the Empire. Ifthe Empire perishes, with it perishes our cherished aspirations.'His audiences said India would fight in return for new freedoms. No, Gandhiinsisted, it was evil to take advantage of Britain's war-time predicament. Hetrusted England.www.mkgandhi.org Page 179

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe district had six hundred villages which averaged one thousand inhabitantseach. If every village gave twenty recruits, Gandhi computed, that would make12,000. 'If they fall on the battlefield,' he exclaimed 'they will immortalizethemselves, their villages and their country.' In the same recruiting-sergeantlanguage, Gandhi asked the women to encourage the men.His efforts failed and he only succeeded in making himself seriously ill. He hadbeen living on peanut butter and lemons. This slim diet and the exertion, plusno doubt, the frustration of failure, gave him dysentery.He fasted. He refused medicine. He refused an injection. 'My ignorance ofinjections was in those days quite ridiculous,' he said. He thought they wereserums.This was the first important illness in his life. His body was wasting away. Hisnerves gave way; he felt sure he would die. A medical practitioner ('a crank likemyself', Gandhi called him) suggested the ice treatment. Anything, as long as itwas outside, Gandhi said.The ice helped. Appetite returned. The crank suggested sterilized eggs with nolife in them. Gandhi remained obdurate; no eggs. Doctors advised milk. But thecruel manner of milking cows and buffaloes had impelled Gandhi to abjure milkfor ever- he answered. 'I have taken a vow never to drink milk'.Here Kasturbai put in a stern word. 'But surely,' she said, 'you cannot have anyobjection to goat's milk.'Gandhi wanted to live. He was not immune, he confessed, to that 'subtlest oftemptations, the desire to serve'. Had he been up to par physically, his willmight have been strong enough to reject Kasturbai's suggestion. But the veryfact that he could not resist the suggestion showed how badly he needed themilk.Taking milk, he wrote later, was 'breach of pledge'. It always bothered him; itrevealed a weakness. Nevertheless, he continued to be a goat-milk drinker tohis last supper.www.mkgandhi.org Page 180

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesKasturbai's insistence is the likely key to Gandhi's willingness to break the vow.Gandhi feared neither man nor government, neither prison nor poverty nordeath. But he did fear his wife. Perhaps it was fear mixed with guilt; he did notwant to hurt her; he had hurt her enough.G. Ramachandran, a devoted Gandhian, has written a 'sheaf of anecdotes' aboutthe master for which C. Rajagopalachari, father of Devadas Gandhi's wife andfirst Governor-General of independent India, vouches as 'true'. Ramachandran,who lived in Sabarmati Ashram for a year, recalls that one day when Kasturbaihad cleaned up the kitchen after lunch and gone into the adjoining room for anaP, Gandhi came to the kitchen and, beckoning to a young male assistant ofBa, or mother, as Kasturbai was called, told lm 111 a whisper that some guestswere arriving in an hour and would have to be fed. Putting a finger to his lips ashe S anced towards Ba's room, Gandhi told the young man what to do andadded, 'Do not disturb her ... Send for Ba only when she needed. And mind you,don't irritate her. You deserve a prize if she does not go for me.'Gandhi, writes Ramachandran, 'was a little nervous lest Ba should wake upsuddenly and burst upon him.' So the husband left the kitchen as quickly as hecould, no doubt feeling a husband's relief at getting beyond fury's reach. ButGandhi's hope of escaping from his kitchen crime without detection crashedwhen a brass platter fell to the floor. After prayers that evening, Ba, armsakimbo, confronted the Mahatma; she had a fierce temper: Why hadn't heawakened her?'Ba,' Gandhi apologized, 'I am afraid of you on such occasions.'She laughed incredulously. You afraid of me?''And yet that was the truth,' Ramachandran comments.In his debilitated state during the dysentery, he was less than ever inclined tooppose her. Thereafter, for thirty years, Gandhi drank goat's milk.Gandhi's readiness to recruit for the British army was another weakness. I askedhim about it in 1942. 'I had just returned from South Africa,' he explained. 'Ihadn't yet found my feet. I was not sure of my ground.' He had come to thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 181

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesunbridgeable gulf between nationalism and pacifism and did not know what todo.He might have taken the easy course and refused to support the war. MostIndian nationalists did that. They said, India is not free, therefore we will notfight. But this was naked nationalism hiding behind the transparent skirt ofpacifism; it meant, if India had self-government we would enlist to kill theenemy.The issue Gandhi faced in 1918 was universal and eternal: What does a citizendo when his country is invaded? For his conscience's sake, a pacifist maydiscommode his body and go to jail, or he may bravely attack conscription andother military measures. This can be a valuable educational demonstration.Suppose, however, the entire nation emulate. Sample and refused to fight?(Suppose the British had refused to fight in 1940?)For Indians in 1918, two positions were possible.A 100 per cent Indian pacifist would have abstained from the war and preferredperpetual colonial status, for as a colony India could deny war-time help to theenslaving motherland, whereas India as a nation would have to prepare for waror face destruction.Gandhi could not take this position because he wanted a free Indian nation.A 100 per cent Indian nationalist would have abstained from the first WorldWar, saying it was Britain's war, but would have prepared to make war onBritain for the liberation of India.Gandhi could not take this position because he still hoped for a non-violentsettlement with Britain about the future of India.In 1918, therefore, Gandhi compromised his nationalism by accepting theEmpire and hoping to attain freedom gradually and peacefully; having donethat, his compelling honesty forced him to compromise his pacifism and recruitfor the war.www.mkgandhi.org Page 182

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe political Gandhi was thus caught in the ineradicable conflict betweennationalism and pacifism. The religious Gandhi tried to resolve it by preachingand practising non¬violence and the universal brotherhood of man.this dichotomy lay the tragedies of Gandhi's life.www.mkgandhi.org Page 183

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XXIIThe History Of British Rule In IndiaTHROUGHOUT the last thirty years of his life, from 1918 to 1948, MahatmaGandhi fought three major battles, the battle with himself, the battle withIndians and the battle with Britain.From remote antiquity to modern times, India has been invaded twenty-sixtimes. The British invasion was the last. Until the end of the fifteenth century,all of India's conquerors came overland and all, except Baber, approachedthrough what is now Russian Turkestan, crossed the Hindu Kush where thepasses are from 12,000 to 16,000 feet above sea level and then filed throughthe narrow Khyber Pass to the Suleiman mountain range and the banks of theIndus and beyond.Semiramis, Queen of Assyria, sent an army into India via Turkestan twenty-twocenturies before Christ. Cyrus of Persia repeated this performance in 530 B.C.North-West India remained under Persian domination (Indians probably foughtthe Greeks at Marathon) until Alexander the Great of Macedonia swept out ofGreece at the head of an army of 40,000 men, quickly subdued Syria, Egypt andPalestine, defeated Persia at Arbela, marched to the Oxus and Samarkand andthen, climbing the Hindu Kush, entered India in 326 B.C., at the age of thirty.After a nineteen months' stay, Alexander, a pupil of Aristotle, left for home,taking with him several Indian philosophers. He died two years later in Babylon.The Greeks, and subsequently the Romans, carried to the West theachievements of Indian science. The so-called 'Arabic' numerals were inventedin India. The zero is an Indian concept. An Indian brain likewise evolved thepresent worldwide system of numeral placement; the system whereby a onewith a four after it is fourteen and a four with a one after it is forty-one.Attracted by the wealth and mystery of India, more fabled conquerors, GenghisKhan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah and others, added their scratches to Indianhistory and withdrew with loot and lore.www.mkgandhi.org Page 184

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesOn July 8, 1497, five years after Columbus in three Spanish vessels discoveredAmerica, Vasco da Gama in three Portuguese ships, the largest of whichdisplaced 150 tons, anchored off the south-west shore of India. Thus began thefirst sea borne invasion of India.The Papal bulls of 1493 and an agreement with Spain gave Portugal, then aworld power, a Catholic monopoly in South-East Asia. That did not prevent theDutch from establishing several lucrative trading posts in India early in thesixteenth century. The French followed a few years later. They sent homepepper, cinnamon and other spices.England hesitated to encroach on the formidable Portuguese. Instead, sincethey had wool to sell which torrid southern Asia did not need, the Britishsearched for a north-west passage through North America and a north-eastpassage around northern Europe to the colder regions of China. But when thisquest proved vain, England, emboldened by her victory over the SpanishArmada in July 1588, dared to defy ortugal, Spain's confederate, anddispatched her first expedition into the Indian Ocean in 1591. Despite the warwith Spain and Portugal, other British expeditions followed. The peace ®ignedwith these nations increased the traffic and intensified commercialcompetition.An East India Company was formed in London in 1600- its renewed charter of1609 gave it a British trade monopoly in Asia unlimited in time and space.War greased the wheels of business. The Dutch, vigorous and aggressive andsupported by all the military might of the homeland, took the offensive againstPortuguese settlements in India and, with British co-operation, achievedconsiderable success. In 1625, an Anglo-Dutch fleet defeated the Portuguese.The victors divided the spoils.In 1642, England abandoned the Dutch and became Portugal's ally. As reward,British merchants won unhampered trade facilities with all Portuguesepossessions in Asia except Macao. Ten years later, Britain went to war withHolland in Europe and Anglo-Portuguese forces fought the Dutch in India. At thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 185

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timescessation of hostilities in 1654, Britain extended her power in India at Holland'sexpense.Wars, intrigues with Indian provincial warlords, and shrewd trading filled thecoffers of the East India Company and enhanced its power. In the first half ofthe seventeenth century, England was importing cotton piece-goods, indigo,drugs, lac, sugar and carpets from India. Indian calicoes were a specialfavourite with British housewives. In return, the Company brought to Indiabroadcloth, industrial metals and gold. In 1668, the Company received from theBritish King the former Portuguese possession of Bombay with its magnificentundeveloped harbour. With royal assent, a similar British position wasestablished on the eastern coast at Madras. Feuds between the Moslem orMogul emperors of India and the warlike Maratha Hindus of south-central India,in the area centering on Poona, east of Bombay, enabled the Company toproclaim the fusion of money-making and imperialism; it announced inDecember 1687, that it proposed to create such civil and military institutions'as may be the foundation of a large, well grounded, sure English dominion inIndia for all time to come'.The accretion of accretion of British power moved with accelerated speed. Theprocess was simple: early in 1749, for instance, prince Shahji, native potentateof the state of Tanjore, on the south-east coast, was dethroned by a rival; heoffered the British a town called Devikottai at the place where the ColeroonRiver empties into the Bay of Bengal 'on condition', says The Cambridge Historyof India, 'of their helping him to recover the throne'. After a few days of siege,Devikottai surrendered. 'The English kept it with the country belonging to it;and as for Shahji,' the British chronicle notes, 'no one thought of restoring himto his throne.'Anybody wronged by the British was wooed by the French and vice versa. WhenNawab Siraj-ud-daula, exploiting the disintegration of Mogul power at Delhi,took control of Bengal, the British tried to prevent him from getting too strong.In one indecisive skirmish he defeated a force of Europeans and imprisonedsome of them overnight in the Black Hole of Calcutta, where an unknownwww.mkgandhi.org Page 186

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesnumber perished. But on January 2, 1757, a young British officer named RobertClive retook Calcutta and forced Siraj-ud-daula to accept humiliating terms.The Nawab accordingly conspired with the French. The British Admiral Watsonthereupon threatened him: 'I will kindle such a flame in your country', theEnglishman wrote, as all the water in the Ganges shall not be able toextinguish.' Sobered by these hot words, the Moslem ruler shrank into apassivity that facilitated the expulsion of his French allies from strategic Bengalareas. But the nawab remained and so did some French advisers. Aninsurrection, coinciding conveniently with the British attack, enabled ColonelClive with 800 English and 2220 mercenary Indian troops to rout Jie nawab'sarmy of 50,000 at Plassey on June 23, 1757. Siraj-ud-daula was executed andhis rival, necessarily a complacent was puppet replaced him. The entireprovince of Bengal Clive wrote to Robert colony- With a frankness born ofimpunity,e wrote to Robert Orme, 'I am possessed of volumes of material forthe continuation of your history, in which will appear fighting, tricks,chicanery, intrigues, politics and the Lord knows what.' It was all politics.Warren Hastings, the Governor-General of Bengal, continued the policy ofBritish expansion through armed force, enforced tributes and dynasticconspiracies. His trial in England, which lasted from February 1788 to April1795, showed that the British administration in India was neither scrupulous norincorruptible, nor concerned with the welfare of Indians.Gradually, by means mostly foul but considered normal in that age and place,the British established themselves throughout the length and breadth of thevast Indian subcontinent. In some areas, the East India Company ruled directlythrough its officials. Elsewhere it stood close behind the thrones of Hindumaharajas and Moslem nawabs who pliantly subserved the politics of Britishempire-building.The Portuguese had been confined to a few ports. The Dutch had been ousted.French power, though still considerable, was waning. In 1786, Mirabeau, theFrench revolutionary, urged the Russian Czar to help France by invading India.Napoleon's offensive against Egypt was conceived as the first step towards thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 187

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesdestruction of the British in India. When the Corsican's campaign in the easternMediterranean collapsed he wrote to Emperor Paul I in St. Petersburg urginghim to march on India and promising men and supplies. Paul agreed and sentinstructions to General Orlov, ataman of the Don Cossacks. 'All the wealth ofIndia will be yours as a reward for the expedition,' he wrote. Russia 'wouldacquire treasure and commerce and strike the enemy in the heart*. The enemywas Britain. 'I am enclosing all the maps I have, the emperor added. They goonly to Khiva and the Oxus.’Later, Paul sent another map by special courier. General Orlov, however, nevergot beyond the Urals. Paul mysteriously murdered and the Russo-Frenchalliance lapse"- But in a few years it was renewed, and when Napoleon meatPaul's successor, Alexander I, at Tilsit in East Prussia in 1807, they planned anassault on India. There is a letter in the Russian archives penned by Napoleon toAlexander on February 2, 1808, in. which the Corsican proposed the formationof a Russo-French army to conquer India. 'England will be enslaved', Napoleonpredicted. He promised Stockholm to Russia as a reward for her efforts againstEngland in Asia.These were idle dreams. The French in India were soon limited to a fewmaritime dots and when, in 1818, the British crushed the great Maratha empirein south-central India, the last organized challenge to British rule vanished. Therest was a clean-up operation.While India was being subjugated, the invention of the spinning jenny in 1764,Watt's perfected steam engine in 1768 and the power loom in 1785 wereconverting England into a maker and exporter of textiles. Indian cotton goodswere no longer wanted in Britain; on the contrary, Britain exported textiles andother factory products to the people of India who, in 1800, numberedapproximately 140,000,000.India's industries consequently languished; Indian treasure flowed to the BritishIsles as profit or plunder. Indian handicrafts suffered too. India wastransformed into a purely agrarian country whose villages, overcrowded by theinflux of unemployed townsmen, could not produce enough food. According towww.mkgandhi.org Page 188

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesa British source, the deaths from famine in India between 1800 and 1825 wereone million; between 1825 and 1850, four hundred thousand; between 1850 and1875, five million; and between 1875 and 1900, fifteen million.Engineered by wit and violence, England's annexations in India in the latter partof the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth left manydisgruntled and dispossessed native rulers. British attempts to introduce lawand order and an equitable system of taxation further irritated Enumerablepersons nursing innumerable wounds. Widespread economic stringencyintensified the general unrest. Only a spark was needed to produce a flame.India had not yet become totally docile, nor had the British learned thetechnique, which they subsequently mastered, of firm yet smooth and barelyvisible administration.It was 1857, and a Hindu prophecy declared that on the centenary of the Battleof Plassey in 1757 British rule would perish. A war, officially called the Mutinyor the Sepoy Mutiny, broke out. The immediate impetus was the distributionamong Indian troops of British-made cartridges, greased with cow or pig fat,which had to be bitten off before being loaded into rifles. Since a Hindu mustnot touch cow fat and a Moslem must not touch pork the provocation wasperfect and Indian army units rebelled. But the British authorities admittedthat the Bengal Indian force was 'a brotherhood' closely identified with thehungry villages, and the same bond connected all sepoys in British uniform withthe ragged, hungry peasants.Numerous regiments rose; one seized Delhi. Moslems took the lead, but allcommunities assiduously annulled innovations introduced by the British. Railand telegraph lines were cut. Both sides committed numerous murders. Indiansoldiers killed their British officers, and at Banaras, 'rebels, suspects and evendisorderly boys,' says The Cambridge History of India, 'were executed byinfuriated officers and unofficial British residents who volunteered to serve ashangmen'. Much blood also flowed in pitched battles and sieges.The mutiny was unplanned, uncoordinated, leaderless and hopeless. Inevitably,after many months, the British, aided by loyal Indians, suppressed it. With thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 189

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesrestoration of peace, the East India Company, 'upon which', according to TheCambridge History, 'all parties in England agreed in throwing the blame of theMutiny", was abolished. In 1858, Queen Victoria assumed the government ofIndia and appointed Lord Canning her first Viceroy. For eighty-nine yearsthereafter, until August 15, 1947, India was a colony of the British Empire.The blood-and-plunder period was ended. England's ideals of clean governmentfiltered into the British administration of India. The British watered somedeserts and improved communications. Many British officials, after twenty orthirty years service in India, felt at home in India and like foreigners when theywent home to England. They were devoted to India. They ate out their heartsand ruined their health coping with difficult problems.The British in India, however, were a fifth caste, the first caste. Theyinterdined with Indians perfunctorily and intermarried seldom. The British werethe super Brahman- Kshatriyas; all Indians were 'untouchables'. The British werein India, never of India. They were like teachers who keep the class quiet andteach the children to read, write and reckon and to march in twos, but who donot really teach the children anything, nor help them, because they regardthemselves as animal trainers and the children as nasty animals.The British were masters in somebody else's home. Their very presence was ahumiliation. Despite the best intentions of the best among them, their everyact was a humiliation- Then they complained, with pain, that Indians were'ungrateful'- The complaint was a measure of the lack of understanding-The British never deciphered the palimpsest which is India- They merely readthe inscription on the surface: India was a weak, dirty, backward country, withsome fine monuments of be sure, and some superior brains, but generallyinferior, and Asiatic.Even if the British had converted India into a land flowing with milk and honeythey would have been disliked. Imperialism, like dictatorship, sears the soul,degrades the sprit and makes individuals small the better to rule them. Fearand cowardice are its allies. Imperialism is government of People, by otherwww.mkgandhi.org Page 190

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timespeople, and for other people. What the subjects gain, be it ever so great, isonly the by-product of efforts on behalf of a distant master.The requirements of British prestige hurt Indian pride. All the visiblemanifestations of the British regime—the ceremonial pomp, the isolatedcantonments or villas where the British dwelt, and the use of English—told theIndians that they were a subject race. Subjection stimulated a desire forliberation.That is why colonial administration never is, and never can be, successful.History has known no good colonizers. Every empire digs its own grave.Imperialism is a perpetual insult, for, it assumes that the outsider has the rightto rule the insiders who cannot rule themselves; it is thus arrogant nationalismand inevitably begets an opposing nationalism.Alien rule thwarts the native lovers of power. The British could never forget theMutiny. 'After all,' Lord Linlithgow, the British Viceroy, said to me in 1942, 'weare the occupying power. Ever since the Mutiny we have hesitated to put armsinto the hands of Indians.' Decades after the Mutiny, when the British weresecure enough in their power to share it, the share of Indians was small. Realpower—the authority to decide, appoint, recall and spend—lay with the British.No matter how high an Indian rose in the government service he remained aBritish hireling. His power was not merely severely restricted; it lacked one ofthe sweetest concomitants of power: popularity; for, the more the Britishtrusted him the more his own people rejected him.Unloved and unwanted, the British found it dangerous to arouse too manyexpectations of self-government and inconvenient to kill too many hopes for it.Hence, all the eighty-nine years of British rule constitute a series of oscillationsbetween bold promises and disappointing performances. When the Queen tookover from the Company in 1858 she announced that 'as far as may be' Indianswould be given responsible posts in government. But Lord Lytton, Viceroy from1876 to 1880, wrote in a secret report, 'Since I am writing confidentially, I donot hesitate to say that both the government of England and of India appear tome up to the present moment unable to answer satisfactorily the charge ofwww.mkgandhi.org Page 191

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeshaving taken every means in their power of breaking to the heart the words ofpromise they have uttered to the ear.'This was the complaint by a man who, unfettered by London, would have donebetter. But the Indians naturally regretted the breach of faith even morekeenly than the Queen's first officer in India.When the demand for broader participation in local government and for redressof grievances grew more insistent, Lord Dufferin, Viceroy from 1884 to 1888,intending to direct upper-class discontent into an artificial canal, sired theIndian National Congress; subsequent Viceroys blessed it. Even if they hadforeseen that a callow Indian law student in London in the late 1880s wouldmake Congress an instrument of the downfall of British rule, they could nothave helped themselves. The history of the British rule in India is a record ofretreats, more graceful in some Viceregal quinquenniums than in others, butalways enhancing Indian strength. Torn between their political sagacity andtheir power lust, the British yielded as much of the appearance of power ascircumstances required and as little of its substance as conditions permitted.Many times, for instance, Indians had been promised equality of employment inthe I.C.S. (Indian Civil Service), which was the British administration of India.'After eighty- two years of equality,' H. N. Brailsford remarks sarcasticallyEnglishmen held 95 per cent of the posts in the I.C.S. in 1923, he declares,using accepted figures, Indian Participation was still only 10 per cent.Jealous of her power, England feared the Indians. Conscious their white skinsand racial superiority, the British scorned the Indians.Fear, and the administrator's natural wish to administer with maximum facility,impelled the British to adopt the approved imperialistic tactic of Divide andRule. Since the Moslems played the leading role in the Mutiny and were thoughtto harbour dreams of empire, the British at first preferred the Hindus to theMoslems. When unrest and political ambition stirred the Hindus, the Britishused the Moslems against the Hindus.www.mkgandhi.org Page 192

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSimilarly, Britain divided the country between British India, governed directlyby England, and native India, governed indirectly by England but directly, andostensibly, by Indian princes. It was a cynical device, avowed as such by LordCanning on April 30, 1860; he wrote, 'It was long ago said by Sir John Malcolmthat if we made all India into zillahs (or British districts) it was not in thenature of things that our empire should last fifty years; but that if we couldkeep up a number of native states without political power but as royalinstruments, we should exist in India as long as our naval supremacy wasmaintained. Of the substantial truth of this opinion I have no doubt; the recentevents make it more deserving of our own attention than ever.' In the twentiethcentury, these royal instruments without political power number over fivehundred and fifty. With that number of puppets the British thought they weresecure.Professor Rushbrook Williams, a brilliant Englishman who often served asofficial intermediary with Indian princes, wrote in the London Evening Standardof May 28, 1930, The situations of these feudatory states, chequerboarding allIndia as they do, are a great safeguard. It is like establishing 3 vast network offriendly fortresses in debatable territory. " would be difficult for a generalrebellion against the British to sweep India because of this network ofpowerful, loyal, native states.'Nothing could be more clear.Lest India become strong enough economically to break from the Empire, and inorder, too, to help British industries in the motherland, Indian industries werediscouraged and Indian shipping and shipbuilding were officially restricted.Education was not designed to train a technical staff for industry nor aprofessional class to serve the country. With a population of approximately380,000,000, India, in 1939, had only 1306 students of agriculture, 2413 ofengineering, 719 of veterinary science, 150 of technology, 63 of forestry andonly 3561 in medicine, in her colleges and universities, according to the officialStatistical Abstract for British India.www.mkgandhi.org Page 193

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIn 1939, India, with three times the population of the United States and twothirdsthe area, had 41,134 miles of railway track, compared with 395,589miles in the United States. India produced 2,500,000,000 kilowatt-hours ofelectric energy in 1935; the United States, 98,464,000,000 kilowatt- hours.These conditions were not the sole fault of the British; Indians shared theblame. But Indians blamed everything on the British.Indians delight in criticizing, and autocrats detest criticism. 'All opposition',writes Sir Valentine Chirol, a British authority on India, 'even in the shape ofcriticism which it can treat as mere waste of breath, is distasteful to anautocracy and apt to be regarded even as pregnant with sedition, and theBritish officials in India honestly believed in an autocratic form of governmentthough they tried to make it as paternal as possible.'British paternalistic autocracy irritated some Indians and embittered others.Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Indian terrorists began to operatein Bengal and other areas. Terror invited repression which provoked moreterror.One school of British politics wished to meet Indian hostility Wrth blood andiron; a second school wished to mollify it with reforms. Each of these had itscounterpart inside the Indian National Congress.The British autocrats did not help the Indian moderates. Late in the nineteenthcentury, Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, well known in India, said, "It is thisconsciousness of the inherent superiority of the European which has won usIndia. However well educated and clever a native may be and however brave hemay have proved himself, I believe that no rank which we can bestow upon himwould cause him to be considered an equal by the British officer."Such racialism bred implacable enemies and embarrassed the moderates. Theliberal lawyers, publicists and capitalists retained their control of Congress, butnot everybody was in Congress. Boys were hurling bombs. Young men withdegrees from Oxford and Cambridge were rejecting the West. East is East andwww.mkgandhi.org Page 194

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesWest is West, and if the twain cannot meet, they said, it is because East wasslave and West was master.In Toward Freedom, an autobiography, Jawaharlal Nehru writes that in 1907, atseventeen, when he had just gone to Cambridge from Harrow, he was anextremist. In fact, speaking of the Indian students, he says, 'Almost withoutexception we were Tilakites or Extremists.'Bal Gangadhar Tilak, known as 'Lokmanya' or 'Respected by the People', playeda key role in the development of the Indian independence movement and inGandhi's life.Tilak was a high-degree Brahman, a Chitpawan Brahman, from Poona in theland of the Marathas, the last Indian folk to be conquered by the British. TheMarathas are highlanders who many times in their history descended into thelowlands, notably into Gandhi's homeland Gujarat, to dominate the lessbellicose peoples of the plains. Once, these fighting Hindus captured MoslemDelhi; they remained foes of Islam.Tilak inaugurated an annual festival to celebrate King Shivaji (born 1627, died1680) who brought new triumphs to the Maratha empire. He wrote a mostscholarly commentary the Gita and defended every orthodox tenet and practiceof Hinduism, including child marriage. He branded as a puppet any Indian whoworked for the British. He exposed the emptiness of British concessions toIndian Home-Rule aspirations.Tilak's fierce imprecations, the British charged, stirred a young ChitpawanBrahman to assassinate a British official on June 27, 1897, the day of QueenVictoria's Diamond Jubilee, and Tilak was condemned to two years in prison.Liberated before the end of his term, he resumed his Hindu religious agitationwhich, while aimed at the British, did not, to say the least, improve relationsbetween Hindus and Moslems.Hindu passions continued to simmer. Indian nationalism found food in numerousevents at home and abroad; the hollowness of British reforms nurtured it and sodid the Japanese defeat of the Russians in the 1904-05 war (the first time awww.mkgandhi.org Page 195

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timescoloured nation defeated a white one), the 1905 Russian revolution and the riseof the Young Turks.In 1904 Lord Curzon, considered by some the greatest Viceroy of India, decreedthe partition of the province of Bengal. This act may have been the beginningof the end of British rule in India; Indians always mention it as a Britishatrocity. Curzon, despite his monumental ability and industry, was abureaucrat, autocrat and aristocrat. He lived close to his files and far from thepeople. Bengal had a population over seventy million and Curzon divided it thebetter to administer it. But the bisection was on religious lines: the oslem areawas separated from the more powerful Hindu area. Bitterness knew norestraint. Curzon was accused of anti-Hindu prejudice and of trying to put theMoslems under a debt which they would have to pay in the coin ofSubmissiveness.These and similar charges were directed at Curzon until eft India towards theend of 1904. Bengal answered the partition with assassinations. In the land ofthe Marathas Tilak whipped his followers into a frenzy. In both provinces Britishgoods were boycotted, in both, Gandhi always found his most stubbornenemies.Gandhi and Tilak were opposites. Gandhi was a quiet public speaker, Tilak theconsummate orator. Gandhi was wedded to non-violence; Tilak justifiedviolence. Gandhi fostered Hindu-Moslem amity; Tilak favoured Hindusupremacy. Gandhi respected means; Tilak pursued ends. Tilak's work borebitter fruit.The 1906 annual session of Congress met in Calcutta, then the capital of Indiaas well as of Bengal. It demanded a reversal of the partition, supported theanti-British boycott and resolved in favour of self-government for India.Lord Minto, Curzon's successor, let it become known in 1906 that he wascontemplating reforms which would give Indians a bigger voice in the provinciallegislatures and more jobs in government offices. But the Tilak extremists werenot mollified. Violence continued in Bengal and Maharashtra and spread to thePunjab. At the 1907 Congress session in Surat, moderates and extremists threwwww.mkgandhi.org Page 196

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timessandals at one another. After the fray, the Tilakites withdrew from theCongress, leaving the lawyers in control.The reforms drafted by Lord Minto, with the assistance of John Morley,Secretary of State for India in London, were introduced in 1908 and 1909. Theyextended Indian participation in the all-Indian and provincial legislativecouncils and in provincial executive councils as well. One Indian joined theViceroy's executive council. But Morley made it clear, in the House of Lordsdebate in December 1908, that 'if it could be said that this chapter of reformsled directly or indirectly or necessarily up to the establishment of aparliamentary system in India, I, for one, would have nothing to do with it'.More Indians sat on legislative councils and they talked more, but they had nomore power, for the councils themselves had no power; their function wasconsultative.Any joy which Indians might have derived from the Minto-Morley reforms wassoured by a concomitant measure: the introduction of separate electorates- In1906, a Moslem deputation led by the Aga Khan waited upon Lord Minto andurged that in all future elections Hindus vote for Hindu representatives andMoslems for Moslem representatives. Nationalist historians have branded thisinterview as a 'command performance' rehearsed and conducted under Minto'sbaton. Whatever the facts, Minto and Morley granted the Moslem request, andin 1909, separate religious electorates, embellished with a device enablingMoslems to obtain more than their proportional number of seats (weightage,this was called) became a permanent Indian institution whose mischief wasincalculable for, it made religious differences the decisive factor in everypolitical contest. The central political problem in India was to bridge the gulfbetween Hindus and Moslems, this widened it.However, the first though not lasting effect of the separate electorates was tobring more Moslems into the Congress party. Prominent among them wasMohamed Ali Jinnah.In 1911, the new King, George V, and Queen Mary, visited of amid fantasticpomp. The King announced the removal of the capital to Delhi and thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 197

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesannulment of the partition for engal" Nevertheless and though Tilak had beensentenced r sedition in November 1907 to a long term of imprisonment and wasailing in Mandalay, acts of personal terror continued; Lord Hardinge, theViceroy, narrowly escaped death y a bomb.The outbreak of war in 1914 found some Indians loyal, some British Army andfew enthusiastic, but many ready to serve in the British Army. More than half amillion Indians fought for England in France, Flanders, Palestine and on otherfronts.Indian princes and commoners distinguished themselves in combat on theground and in the air.Tilak had returned from exile in 1914 and pledged loyalty Gandhi returned fromSouth Africa, via London, in January 1915 and recruited for the British Army.But idleness and the Irish rebellion at Easter, 1916 were too much for Tilak'sfiery spirit and he burst forth into a passionate anti-British campaign in favourof Home-Rule. His companion agitator, who if anything excelled him in oratoryand vituperation, was Mrs. Annie Besant. They were vigorously assisted bySir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar and by Mohamed Ali Jinnah.The Indian earth rumbled with the noise of the volcano beneath it. Not only thepoliticians, but the soldiers and even the peasants, felt that the blood Indianswere shedding in Britain's battle should be recompensed. On August 20, 1917,accordingly, Edwin S. Montagu, Secretary of State for India, announced in theHouse of Commons that British policy envisaged 'not only the increasingassociation of Indians in every branch of the administration, but also thegranting of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realizationof responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire'.This was interpreted as being a pledge of Dominion Status.Tilak thought that on occasions it might be desirable to occupy positions ofpower within the state apparatus. He once sent Gandhi a cheque for fiftythousand rupees as a bet that he could recruit five thousand Marathas for theBritish army if Gandhi extracted a promise from the Viceroy that some of theenlisted personnel would receive officers' commissions Gandhi returned thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 198

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timescheque. He did not like betting. And he felt that if you do something you do itbecause you believe in it and not for what you hope to get out of it.The war closed victoriously in November 1918. Trouble did not wait long; itcame early in 1919.Tilak had been interned again in August 1918. Mrs. Besant was also underarrest. Shaukat Ali and Mohammed Ali, brothers and powerful and prominentMoslem leaders, had been imprisoned during the war. Secret tribunals had beensentencing people in all parts of India. Many newspapers were muzzled bywartime censorship. These measures evoked great bitterness. But with thecoming of peace, the country expected the restoration of civil liberties.Instead, a committee headed by Sir Sidney Rowlatt, who had come fromEngland to study the administration of justice, issued a report on July 19, 1918,which recommended in effect a continuation of the war-time rigours. TheCongress party fiercely denounced the Rowlatt findings. In February 1919 a billembodying them was nevertheless offered by the Government to the ImperialLegislative Council. Gandhi attended the debate and appreciated the attackslevelled by Indian members against the bill but, since a majority of the Councilconsisted of British government officials, its passage, after what Gandhi calledthe 'farce of legal formality', was assured.Gandhi, just recuperating from dysentery and from an operation for fissuresnecessitated by it, decided that the .impending government legislation wasunjust, subversive of the principle of liberty and destructive of the elementaryrights of individuals on which the safety of the community as a whole and ofthe State itself is based.'Assuming that the bill would be enacted, Gandhi began preparations for civilresistance on the pattern of his victorious effort in South Africa. Though still soweak that somebody had to read his speeches, he travelled to many citieslaying the groundwork for a gigantic, nationwide Satyagraha campaign designedto induce the government to withdraw the repressive legislation. Meanwhile, heappealed to the Viceroy by letter and through the press not to approve the law.www.mkgandhi.org Page 199

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesOn March 18, 1919, the Rowlatt Act became the law of the land. An electricshock ran through India. Was this the commencement of Dominion Status? Wasthis the reward for the bloodshed in the war?The next day, Mahatma Gandhi, who had come to Madras for a meeting, said tohis host, C. Rajagopalachari, 'Last night the idea came to me in a dream thatwe should call on the country to observe a general hartal.' A hartal is asuspension of economic activity; shopkeepers do not open for business,employees do not report for work, factories stay shut, ships are not loaded orunloaded. Gandhi urged that hartal day be a day of 'fasting and prayer' and of'humiliation and prayer'. Thereafter Satyagraha would unfold according tocircumstances; resisters might, for example, buy and sell proscribed books, ormanufacture salt in contravention of the law which made its production a statemonopoly.The hartal was Gandhi's first act against the British government of India.Indeed, it was his first political act in India. His intervention on behalf of theChamparan share-croppers had unintentionally involved him in friction with aBritish court. But now he deliberately appealed for a nation-widedemonstration against the British authorities. It was the beginning of histwenty-eight years of struggle against British rule in India. The end of thestruggle was the end of British rule.www.mkgandhi.org Page 200

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XXIIIMurderGANDHI'S hartal idea spread throughout India. It united vast multitudes incommon action; it gave the people a sense of power. They loved Gandhi for it.The hartal paralysed economic life; the dead cities and towns were tangibleproof that Indians could be effective. What the Indian people needed most andlacked most, was faith in themselves. Gandhi gave it to them.Six hundred men and women in Bombay signed the Satyagraha pledge. Gandhiwas happy. He had won with fewer numbers in South Africa. Vows were beingtaken in other cities, and in many villages. 'Even such a mighty government asthe government of India,' Gandhi declared at Bombay, 'will have to yield if weare true to our pledge. For, the pledge is no small thing. It means a change ofheart. It is an attempt to introduce the religious spirit into politics. We may nolonger believe in the doctrine of "tit for tat"; we may not meet hatred withhatred, violence with violence, evil with evih but we have to make acontinuous and persistent effort to return good for evil... Nothing isimpossible.'Sceptics mocked. 'I have no desire to argue,' Gandhi replied. As the Britishproverb says, "The proof of the pudding lies in the eating".' The movement hadbeen launched; it would surely spread and surely triumph.In a further appeal to the Viceroy, the Mahatma put the whole question on ahigh, universal level. The Satyagraha campaign, he told the Viceroy,'constitutes an attempt to revolutionize politics and restore moral force to itsoriginal station'. He quoted a statement of President Woodrow Wilson at Paristo the effect that if the moral force behind the League of Nations Covenant didnot suffice, physical force would. 'We' Gandhi wrote, 'hope to reverse theprocess and by our action show that physical force is nothing compared tomoral force and that moral force never fails.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 201

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSomebody protested that Gandhi's Satyagraha campaign would abet Bolshevism.(The Bolshevik Revolution had taken place on November 7, 1917, and made adeep impression on the East.) No, Gandhi said in a speech at Madras on March30, 1919, 'if anything can possibly prevent this calamity descending upon ourcountry, it is Satyagraha. Bolshevism is the necessary result of modernmaterialistic civilization. Its insensate worship of matter has given rise to aschool which has been brought up to look upon materialistic advancement asthe goal and which has lost all touch with the final things in life ... I prophesythat if we disobey the law of the final supremacy of spirit over matter, ofliberty and love over brute force, in a few years' time we shall have Bolshevismrampant in this land which was once so holy'.The hartal, a prelude to Satyagraha, was observed in Delhi on March 30 and inBombay and other cities and villages on April 6; 'Needless to say,' Gandhireported, 'the hartal in Bombay was a complete success.' The nationwidehartal, he said, 'was a most wonderful spectacle'.In Delhi, however, the hartal provoked violence. The Punjab, home of millionsof Moslems and Hindus and of five million bearded, turbaned, stoutly built Sikhswhose religion was an offshoot of Hinduism, echoed to riots and shootings-Leaders asked Gandhi to come quickly to Delhi and the Punjab. The Britishstopped him, at the borders of province on April 9 and escorted him back toBombay, where be was released. En route to and from Bombay, Gandhi sentmessages that he was safe and free; reports of his arrest had inflamed thealready heated passions of the people; riots occurred in Bombay andAhmedabad.On April 11, Gandhi admonished his followers in Bombay. We have beenthrowing stones,' he said. 'We have obstructed tramcars by putting obstacles inthe way. This is not Satyagraha. We have demanded the release of about fiftymen who had been arrested for deeds of violence. But our duty is chiefly to getourselves arrested. It is a breach of religious duty to endeavour to secure therelease of those who have committed deeds of violence... If we cannot conductthis movement without the slightest violence from our side,' Gandhi warned,www.mkgandhi.org Page 202

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'the movement might have to be abandoned... It may be necessary to go evenfurther. The time may come for me to offer Satyagraha against ourselves... Ihave just heard that some English gentlemen have been injured. Some mayeven have died from such injuries. If so, it would be a great blot on Satyagraha.For me, Englishmen too are our brethren.'From Bombay, Gandhi went to his ashram at Sabarmati, where on April 14 headdressed a huge multitude. Ahmedabad citizens too had committed acts ofviolence of which Gandhi was ashamed; 'a rapier rim through my body couldhardly have pained me more'. Scathingly he denounced them: We have burntdown buildings, forcibly captured weapons, extorted money, stopped trains,cut off telegraph wires, killed innocent People and plundered shops and privatehouses.' As penance, he announced that he had undertaken a seventy-two-hourfast, asked the people to fast twenty-four.Immediately after the Sabarmati meeting, Gandhi left for adiad, a town in theKheda district, twenty-nine miles from Ahmedabad, where he had recruited forthe war. There he covered that violence had spread to small towns as well.Depressed, Gandhi told the people of Nadiad that the entire Satyagrahacampaign was 'a Himalayan miscalculation' on his part. On April 18 he called offthe movement.Many scoffed; the Mahatma, they taunted, had made 'a Himalayanmiscalculation'. But Gandhi never regretted a confession of error. 'I have alwaysheld', he wrote in his autobiography, 'that it is only when one sees one's ownmistakes with a convex lens and does just the reverse in the case of others,that one is able to arrive at a just relative estimate of the two'. What politicianwould say that?His miscalculation, Gandhi explained, was in overlooking the fact that a personmust be trained in civil obedience before civil disobedience against some lawscould succeed. 'I am sorry,' Gandhi said in cancelling the Satyagraha campaign,'that when I embarked upon a mass movement I underrated the forces of eviland I must now pause and consider how best to meet the situation.' Nobodywww.mkgandhi.org Page 203

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesforsook his leadership because he did not immediately announce a clever newplan to divert attention from the one that failed.Meanwhile, the Punjab province boiled. Events there culminated in theoccurrence in the sacred Sikh city of Amritsar on April 13, 1919, which SirValentine Chirol called 'that black day in the annals of British India'. For Gandhiit was a turning point. Indians never forgot it.An official commission of inquiry, appointed by the government of India andconsisting of seven members, four British and three Indian, with Lord Hunter,Senator of the College of Justice of Scotland, as chairman, investigated thePunjab disturbances for many months and then published its report. It foundthat in Amritsar 'the Hartal on the thirtieth (of March) was successful beyondexpectation and stopped the whole business of the city. There was no collisionwith the police and no resort to violence.' On April 6, Amritsar, a city of150,000 inhabitants, observed another hartal. This second time also the hartalpassed off successfully', the official Hunter Report affirms, 'and Europeanscould and did walk unmolested amongst the crowds.'On April 9, the Punjab government issued an order for the deportation from theprovince of the two Congress party leaders, Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew, a Moslemand Dr. Satyapal, a Hindu. It was the day of the Hindu festival Ram Naumi inwhich, according to the Report, Moslems also joined, shouting 'Mahatma Gandhiki jai (Long Live Mahatma Gandhi)' and 'Hindu-Mussalman ki jai (Long LiveHindu- Moslem unity)', and 'drinking out of the same cups publicly by way ofdemonstration'. The police expected that the demonstrators would try toliberate the two leaders and precautions were taken, but 'there was no attemptat rescue'.The banishing of the leaders removed from Amritsar the two men who mighthave restrained the populace. 'Starting in anger at the action of thegovernment in deporting the two local politicians,' reads the Hunter Report, amob raged through the streets. At the National Bank, Mr. Stewart, themanager, and Mr. Scott, the assistant manager, were beaten to death and atthe Alliance Bank, Mr. G. M. Thomson, the manager, 'who attempted to defendwww.mkgandhi.org Page 204

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeshimself with revolver, was cruelly murdered'. Other English people wereassaulted.Two days later, Brigadier-General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer arrived atAmritsar. Dyer, born in Simla, India, in 1864, was educated at MiddletonCollege, County Cork, Ireland, and entered the British Army in 1885. He foughton the north-west frontier, in the Burma war and in the First World War April1919 found him commanding a brigade at Jullunder, in the Punjab. Ordered toAmritsar on the 11th, he issued a Proclamation on the 12th prohibitingprocessions and meetings. ‘The issue of the proclamation which was formallysigned by the Brigade-Major on General Dyer's behalf,' says the Hunter Report,'was left to the police; it does not appear what steps Were taken to ensure itspublication.'During the morning of the next day, April 13, Dyer went through the cityreading the proclamation to the people. 'From an examination of the mapshowing the different places where the proclamation was read,' the HunterReport asserts, 'it is evident that in many parts of the city the proclamation wasnot read.'The Hunter Report then tells the story of the massacre of April 13. 'About oneo'clock', it reads, 'General Dyer heard that the people intended to hold a bigmeeting about four-thirty p.m. On being asked why he did not take measures toprevent its being held, he replied: "I went there as soon as I could. I had tothink the matter out.'"The meeting took place at Jallianwalla Bagh: Bagh means garden. 'JallianwallaBagh', the Report says, 'is not in any sense a garden as its name would suggest.It is a rectangular piece of unused ground, covered to some extent by buildingmaterial and debris. It is almost entirely surrounded by walls of buildings. Theentrances and exits to it are few and imperfect. It seems to be frequently usedto accommodate large gatherings of people. At the end at which General Dyerentered there is a raised ground on each side of the entrance. A large crowdhad gathered at the opposite end of the Bagh and were being addressed by aman on a raised platform about 150 yards from where General Dyer stationedwww.mkgandhi.org Page 205

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeshis troops.' The Report estimates that there were between ten and twentythousand persons in the Bagh.Dyer went to the garden with twenty-five Gurkhas (soldiers from Nepal) andtwenty-five Baluchis from Baluchistan armed with rifles, forty Gurkhas armedonly with knives and two armoured cars. 'On arriving at Jallianwalla Bagh', theReport declares, 'he (Dyer) entered with this force by a narrow entrance whichwas not sufficiently wide to allow the cars to pass. They were accordingly leftin the street outside.'As soon as General Dyer entered the Bagh,' the Report continues, 'he stationedtwenty-five troops on one side of higher ground at the entrance and twentyfivetroops on the other side. Without giving the crowd any warning to disperse,which he considered unnecessary as they were in breach of his proclamation,he ordered his troops to fire and the firing continued for about ten minutes.There is no evidence as to the nature of the address to which the audience waslistening. None of them were provided with firearms, although some of themmay have been carrying sticks.'As soon as the firing commenced the crowd began to disperse. In all 1,650rounds were fired by the troops. The firing was individual and not volley firing...As a result of this investigation it was discovered that approximately 379people were killed.' The Report estimates that there were three times as manywounded as dead. This adds up to 379 dead plus 1137 wounded or 1516casualties with 1650 bullets. The crowd, penned in the low-lying garden, was aperfect target.Under cross-examination before the Hunter Commission, Dyer revealed his mindand purpose:'Question: From time to time you changed your firing and directed it to theplace where the crowd was thickest?''Answer: That is so.'The crowd had rushed to the lowest wall, which was five feet high and that iswhere the bullets felled many of them.www.mkgandhi.org Page 206

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesQuestion: Supposing the passage was sufficient to allow the armored cars to goin, would you have opened fire with the machine-guns?''Answer: I think, probably, yes'.‘When examined before us' the Hunter Report asserts, 'he (Dyer) explained thathis mind was made up as he came along is motor car; if his orders againstholding a meeting were eyed he was going to fire at once.''I had made up my mind,' Dyer testified, 'I would do all men to death...'General Dyer's own dispatch to his military superior, which is quoted in theHunter Report with his italics, said. 'I fired and continued to fire until thecrowd dispersed and I consider this the least amount of firing which couldproduce the necessary effect it was my duty to produce if I was to justify myaction. It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd, but oneproducing a sufficient moral effect from a military point of view not only onthose who were present, but more especially throughout the Punjab. Therecould be no question of undue severity.'The Hunter Commission decided that this was unfortunately a mistakenconception of his duty.' It also found that 'in continuing to fire for so long as hedid it appears to us that General Dyer committed a grave error.’Moreover, the Report notes that 'General Dyer's action in not making provisionfor the wounded at Jallianwalla Bagh has been made the subject of criticism.'Dyer said at the hearings, 'I was ready to help them if they applied.'Sir Michael O'Dwyer, British Acting Governor of the Punjab, approved of Dyer'saction and referred to the disturbances as 'rebellion'. The Hunter Commissioncommented: 'The action taken by General Dyer has also been described byothers as having saved the situation in the Punjab and having averted arebellion on a scale similar to the Mutiny. It does not, however, appear to uspossible to draw this conclusion, particularly in view of the fact that aconspiracy to overthrow British power had not been formed prior to theoutbreaks.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 207

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesNot only was no insurrection intended or planned, but according to the HunterReport, 'It appears that the outburst of the 10th April subsided in a few hours,there was no repetition of any serious incident afterwards either on that dateor on subsequent dates. And even with regard to the events on the 10th ... ifthe officer in charge ... had done his duty, the worst crimes, viz., the murdersof the bank officers ... would in all probability have been prevented.'Amritsar had been calm for two and a half days when Dyer's butchery occurred.His unnecessary massacre was the child of the -British military mentality thendominant in India. To characterize this mentality, the Hunter Report quotes anutterance of General Drake-Brockman of Delhi who said, 'Force is the only thingthat an Asiatic has any respect for.''I thought I would be doing a jolly lot of good', was Dyer's airy summary of themassacre at Jallianwala Bagh.To add humiliation to hurt, General Dyer published his infamous 'crawlingorder'. On April 10 Miss Sherwood, the headmistress of a girls' school inAmirtsar, had been barbarously attacked by the mob. Several days after theJallianwalla Bagh blood bath, Dyer issued instruction that anybody passing thestreet where Miss Sherwood was assaulted would have to go on all fours. Thisapplied even to the members of families whose only approach to their homeswas through that street. Gandhi felt worse about this 'outrage', as he called it,than about the massacre.At the spot, moreover, on which Miss Sherwood was beaten, Dyer erected awhipping post for the public flogging of those who ignored his order that Indianson animals and vehicles must alight, Indians carrying umbrellas or parasols mustlower them, and all Indians must salute or 'salaam' with the hand as they passedBritish officers in some districts of Amritsar.The British Secretary of State for India, Edwin S. Montagu, m an officialdispatch to the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, dated May 26, 1920, wrote, 'HisMajesty's Government repudiate emphatically the doctrine upon whichBrigadier-General Dyer ased his action' at Jallianwalla Bagh. The crawlingorder, Montagu added 'offended against every canon of civilized government'.www.mkgandhi.org Page 208

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesInnumerable Englishmen were ashamed 0f Dyer's deed, yet he found manydefenders.Dyer was asked to resign from the army. Towards the end of his life, heinvented a range finder for sighting aircraft. He died in retirement at Bristol onJuly 23, 1927.Under the Hunter Commission's cross-examination, General Dyer had said, ‘Yes,I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed them perhaps without firing'but 'I was going to punish them. My idea from the military point of view was tomake a wide impression.'We have no doubt', the official British Hunter Report continued, 'that hesucceeded in creating a very wide impression and a great moral effect, but of acharacter quite opposite from the one he intended.' Jallianwalla Baghquickened India's political life and drew Gandhi into politics.www.mkgandhi.org Page 209

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XXIVGandhi Enters PoliticsMAHATMA Gandhi always resisted politics. He regarded his South African workas moral and social, therefore religious. After his return to India in 1915 heattended annual sessions of the Congress, but his public activity at suchassemblies was squally limited to moving a resolution in support of the Indiansin South Africa. Moreover, he regarded the Congress as the unofficialparliament of India in which all political trends and parties were, or could be,represented.To join one party dedicated to a political goal meant a separation from otherparties, and Gandhi disliked anything divisive. He had strong beliefs but nodogmas.Gandhi’s 'readiness to take up the cudgels on behalf of any individual or classwhom he regarded as being oppressed', reads a discerning remark in a 1919British government Publication, 'has endeared him to the masses of thecountry'. He preferred the warm bond of human affection to the cold tongue ofa party programme.Yet, in 1920 Gandhi joined the All-India Home Rule League and became itspresident.Politics can probably be- defined as competition for power, implies an effort toweaken, destroy, or assume the power those in power. Gandhi did not wish toweaken, destroy, or supplant Smuts in South Africa. But by becoming leaderOf the All-India Home Rule League, Gandhi did accept the goal of Indian selfgovernmentinstead of government by England. The Congress did not yetadvocate independence.Gandhi's early steps in politics were uncertain. Indeed, he remained politicallyunpredictable throughout life because his mind was a battlefield on whichcaution contended with passion. Ready to die fighting for a principle, hewww.mkgandhi.org Page 210

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timespreferred to arbitrate and compromise. He was a natural fighter and a bornpeacemaker.Gandhi's criteria were not the usual criteria of politics. His leadership did notdepend on victories. He did not have to save 'face'. In the autobiography,Gandhi tells of incidents that could not have been known but for him, how hevisited a brothel ate meat in stealth, maltreated his wife, etc. Truth had to bethe whole truth or it wasn't true. Indians, whom suffering has made suspicious,could not suspect Gandhi because he told them everything; he hated secrets;he was his own harshest critic. He could admit blunders, 'Himalayan' and less,because he did not claim infallibility or superiority.Gandhi's critics complained that he would withdraw from a political battlebefore all his forces had been brought to bear on the enemy and, sometimes,when success appeared imminent. But what success? His standards of successwere moral and religious. They gave his politics the only consistency andcontinuity they had.The road by which Gandhi arrived at the centre of the Indian political worldwas tortuous. It started at Jallianwalla Bagh; no matter where he went theecho of General Dyer's fusillade pursued him. Following the massacre, Gandhiasked permission to visit the Punjab. He was rebuffed. He pressed his case.Finally, the Viceroy telegraphed him that he could go after October 17, 1919.The Mahatma's reception at Lahore and other cities was unprecedented in sizeand warmth. "The seething seething mass of humanity, he wrote, 'was deliriouswith joy’. He had become a symbol of national resistance to the foreign evil.In the Punjab, Gandhi assisted Indian leaders, among them Motilal Nehru, aveteran Congressman and father of jawaharlal, in the conduct of anindependent inquiry into the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre. He drafted thereport; his colleagues felt he would be without bias.While thus engaged, Gandhi received an invitation to attend a Moslemconference in Delhi. He arrived there on November 24, 1919. The Armisticewhich ended the First World War had been signed on November 11, 1918. Itsealed the defeat of Turkey, a Moslem country, and of the Turkish Sultan, who,www.mkgandhi.org Page 211

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesin addition to being a temporal ruler, was the Caliph or religious head of allIslam.Pan-Islamism has never been a mass movement in India or elsewhere. The fateof the Caliph nevertheless agitated the Moslems in India. The Moslem leaders,notably Mohamed and Shaukat Ali, the brothers who were interned by theBritish during the war, Jinnah, Asaf Ali and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad had hopedthat Indian interest in the Caliph would at least induce England to moderatethe peace terms imposed on Turkey. But when it became obvious that the Turkswould be shorn of their imperial possessions, and that the Sultan himself wouldbe deposed, concern for the Caliph, added to distaste for the British, produceda powerful Caliphate or, as it is always known in India, Khilafat movement.The Moslem conference in Delhi, in November 1919, which Gandhi attended,was a Khilafat meeting. Many Hindus were Present. This period was thehoneymoon of Hindu-Moslem Political friendship. The letter of invitation, whichreached Gandhi in Lahore, said cow protection as well as the Caliph would bediscussed. Gandhi demurred. He told the conference that if, in deference toHindu regard for the cow as a sacred animal, Mohammedans wanted to desistfrom slaughtering it they should do so irrespective of the Hindu attitudetowards the Khilafat question. Similarly, if Hindus believed they ought tosupport Moslems on behalf of the Caliph they should, but not in the expectationof a bargain on cow protection. The cow, therefore, was removed from theagenda.The conference debated what to do; resolutions condemning British harshnesstowards Turkey were not enough. A boycott of British textiles was suggested.But how could buyers distinguish British from other foreign textiles, and mightnot British goods be sold as Japanese or Italian or Belgian? Perhaps all importedcloth should be boycotted. Could India produce sufficient textiles to supply thedomestic market?Gandhi sat on the platform searching his mind for a plan of action. He waslooking for a programme and then for a word that would be alike a slogan and aperfect summary of that programme. Finally, he found it, and when he waswww.mkgandhi.org Page 212

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timescalled on to speak he said, 'Non-co-operation'. Indians could not simultaneouslyoppose the government and work with it. To boycott British exports wasinadequate; they must boycott British schools, British courts, British jobs,British honours; they must non-co-operate.'Non-co-operation' became the name of an epoch in the life of India and ofGandhi. Non-co-operation was negative enough to be peaceful but positiveenough to be effective. It entailed denial, renunciation and self-discipline. Itwas training for self- rule.Gandhi's advice to the Moslem conference was contingent on the final peaceterms dictated to Turkey. If they were as onerous as expected and destroyedthe status of the Caliph, then India would non-co-operate. Thus, Gandhi left aloophole for a modification of British policy vis-a-vis the Turks.The annual session of Congress took place in the last week of that year, 1919 —at Amritsar. The fact that the Government allowed it to meet near JallianwallaBagh and that the Ali brothers were released on the eve of the session so thatthey could come straight to it from jail, fed Gandhi's congenital optimism.By design or coincidence, the King-Emperor announced the much-heraldedMontagu-Chelmsford reforms ('A new era is opening,' the King declared) the daybefore Congress met. The announcement, Gandhi asserted, 'was not whollysatisfactory even to me and was unsatisfactory to everyone else'; nevertheless,he favoured acceptance. In November, in Delhi, he urged non-co-operation. InDecember, in Amritsar, he favoured co-operation.The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, approved by the British House of Commons as'The Government of India Act of 1919' became the new Constitution of India onFebruary 9, 1921. The British called the new system 'Dyarchy'; mon-archy, therule of one—Great Britain—became dy-archy, the rule of two—Great Britain andIndia. Indians, however, had no power in the federal government and none wascontemplated. In the provinces, Indian ministers would administer agriculture,industries, education, health, excise, roads, buildings, etc., but the BritishGovernor retained complete control of finance and police .and he couldoverride any decision of the Indian ministers and of the Indian legislature.www.mkgandhi.org Page 213

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIndian participation in the Civil Service was increased and promises of furtherincreases were made. But Indians decided that, on the whole, dyarchy was stillthe British monarchy.Nevertheless, Gandhi took kindly to the King's proclamation °f the impendingconstitutional changes and wanted the 1919 Amritsar Congress to accept them.He trusted Britain's good intentions. 'To trust is a virtue,' he said. 'It is weaknessthat gets distrust.' But when he heard that C. R. Das, the famous Bengalnationalist, Jinnah and Tilak were opposed, he shrank from opposing such welltriedand universally revered leaders.'I tried to run away from the Congress,' Gandhi reveals his autobiography.Gandhi was prevailed upon to stay, for he had become the rock on whichCongress rested. The session was attended by 7031 delegates, anunprecedented number, and many hailed from farms and city shops. Gandhiwas their idol. They felt closer to him than to the renowned lawyers. Only Tilakcould still question Gandhi's way.Tilak advocated acceptance of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms with a view toproving their inadequacy.This was not the Gandhian way. If you accepted something, you had to do sowithout mental reservations and give it a fair trial. If you did not want it, youhad to fight it no matter who else wanted it.The delegates supported Gandhi. But he disliked defeating Tilak. In a dramaticmoment, Gandhi turned to Tilak who was sitting on the platform. Gandhi waswearing a small cap of white homespun that resembled an aviator's cap; it laterbecame known as the 'Gandhi Cap' of Indian nationalists. Gandhi dropped hiscap on the ground as a gesture of obeisance and pleaded with Tilak to approvea compromise. Tilak succumbed.The compromise thanked Montagu for his part in the reforms and undertook toco-operate with the new dyarchy scheme in such a manner as to expand it intofull parliamentary government, but Lord Chelmsford, who had exoneratedGeneral Dyer, was condemned for mismanaging Indian affairs and his recall waswww.mkgandhi.org Page 214

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesdemanded. Another resolution denounced British and Indian violence in thePunjab. A third asked for the repeal of the Rowlatt acts.However, the youth and the new elements activized by Gandhi had expectedmuch faster post-war progress towards self-government; delicately balancedCongress resolutions disappointed them. High post-war prices were pressingadditional millions down to starvation level. The Moslem now knew that therewould be no amelioration of Turkey's fate; Montagu had sincerely tried, hencethe Amritsar Congress tribute to him, but the British Cabinet said no. InEngland, moreover, Dyer had found many friends; some collected a large pursefor him. Gandhi did not want Dyer punished but he resented the fact that Dyerkept his pension. The Hunter Report fully demonstrated Dyer's guilt yetrecommended no measures against the Dyerism of British rulers in India.Three months after Gandhi had approved the Montagu- Chelmsford dyarchyreforms at the Amritsar Congress session, these developments turned himagainst them.The Amritsar session was merely a temporary triumph of Gandhian caution. Theunmistakable trend of the country was towards non-co-operation. Events movedfast. In April 1920, Gandhi was elected president of the Home Rule League. OnJune 30, guided by Gandhi, the Khilafat movement sanctioned the policy ofnon-co-operation. Gandhi thereupon wrote to the Viceroy, 'I have advised myMoslem friends to withdraw their support from Your Excellency's governmentand advised the Hindus to join them.' The Viceroy replied that non-cooperationwas 'the most foolish of all foolish schemes'. All Chelmsford's power,however, did not suffice to check it. Gandhi announced that non-co-operationwould commence on August 1, 1920, to be preceded by fasting and prayer onJuly 31. That day Tilak died.With Tilak gone, Gandhi was the undisputed leader of Congress. A specialsession of Congress, which met at Calcutta between September 4 and 9, 1920,approved the non-co- operation movement. The annual convention at Nagpur,Central India, in December, unanimously confirmed this approval; Gandhi thenoffered a resolution making the goal Congress Swaraj, or self-rule, within thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 215

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesBritish Empire Possible of outside it if necessary. Mr. Jinnah, and others,preferred home-rule within the Empire. They lost. Jinnah lost interest inCongress. Gandhi politics were Congress politicsThe Nagpur session adopted a new Congress constitution drafted by Gandhi.Congress had been a golden dome without underpinnings. Gandhi converted itinto a democratic mass organization with village units, city district units,provincial sections, an All-India Congress Committee (A.I.C.C.) of 350 memberswhich made policy, and a Working, or Executive, Committee of fifteen.Twenty thousand people attended the Nagpur session; it passed resolutions forthe removal of untouchability, the revival of hand-spinning and hand-weaving,and the collection of a crore (or ten million) of rupees as a Tilak MemorialFund.European clothes were less in evidence at Calcutta and Nagpur than at anyprevious Congress meeting. Less English was spoken, and more Hindustani.Middle-class delegates predominated. India's poor were there too. The menwith great reputations and great fortunes no longer monopolized the limelight.Some drifted away from Congress, but Gandhi's magnetism held many of them;they realized that he had a power over the people to which they never evenaspired.Gandhi was middle caste and middle class. He entered politics just as largenumbers of awakened middle class Indians began to yearn for national freedom.He and they entered politics together.Everything in Gandhi's personality and record helped the people to identifythemselves with him and venerate him- Even sceptics were captivated by hiscourage, indestructible vitality, good humour, near-toothless smile,selflessness, self- confidence and unlimited faith in people.In a nation that was powerless, Gandhi became a symbol of strength. In anation of slaves, he behaved like a free man- Finally; he was a man of God.His idea of non-co-operation had an instantaneous, mighty appeal because itwas so simple: You must not reinforce the walls of the prison that encloses you,www.mkgandhi.org Page 216

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesyou must not forge the fetters that will bind you. He had promised at theNagpur Congress session in December 1920, that if India non-co-operatednon-violently, self-government would come within twelve months. He carriedthis message to the country. He made non-co-operation so personal as to giveeach individual the impression that unless he non-co-operated he would delaySwaraj. Gandhi himself returned to the Viceroy his two South African warmedals and his Kaiser-i-Hind gold medal for humanitarian work in South Africa.In the accompanying letter Gandhi said, 'I can retain neither respect noraffection for a government which has been moving from wrong to wrong inorder to defend its immorality.' Many Indians renounced their British titles andtheir decorations. Motilal Nehru abandoned his lucrative law practice,discontinued the use of alcohol and became a total non-co-operator. His sonJawaharlal, C. R. Das, the leader of the Calcutta bar, Vallabhbhai Patel, andthousands of others likewise left the British courts for ever.Thousands of students dropped their professional studies. The Tilak MemorialFund benefited from the frenzy of self- sacrifice that seized rich and poor; itwas soon oversubscribed. Money was available for the establishment of a chainof permanent Indian institutions of higher learning.Students, teachers and professional men and women left the cities to go intothe villages and teach literacy and non- co-operation. For the peasant, non-cooperationmeant non- Payment of taxes and no use of intoxicating liquors fromwhich the government derived a large revenue.Gandhi toured the country incessantly, indefatigably, in torrid, humid weather,addressing mammoth mass meetings a hundred thousand and more personswho, in those pre- microphone days, could only hope to be reached by hisspirit.For seven months he travelled in hot, uncomfortable trains which werebesieged at all day and night stops by clamouring multitudes who demanded aview of the Mahatma. The inhabitants of one backwoods area sent word that ifGandhi's train did not halt at their tiny station they would lie down on thetracks and be run over by it. The train did stop there at midnight, and whenwww.mkgandhi.org Page 217

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi, aroused from deep sleep, appeared, the crowd, until then boisterous,sank to their knees on the railway platform and wept.During those seven strenuous months the Mahatma took three meals a day;each consisted of sixteen ounces of goat's milk, three slices of toast or bread,two oranges, and a score of grapes or raisins.In the provinces of Assam, Bengal and Madras, Gandhi and Mohamed Ali, theyounger of the Ali brothers, travelled together and addressed meetingstogether. They told every meeting that if they wanted India to rule herself,they had to give up foreign clothing. The audience would burst into applause.At that moment, Gandhi would ask the people to take off the foreign clothingthey were wearing and put it on a heap which he would presently set on fire. Insome places, men stripped themselves naked. The apparel would be passed to aspot near the dais, and when all the hats, coats, shirts, trousers, underwear,socks and shoes had been heaped high, Gandhi set a match to them.As the flames ate their way through the imported goods, Gandhi would tell hisaudience that they must not substitute Indian mill products for foreignmanufactures, they must learn to spin and weave. Gandhi took to spinning halfan hour a day, usually before the midday meal, and required all his associatesto do likewise. Before long, few Indians dared to come into his presencewearing anything but homespun.Daily spinning, Gandhi said, was a 'sacrament' and would turn the spinner's mind'Godward'. Gandhi had a rosary but he never used it except perhaps at nightwhen he watche the stars in moments of sleeplessness. He found rhythm,instead, in the regular hum of the charka and in the steady chanting of 'Rama,Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama (God).Gandhi's long propaganda circuit for non-co-operation had all the attributes ofreligious revivalism. Yet, wherever he went he talked quietly to small groupsabout the launching of branch Congress organizations. He designed a Congressflag with a charka or spinning wheel in the centre. He recruited for thevolunteers whose teen-age members, dressed in civilian uniform, kept order atmeetings. And he regularly wrote several articles for each issue of Young India,www.mkgandhi.org Page 218

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesan English-language weekly, and Navajivan a Gujarati weekly. Founded in 1919,they were Gandhi's personal organs; neither took advertisements; both werepublished in Ahmedabad.The year was nearing its close. Gandhi and Mohamed Ali were walking to ameeting. Two British officers and some soldiers stepped up and arrestedMohamed Ali. Shortly thereafter, Mohamed's older brother Shaukat wasarrested. Both were sentenced to two years' imprisonment for trying todissuade Moslems from serving in the British Army. Before his arrest, MohamedAli had made plans to proceed to the Malabar coast in west India where theMoplahs, a Moslem community, had rebelled against the Government: the affairhad, provoked Hindu-Moslem riots.Mohamed Ali's arrest and the outburst of intercommunity violence in Malabarupset Gandhi deeply. In his concept, the achievement of Swaraj dependedprimarily on Hindu-Moslem friendship.His Mohammedan partner gone, Gandhi strained all the more for results.Spinning became an obsession. He urged it with mounting persistence. InSeptember 1921, he emphasized his devotion to homespun cotton and tosimplicity y discarding, for all time, the cap he had worn, the sleeveless Jacketor waistcoat, and the flowing dhoti or loose trousers, and adopted the loinclothas his sole garment. In addition, he carried a homespun bag for writingequipment, the rosary and a few necessities, possibly some nuts or dried fruit.This was his 'mendicant's garb'.Thus attired, to the dismay and amusement of some of his associates, hearrived in Bombay for decisive consultations with the political leaders of thecountry. On October 5, the Congress Working Committee resolved that 'it is theduty of every Indian soldier and civilian to sever his connections with theGovernment and find some other means of livelihood.' This was a summons todesertion from the army. Congress thus reiterated the seditious statement forwhich the Ali brothers had been incarcerated. Congress leaders were instructedto return to their districts and practise individual civil disobedience against theGovernment.www.mkgandhi.org Page 219

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesInto this tense situation Britain thrust the Prince of Wales, subsequently KingEdward VII and the Duke of Windsor. India was in no mood for glamour ordemonstrations of loyalty. Congress boycotted his tour. He moved throughdeserted city streets and amidst signs of hostility. In Bombay, those who cameout to welcome the Prince were attacked, and bloody riots ensued. Gandhiundertook a fast till the disturbances ended. He fasted five days.The Government now began to round up political leaders and their followers. C.R. Das, Motilal Nehru, Lajpat Rai and hundreds of other leading Congressmenwere arrested. When the annual session of Congress convened in Ahmedabad,id December 1921, twenty thousand Indians had been jailed for civildisobedience and sedition. The session elected Gandhi 'the sole executiveauthority of the Congress'.During December 1921 and January 1922, ten thousand more Indians werethrown into prison for political offences. In several provinces the peasantsspontaneously began tax movements. Indians in government offices left theirjobs.The Government responded with increased severity. Citing instances of officialaction, Gandhi called it 'worse than martial law and characterized therepression as 'savage, because it is Wooden, wild, uncultivated, cruel'. Floggingin prison and out was a daily occurrence.The year 1921 had passed, but no Swaraj. Gandhi was living at his ashram inSabarmati, no doubt wondering what to do. He rarely laid long-range plans; hesubmitted to sudden inspirations. There was dissension in Congress ranks; manyridiculed the Mahatma's emphasis on temperance, homespun and verbaldefiance of the State. They demanded action.Some nationalists yearned for rebellion. But Gandhi believed in peace even atthe price of defeat, though not at the price of cowardice. Where there is only achoice between cowardice and violence,' he had written in Young India ofAugust 11, 1920, 'I would advise violence.' But there was no cowardice. Nonviolencerequired more bravery than violence, and 'forgiveness is more manlythan punishment.' Indians 'have better work to do, a better mission to deliver towww.mkgandhi.org Page 220

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesthe world' than the punishment of the Dyers. 'Non-violence,' he said, 'is the lawof our species as violence is the law of the brute.''If India takes up the doctrine of the sword,' he declared 'she may gainmomentary victory, but then India will cease to be the pride of my heart... Myreligion has no geographical limits. If I have a living faith in it, it will transcendmy love for India herself.' He was not an uncritical my-country-right- or-wrongmy-countrynationalist.Lord Reading, the new Viceroy, had arrived in India on April 2, 1921. He hadabsolute power over the police and the army. Congress had made Gandhi itsdictator. One word from Mahatma would have started a conflagration comparedwith which the 1857 Mutiny would have seemed like a minor affair.Reading was a Jew who, after a remarkable career at the Bar, became in turnCabinet Minister, Lord Chief Justice of England, Ambassador to Washington, andnow Viceroy Shortly after his installation at New Delhi, he indicated a desire totalk with Gandhi. 'Rather exciting days lately/ Reading wrote to his son. '...Intermediaries have stepped in and seen me with a view to bringing about ameeting with Gandhi.''He certainly is a wonderful person,' Reading said of the rebel he had nevermet.Gandhi accepted the Viceroy's invitation. Many Indians objected: Had hebecome a co-operator, they asked. We may attack measures and systems,'Gandhi replied. We may not, we must not attack men. Imperfect ourselves, wemust be tender towards others and be slow to impute motives. I thereforegladly seized the opportunity of waiting upon His Excellency...'Reading's eager anticipation to see Gandhi was amply rewarded. In the latterpart of May, he wrote to his son, he had six talks with the Mahatma, 'the first offour hours and a half, the second of three hours, the third of an hour and ahalf, the fourth of an hour and a half, the fifth of an hour and a half, and thesixth of three-quarters of an hour; I have had many opportunities of judginghim.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 221

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesWhat did Reading think of Gandhi after thirteen hours of conversation? 'There isnothing striking about his appearance,' he informed his son. 'He came .. in awhite dhoti (loincloth) and cap woven on a spinning wheel, with bare feet andlegs and my first impression on seeing him ushered into the room was thatthere was nothing to arrest attention in his appearance, and that I should havepassed him by in the street without a second look at him. When he talks, theimpression is different. He is direct, and expresses himself well & excellentEnglish with a fine appreciation of the value of the words he uses. There is nohesitation about him and there is a ring of sincerity in all that he utters, savewhen discussing some political questions. His religious views are, I believe,genuinely held, and he is convinced to a point almost bordering on fanaticismthat non-violence and love will give India its independence and enable it towithstand the British government. His religious and moral views are admirableand indeed are on a remarkably high altitude, though I must confess that I findit difficult to understand his practice of them in politics... Our conversationswere of the frankest; he was supremely courteous with manners of distinction... He held in every way to his word in the various discussions we had.'It is not surprising that Reading failed to understand Gandhi's politics. TheMahatma explained to the Viceroy how he expected to defeat Great Britain.'Ours,' he told Reading, 'is a religious movement designed to purge Indianpolitical life of corruption, deceit, terrorism and the incubus of whitesupremacy.' The major task was to purify India; England's expulsion would comeas a by-product. Therefore, Indians would non-co-operate non-violently.Reading disapproved.Many Indians disapproved. To Indians, however, the Mahatma wasindispensable, and because he was adamant 'to a point almost bordering onfanaticism', even the Indian champions of violence acquiesced in his nonviolence.But why they demanded, launch non-violent civil disobediencecampaigns simultaneously throughout India? A resolution in support of thismeasure was actually adopted by the All-India Congress Committee meeting inwww.mkgandhi.org Page 222

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesDelhi on November 4, 1921, but Gandhi exacted a promise from all leaders notto move without his consent.Gandhi preferred to try mass civil disobedience in one area, and he chose thecounty of Bardoli, population 87,000 near Bombay, where he could personallysupervise the experiment. On February 1, 1922, Gandhi informed Reading ofthis plan.Why did the Mahatma seek to paralyse the British a ministration in only onelimited territory of 137 tiny villages, thus making himself an easy target forrepression when he might have done the same thing in all provinces and addedto the discomfiture of the government or perhaps even brought it to terms?Gandhi did not believe that civil disobedience, properly conducted, could bedefeated. What did it matter whether the government was coping with ahundred thousand civil resisters or a hundred million? Could it kill the hundredthousand, or jail them?Gandhi, moreover, was not contemplating a fight to the finish with the BritishEmpire. He knew that such a struggle would be violent and prolonged, and onboth sides it might lift into commanding posts men with the least scruples andthe greatest capacity for hatred, cruelty, dishonesty and dictatorship. Nomatter who won the contest, both countries and the world would have lost.At the Ahmedabad Congress session in December 1921, Gandhi had appealed tothe British government 'in all humility': 'No matter what you do,' he said, 'nomatter how you repress us, we shall one day wring reluctant repentance fromyou; and we ask you to think betimes, and take care what you are doing, andsee that you do not make the three hundred millions of India your eternalenemies.'It was because of this spirit that Gandhi chose to work in the Bardoli test tube.A united, unrestrained, self disciplined Bardoli, peaceful but not co-operatingwith British administration, would impress on the people of Great Britain theunpardonable horror of government by massacre, and might induce them togrant India a fuller measure of independence than they now thought Indianswww.mkgandhi.org Page 223

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesdeserved or could wisely use. Gandhi always endeavoured to win, convert andconvince the adversary, not wrestle with him in a pool of blood. Bardoli wasready for civil disobedience.But on February 5 something happened in the United provinces in ChauriChaura, eight miles from Bardoli. In that small town, an Indian mob committedmurder. There had been a legal procession, Gandhi reported in Young India ofFebruary 16, 1921. 'But when the procession had passed, the stragglers wereinterfered with and abused by the constables. The former cried out for help.The mob returned. The constables opened fire. The little ammunition they hadwas exhausted and they retired to the Thana (city hall) for safety. The mob, myinformant tells me, therefore set fire to the Thana. The self-imprisonedconstables had to come out for dear life and as they did so they were hacked topieces and the mangled remains were thrown into the raging flames.'The news of this atrocity reached Gandhi in Bardoli on February 8, and it madehim sick and sad. Violence upset him physically and psychologically. 'Noprovocation,' he exclaimed, 'can possibly justify brutal murder of men who hadbeen rendered defenceless and who had virtually thrown themselves on themercy of the mob.'It was a 'bad augury'.'Suppose,' he asked, 'the non-violent disobedience of Bardoli was permitted byGod to succeed and the government had abdicated in favour of the victors ofBardoli, who would control the unruly elements that must be expected toperpetuate inhumanity upon due provocation?' He was not sure that he could.He accordingly suspended the campaign in Bardoli and cancelled any defianceof the Government anywhere in India. Let the opponent glory in our humiliationor so-called defeat,' he exclaimed. 'It is better to be charged with cowardiceand weakness than to be guilty of denial of our oath and to sin against God. It isa million times better to appear untrue before the world than to be untrue toourselves.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 224

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSome members of the Congress Working Committee disagreed with Gandhi'smove. He saw the justice of their point of view. 'The drastic reversal ofpractically the whole of the aggressive programme may be politically unsoundand unwise,' he affirmed, 'but there is no doubt that it is religiously sound.' Andwhen Gandhi took a religious stand nobody could shake him. Chauri Chaura, hesaid, 'shows the way India may easily go, if drastic precautions be not taken'.Congress would have to educate itself and educate the people. As for himself, 'Imust undergo personal cleansing. I must become a fitter instrument able toregister the slightest variation in the moral atmosphere about me.' He fastedfor five days.Meanwhile a sharp struggle was taking place behind the British scenes. It isdescribed by Lord Reading's son and biographer who had at his disposal hisfather's private letters and unpublished state papers. Official demands hadbeen made for Gandhi's arrest. 'The Viceroy', the biography reads, 'was indeedfar from dismissing as unfounded the opinion held by many competentobservers, notably Sir George (later Lord) Lloyd (Governor of Bombay), that Mr.Gandhi's preaching of non-violence was no more than a cloak for plans aimed atan ultimate revolution by violence. Sir George would have had Mr. Gandhiarrested at once, but Lord Reading, as always, opposed arrest for mere speechmaking,dangerous as the speeches might be, and awaited some definite act. "Iam quite prepared to face the consequences of Gandhi's arrest if he takesaction", Reading declared.'After an interval, the Secretary of State, Edwin "Montagu", the biographycontinues, 'instructed Lord Reading to arrest the principal leaders of the nonco-operationmovement, including Mr. Gandhi". Reading, however, resisted thisorder. His son, in the biography of his father, writes: 'Lord Reading stillpreferred to wait for some definite move by Mr. Gandhi- It looked as though theoccasion for the arrest would come soon enough, for Mr. Gandhi had announcedthat he was about to start active civil disobedience in the Bardoli tehsil(county) 0f the Surat district in Bombay Presidency, and on January 24 thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 225

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGovernment of India telegraphed to Sir George Lloyd specifically enjoining himto wait until Mr. Gandhi openly embarked on the Bardoli campaign...'The biography then relates the events in Chauri Chaura and records Gandhi'scancellation of the Bardoli campaign on February 8, before it had actuallystarted. However, he continues, 'opinion in England was restive over Mr.Gandhi's continued freedom, and Mr. Montagu telegraphed early in Februarysaying that he was "puzzled" at the delay in making the arrest. A debate wasdue to take place in Parliament on the 14th, and both Lord Reading and Mr.Montagu were naturally anxious that, as the arrest had to be made, it should bemade in time for Parliament to be informed of it as a fait accompli. But at thispoint, the Indian members of the Viceroy's Council made the strongest possiblerepresentations in favour of delay, and Lord Reading, after careful thought,decided that the risks of a little delay were on the whole less than those ofimmediate action which would easily be open to misrepresentation both inIndia and abroad.'Reading 'postponed the arrest', the biography says, 'but asked the threePresidency Governors, Sir George Lloyd, Lord Willipgdon of Madras and LordRonaldshay of Bengal to come to Delhi and talk the matter over with him...'Ronaldshay could not leave Calcutta, but 'Lord Willingdon was only lessdisturbed than Sir George by the apparent intention of the Government of Indianot to proceed at all against Mr. Gandhi...'On March 1, following these talks with the two most important Britishconservative administrators in India, Reading ordered the arrest of Gandhi, andit took place on Friday, March 10, 1922, at 10.30 in the evening. A policeofficer stopped his car on the road, eighty yards from Gandhi's hut m SabarmatiAshram, and sent polite word by one of his men that the Mahatma shouldconsider himself under arrest and come as soon as he was ready. Standingsurrounded by a dozen or more ashramites, Gandhi offered up a prayer andjoined in the singing of a hymn. Then, in a gay mood, he walked to the car andwas taken to Sabarmati prison. The next morning, Kasturbai sent clothes, goat'smilk and grapes to her husband.www.mkgandhi.org Page 226

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesLord Reading had at one time asserted that he would arrest Gandhi only aftersome overt act. Gandhi had taken none. The Parliamentary debate had comeand gone; it did not make the arrest necessary. Reading knew very well whatGandhi had been saying in speeches and articles; they did not convince him ofthe wisdom of arresting the Mahatma. How then did Sir George Lloyd and LordWillingdon persuade Reading to act?'I have had no trouble so far arising from Gandhi's arrest,' the Viceroy wrote inApril in a private letter to his son, the biographer. Reading was obviouslyrelieved that Gandhi's arrest had caused no public commotion. The provincialgovernors could have predicted this.Hard-boiled considerations of 'law and order' prevailed over the Viceroy'sscruples. Gandhi had disarmed himself by suspending the Bardoli civildisobedience; therefore he could be arrested with impunity. Reading's Aprilletter to his son confirms this. Gandhi, he wrote, "had pretty well run himselfinto the last ditch as a politician by his extraordinary manifestations in the lastmonth or six weeks before his arrest, when he ran the gamut of open defianceof government with a challenge of all authority fixed for a certain day, andwhen the day arrived he went to the opposite extreme and counselledsuspension of the most acute activities.This of course caused dissension among his followers …’So Gandhi was 'in the last ditch as a politician...' Gandhi's political career wasfinished. The measure of misunderstanding is filled by a remark of thebiographer-son : 'The mere fact that Mr. Gandhi had been taken into custodyand kept in jail like any other ordinary mortal who had run counter to the Lawwas in itself a real setback to his prestige ...'Gandhi had expected arrest and published an article in the March 9 issue ofYoung India entitled 'If I am Arrested'. 'Rivers of bloodshed by the governmentcannot frighten me,' he wrote, "but I should be deeply pained even if thepeople did so much as abuse the Government for my sake or in my name. Itwould be disgracing me if the people lost their equilibrium on my arrest.' Therewere no disorders.www.mkgandhi.org Page 227

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAt the preliminary hearing the day after his arrest, Gandhi gave his age as fiftythreeand his profession 'farmer and weaver" and pleaded guilty. The chargewas writing three seditious articles in Young India. Mr. S. G. Banker, the printerof the magazine, was arraigned at the same time. Gandhi was kept in prison fortrial.The first of the seditious articles appeared in Young India on September 19,1921, entitled Tampering with Loyalty'. 'I have no hesitation in saying", Gandhiwrote, 'that it is sinful for anyone, either soldier or civilian, to serve thisgovernment— sedition has become the creed of Congress ... Non-co-operation,though a religious and strictly moral movement, deliberately aims at theoverthrow of the government, and is therefore legally seditious ... We ask forno quarter; we expect none from the government.'These words made the government case easy. If there was doubt, Gandhi madeit even more explicit in a second article, A Puzzle and Its Solution', in YoungIndia of December 15, 1921. 'Lord Reading’, he wrote, 'must understand thatNon- co-operators are at war with the government. They have declaredrebellion against it ... Lord Reading is entitled therefore to put them out ofharm's way.'The third seditious article, 'Shaking the Manes', in Young "dia of February 23,1922, cried out in the opening sentence, 'How can there be any compromisewhilst the British lion continues to shake his gory claws in our faces?' Thensarcastically he informed the British that 'the rice-eating, puny millions of Indiaseem to have resolved upon achieving their own destiny without any furthertutelage and without arms'. Adding that 'no empire intoxicated with the redwine of power and plunder of weaker races had yet lived long in the world',Gandhi said. 'The fight that was commenced in 1920 is a fight to the finish,whether it lasts one month or one year or many months or many years ...'Gandhi's only surprise was that he had not been arrested after the first orsecond of these articles.The Great Trial', as it came to be known, was held in Government Circuit Houseat Ahmedabad on March 18, 1922, before Mr. Justice C. N. Broomfield, Districtwww.mkgandhi.org Page 228

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesand Sessions judge. Sir J. T. Strangman, Advocate-General of Bombay,prosecuted. Gandhi and Mr. Banker had no lawyers. Heavy military patrolsguarded the building and nearby streets. The little courtroom was crowded.Admission passes were marked: 'Sessions Case No. 45 of 1922. Imperator vs (1)Mr. M. K Gandhi (2) Mr. S. C. Banker.'After the indictment was read and the Advocate-General had stated the caseagainst Gandhi, the judge asked the Mahatma whether he wished to make astatement. Gandhi had a written statement ready. He introduced it with someoral, extemporaneous remarks. The Advocate-General, Gandhi said, 'wasentirely fair... It is very true and I have no desire whatsoever to conceal fromthis court the fact that to preach disaffection towards the existing system ofgovernment has become almost a passion with me'. Indeed, he had preachedsedition long before the prosecution said he had. 'I do not ask for mercy. I donot plead any extenuating act. I am here, therefore, to invite and cheerfullysubmit to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is adeliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty a citizen. Theonly course open to you, the Judge, is as I am going to say in my statement,either to resign your post, or inflict on me the severest penalty if you believethat the system and the law you administer are good for the people. I do notexpect that kind of conversion, but by the time I have finished with mystatement you will perhaps have a glimpse of what is raging within my breast torun this maddest risk that a man can rim.'Gandhi then read his prepared statement to 'explain why, from a staunchloyalist and co-operator, I have become an uncompromising disaffections andnon-co-operator'. In South Africa, he began, his contacts with the British werenot happy; 'I discovered that I had no rights as a man because I was an Indian'.But he thought this 'was an excrescence upon a system that was intrinsicallyand mainly good.' So, he criticized the government but supported it, and joinedin two wars which it fought. In India, too, he recruited for the British Army. 'Inall these efforts at service,' he explained, 'I was actuated by the belief that itwww.mkgandhi.org Page 229

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswas possible by such services to gain a status of full equality in the Empire formy countrymen.'In 1919, the shocks commenced: The Rowlatt acts, Jallianwalla Bagh, thecrawling order, the floggings, the injustice to the Turkish Caliph. Nevertheless,the Mahatma redklled, 'I fought for co-operation and working the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms'; he still hoped. 'But all that hope was shattered.''I came reluctantly to the conclusion,' he told the court, that the Britishconnection had made India more helpless than she ever was before, politicallyand economically ... She has become so that she has little power of resistingfamines. Before the British advent, India spun and wove in her millionsCottages just the supplement she needed for adding to her Meagre agriculturalresources. This cottage industry, so vital India's existence, has been ruined byincredibly heartless and inhuman processes as described by English witnessesLittle do town-dwellers know how the semi-starved masses of India are slowlysinking to lifelessness ... No sophistry no jugglery in figures can explain awaythe evidence that the skeletons in many villages present to the naked eye. Ihave no doubt that both England and the town-dwellers of India will have toanswer, if there is a God above, for this crime against humanity which isperhaps unequalled in history.'Continuing his indictment of the accuser, the prisoner said, 'I am satisfied thatmany Englishmen and Indian officials honestly believe that they areadministering one of the best systems devised in the world and that India ismaking steady though slow progress. They do not know that a subtle buteffective system of terrorism and an organized display of force on the onehand, and the deprivation of all powers of retaliation and self-defence on theother, have emasculated the people and induced in them the habit ofsimulation. This awful habit has added to the ignorance and self-deception ofthe administrators....'I have no personal ill-will against any administrator,' Gandhi assured the judge,'much less have I disaffection towards the King's person. But I hold it an honourto be disaffected towards a government which in its totality has done morewww.mkgandhi.org Page 230

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesharm to India than any previous system. India is less manly under the Britishrule than she ever was before ...it has been a precious privilege for me to beable to write what I have in the various articles tendered in evidence againstme ... In my opinion, non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperationwith good.'In conclusion, Gandhi again asked for the 'severest penalty.When Gandhi sat down, Mr. Justice Broomfield bowed to the prisoner, andpronounced sentence. 'The determination of a just sentence,' the judgedeclared, 'is perhaps as difficult a proposition as a judge in this country couldhave to face- The law is no respecter of persons. Nevertheless, it will be^possible to ignore the fact that you are in a different category from anyperson I have ever tried or am likely to have to try. It would be impossible toignore the fact that, in the eyes of millions of your countrymen, you are a greatpatriot and a great leader. Even those who differ from you in politics look uponyou as a man of high ideals and of noble and even saintly life.'The judge then announced that Gandhi must undergo imprisonment for sixyears, and added that if the government later saw fit to reduce the term 'noone would be better pleased than I'. Mr. Banker received one year in jail and afine of one thousand rupees.On hearing the sentence, the Mahatma rose and said that the sentence 'is asmild as any judge could inflict on me, and so far as the entire proceedings areconcerned, I must say that I could not have expected greater courtesy.'When the court was adjourned, most of the spectators in the room fell atGandhi's feet. Many wept. Gandhi wore a benign smile as he was led away tojail.Gandhi had no grievance. He knew when he entered Indian politics that itinvolved going to prison. It meant this for him and for others. Whenever heheard of a friend or colleague who had been arrested he telegraphedcongratulations. Going to prison was a basic part of his doctrine of non-cooperation.We must widen the prison gates,' he said, 'and we must enter themwww.mkgandhi.org Page 231

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesas a bridegroom enters the bride's chamber. Freedom ls to be wooed only insideprison walls and sometimes on gallows, never in the council chambers, courts,or the schoolroom.' Going to prison was essential to arousing the nation forliberation.The British obliged and sent him to prison often. But this Was the last time theytried him.www.mkgandhi.org Page 232

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XXVGandhi's FamiliesWHEN he passed through the prison gates, Gandhi left behind him a country fullof perplexed politicians and an ashram full of two unhappy families: hispersonal family and his adopted family of secretaries, disciples, devotees andhangers-on. All of them, including Kasturbai, now called him Father, 'Bapu', or'Bapuji', the ji connoting a Hindi mixture of respect and tenderness. Hereceived and gave a great deal of love.Love made him indulgent. For himself, he had an extremely strict code ofconduct. With others he was tolerant. 'Do not be frightened by the wideimplications of these views of mine,' he wrote to the women of the ashram.'There are always two meanings to everything—one wider and the othernarrower. We shall not be put out if you understand the wider implications butstart with the narrower.'From young manhood, he was sweet and kind towards everybody except hiswife and sons. A tension marred his early relations with Kasturbai, butgradually it waned and he was able to relax with her too. For instance, theyfrequently joked about their age; they were born six months apart but theywere not quite certain who was younger and he would claim that he was andshe that she was. Gradually as lust, in Gandhi's words, yielded to love, theybecame a model couple, she the acme of service, he a paragon consideration.'Ba', the Mahatma said, referring to Kasturbai, 'takes tea in spite of the factthat she lives with me. She also takes coffee. I would even lovingly prepare itfor her.' Tea and coffee-drinking were rather sinful in Gandhi's eyes. Ba, inother words, retained her personality; yet she attained a high degree of selfeffacement.She never behaved like Mrs. Gandhi, never asked privileges forherself, never shirked the hardest work, and never seemed to notice the smallgroup of young or middle-aged female disciples who interposed themselvesbetween her and her illustrious husband. Being herself and being at the sametime a shadow of Mahatma made her a remarkable woman, and some whowww.mkgandhi.org Page 233

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesobserved them for long years wondered whether she had not come nearer theGita ideal of non-attachment than he. He was too passionate to be the perfectyogi.As he aged, the passions submitted to more rigid rein, but he never quitelearned to be a father to his sons. He had an un-Gandhian coldness towardsthem. Perhaps he had an impersonal concept of immortality. 'But may not anartist or a poet or a great genius', insisted an interviewer, 'leave a legacy of hisgenius to posterity through his own children?''Certainly not,' Gandhi replied in Young India of November 20, 1924. 'He willhave more disciples than he can ever have children.' 'As he was more severe with himself than with anybody else, so he was severestwith his own boys. He expected Hiralal, Manilal, Ramdas and Devadas to bechips off the old block, but the block did not chip. He was especially critical hischildren when he encountered a young man who did meet a difficult test. In aletter dated Johannesburg, May 1906, Gandhi wrote to his oldest brotherLaxmidas. "Young Kalyandas Jagmohandas's son is like Prahalad in spirit. He istherefore dearer to me than one who is a son because 80 born.'A popular myth, which, like so many other Hindu myths was tightly woven intoGandhi's culture pattern, makes Prahalad the son of a demon King Hiranyakashipu.The King hated God, but Prince Prahalad loved God. The King orderedtutors to teach Prahalad that his father was more powerful than God. When theteacher failed to convince the young man the demon king subjected Prahaladto a series of cruelties- the prince was thrown from a high hill and trampled byelephants and horses. Still he proclaimed the supremacy of God. Finally,Prahalad was forced to embrace a red-hot metal pillar. But when he continuedto call in His name, God emerged from the pillar in the form of a creature halflion, half man, and tore King Hiranya-kashipu to pieces.Gandhi regarded Prahalad as the first Satyagrahi, and the Indian boy in SouthAfrica who behaved like Prahalad was therefore dearer to him than his ownsons.www.mkgandhi.org Page 234

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIn the same 1906 letter to his brother, Gandhi wrote, 'It is well if Hiralal ismarried; it is well if he is not. For the present at any rate I have ceased tothink of him as a son.' Hiralal, Gandhi's first born, had remained in India in thehope of achieving personal independence. At eighteen, he wanted to getmarried; his father thought it was too early and disowned him 'for the present'.Six years later, still in South Africa, a young Indian married woman successfullyassaulted Manilal's continence. When the dereliction was discovered, Gandhimade a public scandal, fasted, persuaded the woman to shave her hair, andsaid he would never allow Manilal to marry. He only relented under Ba'spressure, in March 1927, when Manilal was thirty-five'Gandhi leaned over backward to give his sons less than he gave other men'ssons. The treatment contained an antidote to the nepotism nourished by thestrong Hindu family sense, but it was unfair, and Hiralal and Manilal resen it.They felt disgruntled because their father, who had a profession, denied thema professional education. Gandhi contended that character building outrankedlaw and medicine. That was all very well, they thought, but then why did Bapusend Magsanlal and Chhaganlal, his second cousins, and other young men toEngland to study?When Maganlal died, Gandhi wrote in Young India of April 26 1928, 'He whom Ihad singled out as heir to my all is no more.' Why this partiality to a secondcousin? ‘He closely studied and followed my spiritual career,' Gandhi declaredin the same obituary, 'and when I presented to my co-workers brahmacharya(continence) as a rule of life even for married men in search of Truth, he wasthe first to perceive the beauty and necessity of the practice, and though itcost him to my knowledge a terrific struggle, he carried it through to success,taking his wife along with him by patient argument instead of imposing hisviews on her ... He was my hands, my feet and my eyes.'As I am penning these lines,' Gandhi wrote in a crescendo of lament, 'I hear thesobs of the widow bewailing the death of her husband. Little does she realizethat I am more widowed than she. And but for the living God, I should becomewww.mkgandhi.org Page 235

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesa raving maniac for the loss of one who was dearer to me than my own sons,who never once deceived or failed me ...'The Mahatma thought Manilal had deceived him. In 1916, Manilal had in hiskeeping several hundred rupees belonging to the ashram, and when he heardthat his brother Hiralal, who was trying to make his way in business in Calcutta,needed money, he forwarded the sum to him as a loan. By chance, Hiralal'sreceipt fell into Gandhi's hands. The next day, Manilal was banished from theashram and told to go and apprentice himself as a hand-spinner and weaver butnot to use of Gandhi’s name. 'In addition to this,' Manilal recounts, ‘father alsocontemplated a fast, but I sat all night entreating not to do so and in the endmy prayer was heeded. I left my dear mother and my brother Devadas sobbing.Father did not send me away completely empty-handed. He gave me justsufficient money for my train fare and a little extra.' For two months, Manilallived incognito. Then the Mahatma sent him a letter of introduction toG. A. Natesan, the Madras publisher, with whom Manilal stayed for sevenmonths. In the letter of introduction, Gandhi recommended that Manilal 'besubjected to discipline and should be made to cook his own food and learnspinning.'Following this period of penance, Gandhi dispatched Manilal to South Africa toedit Indian Opinion. 'During his lifetime,' Manilal wrote after his father'sassassination, 'I was able to spend a very few years actually with my father.Unlike my other brothers I had to live away from him in exile, in South Africa.'Manilal came to India for occasional visits. The longest period I was able tospend in India, and most of it with father,' Manilal says, 'was the whole of 1945and half of 1946. Those were the precious months ...' At this time, Manilalnoticed that Gandhi's attitude ... had so vastly changed since the time we wereunder him in our childhood. It seemed to me that he spoilt those near him byhis extreme love and affection. They had become his spoilt children, as it were,and much more so after my mother had been called away from his life ... Oneof the things that struck me was the extreme softness in father's attitudecompared with what it was when we four brothers were under him. He was, ofwww.mkgandhi.org Page 236

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timescourse, always forgiving though he was a very severe task master. But he hadgrown extremely tolerant, which he was not in our time ... When I saw this,many a time I chafed and said to father, "Bapu, you have vastly changed fromthe time we were under you' You never pampered us; I remember how youmade us do laundry work and chop wood; how you made us to take the pick andshovel in the bitterly cold mornings and dig in garden, to cook and to walkmiles. And I am surprised see how you now pamper these people around you."'Bapu would listen and burst out in his usual hearty laughter: "Well, children,"he would say, "are you listening to what Manilal is saying?" And yet he wouldlove and caress them.'How much sorrow there is in all this for many lost years without affection.Manilal underwent punishment and banishment yet remained a balanced humanbeing. Hiralal, however, suffered an inner trauma. While his wife lived, he wasoutwardly normal. But when she died in the 1918 influenza epidemic, and whenGandhi frowned on his remarriage, Hiralal disintegrated completely. He took toalcohol and women; he was often seen drunk in public. Under the influence ofdrink, penury and the desire for vengeance, he would succumb to the offers ofunscrupulous publishers and attack his father in print, signing 'Abdulla', aMoslem name. He had become a Moslem. Conversion to Islam, drunkenness andprofligacy were probably Hiralal's effort to hurt his father.Early in the 1920s, Hiralal helped launch a new firm called All-India Stores,Limited, and became a director. In 1925, Gandhi received a lawyer's letter onbehalf of a client who had invested money in the company; it informed theMahatma that correspondence addressed to the company was being returnedand that the whole thing seemed 'a bogus affair'. The client was a Moslem'whose respect for Mahatmaji led him to become a shareholder.'Gandhi reproduced the entire letter in Young India of June 1925, and appendedhis reply:I do indeed happen to be the father of Hiralal M. Gandhi. He is my eldest boy,is over thirty-six years old and is father four children, the eldest being nineteenwww.mkgandhi.org Page 237

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesyears old. His ideals and mine having been discovered over fifteen years ago tobe different, he has been living separately from me and has been supported byor through me. It has been my invariable rule to regard my boys as my friendsand equals as soon as they completed their sixteen years ... Hiralal wasnaturally influenced by the Western veneer that my life at one time did have.His commercial undertakings were totally independent of me. Could I haveinfluenced him he would have been associated with me in my several publicactivities and earning at the same time a decent livelihood. But he chose, as hehad every right to do, a different and independent path. He was and still isambitious. He wants to become rich, and that too, easily. Possibly he has agrievance against me that when it was open to me to do so, I did not equip himand my other children for careers that lead to wealth and fame that wealthbrings .. I do not know Hiralal's affairs. He meets me occasionally, but I neverpry into his affairs. I do not know how his affairs stand at present, except thatthey are in a bad way ... There is much in Hiralal's life that I dislike. He knowsthat. But I love him in spite of his faults. The bosom of a father will take him inas soon as he seeks entrance... Let the client's example be a warning againstpeople being guided by big names in their transactions. Men may be good, notnecessarily their children ... Caveat emptor.Hiralal naturally caused his mother endless tortures. Kasturbai brought up hisfour children with a grandmother's tenderness. In the 1930s, she could notcontrol her grief, and wrote Hiralal an emotional letter; one of his adventureshad got into the newspapers.My dear son Hiralal, I have read that recently in Madras policemen found youmisbehaving in a state of drunkenness at midnight in an open street and tookyou into custody. Next day you were produced before a bench of Magistratesand they fined you one rupee. They must have been very good people to treatyou so leniently.Even the Magistrates showed regard for your father in thus giving you onlynominal punishment. But I have been feeling very miserable ever since I heardabout this incident. I do not know whether you were alone that night or werewww.mkgandhi.org Page 238

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesaccompanied by some of your friends, but in any case you acted veryimproperly.I do not know what to say to you. I have been pleading with you all these longyears to hold yourself in check. But you have been going from bad to worse.Now you are making my very existence impossible. Think of the misery you arecausing your aged parents in the evening of their lives.Your father says nothing to anyone but I know how the shocks you are givinghim are breaking his heart. You are committing a great sin in thus repeatedlyhurting our feelings. Though born as our son you are indeed behaving like anenemy.I am told that in your recent wanderings you have been criticizing and ridiculingyour great father. This does not behove such an intelligent boy as you. Youlittle realize that you only disgrace yourself by speaking evil of him. He hasnothing but love in his heart for you. You know that he attaches the greatestimportance to purity of conduct. But you have never paid any heed to advice.Yet he has offered to keep you with him, to feed and clothe you and even tonurse you ...I am a frail old woman unable to stand the anguish you are causing...You have left no place for me anywhere. For sheer shame, am unable to moveabout among my friends or strangers. Your father always pardons you, but Godwill not tolerate your conduct...Every morning I rise with a shudder to think what fresh news of disgrace thenewspapers will bring. I sometimes where you are, where you sleep, what youeat. Perhaps you take forbidden food ... I often feel like meeting U' But I do notknow where to find you. You are my eldest son and nearly fifty years old. I ameven afraid of approaching you, lest you humiliate me. I do not know why youhave changed your ancestral religion; that is your affair. But I hear that you goabout asking innocent and ignorant people to follow your example ... Peopleare liable to be led away by the fact that you are your father's son. You are notfit to preach religion.www.mkgandhi.org Page 239

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesYour daughters and son-in-law also bear with increasing difficulty the burden ofsorrow your conduct has imposed upon them.Gandhi blamed Hiralal's misdeeds on himself. 'I was a slave of my passions whenHiralal was conceived'; 'I led a carnal and luxurious life during Hiralal'schildhood,' he would say. But the cause of Hiralal's fall could not have been thenatural impulses which led to his birth and to that of his brothers. Somewheredeep in Gandhi's psyche there was apparently a protest against having children.Yet, Gandhi loved children and was never as happy as when he played withthem. He took time off to play with the youngsters and babies in the ashram.Once, during the week I spent with Gandhi at Sevagram in 1942, he led me to ahut used by a patient of his and then to a neighbouring hut which was emptybut for a red wooden cradle. The mother lifted the baby out of the cradle asGandhi approached. He patted the baby's cheeks and said, 'She is not mypatient, she is my relaxation.' The baby reacted gleefully and he smacked andpinched it playfully.There is a delightful photograph showing Gandhi rubbing noses with a babe inarms. He would amuse the children of the ashram by making funny faces atthem and directing funny remarks to them.Horace Alexander, of the British Society of Friends, spent years in India andmuch time with Gandhi, records his first view of the Mahatma. He arrived atSabarmati one afternoon in March 1928. 'After a rest,' Alexander writes, 'I wentto evening prayers. When all were assembled, he came walking quickly and satdown in the centre and the chanting began. When the prayers were over, eachmember of the ashram gave his or her report on the amount of spinning done.This lasted for fifteen or twenty minutes and was rather tedious. I noticed thatthe children ran playfully around the Mahatma while this went on and he thrustout his hand as if to catch them as they ran past. Some years later, one ofthese children, now a grown-up man, told me how difficult he had found it, ashe grew up, to realize that the kind old man, so simple and friendly, of hischildhood days, was the same as the Mahatma ...'www.mkgandhi.org Page 240

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi believed in the goodness of children. 'Children are innocent, loving andbenevolent by nature,' he wrote in a letter to the boys and girls of the ashram.'Evil comes in only when they become older.'Life at Sabarmati Ashram and, after 1932, at Sevagram in central India, wasserene, simple, joyous and unconstrained. Nobody stood in awe of Gandhi.Until he was too old, he sat in the scullery every morning with the ashramitespeeling potatoes; he did his share of other chores as well. Petty frictions andrivalries were not absent even in this community of ascetics. There wasjealousy for the favour of the Mahatma. He usually succeeded in being abovethat battle too, but bulletins of its progress came to his attention. In fact, fewdetails of the life and work of the inmates remained hidden from his shrewdken. He soothed, smoothed and arbitrated impartially.Gandhi met and expected everybody in the ashram to meet certain rigidrequirements: absolute personal and civic cleanliness, undeviating punctualityand physical labour plus hour or at least thirty minutes a day of spinning. Hejounced the 'divorce between intelligence and labour'. Manual work was for hima means of identification with working India, with the working world. Hiscompulsion to economize, though instinctive, also stemmed from his consciousconcern, for the hundreds of millions who valued a button a nail, and a fractionof a penny.Gandhi once wrote out a telegram to G. V. Mavalankar, his lawyer, who laterbecame Speaker of the Constituent Assembly. But on learning that there was anextra charge per word because it was a holiday he posted the telegram.Gandhi was famous for his postcards. Whenever the size and nature of thecommunication permitted he put it on a postcard instead of into a letter. Hefrequently wrote letters on the reverse side of mimeographed announcements.Any odd piece of scrap paper became an ashram-made envelope. Hissecretaries' notes and his own memoranda were always written on the backs ofletters received from outside. For a brief note he once wrote me to New Yorkhe had obviously taken a larger bit of stationery than necessary and carefullytorn off the excess.www.mkgandhi.org Page 241

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesMiss Slade, daughter of Sir Edmund Slade, a British admiral, who joinedGandhi's ashram in 1925 and lived there for many years until she founded one ofher own on the banks of the sacred Ganges, tells how Gandhi lost the littlepencil stump he had been cherishing. The staff hunted for the lost treasure butin vain. Somebody brought him a new pencil. No, he insisted that they continuethe search for the stump until they recovered it. 'Bapu ... received it with abeaming smile.'Gandhi's insistence on economy, cleanliness, punctuality and spinning grewgreater, if anything, as he grew older. With all his strictness about the personalconduct of his co-workers, however, he was completely tolerant towards theirthinking- Some of his most intimate political collaborators and some who stayedlong in the ashram, did not, to his knowledge, believe in non-violence, or inGod, or in loving the British or the Moslems. Mridula Sarabhai, for instance, saidto him 'I am not a Gandhian,' but he laughed and may have smacked her faceaffectionately. Nobody had to toe a Gandhian 'party line'. There was none.Gandhi accepted people as they were. Aware of his own defects, how could heexpect perfection in others? He believed in the educational and curative valueof time and good deeds.Gandhi took from a person, a book, a religion and a situation that which wascongenial to him and discarded the rest. He refused to see the bad in people.He often changed human beings by regarding them not as what they were butas though they were what they wished to be, and as though the good in themwas all of them.His friends knew he forgave them, therefore they frankly confessed. If they hidthings from him it was because he would blame himself for their shortcomings.He encouraged familiarity; it never bred contempt. It fostered love. Heenjoyed banter even if the point pierced him. A few weeks before Gandhi wasarrested in March 1922, Rajagopalachari, already in jail, wrote the Mahatma aletter. He said he was 'completely shut out from all politics, news andnewspapers. What an ideal condition which I know you are envying.. It took metill now to get rid of the boils. I am now quite free from the trouble. It mustwww.mkgandhi.org Page 242

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeshorrify you to learn that I willingly underwent five injections of vaccine forthese boils... (Gandhi called vaccine 'filthy'.) Your eyes would flow with delightif you saw me here in my solitary cell spinning, spinning not as a task imposedby a tyrant faddist, but with pleasure'. The 'tyrant faddist' printed the letter asthe first item in Young India of February 9, 1922.Sycophancy repelled Gandhi. He respected and befriended his fiercestantagonists. Though pleased to make a convert, he was not flattered by loudpartisans. He encouraged dissent; he helped dissenters. Opponents foundcomfort in the knowledge that he could reverse himself on even the mostimportant political issue in order to give the alternative policy a fair trial.Such democratic liberalism made it possible for many members of his politicalfamily, some of whom had joined reluctantly in the 1921-22 non-co-operationcampaign to lay plans for co-operation when Gandhi was sentenced on March18, 1922, to six years' imprisonment. He had prohibited nothing when heentered prison. From his cell his only injunction was 'peace, non-violencesuffering'. Congress, therefore, was free to flounder and meander in confusion.www.mkgandhi.org Page 243

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XXVIOperation And FastON the evening of January 12, 1924, Mahatma Gandhi was hastily carried fromYeravda Central Prison, where he was lodged on March 20, 1922, to SassoonHospital in the city of Poona. He had developed acute appendicitis. Thegovernment was ready to wait for Indian physicians to arrive from Bombay,three hours' distance by train, but shortly before midnight Colonel Maddock,the British surgeon, informed Gandhi that he would have to operateimmediately. Gandhi consented.While the operating theatre was being prepared, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, head ofthe Servants of India Society, and Dr. Phatak, Poona friend of the Mahatma,were summoned at his request. Together, they drafted a public statementwhich declared that he had agreed to the operation, that the physicians hadtreated him well and that, whatever happened, there must be no antigovernmentagitation. The hospital authorities, and Gandhi knew that if theoperation went badly India might burst into flames.When the declaration was ready, Gandhi drew up his knees and signed it inpencil. 'See how my hand trembles,' he remarked to Colonel Maddock with alaugh. You will have to put this right.''Oh,' replied the surgeon, 'we will put tons and tons of strength into it.'Chloroform was administered and a photograph taken. During the operation, athunderstorm cut off the supply of electricity. Then the flashlight which one ofthe three nurses had been holding went out, and the operation had to befinished by the light of a hurricane lamp.The appendicectomy was successful and the Mahatma thanked the surgeonprofusely. An abscess formed locally, however, and the patient's progress wastoo slow. The government thought it wise or generous in these circumstances torelease Gandhi on February 5.www.mkgandhi.org Page 244

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe operation piqued Gandhi's curiosity, and when Manu Gandhi, the granddaughterof his cousin, had to undergo an appendicectomy at Patna, in Biharprovince, during a tour, the Mahatma asked the surgeon. Dr. D. P. Bhargava,the same who was first to reach Gandhi's side after the assassination, whetherhe could be present. Dr. Bhargava assented on condition that Gandhi wore agauze mask, and two snapshots taken during the operation show Gandhi sittingon a chair, an unusual perch, with a white mask covering the lower half of hisface and tied around the back of his head. Dr. Bhargava says Gandhi did notutter a word during the entire hour. (This was on May 15, 1947, at 9.30 p.m.)The West', Gandhi once wrote to Miss Slade, 'has always commanded myadmiration for its surgical inventions and all- round progress in that direction.'Nevertheless, Gandhi never quite cast off his prejudices against physicians.Once Gandhi resisted a penicillin injection.'If I give you penicillin', the doctor said, 'you will recover in three days.Otherwise it will take three weeks'.That's all right,' Gandhi replied. 'I'm in no hurry'.The doctor said he might infect others.Then give them penicillin,' Gandhi advised.In an unguarded moment, the same physician told Gandhi that if all sick peoplesimply went to bed they'd get well-'Don't say that aloud,' Gandhi cautioned. You will lose all your patients.'Gandhi liked to be his own doctor. Mahadev Desai, who knew him well, said,'But for his fundamental objection to vivisection, he might have been aphysician and a surgeon.'Gandhi wrote a book on health, and loved to recommend 'quack' remedies tofriends, callers and all of India. Accordingly, when he received hisunconditional discharge from Yeravda Jail and went to the beach at Juhu, nearBombay, to recuperate in the home of Shantikumar Morarjee, an industrialist,he decided that since he would be doctoring himself he might as well doctorwww.mkgandhi.org Page 245

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesothers too; he converted the seaside villa into a temporary hospital whereailing associates, summoned from near and far, gave Gandhi pleasure bysubmitting to his mud packs, water baths, food fads and massage. Chiefly,however, he advanced his and their convalescence with the medicine oflaughter and companionship.Others came to Juhu too — unasked — and Gandhi appealed to them throughthe press to come, if they must, between 4 and 5 in the evening for prayers onthe sands. But 'seeing me', he explained, 'is not likely to be of benefit to you. Itis an indication of your love for me, but it is an exaggerated indication'. Itwould be much better to spend the money and time on spinning. If they gavehim peace he could husband his 'very small ... capital of energy' and resume theactive editorship of Young India, his 'views paper', and Navajivan, which he didon April 3, 1924.To Juhu, too, came C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru for discussions on the uglysituation that had arisen during the twenty-two months Gandhi spent in prison.First, Hindu-Moslem friendship, the firm rock on which Gandhi hoped to build aunited, free India, had been all but submerged in an angry tide of hostilitybetween the two immunities.The Khilafat movement was dead, killed not y Britain, but by Kemal Pasha(Ataturk), the master of Moslem Turkey. Wiser than most of his Indiancoreligionists Kemal had created a secular republic, Latinized the cursiveArabic script, proscribed the fez and other Oriental head-dress and, havingdeposed the Caliph, allowed him to flee to the island of Malta in a British manof-warin November 1922. A weak heir clung to the illusion of the Caliph'sreligious primacy, but in March 1924 he too became a refugee.Left without a cause, the Khilafat movement disintegrated. Therewith, largescaleHindu-Moslem political collaboration came to an end.Second, the non-co-operation movement was dead. 'Scores of lawyers haveresumed practice,' Gandhi said, summarizing what he was told at Juhu andwhat he learned first hand. 'Some even regret having given it up... Hundreds ofwww.mkgandhi.org Page 246

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesboys and girls who gave up government schools and colleges have repented oftheir action and returned to them.' Moreover, Motilal Nehru, C. R. Das and theirmany adherents favoured a return to the municipal, provincial and nationallegislative councils. This, they maintained, would enable them to participate inelections, keep in touch with the people, air grievances in the deliberativeassemblies and obstruct the British government. Indeed, in some cases thegovernment might lack a majority in the councils and be forced to rule byadministrative fiat, thus unmasking the sham of dyarchy and showing the Britishnation that their imperialist leaders were not ready to share power withIndians. This demonstration might induce England to alter the system in India.To carry out their programme, Das and the elder Nehru had, at the end of1922, launched the Swaraj (Home-Rule) Party whose 'immediate' aim wasDominion Status within the Empire.Those who continued to uphold Gandhi's non-violent non-co-operation werecalled No-Changers. The two factions wanted Swaraj but had been fighting likebitter enemies. A compronuse giving them freedom of action kept both insideCongress.Confronted with this picture at Juhu, Gandhi entered into the Gandhi-Das Pactwhich confirmed the live-and-let-Iive arrangement between the Gandhians andthe Swaraj Party. He did not want to split Congress.Gandhi was still a non-co-operator, still a champion of civil disobedience and 'astrong disbeliever in this government', he declared in Young India of April 10,1924. He would therefore have pressed the boycott of the courts, schools andgovernment jobs and titles. But the Gandhians had grown discouraged duringhis absence in jail. The boycott involved tremendous personal sacrifice whichfew could bear. The Swaraj Party's policy, on the other hand, was alluring. Itmeant election victories, membership in legislatures, speechmaking, etc.Gandhi had no short-range programme to match it. He accordingly withdrewfrom Indian politics for several years and devoted himself to purifying India.Swaraj depended on how good India was, not how bad the British were. Mywww.mkgandhi.org Page 247

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesbelief is that the instant India is purified India becomes free and not a momentearlier,' he wrote to 'Charlie' Andrews.Gandhi's purpose, during this period of withdrawal from politics, was to fosterthe brotherhood of man among Indians. Looking around, it soon became obviousto him that 'the only question for immediate solution before the country is theHindu-Moslem question. I agree with Mr. Jinnah,' he added, 'that Hindu-Moslemunity means Swaraj... There is no question more important and more pressingthan this.'Great editor that he was, Gandhi dedicated the entire May 29, 1924, issue ofYoung India to his 6000-word article on Hindu-Moslem Tension, its Causes andCure'.After recording the Hindu charges against Moslems (Mussulmans', he calledthem) and the Moslem counter charges and noting the growth of quarrels,dispute and riots between the communities, he expressed the opinion that allthis was 'a reaction against the spread of non-violence. I feel the wave ofviolence coming. The Hindu-Moslem tension is an acute phase of this tiredness.'What would cure this loss of faith in non-violence, Gandhi asked. Non-violence,he answered.Gandhi's lengthy article was advocacy rather than analysis. He believed in theimmediate possibility of Hindu-Moslem friendship 'because it is so natural, sonecessary for both and because I believe in human nature'. That is almost all ofGandhi in one sentence.The key to the situation lies with the Hindus', he wrote. The 'two constantcauses of friction' with the Moslems were cow slaughter and music.'Though I regard cow protection as the central fact of Hinduism (Gandhideclared), I have never been able to understand the antipathy towards theMussulmans on that score. We say nothing about the slaughter (of cows) thatdaily takes place on behalf of Englishmen. Our anger becomes red- hot when aMussulman slaughters a cow. All the riots that have taken place in the name ofthe cow have been an insane waste of effort. They have not saved a single cow,www.mkgandhi.org Page 248

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesbut they have on the contrary stiffened the backs of the Mussulmans andresulted in more slaughter. I am satisfied that during 1921 more cows weresaved through the voluntary and generous effort of the Mussulmans thanthrough the Hindu effort during all the previous twenty years, say. Cowprotection should commence with ourselves. In no part of the world are cattleworse treated than in India.. The half-starved condition of the majority of ourcattle are a disgrace to us. The cows find their necks under the butcher's knifebecause Hindus sell them. The only effective and honourable way is to befriendthe Mussulmans and leave it to their honour to save the cow- Cow protectionsocieties must turn their attention to the feeding of cattle, prevention ofcruelty, preservation of the fast disappearing pasture land, improving the breedof cattle.Then there was the music played in Hindu religious processions as they passedmosques at prayer time. Somehow, the processions contrived to arrive in frontof mosques just when the followers of the Prophet were supplicating Allah.Gandhi had heard that Hindus sometimes did this 'with the deliberate intentionof irritating Mussulmans'. This was as wrong as the Moslem resort to violence inangry retaliation.Gandhi's long article ignored the social-economic reasons for the exacerbationof intercommunity relations except in one reference to the Moslem demandthat a percentage of jobs in the government be reserved for them. A Moslemmiddle class was beginning to emerge in India (and throughout the Arab world);it found itself handicapped in competing with Hindus, Parsis and Christians whohad the advantages of better education and better connections. The Moslemstherefore wanted a certain number of jobs kept for them irrespective of theirqualifications. Gandhi objected. He said, 'For administration to be efficient itmust be in the hands of the fittest. There should certainly be no favouritism. Ifwe want five engineers we must not take one from each community but wemust take the fittest five even if they were all Mussulmans or all Parsis ... Theeducationally backward communities will have a right to favoured treatment inthe matter of education at the hands of the national government ... But thosewww.mkgandhi.org Page 249

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswho aspire to occupy responsible posts in the government of the country canonly do so if they Pass the required test.'This was logical, fair and sensible, but completely ^satisfactory to the Moslems.And since the economic backwardness of India made government employmentone of the major, if not the major, industries of the country, the reservation ofofficial jobs for Mohammedans remained a sore point as long as British rulelasted.The seven hundred thousand villages of India, Hindus and Moslems had alwayslived together in peace. The Hindu- Moslem tension of the twentieth centurywas a man-made, middle-class, urban disease. Indians are often ambitious anddynamic. A city like Bombay throbs with vitality. The inhumanly crowdedtowns, with their herring-barrel tenements and frustration which comes fromanimal-like poverty and the very limited opportunities to earn, learn andadvance, make urban Indians easily excitable—especially in the maddening heatof the long summer. In cities, Gandhi's non-violence contended with nature aswell as human nature.Gandhi, the optimistic Karma yogi, regarded difficulties as spurs to greaterexertions of will. The editor who gave an entire issue of his magazine to aproblem was the doer who would give his whole life to solve it. On September18, 1924, therefore, Gandhi started a twenty-one-day fast for Hindu- Moslemfriendship.Gandhi had been ill for months in jail. Then came the urgent appendicectomy.The wound suppurated and healed slowly. Convalescence was retarded. Weeksof tense talks followed by weeks of strenuous touring wore him out. Thepolitical situation depressed him; years of work seemed to have been lost. At aconference of the All-India Congress Committee in June, when he realized howmany of his associates really did not believe in non-violence, he wept in public.The steady stream of reports on Hindu-Moslem fighting and the atmosphere ofbickering, hate and gloom weighed heavily on his body and spirit. He was fiftyfive.He knew that a twenty-one-day fast might be fatal. He did not want todie. There were too many unfinished tasks. He reveled in life. Suicide waswww.mkgandhi.org Page 250

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesreligiously and physically repugnant to him. The fast was no tryst with death. Itgave him no pleasure to suffer. The fast was dictated by duty to the highestcause —the universal brotherhood of man.For Gandhi, an act had to be right and true. Then he never counted the cost tohimself or even to others; in this sense, he was without mercy. Service meantsacrifice, renunciation and detachment. You detach yourself from yourself. Allthat remains is duty. On September 18, 1924, Gandhi felt it his duty to fast.Gandhi always kept his eye on his objective and when he could not see it hekept his eye on the spot where he thought it would appear. He also had an eyefor drama. He fasted in the home of a Moslem, Mohamed Ali, the youngerbrother of Shaukat. Mohamed Ali was a staunch Congress supporter, a championof Hindu-Moslem friendship. But the Moslem community was moving away fromhim. Gandhi has said in his article that 'the key to the situation lies with theHindus', but with his heart, the senior partner of his mind, he knew thatMoslems were the offenders; conditions, he said, were making the Moslem 'abully'. Gandhi wished to strengthen Mohamed Ali's hand. 'It is our duty', he oncewrote, 'to strengthen by our fasting those who hold the same ideals but arelikely to weaken under pressure.' For twenty-one days India's attention wouldbe focused on the house where Gandhi lay fasting. Moslems would see thatMohandas and Mohamed were brothers. Hindus, moreover, would note thattheir saint had confided his life to a Moslem.No personal benefit could come to Gandhi from the fast; on the contrary. Norwas there any element of compulsion in it. The Moslem in Calcutta or Agra, theHindu in Amritsar or Allahabad would not be compelled to change their conductbecause Gandhi was dying for Hindu-Moslem amity. They would change, if atall, because the Mahatma's great sacrifice established a spiritual bond betweenhim and them, a kind of common wavelength, a means of communication overwhich he conveyed to them the importance, the necessity, the urgency, thesacredness of the cause for which he was fasting. It was his way of going out tothem, of entering their hearts, of uniting himself with them.www.mkgandhi.org Page 251

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIn part, this is Eastern, Indian. The bridges of the West are made of concrete,steel, wire, words. Eastern bridges are of spirit to communicate, the Westmoves or talks. The East sits, contemplates, suffers. Gandhi partook of Westand East. When Western methods failed him, he used Eastern methods.The fast was an adventure in goodness. The stake was one man's life. The prizewas a nation's freedom. If Indians were united as brothers, no outsider couldlong be their master. The British official report on conditions in India in 1919remarked, 'One noticeable feature of the general excitement was theunprecedented fraternization between the Hindus and the Mohammedans'. In1924, Gandhi felt that the fraternization, and with it freedom, was ebbingaway. Hence, the ordeal under his Moslem brother's roof.'Nothing evidently which I say or write can bring the two communities together,'he declared in announcing the fast. 'I am therefore imposing on myself atwenty-one-day fast from today and ending Wednesday October 6. I reserve theliberty to drink water with or without salt. It is both a penance and a prayer... Irespectfully invite the heads of all communities, including Englishmen, to meetand end this quarrel which is a disgrace to religion and to humanity. It seems asif God has been dethroned. Let us reinstate Him in our hearts.'Two Moslem physicians were in constant attendance. Charles Freer Andrews,the Christian missionary, served as nurse.On the second day of the fast, Gandhi wrote a page-long plea for Young Indiaon 'unity in diversity'. The need of the moment', he stressed, 'is not one religionbut mutual respect and tolerance of the devotees of the different religions.' Onthe sixth day without food he wrote a page article which ended, 'To paraphrasea Biblical verse, if it is no profanation. "Seek you first Hindu-Moslem unity,removal of untouchability and the spinning wheel and Khaddar (homespun) andeverything will be added unto you.'Twelve days after the fast commenced he wrote 112 words for publication:'Hitherto it has been a struggle and a yearning for a change of heart amongEnglishmen who compose the government of India. That change has still tocome. But the struggle must for the moment be transferred to a change ofwww.mkgandhi.org Page 252

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesheart among the Hindus and the Mussulmans. Before they dare think of freedomthey must be brave enough to love one another, to tolerate one another'sreligion, even prejudices and superstitions, and to trust one another. Thisrequires faith in oneself. And faith in oneself is faith in God. If we have thatfaith we shall cease to fear one another.'The twentieth day he dictated a prayer: 'Presently from the world of peace Ishall enter the world of strife. The more I think of it the more helpless I feel...I know that I can do nothing. God can do everything. O! God, make me Thyinstrument and use me as Thou wilt. Man is nothing. Napoleon planned muchand found himself a prisoner in St. Helena. The mighty Kaiser aimed at thecrown of Europe and is reduced to the status of a private gentleman. God hasso willed it. Let us contemplate such examples and be humble.' The twentydays had been 'days of grace, privilege and peace'.That evening 'Mahatma Gandhi was wonderfully bright and cheerful,' Andrewswrote. 'Many of his most intimate friends came to see him as he lay upon hisbed on the open roof of the house, which was flooded by the moonlight.' Theyprayed. 'Then followed a long silence. The friends parted one by one and hewas left alone.'The twenty-first day: 'Before four o'clock in the morning we were called for themorning prayers,' Andrews recorded, here was no moon and it was very dark. Achill breeze was blowing from the east... Bapu was wrapped warmly in darkshawl and I asked him whether he had slept well. He replied, "Yes, very wellindeed." It was a happiness to notice at once that his voice was stronger thanthe morning before, instead of weaker.' After prayers, many people came fordarshan, a sight that blesses.At about 10 a.m. (Andrews writes), Mahatmaji called for me and said, 'Can youremember the words of my favourite Christian hymn?'I said, "Yes, shall I sing it to you now?''Not now,' he answered, Taut I have in mind that when I break my fast, wemight have a little ceremony expressing religious unity. I should like the Imamwww.mkgandhi.org Page 253

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSahib to recite the opening verses of the Koran. Then I would like you to singthe Christian hymn, you know the one I mean, it begins. "When I survey thewondrous Cross" and ends with the words,Love so amazing, so divine,Demands my soul, my life, my all.And then last of all I should like Vinoba to recite from the Upanishads andBalkrishna to sing the Vaishnava hymn...' He wanted all the servants present.Now at last the midday hour had come and the fast was to be broken.The doctors went to Gandhi's room; the Ali brothers, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad,Motilal Nehru, C. R. Das and many others sat on the floor near the bed. Beforethe actual breaking of the fast, Gandhi spoke, 'and as he spoke his emotion wasso deep that in his bodily weakness his voice could hardly be heard except bythose who were nearest of all to him.' He asked them to lay down their lives, ifneed be, for the cause of brotherhood. The Moslem leaders renewed theirpledge. Then the hymns were sung. Dr. Ansari brought forward some orangejuice and Mahatma Gandhi drank it- So the fast was broken.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 254

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XXVIIFunds And JewelsIN the latter part of 1924, the world was subsiding into postwar normalcy. TheDawes Plan undertook to stabilize German economic and political conditions.The big European powers were granting diplomatic recognition to Soviet Russia.Except in south China, where Chiang Kai-shek had an alliance with Moscow, thethreat of Bolshevism was on the ebb. Coolidge and complacency presided overAmerica. England had experienced her first Labour government. The BritishEmpire, seriously menaced in 1919-23 by Sinn Fein in Ireland and Near Eastrevolts, was becalmed in stagnant waters.India, too, relaxed—and pursued the luxuries of division and inaction. Thepassions of the post- Armistice-post-Amritsar period were spent. Doubts anddespondency had replaced faith and fighting spirit. Perhaps Gandhi's nonviolencedampened the ardour of belligerent nationalism. His twenty-one-dayfast had failed. It impressed many and altered the attitude of some, but Hindu-Moslem tension continued unabated.Gandhi did not consider this a time for a contest with Britain. It was a time formending home fences. His programme was: prepare morally for future politicalopportunities; concretely—Hindu-Moslem unity, the removal of untouchabilityand spreading the use of homespun or khadi khaddar. In his propaganda forhomespun, Gandhi charged the British with killing India's village industries tohelp the textile mills of Lancashire. Otherwise, his writings and speeches during1925, 1926 and 1927 were remarkable for an almost complete absence ofdenunciations of British rule. He more often criticized Indians. 'I am notinterested', he said, 'in freeing India merely from the English yoke. I am bentupon freeing India from any yoke whatsoever.' For this reason, he could neverget excited about participation in the legislative or municipal councils: 'Swaraj',he affirmed, 'will come not by the acquisition of authority by a few but by theacquisition by all of a capacity to resist authority when it is abused.' A fewhundred Indians were elected to councils, and a few thousand Indians, mostlywww.mkgandhi.org Page 255

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timestowns-people, enjoyed the franchise to elect them. In such circumstances,Indians might become tyrants unless the masses were taught to discard docility.The intellectuals remained unconvinced. 'Though they like me personally", hewrote, they 'have a horror of my views and methods.' He was not complaining; 'Ihave simply stated the fact with the object of showing my limitations.'Educated Indians, he stated, were splitting into parties. 'I confess my inabilityto bring these parties together', he wrote on September 2, 1926. 'Their methodis not my method. I am trying to work from the bottom upward and he warnedthem that if they did not support his khadi policy 'educated India will cut itselfoff from the only visible and tangible tie that binds them to the masses.'Gandhi put his trust neither in the once-hallowed tradition of Congresspetitions and 'prayers' to British officialdom nor in the current Swaraj party'sdesire to become parliamentarians and officials. But having failed to carry theconviction home, 'I must no longer stand in the way of the Congress beingdeveloped and guided by educated Indians rather than by one like myself whohad thrown in his lot entirely with the masses and who has fundamentaldifferences with the mind 0 educated India as a body.'An American clergyman once asked Gandhi what caused him most concern. Thehardness of heart of the educated,' Gandhi replied.He still wished to influence the intellectuals, he confessed, 'but not by leadingthe Congress; on the contrary, by working my way to their hearts, silently sofar as possible, even as I did between 1915 and 1919'. He regretted having beendragged into the political leadership of Congress; he was retiring from it.Loud protests rent the Indian air when he first announced his intention of doingso after coming out of jail in 1924. 'I do not like, I have never liked,' he said inreply, 'this reliance on me for everything. It is the very worst way of managingnational affairs. The Congress must not become, as it has threatened tobecome, one man's show, no matter how good or great that one man be. I oftenthink that it would have been better for the country and for me if I served thefull term of my imprisonment.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 256

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesNevertheless, he was persuaded to take the presidency of Congress for 1925;his friends argued that his aloofness would split Congress between those whofollowed his constructive Programme and the Swaraj Party which advocatedpolitical work in the councils. He exacted a price: the wearing of khadi as astrict condition of membership in the Congress Party; where possible, Congressmembers should spin each day.Someone said his retirement from politics would cost him his moral authority.'Moral authority', was the unequivocal retort, 'is never retained by an attemptto hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.'In truth, his moral authority was increasing irrespective of anything he did ordid not do. It was fed by the Indian Sci1 and Indian mentality. Throughout 1925he travelled, continuously, across the 1500-mile width and the 1900-mile lengthof India, visiting most provinces and many native states. He no longer lived nortravelled like a poor man, he wailed; his co-workers made him travel in asecond-class compartment instead of third where forty or fifty perspiringpeople sat squeezed together in an unpartitioned space. He acquiesced becausein third class he could not write his articles, or rest, or take an occasional nap.Wherever he went, he was besieged by hordes. 'They will not leave me aloneeven when I am taking my bath,' he wrote. At night, his feet and shins werecovered with scratches from people who had bowed low and touched him; hisfeet had to be rubbed with Vaseline. His deification had commenced. In oneplace he was told that a whole tribe, the Gonds, were worshipping him. 'I haveexpressed my horror and strongest disapproval of this type of idolatry morethan once,' he wrote. 'I claim to be a mere mortal heir to all the weaknessesthat human flesh betrays. It would be infinitely better that the Gonds should betaught to understand the meaning of my simple message than that they shouldindulge in a meaningless deification of me which can do no good either to themor to me and can only intensify the superstitious nature of such simple peopleas the Gonds.'Even mere veneration seemed superfluous to him. 'I am no Mahatma,' he criedout. 'My Mahatmaship is worthless,' he wrote.www.mkgandhi.org Page 257

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesBut the Mahatma was powerless; he had to be a Mahatma. Many regarded himas a reincarnations of God, like Buddha, like Krishna; God descendedtemporarily to earth. From the mountains, from the plains, from far-offvillages, people came to have a glimpse of him, to be sanctified if the eye ormuch better, the hand, touched him. Audiences were so large that he wouldaddress them standing in front of them, then S° to the right side, the rear andthe left side, always hoping that they would remain seated on the ground andno stampede towards him. Many times he was in danger of being crushed todeath.At Dacca, in Bengal, a man of seventy was brought before Gandhi. He waswearing Gandhi's photograph around his neck and weeping profusely. As heapproached the Mahatma, he fell on his face and thanked Gandhi for havingcured him of chronic paralysis. 'When all other remedies failed,' the poor mansaid, 'I took to uttering Gandhi's name and one day I found myself entirelycured.''It is not I but God who made you whole,' Gandhi rebuked him. 'Will you notoblige me by taking that photograph off your neck?'Intellectuals too were not immune. One day, Gandhi's train stopped with a jerk;somebody had pulled the emergency cord. It developed that a lawyer hadfallen out of the train, head first. When picked up he was unhurt. He ascribedit to being the Mahatma's fellow traveller. Then you shouldn't have fallen out atall,' Gandhi laughed. But wit was lost on the devout.Women, even Hindu women, sometimes sat on their haunches behind a screenwhen they listened to Gandhi at meetings. Just as Moslems, Christians and evenuntouchables have borrowed the institution of caste from Hindus, so Hindushave in places succumbed to Islam's purdah or segregation of women. But whena woman came to Gandhi with her face hidden, he said, 'No purdah before yourbrother,' and she immediately dropped her veil.Gandhi was an incurable and irresistible fund raiser. He found special relish instripping women of their jewellery.www.mkgandhi.org Page 258

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe army of my sweethearts is daily increasing,' he exclaimed during a tour.'The latest recruit is Ranibala of Burdwan, a darling perhaps ten years old. Idare not ask her age. I was playing with her as usual and casting furtive glancesat her six heavy gold bangles. I gently explained to that they were too heavy aburden for her delicate little wrists and down went her hand on the bangles.'Ranibala's grandfather encouraged her to give Gandhi the bangles.'I must confess I was embarrassed,' Gandhi recalled as he told the story. 'I wasmerely joking as I always do when I see little girls and jokingly create in themdistaste for much ornamentation and desire to part with their jewellery for thesake of the poor. I tried to return the bangles.'But her grandfather said her mother would consider it an ill omen to take themback. Gandhi agreed to keep them on one condition: she was not to ask for newones.That day he addressed a ladies' meeting in the same town. He told them aboutRanibala. 'I got quite a dozen bangles and two or three pairs of earrings, allunasked. Needless to say, they will be used for khaddar...'I notify all the young girls and their parents and grandparents,' Gandhiannounced gayly, 'that I am open to have as many sweethearts as would cometo me on Ranibala's terms. They will be handsomer for the thought that theygave their prized ornaments to be used for the service of the poor. Let thelittle girls of India treasure the proverb, "Handsome is as handsome does."Still touring, "he came to Bihar. At Kharagdeha, reached by a branch railwayand then a twenty-six-mile journey by car, the programme began with a ladies'meeting. 'Hitherto,' Gandhi reported, 'I have restrained myself from criticizingthe heavily ornamental decoration of some of my fair audiences, oppressivethough it has appeared to me. But the bangled arms from wrist practically toelbow, the huge thick nose rings with about a three-inch diameter which couldwith difficulty be suspended from two holes, proved beyond endurance, and Igently remarked that this heavy ornamentation added nothing to the beauty ofwww.mkgandhi.org Page 259

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesthe person, caused much discomfort' must often lead to disease and was, Icould plainly see, a repository of dirt.'Gandhi feared he might have offended the ladies. But when jje had finishedspeaking they crowded around him and brought him money, and many handedhim their ornaments. He hoped Indian women would dispense with 'thesearticles of personal furniture.'Wearing his homespun loincloth, a radiant smile and, usually, sandals(sometimes he went barefoot), he would stride with long, easy steps to thespeaker's platform and make his appeal. While the train waited during hismeeting at a whistle stop in Bihar, Gandhi made a one-minute speech: 'I havecome here to do business,' he said artlessly, 'to collect money for the spinningwheel and khadi and to sell khadi. Who knows, this may be my last visit toBihar. Let me do as much business as I can.' With that, he moved among thelisteners asking for 'ringing testimony' of their devotion to homespun. Thepeople rang the tin bowl with their copper and nickel mites: 526 rupees werecollected. (The rupee was one shilling and four pence). Then he took an armfulof homespun cotton cloth, or loincloths, or women's saris and sold them for asmuch as he could get. Mahadev Desai, his first secretary, Devadas, his youngestson and other members of his group did likewise.It was the custom to present him with a purse collected before his arrival inlarger towns. A purse might contain several hundred or even several thousandrupees. At the same time, ceremonial addresses of devotion were given to him.Many of these exquisitely executed documents were enclosed in silver caskets.'Expensive caskets are not required,' he admonished one committee, 'for I haveno use for them, nor have I any room to keep them in.' He tried selling a casketto the people who gave it to him and not only did they not wind, they paidlavishly for it. So he made a habit of Personally auctioning off such caskets; onebrought 1001 rupees. He did the same with floral garlands thrown around hisneck. Why kill flowers unnecessarily, he argued, when they could 'garland' himwith a ring of yarn. Yarn garlands became an Indian custom.www.mkgandhi.org Page 260

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'Bania', Gandhi's friends called him with amazement. He was the shrewd,successful businessman, but his income and profits were never for himself.An American friend asked me to get him the Mahatma's photograph with Apersonal inscription. I found a photograph in the ashram, explained the requestand asked him to sign.'If you give me twenty rupees for the Harijan Fund,' Gandhi said with a smile.‘I’ll give you ten'. He autographed it.When I told Devadas, he said, 'Bapu would have done it for five.'In 1924, 1925, 1926 and 1927, the popularizing of khadi possessed Gandhi'smind. Each issue of the weekly Young India devoted several pages to lists ofpersons and the exact number of yards of yarn they had spun. Some spinnersgave the yarn to the fund which gave it to villagers, others wove their own.Gandhi's Sabarmati Ashram was manufacturing simple spinning wheels, bat in1926 the manager announced that they had more orders than they could fill.Schools were giving courses in spinning. At Congress meetings, members wouldopen a small box like a violin case, take out a collapsible spinning wheel andspin noiselessly throughout the proceedings. Gandhi had set the fashion.Some of Gandhi's closest friends accused him of khadi extremism; heexaggerated the possibility of restoring India's village industries andoverestimated the benefits that might accrue even if he were successful; thiswas the machine age; all his energy, wisdom and holiness would not avail toturn back the clock.'A hundred and fifty years ago,' Gandhi replied, 'we manufactured all our cloth.Our women spun fine yarns in their own cottages and supplemented theearnings of their husbands ... India requires nearly thirteen yards of cloth perhead per year. She produces, I believe, less than half the amount. India growsall the cotton she needs. She exports several million bales of cotton to Japanand Lancashire and receives much of it back in manufactured calico, althoughshe is capable of producing all the cloth and all the yarn necessary forsupplying her wants by hand-weaving and hand-spinning... The spinning wheelwww.mkgandhi.org Page 261

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswas presented to the nation for giving occupation to the millions who had, atleast for four months of the year, nothing to do .... We send out of India sixtycrores (six hundred million) (more or less) of rupees for cloth...'Many intellectuals sneered at khadi. The stuff was coarse, they said.'Monotonous white shrouds,' some mocked. The livery of our freedom,'Jawaharlal Nehru replied. 'I regard the spinning wheel as a gateway to myspiritual salvation,' Gandhi said.Gandhi was trying to bridge brain and brawn, to unite city and town, to linkrich and poor. What greater service could he perform for a divided country andan atomized civilization? To help the underdog, Gandhi taught, you mustunderstand him, and to understand him you must at least sometime work as hedoes. Spinning was an act of love, another channel of communication. It wasalso a method of organization. 'Any single district that can be fully organizedfor khaddar is, if it is also trained for suffering, ready for civil disobedience.'Thus, khadi would lead to Home-Rule.Gandhi asked townspeople and villagers to spend an hour a day at the wheel. 'Itaffords a pleasant variety and recreation after hard toil.' Spinning does notreplace other reforms; it is in addition to them. But he stressed them less thanspinning.'For me,' Gandhi reiterated, 'nothing in the political world is more importantthan the spinning wheel.' One of India's greatest intellectuals, with a brain askeen as Gandhi's and as habitually skeptical as Gandhi was normally naive,enthusiastically supported the Mahatma's khadi contentions. ChakravartyRajagopalachari, the famous Madras lawyer, was second only to Gandhi in hissanguine expectations from the nationwide use of homespun. 'Khadi work is theonly true political programme before the country', he declared on April 6, 1926,in the textile-mill city of Ahmedabad. "You are living in a great city. You do notreally know the amount of poverty that has overtaken the country called India.As a matter of fact, in India there are thousands and tens of thousands ofvillages where men do not get more than 2½ rupees a month. There is no useshedding tears for them if we won't wear a few yards of khadi which they havewww.mkgandhi.org Page 262

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesmanufactured and want us to buy so that they may find a meal. If our heartswere not made of stone we would all be wearing khadi. Khadi meansemployment for the poor and freedom for India. Britain holds India because it isa fine market for Lancashire...'Motilal Nehru also took to wearing khadi; he peddled it in the streets as Gandhidid. Intellectuals might scoff, but khadi began to have a fascination for themand from the mid - 1920s, homespun became the badge of the Indiannationalist. A propagandist for independence would no more dream of goinginto a village in foreign clothes or even in Indian mill cloth than he would thinkof speaking English at a peasant meeting. Apart from its economic value, whichhas not proved decisive, homespun was Gandhi's peculiar contribution to theeducation of political India: he made it physically conscious of poor,uneducated, non-political India. Khadi was an adventure in identificationbetween leadership and nation. Gandhi was prescribing for a disease whichplagued independent India and most independent countries. He knew that thetragedy of India's history was the canyon between the gold-silver-silk- brocadejewel-elephantsplendour of her palaces and the animal poverty of her hovels;at the bottom of the canyon lay the debris of empires and the bones of millionsof their victims.The work exhausted Gandhi. Three or four stops a day for meetings, a differentplace to stop every night, heavy correspondence which he never neglected, andunnumbered personal interviews with men and women who sought his word onthe biggest political problems and their smallest personal difficulties - all in thegreat heat and humidity — wore him down. In November 1925, therefore, heundertook a seven-day fast.India worried about him and protested. Why a fast? 'The public will have toneglect my fasts and cease to worry about them,' Gandhi stated. 'They are partof my being. I can as well do without my eyes, for instance, as I can withoutfasts. What the eyes are for the outer world fasts are for the inner.' He wouldfast whenever the spirit moved him. The result, to be sure, might bedisastrous. 'I may be wholly wrong,' he admitted. 'Then the world will be able towww.mkgandhi.org Page 263

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswrite an epitaph over my ashes: 'Well deserved, thou fool." But for the timebeing, my error, if it be one, must sustain me.' This was a personal fast; 'thisfast has nothing to do with the public'. It is said 'I am public property... So beit. But I must be taken with all my faults. I am a searcher after truth. Myexperiments I hold to be infinitely more important than the best-equippedHimalayan expeditions.' He was trying to scale the spiritual heights; he thoughtfasts conduced to mental ascendancy over the body.Gandhi's fast brought him a tide of requests for his views on fasting; even inIndia his frequent abstentions from food were unusual. He gave his response ina Young India article. With apologies to my medical friends', it read, Taut outof the fullness of my own experience and that of fellow-cranks, I say withouthesitation, Fast (1) if you are constipated, (2) you are anaemic, (3) if you arefeverish, (4) if you have indigestion, (5) if you have a headache, (6) if you arerheumatic, (7) if you are gouty, (8) if you are fretting and foaming, (9) if youare depressed, (10) if you are overjoyed and you will avoid medicalprescriptions and patent medicines.' His patent medical prescription foreverything was fasting. 'Eat only when you are hungry', he added, 'and whenyou have laboured for your food.'His highest weight after being discharged from prison in February 1924, hewrote in the same article, was 112 pounds. He was down to 103 pounds whenhe started the fast. In the seven days he lost nine pounds but regained itquickly. Physically, he said, he lost nothing either from this fast or from thetwenty-one-day fast in 1924.Water during fasts nauseated him without a pinch of salt or bicarbonate of sodaor a few drops of citrus juice. He never suffered any pangs of hunger during thefast; in fact, 'I broke it half an hour later than I need have. He spun every dayand attended the daily prayer meetings. The first three days of the fast, hewrote, 'I worked practically from four in the morning till eight in the evening,'doing articles, answering letters, giving interviews. On the fourth day, his headached. He accordingly abandoned work for a day; on the seventh day 'I was ableto write with steady hand my article on the fast.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 264

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe article furnished nine rules for fasting; he himself broke the first which was'Conserve your energy both physical and mental from the very beginning, (2)You must cease to think of food while you are fasting, (3) Drink as much coldwater as you can... (4) Have a warm sponge daily (5) Take an enema regularlyduring fast. You will be surprised at the impurities you will expel daily, (6)Sleep as much as possible in the open air, (7) Bathe in the morning air. A sunand air bath is at least as great a purifier as a water bath, Think of anythingelse but your fast, (9) No matter from what motive you are fasting, during thisprecious time think of your Maker and of your relation to Him and His othercreations and you will make discoveries you may not have dreamed of.'It was for these discoveries that he fasted.Gandhi's year as president of Congress was now ended and at Cawnpore, inDecember 1925, he relinquished the gavel to Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, mistress oflyric words. Gandhi then took a vow of a year's 'political silence.' 'At least up totwentieth December next,' he announced in Young India of January 7, 1926, 'Iam not to stir out of the ashram, certainly not out of Ahmedabad' across theriver. Body and soul needed rest.The Swaraj Party, which had sent its people into the legislative councils toobstruct the British government, veered slowly towards a measure of cooperation.A dissident group, headed by M. R. Jayakar and N. C. Kelkar, whobelieved in still more co-operation with the British, but less with the Moslems,split off from the Swarajists and formed the Responsivist Party. It leanedtowards the Hindu Mahasabha, a religious political party. In December 1925,the Moslem League session at Aligarh, attended by Jinnah, Mohamed Ali and SirAli Imam, moved in the direction of religious politics. Gandhi had hoped tounite India for nationalist liberation. But she was splitting at her religious seam.Political India, Gandhi found, was 'disrupted and demoralized'. It seemed agood time for silence. 'Silence', he quoted, 'is the true language of cosmicadoration.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 265

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XXVIIIThe 'Silent' YearIN the silent year there were fifty-two silent Mondays when Gandhi did notspeak. On those days, he would listen to an interviewer and occasionally tearoff a corner of a piece of paper and pencil a few words in reply. Since this wasnot the best way to conduct a conversation, the weekly day of silence gave himsome privacy.In 1942, I inquired of Gandhi what lay behind his way of silence.'It happened when I was being torn to pieces,' he explained. 'I was working veryhard, travelling in hot trains, incessantly speaking at many meetings and beingapproached in trains and elsewhere by thousands of people who askedquestions, made pleas and wished to pray with me. I wanted to rest for one daya week. So I instituted the day of silence. Later of course I clothed it with allkinds of virtues and gave it a spiritual cloak. But the motivation was reallynothing more than that I wanted to have a day off.'He liked to laugh at himself. Questioned further, he would have agreed,however, that silence offered an opportunity for spiritual exercise.Apart from the fifty-two Mondays, the 'silent' year was in no sense silent. He didnot travel, he addressed no mass meetings; but he talked, wrote, receivedvisitors and maintained a correspondence with thousands of persons in Indiaand other countries.On April 1, 1926, Lord Irwin (who later became Lord Halifax, Foreign Secretaryof the United Kingdom and British Ambassador to Washington) arrived in Indiato succeed Lord Reading as Viceroy. But the fateful change was not mentionedin Young India, nor did Gandhi seem to have noted it in any other way. He wasstill a non-cooperator working on the masses instead of on the Viceroy. Hismotto was Swaraj from within.www.mkgandhi.org Page 266

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesOne extremely important change, however, was noticeable in Gandhi'sattitude: he began to suspect that Britain's policy militated against Hindu-Moslem friendship. 'The Government of India', he wrote on August 12, 1926, 'isbased on distrust. Distrust involves favouritism and favouritism must breeddivision'. The Government appeared to prefer Moslems.Gandhi had thought that Hindu-Moslem amity would bring self-rule to India.Now he felt that Hindu-Moslem amity was almost impossible while the British,'the third part, were there.Thus religious peace, the prerequisite of independence, could only followindependence.This dilemma notwithstanding, Gandhi remained hopeful: The unity will comein spite of ourselves ... Where man's effort may fail God's will succeed and Hisgovernment is not based upon "divide and rule" policy'. Meanwhile, there hadbeen bloody fighting between the two religious communities ln several parts ofIndia.Gandhi's prescription was better treatment of the Moslem minority by the Hindumajority and non-violence by both. Hindus violently accused him of being pro-Moslem.But the year's fiercest controversy involved dogs. For Months, the storm ragedabout the Mahatma's head.Ambalal Sarabhai, the big textile millowner of Ahmedabad rounded up sixtystray dogs that frequented his large industrial properties and had themdestroyed.Having destroyed the dogs, Sarabhai was disturbed and shared his anguish withthe Mahatma. What else could be done?' said Gandhi.The Ahmedabad Humanitarian Society learned of this conversation and turnedon Gandhi. 'Is that true?' it demanded in a letter sent to the ashram. Did he say,what else could be done? ... And if so, what does it mean? ...www.mkgandhi.org Page 267

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesWhen Hinduism forbids the taking of the life of any living being,' the letterfumed, 'when it declares it to be a sin, do you think it right to kill rabid dogsfor the reason that they would bite human beings and by biting other dogsmake them also rabid?'Gandhi published the letter in Young India under the caption 'Is This Humanity?'The letter and his reply filled the entire first page and half the second page.Yes, it was true. He had said, what else could be done?' and having thought itover, 'I ...feel that my reply was quite proper ...'Imperfect, erring mortals as we are,' he declared in explanation, 'there is nocourse open to us but the destruction of rabid dogs. At times we may be facedwith the unavoidable duty of killing a man who is found in the act of killingpeople.’The next issue of Young India gave its front page to the same question underthe same caption, 'Is This Humanity- The first article had brought a deluge of‘angry letters'. Worse, people came to Gandhi to insult him, 'At an hour', hewrote, 'when after a hard day's work I was about to retire to be ' three friendsinvaded me, infringed the religion of non violence in the name of humanity andengaged me m discussion on it.' Gandhi used the word 'friends' only becaus® heconsidered everybody a friend. One of the 'friends a Jain and he 'betrayedanger, bitterness and arrogance.Gandhi had grown up under the influence of the absolute non-violence ofJainism. 'Many take me to be a Jain,' Gandhi declared. But Mahavira, thefounder of Jainism, 'was an incarnation of compassion, of non-violence. How Iwish his votaries were votaries also of non-violence'.Gandhi stuck to his guns. 'The multiplication of dogs is', he wrote, 'unnecessary.A roving dog without an owner is a danger to society and a swarm of them is amenace to its very existence.' If people were really religious, dogs would haveowners. 'There is a regular science of dog-keeping in the West ... We shouldlearn it.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 268

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe dog mail continued to come; 'some of the hostile critics have transgressedthe limits of decorum', Gandhi asserted in the next Young India which devotedalmost three pages to the matter. One man had demanded an interview andthen without permission, published the substance of it in a leaflet which he washawking in the streets. 'Does he seek to teach me in this manner?' Gandhiwondered. He who is angry is guilty of violence. How can such a man teach menon-violence?'Even so', Gandhi continued, 'the hostile critics are doing me a service. Theyteach me to examine myself. They afford me an opportunity to see if I am freefrom the reaction of anger. And when I go to the root of their anger I findnothing but love.' How did he arrive at that strange conclusion? Because, hesaid, 'They had attributed to me non-violence as they understand it. Now theyfind me acting in a contrary manner and are angry with me.I do not mind their outburst of anger,' he asserted. 'I appreciate the motivebehind it. I must try to reason with the*n patiently...'He reasoned thus: It is a sin to feed stray dogs. 'It is a to Se Series compassion.It is an insult to a starving dog to throw a crumb at him. Roving dogs do notindicate the civilization or compassion of the society, they betray on thecontrary the ignorance and lethargy of its members. The lower animals are ourbrethren. I include among them the lion and the tiger. We do not know how tolive with these carnivorous beasts and poisonous reptiles because of ourignorance. When man learns better he will learn to befriend even these. Todayhe does not even know how to befriend a man of a different religion or from adifferent country.'Gandhi probably suspected that some of the dog-lovers would howl less if sixtyMoslems or Englishmen had been killed.The humane man, Gandhi wrote, would finance a society to keep the straydogs; or he would harbour some himself. But if the State did not care for them,and if householders would not keep them, the dogs had to be destroyed. 'Thedogs in India', Gandhi mourned, 'are today in as bad a plight as the decrepitanimals and men in the land.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 269

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times(Then why not kill the decrepit cows?)Taking life may be a duty,' Gandhi proceeded. Suppose a man rims amok andgoes furiously about, sword in hand and killing anyone who comes his way andno one dares to capture him alive. Any one who dispatched this lunatic willearn the gratitude of the community...'Many correspondents demanded personal replies and threatened to attack himif they got none. He said he could not answer the mountain of letters that hadreached him on this subject, but he would continue to deal with them in hismagazines. Four more issues of Young India gave several columns each to thedog problem. In one Ahmedabad hospital' Gandhi reported, 1117 cases ofhydrophobia had been treated in 1925 and 990 in 1926. Again he urged India tofollow the West in this matter; 'If anyone thinks that the people m the West areinnocent of humanity he is sadly mistaken- And then comes a sting: 'The idealof humanity in the We is perhaps lower, but their practice of it is very muchmore thorough than ours. We rest content with a lofty ideal and are slow orlazy in its practice. We are wrapped in deep darkness, as is evident from ourpaupers, cattle and other animals. They are eloquent of our irreligion ratherthan of religion.'His pro-dog attitude showed he was under Western influence, correspondentscharged. Patiently he reasoned with the furious. He condemned some featuresof Western civilization and had learned from others, he told them. Moreover,opinions should be judged by content not by their source.'Letters on this subject are still pouring in,' Gandhi announced in the thirdmonth of the controversy, but since their only contribution was venom heignored them.'The dog fight established the record for heat in the 'silent year'. But a little calfalso precipitated a storm. A young heifer in the ashram fell ill. Gandhi tendedit and watched it suffer and decided it ought to be put to death. Kasturbaiobjected strenuously. Then she must go and nurse the animal, Gandhisuggested. She did and the animal's torment convinced her. In Gandhi'swww.mkgandhi.org Page 270

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timespresence, a doctor administered an injection which killed the heifer. Theprotest mail was heavy and fierce. Gandhi insisted he had done right.Frank sex discussions filled many Letters to the Editor. 'My correspondence withyoung men on their private conduct', Gandhi wrote, 'is increasing.' They askedhis advice.Taking advantage of relative leisure in the 'silent year', Gandhi read HavelockEllis, Forel, Paul Bureau's Toward Moral Bankruptcy and other Europeanauthorities on family and sex. His interest in the sex life of Indians alwaysremained high. He believed that early and frequent sexual intercourse .ad adebilitating effect on Indians; he understood the implications of the rapidincrease in his country's population.n the 1940s, the population of India was increasing by five million each year.)He wrapped this problem too in a spiritual cloak and, taking a leaf out ofsacred Hindu books, advocated chastity for religious reasons. But the biologicaland economic aspects of the situation did not escape him.In many articles that came from his pen, or pencil, in 'silent' 1926 and oftenthereafter, Gandhi consistently opposed the use of contraceptives; they were aWestern vice. But he did not oppose birth control. He always advocated birthcontrol. The birth control he favoured, however, was through self-control,through the power of the mind over the body. 'Self-control', he wrote, 'is thepurest and only method of regulating the birth rate.' Without such discipline,he contended, man was no better than a brute. He maintained that abstinencefor ever or for long periods was neither physically nor psychologically harmful.Gandhi and his closest ashram associates practised Brahmacharya, completecontinence; people in general, he said, might indulge in sex for purposes ofprocreation, but not to gratify animal passion. He denied 'that sexualindulgence for its own sake is a human necessity'.A correspondent wrote: 'In my case, three weeks seem to be the utmost periodof beneficial abstention. At the end of that period I usually feel a heaviness ofbody, a restlessness both of body and mind, leading to bad temper. Relief isobtained either by normal coitus or nature herself coming to the rescue by anwww.mkgandhi.org Page 271

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesinvoluntary discharge. Far from feeling weak or nervous, I become the nextmorning calm and light and am able to proceed to my work with added gusto.'Many similar cases were brought to Gandhi's notice.Dipping into his personal experience, Gandhi said in reply. 'Ability to retain andassimilate the vital liquid is a matter of long training.' Once achieved, itstrengthens body and mind- The vital liquid, 'capable of producing such awonderful being as man, cannot but, when properly conserved, be transmuteointo matchless energy and strength'.Realistically, in Harijan magazine of September 14, 1935, Gandhi wrote,'Assuming that birth control by artificial aids is justifiable under certainconditions, it seems to be utterly impracticable of application among themillions.' India was poor and ignorant because she was too poor and ignorant toapply birth control by contraceptives. Therefore, Gandhi urged other means ofreducing the population. Contraceptives led to over-indulgence with the resultthat a 'society that has already become enervated through a variety of causeswill become still further enervated by the adoption of artificial methods'.Gandhi endeavoured to delay the marriage of his own sons. Times withoutnumber, he attacked the institution of child marriage: 'Early marriages are afruitful sources of life, adding to the population...' 'He conceded, of course,that the earth should produce enough to support all who are born on it, but, asa religious man with a strong practical sense, he saw the necessity ofpopulation limitation. 'If,' he wrote to Charles Freer Andrews, 'I could find away of stopping procreation in a civil and voluntary manner whilst India remainsin the present miserable state I would do so today.' The only manner hecountenanced was mental discipline. To the strong and saintly he proposedlifelong Bramacharya; to the mass, he proposed late marriage, in the midtwentiesif possible and self-control thereafter. In the ashram, the minimummarriage age for girls was twenty-one. He recognized human frailties butinsisted that unspiced food, the right kind of clothes, the right kind of work,walking, gymnastics, unspiced literature, Prayer, pure films (Indian films to thisday prohibit kissing on the screen) and devotion to God would relieve thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 272

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timestension in modern life and conduce to the sexual self-control which mostpersons unthinkingly consider unnatural. Gandhi's stings on these matters,though they appeared in his small-circulation Young India and GujaratiNavajivan, were, like almost everything he said, reprinted in the entire IndianPress.A cognate question attracted Gandhi's special attention during the 'silent' year:child widows. According to the official British census for 1921, which he cited,there were in India 11,892 widows less than five years old: 85,037 widowsbetween the ages of five and ten; and 232,147 widows between ten andfifteen; together 329,076 widows under sixteen.The existence of girl widows', Gandhi exclaimed, 'is a blot upon Hinduism.'Parents would marry their baby daughters to baby sons of other families, oreven to old men and if the husband died, either in infancy or of senility, thewidow could not, under Hindu law, remarry. Defiantly, Gandhi declared, 'Iconsider remarriage of virgin widows not only desirable but the bounden dutyof all parents who happen to have such widowed daughters.' Some of theseyouthful widows were no longer virgins but prostitutes. The remedy inanticipation', he wrote, 'is to prevent early marriages.' To those bigoted Hinduswho, loyal to every immoral custom, defended the proscription against secondmarriage of child widows, Gandhi retorted. 'They were never married at all'.The wedding of a child is a sacrilege, not a sacred rite. His deepest feelingabout child widows was expressed in one sweet sentence, They are strangsrs tolove.' Chastity had to be the deliberate and voluntary act of a mature person,not the imposition of cruel parents on children. Gandhi wanted all humanbeings to know love. But a widow, or widower, who had married as an adultshould not remarry, he said; they had tasted love. This proscription constitutedanother birth-control technique.Protection of the cow, protection of Indians in South Africa where race hatewas again rampant, prohibition and world peace also excited Gandhi'sreforming zeal during his Sabbatical year.www.mkgandhi.org Page 273

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesOccasionally, some proverbs dropped from his pen: 'Any secrecy hinders thereal spirit of democracy'; 'If we could area. the “I’s and "Mine's" from religion,politics, economics, we should be free and bring heaven on earth.'Occasionally, too, he made brief excursions into religion, but there wasremarkably little discussion in print about God, metaphysics and kindred topics.One thought he did leave with his readers: 'Rationalists are admirable beings,'he wrote in an article on the efficacy of prayer; 'rationalism is a hideousmonster when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence toreason is as bad a piece of idolatry as is worship of stick and stone believing itto be God... I do not know a single rationalist who has never done anything insimple faith... But we all know millions of human beings living their more orless orderly lives because of their child-like faith in the Maker of us all. Thatvery faith is a prayer... I plead not for the suppression of reason, but for duerecognition of that in us which sanctions reason itself.''Mankind cannot live by logic alone, but also needs poetry,' he once wrote.Gandhi frequently left the field of sensory perception and rational mentalprocesses for that middle zone of faith, instinct, intuition and love, but henever wandered away from it into the rarefied realm of mystic messages,miracles, hallucinations, prophecy and other unaccountable manifestations ofmind and body. 'Whilst he did not rule out the authenticity of suprasensuousphenomena,' says one of his closest disciples, 'he very strongly disapproved ofpursuing them.' He judged men and events by the criteria of cold facts andinvited others to judge him rationally. He did not wish to influence people bymystic radiation. His estimate of himself was severely sober. His work waspractical and its goal was practical success. He told Muriel Lester, anEnglishwoman, that he 'never heard a voice, saw a vision, or had somerecognized experience of God'. No mystic experience had been vouchsafed tohim. His guide was reason on the wing of faith.Gandhi's reputation abroad was spreading. Romain Rolland,French author,wrote a book about him. Many invitations reached him, especially fromAmerica, to come on a visit He rejected them. 'My reason is simple,' hewww.mkgandhi.org Page 274

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesexplained, 'I have not enough self-confidence to warrant my going to America. Ihave no doubt that the movement for non-violence has come to stay. I have nodoubt whatsoever about its final success. But I cannot give an oculardemonstration of the efficacy of non-violence. Till then, I feel I must continueto preach from the narrower Indian platform.'Two American women, Mrs. Kelly and Mrs. Langeloth, representing theFellowship of Faith, the League of Neighbours and the Union of East and West,actually came to Sabarmati to invite the Mahatma. First they cross-examinedhim: 'Is it true that you object to railways, steamships and other means ofspeedy locomotion?''It is and it is not,' Gandhi replied patiently, for the thousandth time, and urgedthem to read his Indian Home- Rule. More conversation of the same kindfollowed. He was afraid, in the end, that they did not understand his attitudeto the machine and speed, because they had to catch a train and left early.Gandhi was in no hurry either personally or politically, and sat still for a year.He seemed to enjoy his 1926 moratorium from politics. It gave his body time torest and his spirit a chance to roam. He played more with the children. Heparticipated in an ashram spinning contest. He and Kasturbai, the oldestmembers of the community, were beaten by the youngest, their granddaughter.The announcement evoked great hilarity.He cultivated his friends, Rajagopalachari, the lawyer with the razor-edgebrain; Mahadev Desai, who was a secretary and an apostle; and 'Charlie'Andrews, two years Gandhi’s junior, whom Gandhi called The Good Samaritan'.He more than a blood brother to me', Gandhi said. 'I do not thin* that I canclaim a deeper attachment to anyone than to Mr. Andrews.' The Hindu saint hadfound no better saint than Andrews. The Christian missionary had found nobetter Christian than Gandhi. Perhaps the Indian and Englishman were brothersbecause they were truly religious. Perhaps religion brought them togetherbecause nationality did not separate them. 'Each country', Andrews said,speaking of England and India, 'has become equally dear to me.' Gandhideclared, 'I would not hurt England or Germany to serve India'. In a letter towww.mkgandhi.org Page 275

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAndrews dated Calcutta, December 27, 1928, Gandhi wrote, 'The most forwardnationalists in India have not been haters of the West or of England or in anyother way narrow ... but they have been internationalists under the guise ofnationalism.'Where nationalism does not divide, religion can make men brothers.www.mkgandhi.org Page 276

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XXIXCollapseGANDHI emerged from the year of silence with views unchanged. Hisprogramme was still Hindu-Moslem unity, the removal of untouchability and thepromotion of homespun. Indeed, Gandhi's programme in its simplest termsremained the same for decades. The vision of the future of India which heoutlined in 1909 in his booklet Indian Home- Rule guided him to the end of hisdays. In 1921, at the height of the non-co-operation movement, he had sentAndrews to tell the Viceroy that if the government would help promote homespinning and weaving in the villages and suppress alcohol and opium he woulddrop non-co-operation. The Government did not reply. He «would have settledfor khadi and prohibition at any time in his career. But khadi struck at Britishtrade and prohibition at government revenue.Leaving Sabarmati Ashram in December 1926, Gandhi worked his way frommeeting to meeting till he reached Gauhati, in north-east India, in the provinceof Assam, to attend the annual session of Congress. En route, he received wordof a tragedy which horrified India. A young Moslem named Abdul Rashid hadcalled on Swami Shradhanand, a well-known Hindu nationalist, and said hewished to discuss religious problems with him. The Swami, or priest, was iU inbed; his doctor had ordered complete repose. When the Swami heard thealtercation outside his room between his servant and the insistent visitor heordered the man to be admitted. Inside, the Swami told Abdul Rashid that hewould be glad to talk with him as soon as he felt stronger. The Moslem askedfor water. When the servant left to fetch him a drink, Abdul Rashid pulled out arevolver and fired several bullets into the Swami's breast, killing him.The Moslem press had been attacking the Swami as a proponent of Hindudomination of India. In an address to Congress, Gandhi assured the Moslemsthat the Swami had not been their enemy. He said Abdul Rashid was not guilty.The guilty ones were 'those who excited feelings of hatred against one another'.He referred to the assassin repeatedly as his 'brother'.www.mkgandhi.org Page 277

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe British too were brothers. Extreme nationalists at the Congress sessionmoved a resolution in favour of independence and the severance of all ties withEngland. Gandhi opposed it. 'They betray want of faith in human nature andtherefore in themselves,' he said. 'Why do they think there can never be achange of heart in those who are guiding the British Empire?' If India weredignified and strong, England would change.Gandhi accordingly continued his efforts to strengthen the nation from within;otherwise, resolutions in favour of independence were empty words and vaingestures.Again, therefore, Gandhi toured the country. At meetings where he saw asector of the grounds set apart for untouchables he squatted among them andchallenged Brahmans and other caste Hindus to come and do likewise. TheMahatma on active service for India could not be disobeyed.During some speeches, he would lift his left hand and open UP the five fingers.Taking the first finger between two fingers of his right hand he would shake itand say, This is equality for untouchables,' and even those who could not hearhim would ask for and get explanation later on from those who had. Then thesecond finger; this is spinning'. The third finger was sobriety; no alcohol, noopium. The fourth was Hindu-Moslem friendship. The fifth was equality forwomen. The hand was bound to the body by the wrist. The wrist was nonviolence.The five virtues, through non-violence, would free the body of eachone of them, and hence, India.Sometimes, if he was too tired or the crowd too noisy, he would sit on theplatform in silence till the audience, which often numbered two hundredthousand, became quiet. He then continued to sit in silence, and the men andwomen sat in silence, and he touched his palms together to bless them, andsmiled, and departed. This was communication without words, and the masssilence was an exercise in self-control and self-searching, a step thereforetowards self-rule.Thousands of townspeople came to meetings wearing khadi. In one locality, thelaundry men, the indispensable men of India, refused to wash anything butwww.mkgandhi.org Page 278

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeshomespun. A primitive tribe gave up alcohol when they heard it was theMahatma's wish. His attacks on child marriage met with wider acceptance.Women mixed with men at meetings.But the Hindu-Moslem problem defied Gandhi's efforts. 'I am helpless,' headmitted. 'I have now washed my hands. But I am a believer in God ...Something within tells me that Hindu-Moslem unity will come sooner than wemight care to hope, that God will one day force it on us, in spite of ourselves.That is why I said that it has passed into the hands of God.' This formulacomforted him, but it did not relax the tension. Hindus and Moslems werekidnapping one another's womenfolk and children and forcibly converting them.From Calcutta, Gandhi moved down through Bihar to the country of theMarathas, Tilak's country. At Poona, students demanded that he should speakEnglish; their language was Marathi which Gandhi did not command. He startedin English and then switched to Hindustani, which he wanted to have acceptedas the national language. Some students were friendly; one sold his gold medalfor khadi. Some students were hostile. In Bombay, however, the peopleoverwhelmed him with kindness and money. It was his own Gujarat region.Thence he returned to Poona to take the train for Bangalore and a tour of theCarnatic, in south-east India.At the Poona station, Gandhi felt so weak he had to be carried into theBangalore train. His vision was blurred and he could scarcely scribble an urgentnote. Sleep that night refreshed him, and the next day, at Kolhapur, in theDeccan princely states, he addressed seven meetings; the untouchables insistedon their own meetings and dragged Gandhi to their school. The women had aspecial affair; the children too; the non-Brahmans; the Christians; the khadiworkers; the students. At the close of the final meeting, Gandhi collapsed.Yet he went on. The next day, he felt too ill to make speeches, but he sat onthe porch of his host's house while multitudes passed. Then he drove to ameeting to receive a purse of 8457 rupees for khadi. At Belgaum, over ahundred miles from Kolhapur, he also attended a meeting, but did not speak.www.mkgandhi.org Page 279

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesFinally, a doctor persuaded him that his condition was serious and he had torest. He was taken to a hill town swept by sea breezes.Under pressure from his friend and physician, Dr. Jivraj Mehta, and others,Gandhi agreed to rest for two months. But why couldn't he go home toSabarmati where his upkeep would cost less money? He was told that thealtitude and salubrious climate would help him recover more quickly. He saidhe did not wish 'to vegetate'. Well, he could continue Working on hisautobiography and do light reading.What is light reading?' Gandhi asked.*You must not spin,' the doctor continued. Your blood pressure is too high.' Thisraised a fierce protest.Take my blood pressure before and after spinning,' Gandhi urged. 'Besides,what a glorious death to die spinning.' He did spin. But he agreed not to answercorrespondence, not to work.Well, my cart has stuck in the mire,' he wrote the women of Sabarmati Ashram.'Tomorrow it might break down beyond hope of repair. What then? Gitaji (theBhagavad-Gita) proclaims that everyone that is born must die, and everyonethat dies must be born again. Everyone comes, repays part of his obligation,and goes his way.'The sale of khadi was medicine to Gandhi. The chief of the native state and hiswife came for a visit and bought some homespun. Devadas and Mahadev Desaiwent out to peddle khadi and came back with purses full.Soon Gandhi commenced to write articles for his two magazines. His bloodpressure was down, he reported 'from 180 to 155, and from 155 to 150 which isnormal for my age. I have been walking for three days over one mile per day intwo periods..' He suggested a fast; that would cure him. The doctors dissuadedhim with difficulty. They suggested recreation instead.'Like backgammon, or whist or bridge, or ping pong?' Gandhi laughed.They could propose nothing definite.www.mkgandhi.org Page 280

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'So your proposal has ended in smoke,' he teased. 'It cannot be otherwise. Whatcan you suggest where all work is play- He had a proposition. 'Get me acarpenter's box of tools and broken spinning wheels and I shall repair them, orcrooked spindles and I shall make them straight.'During April 1927, he remained in the native state of Mysore, recuperating. Theprime minister of the state appeared for a visit, and in the course of theconversation he assured Gandhi that he had no objection to the wearing ofhomespun by Mysore officials. Gandhi went to inspect the Methodist MissionSchool for girls at Bangalore, capital of Mysore. He told the teachers that E.Stanley Jones, the American missionary, had promised him to introducespinning in the Methodist Mission Schools. He joked with the pupils and askedthem to wear khadi.Dr. B. C. Roy, Gandhi's physician in later years, and Dr. Manchershah Gilder, anIndian who practiced medicine in Bombay and London, have stated that Gandhihad a 'slight stroke' at Kolhapur in March 1927. Neither found any physicalafter-effects. Dr. Gilder, who was Gandhi's heart specialist after 1932, said thatthe Mahatma's heart was stronger than in an average man of his age. He neverknew Gandhi's blood pressure to rise except when an important decision was inthe making. On one occasion, Gandhi went to bed with high blood pressure; inthe morning it was normal, because, during the night, he had made up his mindon a crucial question. The presence of irritating persons, or public attacks onhim, or concern about his work, Dr. Gilder declared, never affected Gandhi'sblood pressure; only the self-wrangling that preceded a decision brought on arise.The 'slight stroke' of 1927, accompanied by high blood pressure, may have beendue to overwork at a time when the political situation did not permit Gandhi toreach a decision in favour of a new civil disobedience campaign. From momenthe came out of jail in 1924, Gandhi watched for an opportunity to renew nonco-operation.This was his goal. Everything else was preparation for it. Morethan ever co-operation with the British, or even obstruction to the British in thelegislative assemblies, appeared to him a waste of time.www.mkgandhi.org Page 281

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesMost co-operators were loyal to Gandhi. Vithalbhai Patel, president of thenational Legislative Assembly at New Delhi, brother of Vallabhbhai Patel,Gandhi's close associate, had been sending more than half his handsome Britishsalary to Gandhi by cheque every month for constructive work. Others didlikewise. Civil disobedience, Gandhi felt, would unite cooperators and non-cooperators.Only civil disobedience would impel the British to yield real power;under dyarchy they yielded the semblance of power.But 'the present look of things' between Hindus and Moslems, Gandhi wrote inYoung India of June 16, 1927, was 'ugly'. He yearned to do something, perhapsto fast, in order to 'melt and change the stony hearts of Hindus and Moslems.But I have no sign from God within to undertake the penance.'Hindu-Moslem dissension, Gandhi said, proved that Indians could not regulatetheir own affairs. Then what claim had they on the British for more power? Itwas not enough to reply that Britain made use of their division or even createdit. Why did Indians give England this advantage?Gandhi put his faith in God; when all seemed lost perhaps the British wouldhelp. They did.Lord Irwin, the new viceroy, had arrived in India in April 1926, at the age offorty-five, to relieve Reading. From his grandfather, the first Viscount Halifax,who had served in India and as Secretary of State for India in Whitehall, heinherited a bond with India. From his father he acquired an attachment to theChurch of England and High Church views. In fact, on his arrival, on GoodFriday, in Bombay, he postponed the ceremonies that accompany the advent ofa new Viceroy and went to church.The choice of a religious man as Viceroy was regarded in some quarters asauspicious for his five-year reign over a religious country in which a Mahatmaled the opposition.But for nineteen months, Irwin sent no invitation to Gandhi nor indicated anydesire to discuss the Indian situation with the most influential Indian. OnOctober 26, 1927, while filling speaker engagements at Mangalore, on the westwww.mkgandhi.org Page 282

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timescoast, a message reached Gandhi that the Viceroy wished to see him onNovember 5.The Mahatma immediately broke off his tour and travelled the 1250 miles — atwo-day train journey — to New Delhi. At the appointed hour he was usheredinto the presence of Lord Irwin. He did not enter alone. The Viceroy had alsoasked Vithalbhai Patel, the president of the national Legislative Assembly, S.Srinivasa Iyengar, the president of the Congress Party for 1927, and Dr. M. A.Ansari, the president elect of Congress for 1928.When the Indians had been seated, Irwin handed them a paper announcing theimpending arrival of an official British commission, led by Sir John Simon, toreport on Indian conditions and make recommendations for political reforms.Having read the text, Gandhi looked up and waited. The Viceroy said nothing.'Is this the only business of our meeting?' Gandhi asked.Yes,' replied the Viceroy.That was the end of the interview. Silently, Gandhi returned to southern Indiaand from there went out to Ceylon to collect money for khadi.In the days following Irwin's confrontation with Gandhi, other Indian leaderswere informed, in similar fashion of the forthcoming visit of the SimonCommission. In no case was there any discussion or elaboration. The Viceroysimply said that under Section 84a of the Government of India Act of 1919,which provided for ten-year surveys, a Statutory Commission consisting of SirJohn Simon and six other members of the British House of Commons and Houseof Lords would soon arrive in India to investigate and to suggest changes, if anywere necessary, in the Indian political system. Irwin expected Indians to testifybefore the commission and submit proposals to it.Irwin's biographer, Alan Campbell Johnson, describes this episode as 'adeplorable lack of tact in the handling of the Indian leaders'. The blame wasshared by Irwin and Lord Birkenhead, the Secretary of State for India in theBritish government. Birkenhead, a brilliant lawyer, made Indian policy inWhitehall. In doing so he was guided by an attitude epitomised in hiswww.mkgandhi.org Page 283

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timespronouncement in the House of Lords in 1929. 'What man in this House',Birkenhead asked rhetorically, 'can say that he can see in a generation, in twogenerations, in a hundred years, any prospect that the people of India will be ina position to assume control of the Army, the Navy, the Civil Service, and tohave a Governor-General who will be responsible to the Indian government andnot to any authority in this country?' The legal mind has no eyes; yet he, withIrwin, ruled India.The Simon Commission was the premature child of Birkenhead's brain. Underthe Act of 1919, the commission might have been created a year or two later,but a national election was imminent in Britain, and Birkenhead feared that hisTory Party might be defeated by Labour, as indeed it was, in 1929. This beingthe case, the Indians were all the more disappointed that the Labour Partyshould have lent itself to Birkenhead's manoeuvre by allowing Major Clement R,Attlee, then a less-known M.P., to serve with Simon.The news of the Simon Commission astounded India. The Commission woulddetermine the fate of India, but it had no Indian member. The British explainedthat it was a commission of Parliament and must therefore consist of peers orM.P.s. But there was an Indian peer. Lord Sinha. No, India did not accept theexplanation. Indians were being treated as 'natives'; the whites would come,look around, and decide the fate of the dumb, brown Asiatics. Are these thefruits of co-operation, the Gandhian non-cooperators scoffed.Spontaneously, a movement sprang up throughout India not to help the SimonCommission in its studies, nor to lay plans before it. Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, agreat Indian constitutional lawyer, former member of the Viceroy's AdvisoryCouncil, persuaded the Liberal Party of India to vote for boycott. The HinduMahasabha wavered for a moment and then followed the lead of Pandit MadanMohan Malaviya into the boycott camp. Congress was of course unanimous forboycott, and needed no promptings from Gandhi. Mr. Jinnah, of the revivedMoslem League, also seemed inclined to join the boycott. Irwin, according tohis biographer, 'did his utmost to bring Jinnah back into the fold and made asubstantial offer to him.' But a rude speech by Birkenhead challenging Indianswww.mkgandhi.org Page 284

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesto produce 'an agreed scheme' of future government convinced Jinnah that theBritish were playing on Indian religious divisions and caused him to spurn theViceroy's 'substantial offer'. One touch of Birkenhead made all Indians non-cooperate.Upon its arrival in Bombay on February 3, 1928, the Simon Commission wasgreeted with black flags and processions shouting 'Go back, Simon.' This slogan,chanted by Indians who sometimes knew no other English words, rang in thecommissioners' ears throughout their stay in India. The boycott was politicaland social. The Commission was isolated.Simon tried his hand at compromise. Irwin tempted and cajoled. A few bitter orambitious untouchables and a handful of very minor politicians were induced tocome before the Simonites. But no representative Indian would see them. Theytoiled honestly, and produced an intelligently edited compendium of valuablefacts and statistics. It was a learned epitaph on British rule.The first Gandhi-Irwin interview of November 5, 1927, stood for inequality; thecomposition of the Simon Commission stood for exclusion. Both principlesangered Gandhi and the Indian people.By 1930, however, Gandhi had changed the relationship between India andEngland to one of negotiation between hard bargainers. By 1930, automaticIndian obedience to British fiat was a thing of the past. Imperceptibly, in 1928,1929 and 1930, unknown even to themselves, and scarcely noticed by outsiders,Indians became free men. The body still wore shackles; but the spirit hadescaped from prison. Gandhi had turned the key. No general directing armiesagainst an enemy ever moved with more consummate skill than the saint armedwith righteousness as his shield and a moral cause as his spear. All of Gandhi'syears in South Africa were preparation for the 1928-30 struggle; all his work inIndia since 1917 prepared the Indian people for it. He did not plan it that way.But in perspective his activities make a delicate design.www.mkgandhi.org Page 285

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesPART TWOwww.mkgandhi.org Page 286

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter IPrologueGANDHI moved into battle very slowly. Unlike most rebels he did not getammunition from his adversary. The British merely provided him with anopportunity to use his special, self-made weapon; civil disobedience.The savage massacre of policemen in Chauri Chaura in February 1922, by aCongress mob, had induced Gandhi to suspend civil disobedience in the countyof Bardoli. But he did not forget. He waited six years, and on February 12,1928, he gave the signal for Satyagraha in the same place: Bardoli.Gandhi did not conduct it himself. He watched from afar, wrote lengthyarticles about it, and supplied the general direction and inspiration. The actualleader was Vallabhbhai Patel, assisted by a Moslem named Abbas Tyebji.In 1915, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, a prosperous Ahmedabad lawyer, was playingbridge in his club when Gandhi entered. Patel looked at the visitor with a sideglance of his heavy-lidded eyes, smiled under his thick moustache at the littleman with the big, bulbous, loose turban and the long Kathiawar coat withsleeves rolled up, and turned back to his cards. He had heard of Gandhi's SouthAfrican exploits but was not impressed by this first view.A week later, however, he dropped in at a conference on Peasant taxationconvened by Gandhi and stayed to admire the newcomer's logic. Patel had aprecise, scientific steel-trap mind. In later years, his clean-shaven pouchy face,his round, nut- brown bald head, and his broad body wrapped down to theknees in white khadi gave him the appearance of a classic Roman senator. If hehad any sentiments, he hid them successfully. He became the 'Jim Farley', asAmericans called him, of the Congress party, the machine 'box' whoremembered everybody's name and navigated with supreme confidence amongthe numerous jutting reefs of Indian politics.Gandhi won Patel's loyalty by the common sense of his position: to win freedomyou needed peasant backing, for India was more than 80 per cent peasant. Towww.mkgandhi.org Page 287

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswin peasant backing you had to speak the peasant's language, dress like him,and know his economic needs.In 1928 Patel was mayor of Ahmedabad. At Gandhi's suggestion, he left the postand went to Bardoli, in Bombay province, to guide the 87,000 peasants in apeaceful revolt against a 22 per cent increase in taxes decreed by the Britishgovernment.The villagers, responding to Patel's leadership, refused to pay taxes. Thecollector seized their water buffaloes which worked and gave milk. Cultivatorswere driven off their farms. Kitchens were invaded and pots and pansconfiscated for delinquency. Carts and horses were also taken. The peasantsremained non-violent.'At the rate the forfeitures are being served', Gandhi observed in Young India,'practically the whole of the county of Bardoli should soon be in thegovernment's possession, and they can pay themselves a thousand times overfor their precious assessments. The people of Bardoli if they are brave, will benone the worse for dispossession. They will have lost their possessions but keptwhat must be the dearest of all to good men and women — their honour. Thosewho have stout hearts and hands need never fear loss of belongings.'Apparently, the Mahatma thought every hungry peasant was a Gandhi.Strangely enough, the judgment did not err. A spark of Gandhism lifted thepeasantry into a mood of sacrifice.Months passed. Bardoli stood its ground. Hundreds were arrested. TheGovernment was accused of 'lawlessness'; no one called it terror, for no onewas terrorized.India began to take notice. Voluntary contributions flowed in for themaintenance of the struggle.Government officials drove through the countryside in motorcars. "Why notbarricade the roads,' some peasants whispered to Sardar Patel, 'or place spikeson them to burst the tyres of the officials' cars and give a "non-violent" shakeupto some fellow who has made himself a veritable nightmare to the people?'www.mkgandhi.org Page 288

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'No,' Patel admonished, 'your fight is not for a few hundred thousand rupees,but for a principle... You are fighting for self-respect which ultimately leads toSwaraj.'The government undertook to denude whole villages of movable property. Thepeasants barricaded themselves in their huts with their animals. The collectorsthen made off with carts. 'Pull your carts to pieces,' the Sardar ordered. 'Keepthe body in one place and the wheels in another. Bury the shaft.'The government stated in a public announcement that some seized land hadbeen sold to new occupants and that all farms in Bardoli would be auctioned iftaxes remained unpaid. Vallabhbhai Patel's elder brother Vithalbhai, presidentof the national Legislative Assembly, wrote to the Viceroy with the charge that'the measures adopted have crossed in several instances the bounds of law,order and decency.' Gandhi hailed the letter as breaking 'that unhealthy andslavish tradition' of neutrality when the people defied the government.At the instance of Gandhi, India celebrated a hartal, or cessation of work andbusiness, on June 12, in honour of Bardoli. Huge sums were thrust upon SardarPatel by Indians at home and abroad.Gandhi went on a brief visit to Bardoli. Processions greeted him everywhere.Indians of national importance, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, the great constitutionallawyer, K. M. Munshi, a member of the Legislative Council of Bombay, andothers expressed sympathy with the Bardoli resisters and demanded that justicebe done by the government. On July 13, with the Satyagraha movement at itsheight, the Governor of the province of Bombay went to Simla to consult LordIrwin. He returned five days later and summoned Vallabhbhai Patel, AbbasTyebji and four other leading Satyagrahis to a conference. Negotiation is alwayswelcome to the civil resister; it may lead to compromise. No compromise onBardoli was possible, however, and on July 23, Sir Leslie Wilson, opening thesession of the Bombay Legislative Council, declared the issue was 'whether thewrit of his Majesty the King-Emperor is to run in a portion of His Majesty'sdominions.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 289

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe press in England awoke to the Bardoli revolt. Questions were asked in theHouse of Commons where Lord Winterton was firmly in favour of 'enforcingcompliance with law and crushing the movement...' The Satyagrahis and Patelignored this 'sabre rattling'.From all over India, Gandhi was urged to start civil disobedience in otherprovinces. He counseled patience. The time has not yet come for even limitedsympathetic Satyagraha. Bardoli has still to prove its mettle. If it can stand thelast heat and if the Government go to the farthest limit, nothing I orVallabhbhai can do will stop the spread of Satyagraha or limit the issue ... Thelimit will then be prescribed by the capacity of India as a whole for selfsacrificeand self-suffering- Meanwhile, the people of Bardoli 'are safe in God'shands.The arrest of Patel was expected hourly. On August 2, accordingly, Gandhimoved to Bardoli. On August 6, the government capitulated. It promised torelease all prisoners, return all confiscated land, return the confiscated animalsor their equivalent, and, the essence, to cancel the rise in taxes- Patelpromised that the peasants would pay their taxes at the old rates. Both sideskept the agreement.Gandhi had shown Irwin and India that the weapon worked.Would he use it on a vaster scale?India was in turmoil. From February 3, 1928, when the Simon Commissionlanded at Bombay, India boycotted it. Gandhi's boycott was so complete that henever mentioned the Commission. For him, it did not exist. But othersdemonstrated against it. At a huge anti-Simon meeting in Lahore, Lajpat Rai,the chief political figure of the Punjab, a man of sixty-four whom Gandhi calledthe 'Lion of the Punjab', was struck with a lathi or four-foot wooden staff swungby the policeman in a charge, and died soon afterwards. About the same time,Jawaharlal Nehru was beaten with lathis during an anti-Simon protest meetingin Lucknow. In December 1928, several weeks after Lajpat Rai's death, AssistantPolice Superintendent Saunders of Lahore was assassinated. Gandhi brandedwww.mkgandhi.org Page 290

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesthe assassination 'a dastardly act'. Bhagat Singh, the suspected assassin, eludedarrest and quickly achieved the status of hero.Dining the autumn of 1928, the government moved against the growing labourorganizations of India. Trade union leaders, and Socialists and Communists,were arrested en masse. Labour was unhappy and anti-British for nationalist aswell as class reasons.In Bengal, always the heart of turbulence and of opposition to the governmentas well as to the Congress leadership, Subhas Chandra Bose, a stormy petrelwhose philosophy was, 'Give me blood and I promise you freedom', had wongreat popularity and a big, restive following.Gandhi sensed the crisis atmosphere. The existing British system was, he said,'an unmitigated evil'. One word from him a thousand Bardolis would spring intoaction throughout ^ But as a good field-commander, Gandhi was always carefulChoose the right time and place for battle. He knew India's Co he also knew itsweakness, and the weaknesses of congress. Perhaps, if he was patient, thebattle could be avoided; even a non-violent contest should not be undertakenbefore every possibility of averting it had been exhausted.In this mood of uncertainty, Gandhi approached the annual Congress sessionwhich met in Calcutta in December 1928. En route to the meeting, friends putsome searching and significant questions to him when the train stopped atNagpur.What would be your attitude towards a political war of independence?' theyasked.'I would decline to take part in it,' Gandhi answered.Then you would not support a national militia?''I would support the formation of a national militia under Swaraj,' Gandhi said,'if only because I realize that people cannot be made non-violent bycompulsion. Today I am teaching the people how to meet a national crisis bynon-violent means.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 291

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe Congress session demanded action. But Gandhi had an eye for organizationand a nose for reality. Congress talked war. Was it an effective army? Gandhiwanted Congress 'overhauled'. 'The delegates to the Congress', he wrote, 'aremostly self-appointed ... As at present onstituted, the Congress is unable to putforth real united and unbreakable resistance.'The Congress, however, would not be gainsaid. Caution was not on its agenda.Subhas Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru, leading the young men, wanted adeclaration of immediate independence to be followed, implicitly, by a war ofindependence. Gandhi suggested a two years' warning to the British. Underpressure, he finally cut it down to one year. If by December 31, 1929, India hadnot achieved freedom under Dominion Status, 1 must declare myself anIndependence-Walla.’'I have burnt my boats,' Gandhi announced.The year 1929 would be crucial and decisive.As preparation for 1930, Gandhi toured India in 1929. He no longer allowedhimself to be cooped up in first or second class however. He travelled thirdagain and found that the passing were just as slovenly about personal sanitationas they were five years before.While touring in the west-of-India province of Sindh, in February, Gandhi wassummoned to New Delhi to accept the chairmanship of the Congress Committeefor the Boycott of Foreign Cloth. He did not believe in boycotting British booksor surgical instruments, etc. Nor would he countenance a boycott of Britishcloth only. Imported textiles from any country must be boycotted in favour, notof Indian mill products, but of khadi. He regarded the universal use of khadi asa prime requisite for the battle of 1930. Indians would go into that strugglewearing uniforms of homespun.During his days in Delhi, Gandhi went to a tea party, and it became the subjectof much rumour. The party was given by Speaker Patel of the LegislativeAssembly, and among the guests were Gandhi, Lord Irwin, Jinnah, MotilalNehru, Pandit Malaviya, the Maharaja of Bikaner and the Maharaja of Kashmir.www.mkgandhi.org Page 292

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSurely, press and politicians speculated, the tea party was arranged to initiateconversations between Indians and Englishmen with a view to avoiding the 1930clash. Speculation became so lush that Gandhi honoured the afternoon partywith an inimitable paragraph in Young India. Gandhi admitted that Patel, apartisan of Swaraj, staged the tea party 'to break the ice as it were. But therecannot be much breaking of ice at a private, informal tea party. And in myopinion it cannot lead to any real advance or action unless both are ready. Weknow that we are not yet ready. England will never make any advance so as tosatisfy India's aspirations till she is forced to Jt- British rule is no philanthropicjob, it is a terribly earnest business proposition worked out from day-to-daywith deadly Precision. The coating of benevolence that is periodically given t°it merely prolongs the agony. Such occasional parties are therefore good only tothe extent of showing that the bringing together of parties will be easy enoughwhen both are ready 0r business. Meanwhile let the reader rest satisfied withthe assurance that no political significance attaches to the event the party wasone of Speaker Patel's creditable freaks.'During the first four months of 1929, while Gandhi was lighting bonfires offoreign textiles in Calcutta and keeping longstanding speaking engagements inBurma, no longer a part of India, Irwin, according to his biographer, 'was largelyabsorbed with finding administrative remedies to meet the perils of politicalterrorism and industrial strife'. Alas, the remedy did not lie in administrativemeasures. It required statesmanship.On April 8, Bhagat Singh, the Sikh who killed Assistant Police SuperintendentSaunders in Lahore in December 1928, walked into the Legislative Assembly inNew Delhi while the chamber was filled with its British and Indian members,tossed two bombs into their midst, and then began firing from an automaticpistol. The bombs exploded with a mighty impact but burst into large fragmentsinstead of small splinters, and only one legislator was seriously wounded. SirJohn Simon saw the outrage from the gallery. It was his last big impression ofIndia; that month the Commission went home.www.mkgandhi.org Page 293

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIn May 1929, national elections in Brifain gave Labour a minority in the House ofCommons, but as the largest party it took office and Ramsay Macdonald becamePrime Minister. In June, Irwin sailed for England to consult the new governmentand especially the new Secretary of State for India, Mr. Wedgwood Benn.Gandhi, who had said, 'You know, there is one thing in me, and that is that Ilove to see the bright side of things and not the seamy side,' hoped for a changethat would obviate the expected showdown in 1930.But though he looked for the silver lining, his head was never in the clouds; hekept his bare feet on the earth of India. In an unconditional condemnation ofterrorist acts, Gandhi reiterated that the Government could stop them by'conceding the national demand gracefully and in time. But that is hopingagainst hope. For the Government to do so would be a change 0f heart, notmerely of policy. And there is nothing on the horizon to warrant the hope thatany such change is imminent.'He feared a bloody clash. 'If India attains what will be to me so-called freedomby violent means she will cease to be the country of my pride,' he wrote inYoung India of May 9, 1929. Prophetically, he pictured the ideal freedom shouldcome non- violently 'through a gentlemanly understanding with Great Britain.But then, he added, 'it will not be an imperialistic haughty Britain manoeuvringfor world supremacy but a Britain humbly trying to serve the common end ofhumanity'.That day was not yet.With the fateful test of strength only a few months away, Gandhi continued toconcern himself with the things that normally concerned him. In a leadingarticle entitled 'A National Defect' the Mahatma returned to the question ofcleanliness. He was travelling by car through the country and crossed theKrishna River. 'The car', he wrote, 'practically passed by hundreds of men andwomen evacuating themselves not many yards from the river bank. It is thestream in which people bathe and from which they drink. Here there was abreach of the code of decency and a criminal disregard «of the mostelementary laws of health. Add to this the economic waste of the preciouswww.mkgandhi.org Page 294

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesmanure, which they would save if these evacuations were made in a field andburied in the living surface of the earth and well mixed with loosened soil ...Here ls work for the municipalities.'He worried about the expenses of his party while on tour. He asked for anaccounting and found that 'these expenses do not amount to more than 5 percent of the collections... 'Having said this in defence of the expense, I mustconfess that even though the sums collected may be large, we cannot afford tofly from place to place and pay high motor charges'. (He never flew in his life.Fly' meant move fast in cars.)Editorial offices and homes were being searched, presumably 0r seditiousmaterial. Individuals sent Gandhi reports of such measures. 'Let us thank thepolice,' he commented, 'that they were courteous.' The purpose of the raids, hedeclared, was 'to overawe and humiliate a whole people. This studiedhumiliation is one of the chosen methods which the ruling race considernecessary in order that they — though less than one hundred thousand — mayrule three hundred million people. It is a state of things we must strain everynerve to remedy. To command respect is the first step to Swaraj'.This was Gandhi's refrain: dignity, discipline and restraint would bring Indiansself-respect, therefore respect, therefore freedom.January 1, 1930, was not far off.Irwin returned to India in October after conferences lasting several months withmembers of the Labour government, his predecessor Lord Reading, LloydGeorge, Churchill, Stanley Baldwin, Sir John Simon and many others. TheViceroy found the situation in India 'bordering on a state of alarm'. Everythingwas ready for the great challenge of 1930.On the last day of October 1929, accordingly, Irwin made 'his momentousstatement' envisaging a Round Table Conference in which British governmentrepresentatives would sit with delegates from British India and from the nativestates. (The idea of such a conference with Indian participants had beenbroached before the Simon Commission was appointed, but Irwin would notwww.mkgandhi.org Page 295

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeslisten to it.) The statement declared that 'the natural issue of India'sconstitutional progress... is the attainment of Dominion Status'.By thus anticipating the recommendations of the Simon Commission, Irwinsuggested in effect that its labours were vain and its life ended. Indians, towhom it had become a red flag, were expected to appreciate this aspect of theViceroy’s move.A few days later, in Delhi, Gandhi met Dr. Ansari, Annie Besant, Motilal Nehru,Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, Pandi Malaviya, Srinivasa Sastri and others, and issued a'Leaders Manifesto'. Their response to the Viceroy's announcement wasfavourable, but they said, steps should be taken to induce 'a calmeratmosphere', political prisoners should be released and the Indian NationalCongress should have the largest representation at the forthcoming RoundTable Conference. They added a gloss: they understood the Viceroy to havesaid that the purpose of the conference was not to determine whether or whenDominion Status would be introduced but rather to draft a constitution for theDominion.The conciliatory attitude of Gandhi and the elder statesmen precipitated astorm of protest, especially from Jawaharlal Nehru, president-elect of theCongress party for 1930, and Subhas Chandra Bose. Undeterred, confident thata peaceful agreement with the British would be accepted by the nation, Gandhiand his colleagues continued their probings. They made an appointment withLord Irwin for the afternoon of December 23.That morning, Irwin returned by train from a tour of South India. At 7.40 a.m.the white cars of the Viceroy's train appeared out of the mist and approachedNew Delhi station. Three miles from the terminus, where the track is single, abomb exploded under the train. Only one person was hurt, and Irwin did notknow what happened until informed by his aide-de-camp.A far deadlier bomb had been prepared for the Viceroy in Westminster. LordReading led the attack in the House of Lords, and the Tories and Liberalscombined in the House of Commons to condemn Irwin's promise of a RoundTable Conference and Dominion Status. Wedgwood Benn and other labouriteswww.mkgandhi.org Page 296

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesdefended the Viceroy, but the result of the debate was to bring majorityparliamentary pressure to bear against ^ commitment in favour of DominionStatus.When Jinnah, Gandhi, Sapru, Motilal Nehru and Vithalbhai Patel entered theViceroy's office on the afternoon of December Gandhi congratulated theViceroy on his escape and then 0ceeded to detonate the long-fuse torpedomade in Parliament. The audience lasted for two and a half hours; Irwin andGandhi did most of the talking.Could his Excellency, Gandhi demanded, promise a Round Table Conferencewhich would draft a constitution giving India full and immediate DominionStatus including the right to secede from the Empire?Reflecting the Parliamentary debate, Irwin replied, in the words of hisbiographer, 'that he was unable to prejudge or commit the (Round Table)Conference at all to any particular line...'These events formed the overture to the historic annual Congress partyconvention which met, late in December, in Lahore, under the presidency ofJawaharlal Nehru who had celebrated his fortieth birthday the month before.At the second of time when the year 1929 ended and 1930 was born, theCongress, with Gandhi as stage director, unfurled the flag of freedom andacclaimed a resolution in favour of unabridged independence and secession.'Swaraj', Gandhi declared, 'is now to mean complete independence.' TheCongress convention instructed its members and fronds to withdraw from alllegislatures, and sanctioned civil disobedience including the non-payment oftaxes. The All-India Congress Committee was authorized to decide whenSatyagraha would commence but, as Gandhi said, 'I know that it is a dutydevolving primarily on me.' Everyone realized that Gandhi would have to be thebrain, heart and directing hand of any civil disobedience movement, and it wastherefore left to him to choose the hour, the place and the precise issue.www.mkgandhi.org Page 297

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter IIDrama At The SeashoreGANDHI was a reformer of individuals. Hence his concern for the meanswhereby India's liberation might be achieved. If the means corrupted theindividual the loss would be greater than the gain.Gandhi knew that the re-education of a nation was a slow process and he wasnot usually in a hurry unless prodded by events or by men reacting to thoseevents. Left to himself, he would not have forced the issue of independence in1930. But now the die was cast; Congress had decreed a campaign forindependence. The leader therefore became an obedient soldier.During the weeks after the stirring New Year's Eve independence ceremony,Gandhi searched for a form of civil disobedience that left no opening forviolence.Gandhi's monumental abhorrence of violence stemmed from the Jainist andBuddhist infusions into his Hinduism but, particularly, from his love of humanbeings. Every reformer, crusader and dictator avows his undying devotion theanonymous mass; Gandhi had an apparently endless Opacity to love theindividual men, women and children who crowded his life. He gave themtenderness and affection; he remembered their personal needs and he enjoyedcatering for their wants at the unnoticed expense of his limited time andenergy. H. N. Brailsford, the humane British Socialist, explains this by 'the factthat female tendencies were at least as strong in his mental makeup as male.They were evident for example, in his love of children, in the pleasure he tookin playing with them, and in the devotion he showed as a sick-nurse. Hisbeloved spinning wheel has always been a women's tool. And is not Satyagraha,the method of conquering by self- suffering, a woman's tactic?' Perhaps. Butmay be Brailsford is being unfair to men and too fair to the fair. Like Brailsford,everyone will interpret Gandhi's loving kindness according to his ownexperience. It wrapped the Mahatma's iron will and austerity in a downywww.mkgandhi.org Page 298

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timessoftness; one touch of it and most Indians forgave his blunders, quirks and fads.It ruled out anything that could lead to violence. In the successful BardoliSatyagraha in 1928, for instance, there was no violence, but there might havebeen. The peasants might have allowed themselves to be goaded into the useof force. The civil disobedience campaign of 1930, Gandhi felt, had to precludesuch potentials, for if it got out of hand no one, not even he, could control it.Rabindranath Tagore, for whom Gandhi had the deepest veneration, was in theneighbourhood of Sabarmati Ashram and came for a visit on January 18. Heinquired what Gandhi had in store for the country in 1930. 'I am furiouslythinking night and day,' Gandhi replied, 'and I do not see any light coming outof the surrounding darkness.'The situation made Gandhi apprehensive. 'There is a lot of violence in the air,'he said. The British government had altered the exchange rate of the rupee sothat India might import more from Lancashire; the Indian middle class suffered.The Wall Street crash of October 1929 and the spreading world economicdepression hit the Indian peasant. Working class unrest was mounting for allthese reasons, and because of the government's persecution of labourorganizers. Again, as in 1919 to 1921, a number of young Indians saw anopportunity of striking a bloody blow for freedom.Civil disobedience in these circumstances involved 'undoubted risks', but theonly alternative was 'armed rebellion'. Gandhi s confidence remained unshaken.For six weeks, Gandhi had been waiting to hear the 'Inner Voice'. This, as heinterpreted it, had no Joan-of-Arc connotations. 'The "Inner Voice", he wrote,'may mean a message from God or from the Devil, for both are wrestling in thehuman breast. Acts determine the nature of the voice.'Presently, Gandhi seemed to have heard the Voice, which could only mean thathe had come to a decision, for the February 27 issue of Young India openedwith an editorial by Gandhi entitled 'When I am Arrested', and then devotedconsiderable space to the iniquities of the salt tax. The next number of themagazine quoted the penal sections of the Salt Act. And on March 2, 1930,www.mkgandhi.org Page 299

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi sent a long letter to the Viceroy serving notice that civil disobediencewould begin in nine days.It was the strangest communication the head of a government ever received.Dear Friend,Before embarking on Civil Disobedience and taking the risk I have dreaded totake all these years, I would fain approach you and find a way out.My personal faith is absolutely clear. I cannot intentionally hurt anything thatlives, much less human beings, even though they may do the greatest wrong tome and mine. Whilst, therefore, I hold the British rule to be a curse, I do notintend harm to a single Englishman or to any legitimate interest he may have inIndia... And why do I regard the British rule as a curse?It has impoverished the dumb millions by a system of Progressive exploitationand by a ruinous expensive military and civil administration which the countrycan never afford.It has reduced us politically to serfdom. It has sapped the foundations of ourculture. And by the policy of cruel disarmament, it has degraded usspiritually...fear ... there never has been any intention of granting ...Dominion Status to India in the immediate future... It seems as clear as daylightthat responsible British statesmen do not contemplate any alteration in Britishpolicy that might adversely affect Britain's commerce with India ... If nothing isdone to end the process of exploitation India must be bled with an everincreasing speed...Let me put before you some of the salient points.The terrific pressure of land revenue, which furnishes a large part of the total,must undergo considerable modification in an Independent India... the wholerevenue system has to be so revised as to make the peasant's good its primaryconcern. But the British system seems to be designed to crush the very life outof him. Even the salt he must use to live is so taxed as to make the burden fallwww.mkgandhi.org Page 300

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesheaviest on him, if only because of the heartless impartiality of its incidence.The tax shows itself still more burdensome on the poor man when it isremembered that salt is the one thing he must eat more than the rich man ....The drink and drug revenue, too, is derived from the poor. It saps thefoundations both of their health and morals.The .iniquities sampled above are maintained in order to carry on a foreignadministration, demonstrably the most expensive in the world. Take your ownsalary. It is over 21,000 rupees (about $1750) per month, besides many otherindirect additions. You are getting over 700 rupees a day against India's averageincome of less than two annas (two pence) per day. Thus you are getting muchover five thousand times India's average income. The British Prime Minister isgetting only ninety times Britain's average income. On bended knee, I ask youto ponder over this phenomenon. I have taken a personal illustration to drivehome a painful truth. I have too great a regard for you as a man to wish to hurtyour feelings. I know that you do not need the salary you get. Probably thewhole of your salary goes for charity. But a system that provides for such anarrangement deserves to be summarily scrapped. What is true of the Viceregalsalary is true generally of the whole administration... Nothing but organizednon-violence can check the organized violence of the British government ...This non-violence will be expressed through civil disobedience, for the momentconfined to the inmates of the Satyagraha (Sabarmati) Ashram, but ultimatelydesigned to cover all those who choose to join the movement...My ambition is no less than to convert the British people through non-violence,and thus make them see the wrong they have done to India. I do not seek toharm your people. I want to serve them even as I want to serve my own... Ifthe (Indian) people join me as I expect they will, the sufferings they willundergo, unless the British nation sooner retraces its steps, will be enough tomelt the stoniest hearts.The plan through Civil Disobedience will be to combat such evils as I havesampled out... I respectfully invite you to pave the way for the immediateremoval of those evils, and thus open a way for a real conference betweenwww.mkgandhi.org Page 301

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesequals... But if you cannot see your way to deal with these evils and if myletter makes no appeal to your heart, on the eleventh day of this month I shallproceed with such co-workers of the Ashram as I can take, to disregard theprovisions of the Salt Laws... It is, I know, open to you to frustrate my designby arresting me. I hope that there will be tens of thousands ready, in adisciplined manner, to take up the work after me...If you care to discuss matters with me, and if to that end you would like me topostpone publication of this letter, I shall gladly refrain on receipt of atelegram...This letter is not in any way intended as a threat but is a simple and sacredduty peremptory on a civil resister. Therefore I am having it specially deliveredby a young English friend who believes in the Indian cause...I remain,Your sincere friend,M. K. GandhiThe messenger was Reginald Reynolds, a British Quaker who later wrote a bookon beards. Clad in khadi and a sun helmet, he entered the Viceroy's house anddelivered the letter to Irwin who had flown back from the polo matches atMeerut to receive it.Irwin chose not to reply. His secretary sent a four-line acknowledgementsaying, 'His Excellency... regrets to learn that you contemplate a course ofaction which is clearly bound to involve violation of the law and danger to thepublic peace.'This law-and-order note, which disdained to deal with matters of justice andpolicy, caused Gandhi to say, 'On bended knee I asked for bread and I receivedstone instead.' Irwin refused to see Gandhi. Nor did he have him arrested. 'Thegovernment', Gandhi declared, 'is puzzled and perplexed.' It was dangerous notto arrest the rebel, and dangerous to arrest him.www.mkgandhi.org Page 302

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAs March 11 neared, India bubbled with excitement and curiosity. Scores offoreign and domestic correspondents dogged Gandhi's footsteps in the ashram;what exactly would he do? Thousands surrounded the village and waited. Theexcitement spread abroad. Cables kept the Ahmedabad post office humming.'God guard you' the Reverend Dr. John Haynes Holmes wired from New York.Gandhi felt it was the 'opportunity of a lifetime'.On March 12, prayers having been sung, Gandhi and seventy- eight male andfemale members of the ashram, whose identities were published in Young Indiafor the benefit of the police, left Sabarmati for Dandi, due south ofAhmedabad. Gandhi leaned on a lacquered bamboo staff one inch thick andfifty-four inches long with an iron tip. Following winding dirt roads from villageto village, he and his seventy-eight disciples walked two hundred miles intwenty-four days. We are marching in the name of God,' Gandhi said.Peasants sprinkled the roads and strewed leaves on them. Every settlement inthe line of march was festooned an decorated with India's national colours.From miles around, peasants gathered to kneel by the roadside as the pilgrimspassed. Several times a day the marches halted for a meeting where theMahatma and others exhorted the people to wear khadi, abjure alcohol anddrugs, abandon child marriage, keep clean, live purely and — when the signalcame — break the Salt Laws.He had no trouble in walking. 'Less than twelve miles a day in two stages withnot much luggage,' he said. 'Child's play!' Several became fatigued and footsore,and had to ride in a bullock cart. A horse was available for Gandhi throughoutthe march but he never used it. The modern generation is delicate, weak, aridmuch pampered,' Gandhi commented. He was sixty- one. He spun everyday foran hour and kept a diary and required each ashramite to do likewise.In the area traversed, over three hundred village headmen gave up theirgovernment posts. The inhabitants of a village would accompany Gandhi to thenext village. Young men and women attached themselves to the marchingcolumn; when Gandhi reached the sea at Dandi on April 5, his small ashramband had grown into a non-violent army several thousand strong.www.mkgandhi.org Page 303

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe entire night of April 5, the ashramites prayed, and early in the morningthey accompanied Gandhi to the sea. He dipped into the water, returned to thebeach, and there picked up some salt left by the waves. Mrs. Sarojini Naidu,standing by his side, cried, 'Hail, Deliverer'. Gandhi had broken the British lawwhich made it a punishable crime to possess salt not obtained from the Britishgovernment salt monopoly. Gandhi, who had not used salt for six years, calledit a nefarious monopoly'. Salt, he said, is as essential as air and Water, and inIndia all the more essential to the hard-working, Perspiring poor man and hisbeasts because of the tropical heat.Had Gandhi gone by train or motor-car to make salt, the effect would havebeen considerable. But to walk for twenty- four days and rivet the attention ofall India, to trek across a country-side saying, "Watch, I am about to give asignal to the nation,' and then to pick up a pinch of salt in publicized defianceof the mighty government and thus become a criminal, that requiredimagination, dignity and the sense of showmanship of a great artist. It appealedto the illiterate peasant and it appealed to a sophisticated critic and sometimefierce opponent of Gandhi's like Subhas Chandra Bose who compared the SaltMarch to 'Napoleon's march to Paris on his return from Elba.'The act performed, Gandhi withdrew from the scene. India had its cue. Gandhihad communicated with it by lifting up some grains of salt.The next act was an insurrection without arms. Every villager on India's long seacoast went to the beach or waded into the sea with a pan to make salt. Thepolice began mass arrests. Ramdas, third son of Gandhi, with a large group ofashramites, was arrested. Pandit Malaviya and other moderate co-operatorsresigned from the Legislative Assembly. The police began to use violence. Civilresisters never resisted arrest; but they resisted the confiscation of the saltthey had made, and Mahadev Desai reported cases where such Indians werebeaten and bitten in the fingers by constables. Congress Volunteers openly soldcontraband salt in cities. Many were arrested and sentenced to short prisonterms. In Delhi, a meeting of fifteen thousand persons heard Pandit Malaviya'sappeal to the audience to boycott foreign cloth; he himself bought some illegalwww.mkgandhi.org Page 304

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timessalt after his speech. The police raided the Congress party headquarters inBombay where salt was being made m pans on the roof. A crowd of sixtythousand assembled. Hundreds were handcuffed or their arms fastened withropes and led off to jail. In Ahmedabad, ten thousand people obtained illegalsalt from Congress in the first week after the act at Dandi. They paid what theycould; if they had no money they got it free. The salt lifted by Gandhi from thebeach was sold to a Dr. Kanuga, the highest bidder, for 1600 rupees. JawaharlalNehru, the president of Congress, was arrested in Allahabad under the Salt Actsand sentenced to six months' imprisonment. The agitation and disobediencespread to the turbulent regions of Maharashtra and Bengal. In Calcutta, theMayor, J. M. Sengupta, read seditious literature aloud at a public meeting andurged non-wearing of foreign textiles.He was put in prison for six months. Picketing of liquor shops and foreign clothshops commenced throughout India. Girls and ladies from aristocratic familiesand from families where purdah had been observed came out into the streets todemonstrate. Police became vindictive and kicked resisters in sensitive parts.Civil resistance began in the province of Bihar. Seventeen Bihar Satyagrahis,including resigned members of Legislative Councils, were sentenced to periodsof from six months to two years in prison. A Swami who had lived in SouthAfrica received two and a half years. Teachers, professors and students madesalt at the sea and inland, and were marched to jails in batches. KishorlalMashruwala, a faithful disciple of Gandhi, and Jamnalal Bajaj, a rich friend ofGandhi's were sentenced to two years' imprisonment. In Karachi, the policefired on a demonstration; two young Volunteers were killed. 'Bihar has beendenuded of almost all its leaders,' Mahadev Desai wrote, 'but the result hasbeen the opening of many more salt centres.' Congress distributed literatureexplaining simple methods of producing salt. B. G. Kher and K- M. Munshi,leaders of the national Congress, were arrested m Bombay. Devadas Gandhi wassentenced to three months' imprisonment in Delhi. The salt movement and thearrests and imprisonments spread to Madras, the Punjab and the Carnatic(Karnatak). Many towns observed hartals when Congress leaders were arrested.www.mkgandhi.org Page 305

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAt Patna, in Bihar, a mass of many thousands moved out of the city to march toa spot where salt would be made. The police blocked the highway. The crowdstayed and slept on the road and in the fields for forty hours. Rajendra Prasad,who was present and told the 8t°ry, received orders from the police officer todisperse the crowd. He refused. The officer announced that he would chargewith cavalry. The crowd did not move. As the horses galloped forward, the menand women threw themselves flat on the ground. The horses stopped and didnot trample them. Constables then proceeded to lift the demonstrators andplace them in trucks for transportation to prison. Other demonstrators replacedthem. Mahadev Desai was arrested for bringing in a load of salt. In villages,millions of peasants were preparing their own salt. The British pressed localofficials to cope with the problem. The officials resigned. Vithalbhai Patel, theSpeaker of the Legislative Assembly, resigned. A large group of prominentwomen appealed to Lord Irwin to prohibit the sale of intoxicating beverages. AtKarachi, fifty thousand people watched as salt was made on the seashore. Thecrowd was so dense the policemen were surrounded and could make no arrests.At Peshawar, the key to the volatile north-west Frontier Province, an armoredcar, in which the Deputy Police Commissioner was seated, first ran full-tilt intoa crowd and then machine-gunned it, killing seventy and wounding about onehundred. In parts of Bengal, in the United Provinces and in Gujarat, peasantsrefused to pay rent and the land tax. The Government tried to place allnationalist newspapers under censorship, whereupon most of them voluntarilysuspended publication. Congress provincial offices were sealed and theirproperty and office paraphernalia confiscated. Rajagopalachan was arrested inMadras and given a nine months' sentence. The wild Afridi tribe, in the northwestfrontier Tribal Area, attacked British patrols. In the city of Chittagong,Bengal, a band of violent revolutionists raided the arsenal to seize arms. Somewere killed.The Viceroy says Irwin's biographer 'had filled the jails with no less than sixtythousand political offenders'. Estimates ran as high as a hundred thousand. 'Amere recital of action taken by him during this time', the biography affirms,'belies once for all the legend that he was a weak Viceroy- Those who werewww.mkgandhi.org Page 306

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesresponsible for executing his orders tens that his religious convictions seemedto reinforce the very ruthlessness of his policy of suppression...'A month after Gandhi touched salt at the Dandi beach, India was seething inangry revolt. But, except at Chittagong, there was no Indian violence, andnowhere was there any Congress violence. Chauri Chaura in 1922 had taughtIndia a lesson. Because they treasured the movement Gandhi had conjured intobeing, and lest he cancel it, they abstained from force.May 4, Gandhi's camp was at Karadi, a village near Dandi. He had gone to sleepon a cot under a shed beneath the branches of an old mango tree. Severaldisciples slept by his side. Elsewhere in the grove, other ashramites were indeep slumber. At 12.45 a.m., in the night of May 4 to 5, heavy steps wereheard. Thirty Indian policemen armed with rifles, pistols and lances, two Indianofficers, and the British District Magistrate of Surat invaded the leafycompound. A party of armed constables entered Gandhi's shed and the Englishofficer turned the flashlight on Gandhi's face. Gandhi awoke, looked about him,and said to the Magistrate, 'Do you want me?''Are you Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi?' the Magistrate asked for the sake ofform.Gandhi admitted it.The officer said he had come to arrest him.'Please give me time for my ablutions,' Gandhi said politely.The Magistrate agreed.While brushing his few teeth, Gandhi said, 'Mr. District Magistrate, may I knowunder which charge I am arrested. Is Section 124?''No, not under Section 124. I have got a written order.'By this time, all the sleepers in the compound had crowded around the shed.'Please, would you mind reading it to me?' Gandhi asked.The Magistrate (reading): 'Whereas the Governor-in-Council views with alarmthe activities of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, he directs that the saidwww.mkgandhi.org Page 307

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesMohandas Karamchand Gandhi should be placed under restraint underRegulation XXXV of 1827, and suffer imprisonment during the pleasure of theGovernment, and that he be immediately removed to the Yeravda Central Jail.'At 1 a.m. Gandhi was still cleaning his teeth. The officer told hirn to hurry.Gandhi packed some necessities and papers in a small bag. Turning to theofficer, he said, 'Please give me a few minutes more for prayer.'The officer nodded in assent, and Gandhi requested Pandit Khare to recite afamous Hindu hymn. The ashramites sang. Gandhi lowered his head and prayed.Then he stepped to the side of the Magistrate who led him to the waitingvehicle.There was no trial, no sentence and no fixed term of imprisonment. The arresttook place under an ordinance, passed before a British government existed inIndia, which regulated the relations between the East India Company and Indianpotentates.The prison authorities measured Gandhi and noted his height: five feet fiveinches. They also made sure to have his special identification marks in casethey needed to find him again: a scar on the right thigh, a small mole on thelower right eyelid, and a scar about the size of a pea below the left elbow.Gandhi loved it in jail. 'I have been quite happy and making up for arrears insleep,' he wrote to Miss Madeleine Slade, a week after his imprisonment. Hewas treated extremely well; the prison goat was milked in his presence. On hisday of silence he wrote a letter to the little children in the ashram.Little birds, ordinary birds cannot fly without wings. With wings, of course, allcan fly. But if you, without wings, vrill learn how to fly, then all your troubleswill indeed be at a*1 end. And I will teach you.See, I have no wings, yet I come flying to you everyday in thought. Look, here islittle Vimala, here is Hari and here is Dharmakumar. And you can also comeflying to me in thought...Tell me too who amongst you are not praying properly in Prabhubhai's eveningprayer.www.mkgandhi.org Page 308

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSend me a letter signed by all, and those who do not know how to sign maymake a cross.Bapu's blessings.Just before his arrest, Gandhi had drafted a letter to the Viceroy announcinghis intention, 'God willing", to raid the Dharasana Salt Works with somecompanions. God, apparently, was not willing, but the companions proceededto effect the plan. Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, the poetess, led twenty-five hundredVolunteers to the site one hundred and fifty miles north of Bombay and, aftermorning prayers, warned them that they would be beaten Taut', she said, 'youmust not resist; you must not even raise a hand to ward off a blow'.Webb Miller, the well-known correspondent of the United Press who died inEngland dining the second World War, was on the scene and described theproceedings. Manilal Gandhi moved forward at the head of the marchers andapproached the great salt pans which were surrounded by ditches and barbedwireand guarded by four hundred Surat policemen under the command of sixBritish officers. 'In complete silence the Gandhi men drew up and halted ahundred yards from the stockade. A picked column advanced from the crowd,waded the ditches, and approached the barbed-wire stockade.' The policeofficers ordered them to retreat. They continued to advance. 'Suddenly,' WebbMiller reported, 'at a word of command, scores of native policemen rushedupon the advancing marchers and rained blows on their heads with their steelshodlathis. Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend off the blows.They went down like nine-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whackof the clubs on unprotected skulls. The waiting crowd of marchers groaned andsucked in their breath in sympathetic pain at every blow. Those struck downfell sprawling, unconscious or writhing with fractured skulls or brokenshoulders... The survivors without breaking ranks, silently and doggedlymarched on until struck down.' When the first column was laid low, anotheradvanced. 'Although everyone knew,' Webb Miller wrote, 'that within a fewminutes he would be beaten down, perhaps killed, I could detect no signs ofwavering or fear. They marched steadily, with heads up, without thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 309

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesencouragement of music or cheering or any possibility that they might escapeserious injury or death. The police rushed out and methodically andmechanically beat down the second column. There was no fight, no struggle;the marchers simply walked forward till struck down.'Another group of twenty-five advanced and sat down. 'The police', Webb Millertestifies, 'commenced savagely kicking the seated men in the abdomen andtesticles.' Another column advanced and sat down. Enraged, the police draggedthem by their arms and feet and threw them into the ditches. 'One was draggedto a ditch where I stood,' Miller wrote, 'the splash of his body doused me withmuddy water. Another policeman dragged a Gandhi man to the ditch, threwhim in, and belaboured him over the head with his lathi. Hour after hourstretcher-bearers carried back a stream of inert, bleeding bodies.'A British officer approached Mrs. Naidu, touched her arm, and said, 'SarojiniNaidu, you are under arrest.' She shook off his hand. 'I'll come,' she declared,'but don't touch me.' Manilal was also arrested.'By eleven (in the morning)', Webb Miller continued, 'the heat had reached 116and the activities of the Gandhi volunteers subsided'. He went to the temporaryhospital and counted three hundred and twenty injured, many of them stillunconscious, others in agony from the body and head blows-Two men had died. The same scenes were repeated for several days.India was now free. Technically, legally, nothing had changed. India was still aBritish colony. Tagore explained the difference. Those who live in England, faraway from the East,' he told the Manchester Guardian of May 17, 1930, 'havenow got to realize that Europe has completely lost her former moral prestige inAsia. She is no longer regarded as the champion throughout the world of fairdealing and the exponent of high principle, but as the upholder of Western racesupremacy and the exploiter of those outside her own borders.'For Europe this is, in actual fact, a great moral defeat that has happened. Eventhough Asia is still physically weak and unable to protect herself fromaggression where her vital interests are menaced, nevertheless she can nowwww.mkgandhi.org Page 310

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesafford to -look down on Europe where before she looked up.' He attributed theachievement in India to Mahatma Gandhi.Gandhi did two things in 1930: he made the British people aware that theywere cruelly subjugating India, and he gave Indians the conviction that theycould, by lifting their heads and straightening their spines, lift the yoke fromtheir shoulders. After that, it was inevitable that Britain should some dayrefuse to rule India and that India should some day refuse to be ruled.The British beat the Indians with batons and rifle butts. The Indians neithercringed nor complained nor retreated. That made England powerless and Indiainvincible.www.mkgandhi.org Page 311

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter IIIParleys With The RebelMANY British Labour ministers and their supporters were champions of Indianindependence. Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald could be faced with his ownunequivocal statements in favour of India's freedom. It was embarrassing forLabour to keep Gandhi and tens of thousands of Indian nationalists in jail. ToLord Irwin, Gandhi's imprisonment was more than an embarrassment; itparalysed his administration. Revenues dropped steeply. Unrest mounted. Whenthe news of Gandhi's arrest reached industrial Sholapur, in the BombayPresidency or province, the population overpowered the police, raised thenational flag, and declared themselves independent of British rule. InPeshawar, the police surrendered the city to the non-violent, religious 'RedShirts', an organization led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the 'Frontier Gandhi'.The army appeared three days later and machine-gunned peaceful citizens. Buta platoon of Garhwal Rifles, famous Hindu regiment of the British Army,mutinied, refused to fire on Moslems, and were court- martialled andsentenced to ten to fourteen years' hard labour. On June 30, Motilal Nehru wasarrested. More than a hundred thousand Indians, and almost all Congress first,second, third- rank leaders were in prison.The situation was politically intolerable for MacDonald and Irwin. Gandhi in jailwas as much a nuisance as Gandhi on the march or at the beach or in theashram.Conscious of their dilemma and of the growing revolt, the authorities permittedGeorge Slocomb, handsome, red- bearded correspondent of the London Labourpaper, the Daily Herald, to interview Gandhi in prison, on May 19 and 20, onlytwo weeks after the Mahatma's arrest. Gandhi gave Slocombe the terms onwhich he would be ready to negotiate with the British government. In July,with the Viceroy's consent, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru and Mr. M. R. Jayakar, leadersof the moderates, went to Gandhi's cell for parleys. Gandhi was glad to talk tothem but said he could not reply to overtures before he consulted the Congresswww.mkgandhi.org Page 312

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesWorking Committee. Motilal and Jawaharlal Nehru, father and son, and SyedMohamud, the acting secretary of Congress, were accordingly transported in aspecial train, with every comfort and courtesy, from their jail in the UnitedProvinces to Gandhi's jail at Poona where Mrs. Naidu and Vallabhbhai Patelwere also confined. Irwin willingly brought his prisoners together, but WorkingCommittee members still at liberty were not allowed to participate in theseprison conversations.After two days' discussion (August 14-15), the leaders announced publicly that'an unbridgeable gulf separated them from the British position.The first Round Table Conference opened in London on November 12, 1930;Jinnah, the Maharaja of Bikaner, Srinivasa Sastri and others were there. NoCongress representative attended. The conference accomplished nothing. Butthe Labour government's conciliatory attitude was apparent throughout;indeed, at the closing session, on January 19, 1931, Ramsay MacDonaldexpressed the hope that Congress would send delegates to the second RoundTable Conference.Irwin gladly took the hint—or the command—and unconditionally releasedGandhi, the Nehrus, and more than twenty other Congress leaders on January26, Independence Day. In appreciation of this graceful gesture, Gandhi wrote aletter to the Viceroy asking for an interview. 'Face-saving" was an unintelligibleconcept to Gandhi. He did not believe in ending a relationship that could bemended, and since he had an undying faith in mending, he tried never to end apersonal or political relationship.The first meeting between Irwin and Gandhi began on February 17, at 2-30p.m., and lasted till 6.10 p.m. 'So the stage was set', writes Irwin's biographer,'for the most dramatic personal encounter between a Viceroy and an Indianleader in the whole seething history of the British raj.'It was more than dramatic; the mere fact of the encounter was historicallydecisive. Winston Churchill, always clear- eyed, saw this better than anyone.He was revolted by 'the nauseating and humiliating spectacle of this one-timeInner Temple lawyer, now seditious fakir, striding half-naked up the steps ofwww.mkgandhi.org Page 313

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesthe Viceroy's palace, there to negotiate and to parley on equal terms with therepresentative of the King- Emperor'.A fakir is an Indian mendicant monk.Churchill realized that it was not an ordinary interview. Gandhi did not come,like most of the Viceroy's visitors, to ask favours. He came as the leader of anation to negotiate 'on equal terms' with the leader of another nation. The SaltMarch and its aftermath had proved that England could not rule India against orwithout Gandhi. The British Empire was at the mercy of the half-naked fakir,and Churchill did not like it. Churchill saw that Britain was conceding India'sindependence in principle while withholding it, for the time being, in practice.The negotiations between Irwin and Gandhi took place in the Viceroy's newpalace, designed by the gifted British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. Risingsuddenly, high, expensive and resplendent, out of the flat Delhi plain amidstthe ruins of Mogul mosques and forts, it symbolized the towering might of theBritish raj. But almost the first act within its halls marked the beginning of theend of that power.Gandhi and Irwin conferred again for three hours on February 18, and for halfan hour on the 19. Meanwhile Irwin was cabling his superiors six thousand milesaway in London, while Gandhi held long meetings with the Congress WorkingCommittee members in New Delhi. (The great Motilal Nehru had died onFebruary 6.) Shuttling between the two parties, Sapru, Jayakar and Sastristrove to prevent a deadlock.Once, during a conference, Irwin asked Gandhi whether he would have tea.'Thank you,' said Gandhi, taking a paper bag out of a fold in his shawl, 'I will putsome of this salt into my tea to remind us of the famous Boston Tea Party.' Bothlaughed.Difficulties arose. There were no talks for seven days. On February 27 theywere resumed. On March 1, Gandhi came to Irwin at 2.30 p.m. The discussionscontinued till his dinner time, so Miss Slade had brought his dinner —forty datesand a pint of goat's milk—to the palace and Gandhi ate it in the presence of thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 314

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesViceroy. At 5.50 p.m. Gandhi left the Viceroy, but that same evening hewalked, unescorted, from Dr. Ansari's house, where he was staying, to thepalace, a distance of five miles, and remained closeted with Irwin till aftermidnight. 'Good night,' Irwin said to him as he departed to trudge home alonein the darkness. Good night, Mr. Gandhi, and my prayers go with you.' Gandhireached home at 2 a.m. The Working Committee was waiting for him.Finally, after further wrangling between the two men and between each ofthem and their colleagues, the Irwin-Gandhi Pact, or The Delhi Pact as Irwin'sbiographer calls it, was signed after breakfast on March 5. The key word is'Pact'. Two national statesmen had signed a pact, a treaty, an agreed text;every phrase and stipulation of which had been hammered out in toughbargaining. British spokesmen maintained that Irwin won the battle, and a goodcase could be made for the contention. But in the long-range terms in whichthe Mahatma thought, the equality that had been established, in principle,between India and England was more important than any practical concessionwhich he might have wrung from the reluctant Empire. A politician would havesought more substance. Gandhi was satisfied with the essence: a basis for anew relationship.For the millions, and for history, the thousands of words of the Pact with itsmany articles, headings and sub-headings which appeared in the officialGazette of India Extraordinary of March 5, 1931, meant: civil disobediencewould be called off, prisoners released, and salt manufacture permitted on thecoast; Congress would attend the next Round Table Conference in London.Independence was not promised. Dominion Status was not promised.In an address to American and Indian journalists that day, Gandhi paid a tributeto the Viceroy. 'I am aware,' he told the newsmen, 'that I must have, thoughquite unconsciously, given him cause for irritation. I must also have tried hispatience, but I cannot recall an occasion when he allowed himself to bebetrayed into irritation or impatience.' The settlement, Gandhi said, was'provisional' and 'conditional; a 'truce'. The goal remained: 'completeindependence... India cannot be satisfied with anything less... The Congresswww.mkgandhi.org Page 315

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesdoes not consider India to be a sickly child requiring nursing, outside help andother props.'One has a feeling, in reviewing Gandhi's 1930 negotiations, that he viewedthem at the time in the perspective of several decades later. What does thephraseology or even content of Article 2 matter now? Seventeen years after theDelh1 Pact, India was an independent nation. What are seventeen years in thelife of an old nation like India?Subhas Chandra Bose, critic of the Mahatma, watching the public reactionduring a tour with Gandhi after the Pact was signed, wrote, 'I wonder if such aspontaneous ovation was ever given to a leader anywhere else.' And Boseadmitted that Irwin, 'though a prominent member of the Conservative party ....had proved himself to be a well-wisher of India'. To Gandhi, who was oftenguided in politics by his responses to persons, this warranted the signing of thePact.The moment the Pact was signed, complaints of non- fulfilment were levelledagainst the Government, and soon Gandhi was again negotiating, this time withthe new Viceroy, Lord Willingdon. Adjustments made, the Congress conventionat Karachi which, according to Bose, was 'the pinnacle of the Mahatma'spopularity and prestige', elected Gandhi its sole delegate to the second RoundTable Conference.At noon on August 29, Gandhi sailed from Bombay aboard the S. S. Rajputana.Accompanying him in various capacities were Pandit Malaviya, Mrs. Naidu, hisson Devadas, Mahadev Desai who, Gandhi said, 'out-Boswelled Boswell', PyarelalNayyar, a secretary and disciple, Miss Slade, who had made India herpermanent home and Gandhi her spiritual father, and G. D. Birla, the big Indianindustrialist. 'There is every chance of my returning empty-handed,' he said onembarking.Gandhi had given orders that he and his party should travel by the lowest class.When he discovered how much luggage they had brought he saw to it thatseven suitcases and trunks were sent back from Aden. He himself spent most ofthe day and all night on deck, spinning, writing, sleeping, eating, praying,www.mkgandhi.org Page 316

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timestalking and playing with child Passengers. Like so many steamship passengersthe world °ver, he was the Captain's guest on the bridge, where he lookedthrough the sextant and steered the ship for a minute.Gandhi arrived in London on September 12, and remained in England untilDecember 5. He stayed in an East End Settlement House called Kingsley Hall asguest of Muriel Lester who had visited him in 1926. Kingsley Hall is five milesfrom the centre of the city and from St. James' Palace where the Round TableConference sat.Friends told him that he would save many hours for work and sleep if he livedin an hotel, but he did not want to spend the money. Nor would he availhimself of the hospitality of Indians and Englishmen who had big houses nearerthe heart of London. He would come home to Kingsley Hall every evening, oftenvery late, because, he said, he enjoyed living among his own kind, the poorpeople. To spare interviewers the necessity of coming all the way to the EastEnd, however, he agreed, under pressure, to keep a little office at 88Knightsbridge. (The building was destroyed in the second World War).In the mornings, he walked through the slum streets around Kingsley Hall, andwomen and men going to work would smile and greet him and some would joinhim for conversation; he visited several in their homes. Children ran up andheld his hand. 'Uncle Gandhi', they called him. One mischievous youngsteryelled, 'Hey. Gandhi, where's your trousers?' The Mahatma laughed heartily.Questioned by a reporter about his dress, Gandhi said, "You people wear plusfours,mine are minus fours.' Gandhi was wonderful newspaper copy, andjournalists covered every move he made. The dailies and weeklies in Europeand America eagerly sought special features about him. George Slocombe wrotea story about Gandhi's generosity and as an illustration said that when thePrince of Wales visited India the Mahatma prostrated himself before him. Thenext time Gandhi saw Slocomb, he smiled and said, Well, Mr- Slocombe, thisdoes not even do credit to your imagination- I would bend the knee before thepoorest untouchable m India for having participated in crushing him forcenturies,www.mkgandhi.org Page 317

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesI would take the dust off his feet. But I would not prostrate myself, not evenbefore the King, much less before the Prince of Wales, for the simple reasonthat he represented insolent might.' Gandhi went to Buckingham Palace to havetea with King George V and Queen Mary. On the eve of the event, all Englandwas agog over what he would wear. He wore a loincloth, sandals, a shawl andhis dangling watch. Later, someone asked Gandhi whether he had had enoughon. 'The King*, he replied, 'had enough on for both of us.'David Lloyd George, Britain's war-time Prime Minister, invited Gandhi to hisfarm at Churt, in Surrey. They talked for three hours. In 1938, when I saw LloydGeorge at Churt, he mentioned the Gandhi visit. He said the servants did whatno guest had ever inspired them to do; they all came out to meet the holy man.Four years later, I told Gandhi that Lloyd George had talked to me about hisvisit. "Yes,' Gandhi queried eagerly."What did he say?''He told me that you squatted on his couch and just as you got settled a blackcat they had never seen before entered through the window and rested in yourlap.'That's correct,' Gandhi recalled.'And when you left, Lloyd George said, the cat disappeared.''Ah', Gandhi said, 'that I don't know'.Lloyd George,' I continued, 'said that the same cat returned when Miss Sladevisited him at Churt.'"That too I don't know,'. Gandhi declared.As soon as Gandhi reached England he inquired about Colonel Maddock who hadperformed the operation on him j0r appendicitis in 1924, and the moment hefound some leisure he went down to spend some hours at the home of Coloneland Mrs. Maddock near Reading where they sat in the beautiful garden andreminisced and told one another they did not look a year older.www.mkgandhi.org Page 318

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesCharlie Chaplin asked to see Gandhi. Gandhi had never heard of him; he hadnever seen a moving picture. On being enlightened, Gandhi said no, he had nospecial interest in actors. But when told that Chaplin came from a poor familyin the London East End, he received him at the home of Dr. Katial. Theencounter turned into a competition between toothless and toothsome smilingand the inevitable discussion about Gandhi's attitude to the machine, whichwas Chaplin's first question. The answer may have inspired one of the actor'ssubsequent films.George Bernard Shaw also paid his respects. With unusual modesty he gave thepalm to Gandhi and called himself 'Mahatma Minor'. ‘You and I,' he said, 'belongto a very small community on earth.' They touched on a score of subjects andShaw's humour immensely amused 'Mahatma Major', but it cannot be said thatGandhi liked the playwright's love of the word that shocks. Neither had Tolstoy.Gandhi met Lord Irwin, General Smuts, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Deanof Canterbury, Harold J. Laski, C. P. Scott, the retired editor of the ManchesterGuardian, Arthur Henderson and hundreds of others. Churchill declined to seehim. Smuts said, apropos South Africa, 'I did not give you such a bad time asyou gave me.''I did not know that,' Gandhi apologized.At the Montessori Training College Gandhi joyously drank in the beautifulrhythmic exercises of the healthy, happy children who made him think, withsadness, of 'the millions of children in semi-starved Indian villages'. MadameMaria Montessori introduced him as 'Noble Master'. Thought o world civilizationand thought of the child,' she said, 'that is what links us...' In his speech,Gandhi declared, 'I believe implicitly that the child is not born mischievous inthe bad sense of the term. If parents behave themselves while the child isgrowing, the child will instinctively obey the law of truth and the law of love ...From my experience of hundreds—I was going to say thousands—of children, Iknow that they have a finer sense of honour than you and I have... Jesus neveruttered a loftier or grander truth than when he said that wisdom cometh out ofthe mouths of babes. I believe it....'www.mkgandhi.org Page 319

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesWith what is regarded as typical American enterprise, the ColumbiaBroadcasting System arranged for a radio address to the United States the dayafter Gandhi's arrival in England. He refused to prepare a script and spokeextemporaneously. In the studio, he eyed the microphone, and said, 'Do I haveto speak into that?' He was already on the air.India's struggle, Gandhi stated, had drawn the attention of the world notbecause Indians were fighting for their freedom, but because 'the meansadopted by us for attaining that liberty are unique, and as far as history showsus, have not been adopted by any other people... Hitherto, nations have foughtin the manner of the brute. They have wreaked vengeance upon those whomthey have considered to be their enemies... We in India', Gandhi continued,'have endeavored to reverse the process. We feel that the law that governsbrute creation... is inconsistent with human dignity. I personally would wait, ifneed be for ages rather than seek attain the freedom of my country throughbloody means. I feel in the innermost recesses of my heart... that the world lssick unto death of blood-spilling. The world is seeking a way out and I flattermyself with the belief that perhaps will be the privilege of the ancient land ofIndia to show e way out to the hungering world...''It is a matter of deep humiliation to confess that we are a house dividedagainst itself, that we Hindus and Mussulmans are flying at one another. It is amatter of still deeper humiliation that we Hindus regard several milli0n of ourown kith and kin as too degraded even for our touch'He then elaborated on the curse of drink and of drugs and on the destruction,by the East India Company, of village industries for the benefit of Britishmanufacturers. At this juncture, a note was passed to Gandhi saying his timewas almost up and New York would cut him off in three minutes Unperturbed,he delved still further into the economics of British rule, and closed with aplea: 'May I not, then, on behalf of other semi-starved millions, appeal to theconscience of the world to come to the rescue of people dying to regain itsliberty?'www.mkgandhi.org Page 320

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe C.B.S. producer signalled to stop. 'Well, that's over,' Gandhi said. He wasstill on the air. His voice was clear and the reception perfect.In his eighty-four days in England, Gandhi visited Eton, Cambridge, where hesentimentally asked to be taken to Trinity, which was Jawaharlal Nehru's and C.F. Andrews' college, and Oxford, and addressed scores of public meetings ofwomen's organizations, Quakers, Indian students, Indian merchants, Britishstudents, Labourites, Members of Parliament, the London School of Economics,The American Journalists Association, which arranged a vegetarian luncheon atthe Savoy in deference to his habits, Friends of India, Temperance Society,Vegetarians, etc. etc.Gandhi's two weekends at Oxford were memorable. He stayed with ProfessorLindsay, the Master of Balliol, who later became a peer, Lord Lindsay of Birker.'Both my wife and I,' Lindsay wrote in 1948, 'that having him in our house waslike having a saint in the house. He showed that mar of a great and simple manthat he treated everyone with the same courtesy and respect whether onewere a distinguish statesman or an unknown student. Anyone who was inearnest in wanting an answer to a question got a real one.’Another view of Gandhi at Oxford was expressed by Dr Edward Thompson, atwhose home, on his second Oxonian weekend, Gandhi had a discussion with agroup that included the Master of Balliol, Gilbert Murray, Professor S.Coupland, Sir Michael Sadler, P. C. Lyon and other trained minds. 'He can beexasperating,' Professor Thompson remarked after Gandhi's visit.Describing the intellectual joust, Thompson said, 'For three hours he was siftedand cross-examined... It was a reasonably exacting ordeal, yet not for amoment was he rattled or at a loss. The conviction came to me, that not sinceSocrates has the world seen his equal for absolute self-control and composure;and once or twice, putting myself in the place of men who had to confront thatinvincible calm and imperturbability, I thought I understood why the Atheniansmade "the martyr-sophist" drink the hemlock. Like Socrates, he has a "daemon".And when the "daemon" has spoken, he is as unmoved by argument as bydanger.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 321

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesApparently, not all those present possessed the Socratic imperturbability, forProfessor Thompson says, 'I can still hear Lindsay's desperate tones, as he citedCromwell's appeal to the Presbyterian ministers—"In the bowels of Christ, Ibeseech you to think it possible that you may be mistaken"- and added, "Mr.Gandhi! Think it possible that you may be mistaken!" Mr. Gandhi did not think itpossible.'But Mahadev Desai was there, taking notes as usual, and he records Gandhi aspleading for 'the liberty to make mistakes'. On the other hand, Gandhi wasadamant in defending civil disobedience; he would never give it up. 'I will notpurchase my country's freedom at the cost of non- violence ' he told theprofessors who thought they could not Mistaken. You may be justified' Gandhiadmitted, 'in saying that I must go more warily, but if you attack thefundamentals you have to convince me'. They failed.In all Gandhi's public and private, official and unofficial utterances during hiseighty-four days in England, he tried, above all else, to clarify what he meantby the independence of India.'How far would you cut India off from the Empire?' a member of the audience atthe Raleigh Club asked.'From the Empire entirely,' Gandhi replied. 'From the British nation not at all, ifI want India to gain and not to grieve. The Emperorship must go and I shouldlove to be an equal partner with Britain sharing her joys and sorrows and anequal partner with the Dominions. But it must be a partnership on equal terms.'He advocated 'an honourable partnership... We can have a partnership betweenEngland and India... I still aspire to be a citizen not in the Empire, but in aCommonwealth, in a partnership if possible; if God will it, an indissolublepartnership, but not a partnership superimposed upon one nation by another...The Congress does not stand merely for isolated independence which may easilybecome a menace to the world... I would heartily welcome the union of Eastand West provided it is not based on brute force... England and India (shouldbe) bound by the silken cord of love- India as an independent partner wouldhave a special contribution to make in a world which is getting weary of warwww.mkgandhi.org Page 322

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesand bloodshed. In case of an outbreak of war it would be the common effort ofIndia and Great Britain to prevent war, not indeed by force of arms, but by theirresistible force of example'.In these statements, Gandhi described precisely, and with remarkableprevision, the status which independent India voluntarily assumed in theCommonwealth in 1948. More, the protagonists of that move used the veryargument —and almost the exact words—which Gandhi had used in Londonseventeen years earlier. Gandhi saw that the only beneficent independence wasthe kind that led to interdependence. 'Isolated independence is not the goal',he said. 'It is voluntary interdependence'. He arrived at this conclusion throughno abstruse theorizing about internationalism or world government. Gandhi wasaddicted to love; it was the basis of his relations with people. Love is creativeinterdependence. And since Gandhi regarded nations not as abstract legalentities but as agglomerations of human beings with names, noses, aches andsmiles, he believed that international relationships should be founded oninterdependence and love.Gandhi had been criticized for acquiescing in Article Two of the Irwin-DelhiPact of March 5, 1931, which stated that in the contemplated constitution ofIndia, England would retain control over defence, foreign affairs, minorityproblems and financial obligations to foreign creditors. It was a severelimitation on freedom. Gandhi took the criticism to heart. Indeed, the Congressconvention in Karachi at the end of March 1931, instructed Gandhi to changehis position on this key question. Gandhi, accordingly, told British audiencesthat 'it is part of the mandate given to me by Congress that completeindependence would be meaningless unless it was accompanied by completecontrol over finance, defence and external affairs'. This reversal in Gandhi'sattitude exasperated the British; he had gone back on his signature. Gandhi hada technical justification in the mandate of Congress, his master. Actually, heattached no political importance to the stipulation in the Delhi Pact and onlypropaganda importance to his advocacy of the opposite in London. England waswww.mkgandhi.org Page 323

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesnot yet parting with power in India. That was the crucial fact. Hair-splittingover who would control what was therefore futile.This being his approach, Gandhi concentrated more on convincing the Britishpeople than on debating with the British government at the Round TableConference. 'I find that my work lies outside the Conference,' he told anaudience. Referring to his efforts to explain India to England he said, 'This tome is the real Round Table Conference... The seed which is being sown nowmay result in softening the British spirit... and in preventing the brutalizationof human beings.' He made friends through his charm, frankness, humanity andaccessibility. He won the hearts of the Christians in England who recognizedhim as a big brother and ally. He touched what was Christian in all Englishmen.He found an echo in their common sense; it was clear after his visit that someday, sooner than some thought, sooner than Churchill wished, India would beliberated. Many considered him 'difficult', and he undoubtedly could be. But hemoderated the hostility of the most rabid. He even walked into the lion's denand went to Lancashire where his agitation against foreign cloth and in favourof khadi had caused unemployment and loss of profits. At a meeting, one mansaid, 'I am one of the unemployed, but if I was in India I would say the samething that Mr. Gandhi is saying.' There is a telling photograph, taken outside theGreenfield Mill at Darwen, Lancashire, showing Gandhi wrapped in white cottonfrom neck to knee, overcome with coyness and squeezed in amidst cottonfactory workers, most of them women, one of them holding his hand, and all ofthem, young, old, male, female, cheering the Mahatma and smiling. He madefriends among those whom he hurt.The Government assigned two Scotland Yard detectives, Sergeant Evans andSergeant Rogers, to guard Gandhi; they were special policemen, giants instature, usually assigned to protecting royalty. They grew to like 'the littleman'. Unlike most prominent personalities in such circumstances, Gandhi didnot keep them at arm's length or ignore them. He talked to them and visitedtheir homes. Before leaving England, he begged that they be allowed towww.mkgandhi.org Page 324

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesaccompany him to Brindisi, Italy- The bureaucrat asked the reason for thisstrange request.'Because they are part of my family,' Gandhi answered, prom India he sent eacha watch engraved with love from M. K. Gandhi.'Between lectures, speeches, forums, press interviews, trips, innumerableindividual appointments, and answering a mountain of mail—all with a view toconquering Britain's heart—he attended to the official business which hadbrought him to London: the second Round Table Conference. His official andunofficial activities unusually kept him busy twenty-one hours a day; diariespreserved show that he sometimes got to bed at 2 a.m., awoke at 3.45 a.m.,for prayers, rested again from 5 to 6 a.m., and had no respite from then till thenext morning at 1 or 2 a.m. The schedule wore him out; he delighted in drivinghis body to the maximum of endurance and beyond. As a result, what he gavethe Round Table Conference was not of his best quality, yet the participantsheard some remarkable, and certainly unique, utterances from his lips. Heattended regularly, although most plenary sessions and committee meetingsbored him; they were so political that he lost all sense of their reality. Often hesat with eyes closed. He may have slept a few winks.The purpose of the Round Table Conference was 'constitution- building' forIndia. Lord Reading, a member of the British delegation, formulated the Britishpurpose in one sentence: 'I believe that the true policy between Britain andIndia is that we should in this country strive all we can to give effect to theviews of India while preserving at the same time our own position, which wemust not and cannot abandon.'How could England give effect to the views of India while remaining themistress of India?The Round Table Conference was worse than a failure.By intensifying the religious divisions of India it exercised sinister, tragicinfluence on the future.www.mkgandhi.org Page 325

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe Conference consisted of 112 delegates: 20 representing the government ofthe United Kingdom, 23 from princely India—rajas, maharajas, nawabs and theirsubordinates- and 64 from British India. The Viceroy appointed the princes,and, with the exception of Gandhi, Mrs. Naidu and a few others, he appointedthe visitors from British India.His selections were careful and purposeful. The British government advocated afederation of princely India, which was roughly a third of India, with BritishIndia. This would have introduced the weight of the autocratic princes, Britishpuppets all, into the government of India. Thus what seemed like theunification of the two Indias was calculated to strengthen feudal, medievalreaction and reinforce British rule.The delegation from British India included the Aga Khan and others like him. Itincluded British merchants, Anglo- Indians, Christians, Hindus, Moslems,landlords, Labourites, untouchables and Parsis (but not one peasant), and eachof these groups demanded a separate electorate for itself. In other words, anumber of seats in the legislative assemblies would be reserved for Englishmenresident in India, for landlords, for Moslems, etc, and the Englishmen would beelected only by the votes of the Englishmen of India who could vote for no oneelse, the landlords would be elected by landlords, the Moslems could vote onlyfor Moslem candidates, and so on. Every divisive tendency in India wasencouraged.The Conference set up a Minorities Committee comprising six Englishmen fromEngland, thirteen Moslems, ten Hindus, two untouchables, two Labourites, twoSikhs, one Parsi, two Indian Christians, one Anglo-Indian (Anglo-Indiansdescendants of mixed marriages between British men and Indian women), twoEnglishmen domiciled in India and four women. Only the women did not ask fora separate electorate. Of the thirteen Moslems in the Committee only one wasa nationalist Moslem who was an Indian politically and a follower of the Prophetreligiously. The remaining twelve mingled Church and State and put thepolitical interests of their religious community above the welfare of India as awhole.www.mkgandhi.org Page 326

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesMr. Fazl-ul Huq, a Moslem, was addressing the Plenary Session of November 28,1931. 'I wonder', he said, 'if Sir Austen Chamberlain has come across two suchincongruous specimens of humanity as Dr. Moonje (a Hindu member of theConference) and myself—professing different religions, worshipping differentGods'.The same God,' a member interjected."No', Mr. Fazl-ul Huq demurred, 'no' it cannot be the same God. My God is forseparate electorates; his God is for joint electorates.The Moslem delegate was partitioning God. But Gandhi would not partition Godor India. He told the conference he rejected all separate electorates. In anindependent India, he said, Indians would vote as Indians for Indians. The virtueof Indian nationalism and its appeal to outsiders was not that it would createnew national barriers—there were already too many—but rather that it wouldrid England and the world of the incubus of imperialism and take religion out ofpolitics in India. Instead, the Round Table Conference, under BritishManagement, intensified old and attempted to introduce new fissiparousinfluences. 'Divide and Rule, is the law of Empire; the more the rule isthreatened the more diligently that aw is applied.The solution for India would have been to banish religious considerations frompolitics. But with all its twentieth century vitality, Indian nationalism stilllacked the strength to unite that which religion, provincial loyalties andeconomic differences separated. The Indian national movement was faced withthe task of liberation before the Indians had been welded into a nation.The caste system was a further divisive influence which weakened nationalism.The Harijans or untouchables feared and often hated the Hindus who hadharnessed so many brutal disabilities upon them. They, too, through theirgifted and ambitious representative at the Conference, Dr. Bhimrao RamjiAmbedkar, a lawyer who studied at Columbia University of New York under ascholarship from the Gaekwar Maharaja of Baroda, demanded a separateelectorate or a least a right to a specified number of Hindu seats in thelegislative assemblies.www.mkgandhi.org Page 327

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesMahatma Gandhi, a supremely devout Hindu, was incapable of discriminatingagainst anyone on account of religion, race, caste, colour, or anything. Hiscontribution to the equality of untouchables and to the education of a newgeneration which was Indian instead of Hindu or Moslem or Parsi or Christianhas world significance. But at the time of the Round Table Conference of 1931,and especially with the British government pulling in the opposite direction, hisarm lacked the power to draw the Hindu, Moslem and Harijan communitiestogether into an Indian unity which could have commanded the British raj to gohome.At the last plenary sitting of the Round Table Conference, on December 1,1931, the chairman, James Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister, since thegeneral elections of October 27, 1931, not of a Labour government but of aTory government in which he and J. H. Thomas were prisoners, referred toGandhi as a Hindu.'Not Hindu,' Gandhi exclaimed.To his God, Gandhi was a Hindu. To the British Prime Minister, and in politics,he was an Indian. But there were few such Indians at the Round TableConference and too few in India.That was the upshot of the Round Table Conference. It was completelyabortive. It made the situation in India worse. Gandhi left it and England with aheartache, for though he had charmed and convinced many English people, hehad failed to bridge or even to narrow the gulf that separated Hindus fromMoslems; and the British government was holding on to India.www.mkgandhi.org Page 328

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter IVOn The Way HomeGANDHI sent apologies to persons and groups in almost every free country ofthe world; he could not visit them because he had work to do in India. On theway home, he stopped for a day in Paris. Sitting on a table, he addressed alarge meeting in a cinema theatre, and then took the train for Switzerland,where he stayed five days with Romain Rolland at Villeneuve, at the easternend of Lake Leman.Rolland, whose Fean Christophe, is a literary masterpiece of the twentiethcentury, had come under the influence of Count Leo Tolstoy, author of thefinest novel of the nineteenth. Rolland made a shrewd comparison betweenTolstoy and Gandhi. With Gandhi,' he said in 1924, everything is nature—modest, simple, pure—while all his struggles are hallowed by religious serenity,whereas with Tolstoy everything is proud—revolt against pride, hatred againsthatred, passion against passion. Everything in Tolstoy is violence, even hisdoctrine of non-violence.Tolstoy was storm-tossed, Gandhi calm and equable. Gandhi could not havefled from his wife, or from anything. The market place in which he sat wascriss-crossed by hundreds of millions of persons with their wares and carts andcares and thoughts, but he sat still and there was silence in him and aroundhim. Gandhi would have suffocated in an ivory tower or on an Olympian height.Tagore was different. "But where am I in a great crowd, squeezed in at allsides?' Romain Rolland quotes Tagore a saying... 'And who can understand thenoise I hear? If I a song, my sitar can catch the melody, and I can join thechorus, for I am a singer. But in the mad clamour of the crowd, my voice is lost,and I become dizzy.'Rolland and Gandhi had never met before 1931. Rolland knew Gandhi from longconversations with Tagore and C. F. Andrews who had lived for fifteen yearswith Tagore. He had also read Gandhi. Like Tagore, Rolland was a singer. Hewww.mkgandhi.org Page 329

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswas the author of books on Beethoven, Handel, Goethe and Michelangelo. Hewrote a book on Ramakrishna, the Hindu mystic.Rolland regarded Gandhi as a saint. In fact, he wrote in his 1924 biography ofthe Mahatma, 'Gandhi is too much of a saint; he is too pure, too free from theanimal passions that lie dormant in man.' Rolland and Tagore were afraid of theevil in human beings. Tagore feared that when Gandhi lit bonfires of foreigncloth he would kindle uncontrollable emotions in men; Rolland agreed; Andrewsagreed.This estimate omits Gandhi's faith in the basic goodness and corrigibility of manwhich is the essence of Gandhi. In South Africa, Gandhi believed that theordinary, illiterate, indentured labourer in a mine or on a farm could rise to thepurity and restraint required of a Satyagrahi. He trusted the peasants ofbackward Bardoli to resist provocation and violence. His trust exalted them.Gandhi did not regard nobility as a monopoly of the great man or the artist orthe elite. Gandhi's uniqueness lay in working with common clay and finding thesoul-spark in it.Before Gandhi's arrival on December 5, Rolland had received hundreds ofletters connected with the Mahatma's visit: an Italian wanted to know fromGandhi what numbers would win in the next national lottery; a group of Swissmusicians offered to serenade Gandhi under his window every night; theSyndicate of the Milkmen of Leman volunteered to supply 'the King of India'with dairy products during his stay. Journalists sent questionnaires and campedaround Rolland's villa; photographers laid siege to the house; the policereported that the hotels had filled with tourists who hoped to see the Indianvisitor.The two men, Gandhi sixty-two, Rolland sixty-five, met like old friends andtreated each other with the tenderness of mutual respect. Gandhi arrived on acold rainy evening with Miss Slade, Mahadev Desai, Pyarelal Nayyar andDevadas. The next day was Monday, Gandhi's day of silence, and Rollanddelivered a ninety-minute talk on the tragic moral and social state of Europesince 1900. Gandhi listened and pencilled some questions.www.mkgandhi.org Page 330

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesOn Tuesday, they discussed Gandhi's trip to Rome. He wanted to see Mussoliniand other Italian leaders as well as the Pope. Rolland warned him that theFascist regime would exploit his presence for its sinister purposes. Gandhi saidhe would break through the cordon they might throw around him. Rollandsuggested that he put certain conditions. Gandhi replied that it was against hisconvictions to make such arrangements in advance. Rolland persisted. Gandhisaid, 'Then tell me, what is your final opinion on my plan to stop in Rome?'Rolland advised him to stay with some independent persons. Gandhi promisedand kept the promise.Rolland asked Gandhi to comment on his remarks about Europe. Gandhi said itshowed him how vast had been Rolland's suffering. Speaking English whichRolland's sister translated into French, Gandhi said he had learned very littlefrom history. ‘My method is empiric,' he explained. 'All my conclusions arebased on personal experience.' This, he admitted, could be dangerous andmisleading, but he had to have faith in his own views. All his trust was in nonviolence,it could save Europe. In England, friends tried to show him theweakness of his non-violent method; "but even though the whole world doubtsit, I will continue to believe in it.’The next two days Gandhi spent in Lausanne where he addressed a publicmeeting and in Geneva where he spoke in Victory Hall. At each he was heckledfor hours by atheists and others. He answered them in perfect calm, 'not amuscle of his face twitching', Rolland wrote.On December 10, they resumed their conversation. Rolland recalled Gandhi'sstatement at Geneva: Truth is God'. He gave Gandhi a brief sketch of his life,his childhood, how cramped he felt in the small French town, how he became awriter and struggled with the problem of the truth in art. 'If it is correct',Rolland said, 'that "Truth is God, it appears to me that it lacks one importantattribute of God: joy. For —and on this I insist—I recognize no God without joy'.Gandhi replied that he did not distinguish between art and truth. 'I am againstthe formula, "Art for art's sake". For me, all art must be based on the truth. Ireject beautiful things if, instead of expressing truth, they express untruth. Iwww.mkgandhi.org Page 331

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesaccept the formula "Art brings joy and is good" but on the condition Imentioned. To achieve truth in art I do not expect exact reproductions ofexternal things. Only living things bring living joy to the soul and must elevatethe soul.'Rolland did not differ but he stressed the pain of searching for truth and forGod. He took a book from his shelf and read from Goethe. Rolland laterconfessed that he thought Gandhi's God found pleasure in man's sorrow; Rollandwas trying to modify this Gandhian view.They talked about the perils of another war. 'If one nation possessed theheroism to submit without answering violence with violence,' Gandhi declared,'it would be the most effective lesson. But for this an absolute faith isnecessary.'Rolland: 'Nothing should be done by halves, no matter whether it is bad orgood.' Rolland's sister, Madeleine, and Miss Kondachev, a Russian secretary,were taking notes. Neither recorded Gandhi's reaction to this assertion.The last day, December 11, Rolland requested Gandhi to deal with somequestions submitted by Pierre Monatte, the editor of a Paris magazine calledThe Proletarian Revolution. Response to one query, Gandhi asserted that iflabour was perfectly organized it could dictate conditions to the employers;labour is the only power in the world'. But Rolland interposed that thecapitalists might divide the workers; there might be scabs; 'then the consciousminority of labour must set up a dictatorship of the proletariat and force themass of labour to unite in its own interest'.'I am absolutely opposed to that,' Gandhi affirmed. Rolland dropped the subjectand quickly introduced several others: non-violence in relation to criminals,etc. etc., and 'What do you call God? Is it a spiritual personality or a forcewhich rules over the world?''God,' Gandhi replied, 'is not a person... God is an eternal principle. That is whyI say that Truth is God... Even atheists do not doubt the necessity of truth.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 332

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe last evening Gandhi asked Rolland to play some Beethoven. Rolland playedthe Andante from the Fifth Symphony and, as an encore of his own accord,Gluck's "Elysian Fields'.The theme of the Fifth Symphony is considered to be man's struggle with fate,man's harmony with fate, the brotherhood of man. The second movement, theAndante, is melodious and suffused with tender lyrical emotions, quiet nobilityand optimism. Rolland chose it because it came closest to his concept ofGandhi's personality. It is gentle and loving. In the Gluck piece one almost hearsthe angels singing to the strains of the flute. It is celestial music, full of purityand clarity. The Gita might be set to it.Rolland was frail and had just recovered from bronchitis, but he insisted ontaking Gandhi and his party to the railway station. There they embraced, asthey did when they first met; Gandhi pressed his cheek against Rolland'sshoulder and threw his right arm around Rolland; Rolland touched his cheek toGandhi's head. 'It was the kiss of St. Dominic and St. Francis,' Rolland said.The Italian government wished Gandhi to be its guest and made thecorresponding preparations. Gandhi politely refused and stayed with GeneralMoris, a friend of Rolland's, who had lived in India. The day of his arrival, theMahatma went to see the Duce. An official communique said the interviewlasted twenty minutes. Gandhi's companions recall that it lasted only tenminutes. Gandhi could establish no psychological contact with Mussolini. 'He hasthe eyes of a cat,' Gandhi said later; 'they moved about in every direction as ifin constant rotation. The visitor would totally succumb before the awe of hisgaze like a rat running directly into the mouth of a cat out of mere fright.'I was not to be dazed like that,' Gandhi testified, 'but I noticed that he had soarranged things about him that a visitor would easily get stricken with terror.The walls of the passage through which one has to pass to reach him are allover studded with various types of swords and other weapons.' Mussolini'soffice, too, Gandhi noted, was hung with weapons, but, he added, 'he keeps noarms on his person'.www.mkgandhi.org Page 333

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe Pope did not see Gandhi. Several members of Gandhi's entourage thoughtthe Holy Father might have been acting in deference to II Duce's wishes, butthey did not know. Some suggested that the interview failed to materialize notonly on account of Mussolini's relations with the Vatican but also because ofAnglo-Italian relations; Gandhi, after all, was an anti-British rebel. Gandhi wastaken to the Rome-Naples rugby match and a parade of the young BalillaMusketeers where he was received with a salvo of cannon. He was moreinterested in e Vatican Library, and spent two happy hours in St. Peter's. n theSistine Chapel he stood before Christ on the Cross and wept. 'One cannot helpbeing moved to tears,' he said Mahadev Desai. If he could have lingered 'two orthree months is in the museums and observed the statues and paintingseveryday, Gandhi wrote to the ashram, he might e an opinion that wasworthwhile. Even then, 'I am hardly qualified as an art critic.'Romain Rolland, however, had directed his attention to art 'I do not think thatEuropean art is superior to Indian art ' Gandhi boasted. 'Both these arts havedeveloped on different lines. Indian art is based entirely on the imagination,' hewrote to a friend; he was probably recalling the Indian statues with many armsand heads. 'European art is an imitation of nature. It is therefore easier tounderstand but turns our attention to the earth, whereas Indian art, whenunderstood tends to direct our thoughts to Heaven.'Then he checked himself. 'This is only for a person like you,' he cautioned. 'Iattach no importance to these views. It may be my unconscious partiality forIndia or perhaps my ignorance that makes me say this.'To Gandhi, art had to be spiritual. 'True beauty', he said in his autobiography,'consists in purity of heart.''Jesus (he wrote in Young India) was to my mind a supreme artist, because hesaw and expressed Truth... But I know that many call themselves artists, andare recognized as such, and yet in their work there is absolutely no trace of thesoul's upward surge and unrest... True art is thus an expression of the soul... Alltrue art must help the soul to realize its inner self. In my own case, I find that Ican do entirely without external forms in my soul's realization. I can claim,www.mkgandhi.org Page 334

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timestherefore, that there is truly sufficient art in my life, though you might not seewhat you call works of art about me. My room may have blank walls. And I mayeven dispense with the roof, so that I may gaze upon the starry heavensoverhead that stretch in an unending expanse of beauty... Is a woman with fairfeatures necessarily beautiful? ... Socrates, we are told, was the most truthfulman of his time and yet his features are said to have been the ugliest inGreece. To my mm he was beautiful because he was struggling after truth...True is the first thing to be sought for, and beauty and goodness will then beadded unto you... True art takes note not merely of form but also of what liesbeyond. There is an art kills and an art that gives life. True art must beevidence of the happiness, contentment and purity of its authors.’Before Gandhi left Rome he sought out Tolstoy's daughter. As he sat spinning onthe floor of her apartment, Princess Maria, a daughter of the King of Italy,entered with a lady-in-waiting, and brought the Mahatma a large basket of figs.'Her Majesty the Queen packed them for you,' said the lady-in-waiting.Nobody exploited Gandhi's presence for pro-Fascist purposes although theGiornale d'ltalia did print an interview with him which he never gave by ajournalist he had never seen. Altogether, from Swiss border to the Italian heel,Gandhi spent forty-eight hours in Italy. At Brindisi, he bade farewell to his twoScotland Yard men, but not to Professor and Mrs. Edmond Privat.The professor and his wife were friends of Romain Rolland and accompaniedGandhi from Villeneuve to the Italian frontier. As they were saying goodbyethey remarked that they would like some day to visit India. Gandhi asked whythey didn't come along with him. They replied that they could not afford it.You probably think in terms of first and second class,' Gandhi said, 'but we onlypay ten pounds each for our passage on deck, and once there, many Indianfriends would open their houses to you.'The Privats counted the money in their pockets and purse and decided to go. AtRome they bought bedding, sent telegrams to the University of Neuchatel,where the professor taught, that he would not be back for his lectures, and onwww.mkgandhi.org Page 335

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesDecember 14 boarded the S.S. Pilsna at Brindisi with the Gandhi party. Twoweeks later they landed at Bombay.A mammoth crowd cheered Gandhi's arrival on the morning of December 28.'I have come back empty handed,' he told them, "hut I have not compromisedthe honour of my country.' That was his summary of how India had fared at theRound Table Conference. But things were blacker than he thought.www.mkgandhi.org Page 336

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter VClimaxNEVER was deck passenger accorded such a regal welcome; 'judging from thewarmth, cordiality and affection displayed at the reception, one would thinkthat the Mahatma had returned with Swaraj in the hollow of his hand',Subhas Chandra Bose remarked caustically. He had returned with his integrity;he had not stepped down from the role of half naked fakir who parleyed as anequal with the mighty British Empire. This was the next best thing to freedom,for it reflected the liberation of India's spirit. Since the Salt March, andspecially since the Irwin-Gandhi Pact, India felt free. Gandhi fed that feeling,and Indians were grateful. Moreover, their Mahatma had come back safely fromthe cold world across the sea.India's partial liberation was achieved in 1930-31, thanks to Gandhi, Irwin andthe British Labour government. But Irwin was gone; and in October 1931,Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government had been supplanted by a Cabinet,headed by MacDonald, in which Conservatives predominated. Sir Samuel Hoare'an honest and frank-hearted Englishman, according to Gandhi, and an honestand frank Conservative, was Secretary of State for India.The new British government proceeded to attack India s new sense of freedom.A full report was poured into Gandhi's ear from the moment ke set foot on theBombay quay on December 28. By evening he had a detailed picture of the uglysituation and conveyed it to the two hundred thousand listeners whom headdressed, with the aid of loudspeakers, on the vast Azad Maidan.Jawaharlal Nehru and Tasadduq Sherwani, Moslem president of the Congressorganization of the United Provinces, had been arrested two days earlier whiletravelling to Bombay to greet Gandhi. Emergency Powers Ordinances had beenpromulgated early in December in the United Provinces and in the North-westFrontier Province and Bengal to deal with a widespread no-rent movement;they authorized the military to seize buildings, impound bank balances,www.mkgandhi.org Page 337

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesconfiscate wealth, arrest suspects without a warrant, suspend court trials, denybail and habeas corpus, withdraw mailing privileges from the press, disbandpolitical organizations, and prohibit picketing and boycotting. 'We are notplaying a game with artificial rules,' Sir Harry Haig, Home Member (Minister ofInterior) of the government of India, said in the Assembly. 'The question iswhether the Congress is going to impose its will on the whole country.''All this,' Gandhi told his Bombay audience, T learned after my landing here. Itake it these are all Christmas gifts from Lord Willingdon, our Christian Viceroy.For is it not a custom during Christmas to exchange greetings and gifts?Something had to be given me and this is what I have got.' (He had not yetunwrapped all the packages.)The same evening he spoke to the Welfare of India League m the HotelMajestic. 'I am not conscious of a single experience throughout my threemonths' stay in England and Europe,' he asserted, 'that made me feel that afterall East is East and West is West. On the contrary, I have been convinced morethan ever that human nature is much the same, no matter under what clime itflourishes, and that if approached people with trust and affection you wouldhave ten-fold trust and thousand-fold affection returned to you.'The members of the British government were friendly to him; 'we parted as thebest of friends... But when I come here I find a different order of thingsaltogether...' He summarized the extraordinary ordinances. 'The Congress ischarged with trying to run a parallel government... I assure you that I shallstrain every nerve to see if I would not tender co-operation on honourable linesto induce the government to withdraw or revise these ordinances.'The government had no intention of letting Gandhi offer anything.The day after his arrival, Gandhi telegraphed the Viceroy deploring theordinances and arrests and suggesting an interview. The Viceroy's secretaryreplied on the last day of the year; the ordinances were justified by theactivities of Congress against the government. The Viceroy would be 'willing tosee you and to give you his views as to the way in which you can best exertyour influence', the secretary said. 'But His Excellency feels bound to emphasizewww.mkgandhi.org Page 338

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesthat he will not be prepared to discuss with you measures which thegovernment of India, with the full approval of His Majesty's government, havefound it necessary to adopt in Bengal, the United Provinces and the N.W.F.P.'The British raj would no longer parley with the rebel.Gandhi's rejoinder defended Congress and intimated that he might have to starta civil disobedience campaign. The Viceroy's secretary answered sharply onJanuary 2, 1932. 'His Excellency and the government', he wrote, 'can hardlybelieve that you or the Working Committee (Executive Committee of Congress)contemplate that His Excellency can invite you with the hope of any advantage,to an interview held under the threat of the resumption of civil disobedience...nor can the government of India accept the position implied in you telegramthat its policy should be dependent on the judge of yourself as to the necessityof measures which government has taken...'Willingdon was right. No autocracy can permit a private citizen or organizationto question its acts.Gandhi replied on the same day. He had not threatened; he had expressed anopinion. Moreover, he had negotiated with Irwin, prior to the Delhi Pact, whilecivil disobedience was actually in progress. He never thought the governmenthad to depend on his judgement, 'But I do submit,' Gandhi wired, 'that anypopular and constitutional government would always welcome and considersympathetically suggestions made by public bodies and their representatives...'The government ‘Has banged the door in my face,' Gandhi informed the nationon January 3. The next day, the government banged an iron door in his face: hewas arrested -again, as after the Salt March, under Regulation XXXV of 1827;again he was His Majesty's guest in Yeravda Jail. A few weeks earlier he hadbeen the guest of His and Her Majesty in Buckingham Palace.The government attack on Congress was fierce. Congress organizations wereclosed and almost all leaders imprisoned; in January, 14,800 persons werejailed for political reasons; in February, 17,800. Winston Churchill declaredthat the repressive measures were more drastic than any since the 1857 Mutiny.www.mkgandhi.org Page 339

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesMahatma Gandhi enjoyed a special regime in prison. In 1930, in the sameYeravda Jail, the chief warden came to him and asked how many letters heneeded to receive from the outside each week.I do not need to receive a single letter,' Gandhi replied.How many letters do you wish to write?' the warden inquired.‘Not one,' Gandhi said.Was given unlimited privileges to write and receive despondence.Major Martin, the prison governor, bought furniture, crockery and other utensilsfor Gandhi. 'For whom have y0u bought all this,' Gandhi protested. 'Take itaway, please.'Major Martin said he had permission from the central authorities to spend aminimum of three hundred rupees a month on such an honoured guest. 'That isall very well,' Gandhi declared, 'but this money comes from the Indian treasury,and I do not want to increase the burdens of my country. I hope that myboarding expenses will not exceed thirty-five rupees a month.' The specialequipment was removed.At Yeravda an official named Quinn asked Gandhi to teach him Gujarati and heused to come every day for his lesson. One morning, Quinn failed to appear,and on inquiry Gandhi was told that the official was busy at a hanging in theprison. 'I feel as though I am going to be sick,' Gandhi said.Vallabhbhai Patel too was arrested and lodged at Yeravda. In March, MahadevDesai was transferred from another jail to Yeravda: Gandhi had asked for hiscompanionship. When Mahadev arrived he laid his head on Gandhi's feet, andGandhi patted his head and shoulders affectionately. The three enjoyednumerous conversations together in which other prisoners and British wardensand physicians sometimes joined.Gandhi read the newspapers more carefully than he did outside, washed hisown clothes, spun, studied the stars at night, and read many books; he likedUpton Sinclair's The Wet Parade, Goethe's Faust, Kingsley's Westward Ho! andwww.mkgandhi.org Page 340

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesothers. He also put the finishing touches on a tiny book most of which he hadwritten in Yeravda in 1930 in the form of letters to Sabarmati Ashram. Heentitled it From Yeravda Mandir; 'mandir' is a temple; the prison was a templehe worshipped God in it. The booklet, supplemented occasional articles andpronouncements at other time furnishes a key to Gandhi's thinking on thenature of and the ideal conduct of a man.'God is,' Gandhi said.The word satya means 'truth' and it derives from sat which means 'to be'. Satalso denotes God. Therefore, God is that which is. 'And since', according toGandhi, 'nothing else I see merely through the senses can or will persist, Healone is.' Everything else is illusion. God is the only truth.Over the years Gandhi tried many times to prove the existence of God. 'There isan indefinable mysterious Power', he wrote, 'which pervades everything. I feelit, though I do not see it. It is this unseen Power which makes itself felt and yetdefies all proof, because it is so unlike all that I perceive through my senses. Ittranscends the senses.'But', he added optimistically, 'it is possible to reason out the existence of Godto a limited extent... There is an orderliness in the Universe, there is anunalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. It isnot a blind law, for no blind law can govern the conduct of human beings...That law then which governs all life is God... I do dimly perceive that whilsteverything around me is ever changing, ever dying there is underlying all thatchange a living Power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates,dissolves, and recreates. That informing Power or spirit is God... In the midst ofdeath life persists, in the midst of untruth truth persists; in the midst ofdarkness high persists. Hence I gather that God is Life, Truth, and Love. He isLove. He is the supreme Good.'After this valiant rational effort, Gandhi says, 'But He is no God who merelysatisfies the intellect, if He ever does. God to be God must rule the heart andtransform it. He must express Himself in every smallest act of His votary. Thiscan only be done through a definite realization more real than he five senseswww.mkgandhi.org Page 341

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timescan ever produce. Sense perceptions can be, often are, false and deceptivehowever real they may appear us. Where there is realization outside the sensesit is infallible. It is proved not by extraneous evidence but in the transformedconduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within.'That was another attempt at proof, this time not by logic but by the palpabletestimony of human behaviour. But 'faith transcends reason', he confessed;consequently, 'the safest course is to believe in the moral government of theworld and therefore in the supremacy of the moral law, the law of truth andlove... If we could solve all the mysteries of the Universe, we would be coequalwith God. Every drop of ocean shares its glory but is not the ocean'. Everyhuman being, in other words, partakes of the nature of God but is not God andcannot know what He is. Even the greatest Hindu sage, Sankara, did not knowmore than that God is 'Not this' and 'Not that'.Except as a youth, Gandhi never doubted the existence of God as Jains andBuddhists may. 'I literally believe,' he said, 'that not a blade of grass grows ormoves without His will- God is nearer to us than fingernails to the flesh... I cantell you this, that I am surer of His existence than of the fact that you and I aresitting in this room... You may pluck out my eyes, but that cannot kill me. Youmay chop off my nose, but that will not kill me. But blast my belief in God, andI am dead.'Gandhi, moreover, was convinced of the large and intimate role which Godplayed in this work. Whatever striking things I have done in life,' he declared, 'Ihave not done prompted by reason but prompted by instinct — I would say God.Take the Dandi Salt March of 1930. I had not the ghost of a suspicion how thebreach of the Salt Law would work itself out. Pandit Motilalji and other friendswere fretting and did not know what I would do, and I could tell them nothingas I myself knew nothing about it. But like a flash it came, and as you know itwas enough to shake the country from one end to the other.''Do you feel a sense of freedom in your communion with God?' someone asked.'I do,' Gandhi replied. 'I have imbibed through and through the teaching of theGita that man is the maker of his own destiny in the sense that he has freedomwww.mkgandhi.org Page 342

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesof choice as to the manner in which he uses that freedom. But he is nocontroller of results. The moment he thinks he is, he comes to grief.'I have no special revelation of God's will,' Gandhi explained. 'My firm belief isthat He reveals Himself daily to every human being, but we shut our ears to the'still small voice'.., God never appears to you in person but in action.'How did Gandhi worship God? He believed in the efficacy of prayer. 'Prayer isthe key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.... As food is necessary forthe body, prayer is necessary for the soul... No act of mine is done withoutprayer ... I am not a man of learning, but I humbly claim to be a man of prayer.I am indifferent to the form. Every man is a law unto himself in that respect.'But 'it is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without aheart'. One can pray in the silence that has banished words.Nevertheless, the highway to God was through action. For ten days Gandhi andE. Stanley Jones, an American missionary, discussed a variety of topics, chieflyreligion. One day Gandhi said, 'If one is to find salvation, he must have as muchpatience as a man who sits by the seaside and with a straw Picks up a singledrop of water, transfers it and thus empties the ocean.' Salvation, according toGandhi, comes—as Dr. Jones understood it—'through one's strict, disciplinedefforts, a rigid self-mastery'."But I,' E. Stanley Jones declares, 'look on salvation, not as an attainmentthrough one's efforts, but as an obtainment through grace. I came to Godmorally and spiritually bankrupt with nothing to offer except my bankruptcy.To my astonishment He took me, forgave me, and sent my soul singing its waydown the years. By grace was I saved through > and that not of myself; it wasthe gift of God... It was at this point that the Christians and the Mahatma nevergot together.'I know,' Dr. Jones adds, 'that salvation by grace seems too cheap and easy, butit is not cheap; for when you take the gift, you belong forever to the Giver.'Gandhi took the hard road. His doctrine was: By their works shall ye knowthem. His God required him to live for humanity. 'If I could persuade myself,www.mkgandhi.org Page 343

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi wrote, 'that I should find Him in a Himalayan cave I would proceedthere immediately. But I know I cannot find him apart from humanity... I claimto know my millions. All the hours of the day I am with them. They are my firstcare and last because I recognize no God except that God that is to be found inthe hearts of the dumb millions.'Gandhi's relation with God was part of a triangle which included his fellow man.On this triangle he based his system of ethics and morality.The first duty of the God-worshipper is truth: for truth is God. This Gandhirepeated thousands of times. Truth is God.'There should be Truth in thought, Truth in speech and Truth in action,' Gandhiwrote in From Yeravda Mandir. Devotion to Truth is the sole justification of ourexistence. This Truth is honesty, and also something else. 'It is impossible for usto realize perfect Truth so long as we are imprisoned in this mortal frame... ifwe shatter the chains of egotism, and melt into the ocean of humanity, weshare its dignity. To feel that we are something is to set up a barrier betweenGod and ourselves; to cease feeling that we are something is to become onewith God. A drop in the ocean partakes of the greatness of its parent, althoughit 18 unconscious of it. But it is dried up as soon as it enters up on an existenceindependent of the ocean.'Truth is identification with God and humanity. From Truth, non-violence isborn. Truth appears different to different individuals. 'There is nothing wrongin every man following Truth according to his lights,' says From Yeravda Mandir.Each person must be true to his own Truth. But if the seeker after Truth beganto destroy those who saw Truth in their way he would recede from the Truth.How can one realize God by killing or hurting? Non-violence, however, is morethan peacefulness or pacifism; it is love, and excludes evil thought, unduehaste, lies, or hatred.First, Truth; second, non-violence or Love; and third, chastity. 'If a man giveshis love to one woman or a woman to a man, what is there left for all the worldbesides? It simply means, "We two first, and the devil take the rest of them."...Such persons cannot rise to the height of Universal Love.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 344

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThen are married people lost forever? No, 'if the married couple can think ofeach other as brother and sister, they are freed for universal service'. This isthe maximum programme for the monks and nuns of the ashram. For the rankand file of humanity 'Sex urge is a fine and noble thing. There is nothing to beashamed of in it. But it is meant only for the act of creation. Any other use of itis a sin against God and humanity... Indulgence interfered with my work.'The next injunction to the ashramites is 'Non-stealing' which implies nonpossession.'Civilization, in the real sense °f the term, consists not in themultiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants...''Anxiety about the future,' Gandhi said to a friend, 'is sheer atheism. Whyshould we fear that our children will be less efficient or successful than we are?To save money for the sake of children is to show lack of faith in them,' and inAttachment to money or possessions is the product of fear. Violence is theresult of fear. Dishonesty is fear, fearlessness is the key to Truth, to God, toLove; it is the king of virtues.The remaining virtues are: the removal of untouchability!ci1 'means love for, and service of, the whole world'; 'bread- labour' or regularproductive manual work; tolerance of all religions; humility; and, finally,spinning and the encouragement of domestic national economy without 'ill-willtowards the foreigner'.Few inside or outside the ashram ever lived up to Gandhi's austere code, onlyhe approached his ideal.While Gandhi was editing these simple epistles on God and ethics in his prison'temple', India moved towards its tensest fortnight in modern history.It centered around saving Gandhi's life.'To find a parallel for the anguish of September 1932', wrote Rajagopalachari,'we have to go back to Athens twenty-three centuries ago when the friends ofSocrates surrounded him in prison and importuned him to escape from death.Plato has recorded the questions and answers. Socrates smiled at thesuggestion... and preached the immortality of the soul.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 345

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe 'Anguish of September 1932' began for Gandhi early that year. He hadgathered from the newspapers that the proposed new British constitution ofIndia would grant separate electorates not only to Hindus and Moslems as in thepast but to untouchables, or 'Depressed Classes'. He accordingly wrote a letteron March 11, 1932, to Sir Samuel Hoare, the Secretary of State for India.'A separate electorate for the Depressed Classes', Gandhi wrote, 'is harmful forthem and for Hinduism.... So far as Hinduism is concerned, separateelectorates would simply vivisect and disrupt it... The political aspect,important though it is, dwindles into insignificance compared to the moral andreligious issue.' If therefore the Government decided to create a separateelectorate for untouchables, 'I must fast unto death'. That, he knew, wouldembarrass the authorities whose prisoner he was, but 'for me the contemplatedstep is not a method, it is part of my being'.The minister replied to the prisoner on April 13, saying that no decision had yetbeen taken and that his views would be considered before it was taken.No new developments occurred until August 17, 1932 when Prime MinisterMacDonald announced Britain's decision in favor of separate electorates.'I have to resist your decision with my life,' Gandhi wrote to Ramsay MacDonaldthe next day. 'The only way I can do it is by declaring a perpetual fast untodeath from food of any kind save water with or without salt and soda.' The fastwould commence at noon, September 20.In a very long reply, dated 10 Downing Street, September 9, 1932, PrimeMinister MacDonald said he had received Gandhi's communication with muchsurprise and, let me add, with very sincere regret'. Gandhi had misunderstood;they had considered his known friendship for the untouchables and his letter toSir Samuel Hoare. 'We felt it our duty to safeguard what we believe to be theright of the Depressed Classes to a fair proportion of representation in thelegislatures' and 'we were equally careful to do nothing that would split offtheir community from the Hindu world.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 346

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThen MacDonald cogently defended the Government's decision: 'Under thegovernment scheme the Depressed Classes will remain part of the Hinducommunity and will vote with the Hindu electorate on an equal footing.' That iswhat Gandhi wanted. 'But for the first twenty years, while still remaining partof the Hindu community, they will receive through a limited number of specialconstituencies, means °f safeguarding their rights and interests....'In other words, MacDonald emphasized, the untouchables Would have one votein the Hindu electorate, and many of them would have a second vote in theirspecial untouchable electorate. They will 'have two votes', he wrote. SurelyGandhi, their champion, could not object.The alternative method, 'reservation of seats', MacDonald declared, had beenrejected because, though it would reserve a number of seats for untouchablelegislators within the larger block of Hindu seats, 'in practically all cases, suchmembers would be elected by a majority consisting of higher caste Hindus'.That being the case, the Prime Minister implied they might be stooges of casteHindus: they would have to keep in the good graces of caste Hindus, and mightnot be 'in a position to speak for themselves'.So, MacDonald reasoned, 'you propose to adopt the extreme course of starvingyourself to death not in order to secure that the Depressed Classes should havejoined electorates with other Hindus, because that is already provided, nor tomaintain the unity of Hindus, which is also provided, but solely to prevent theDepressed Classes, who admittedly suffer from terrible disabilities today, frombeing able to secure a limited number of representatives of their own choosingto speak on their behalf on the legislatures...' Therefore, MacDonald could onlythink that Gandhi's proposal to fast was based on a misapprehension. TheGovernment's decision would stand.Gandhi's letter of September 9, from Yeravda Central Prison to 10 DowningStreet, was typical.Without arguing, I affirm that to me this matter is one of pure religion. Themere fact of the Depressed Classes having double votes does not protect themor Hindu society in general from being disrupted. You will please permit me towww.mkgandhi.org Page 347

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timessay that no matter how sympathetic you may be, you cannot come to a correctdecision on a matter of vital and religious importance to the parties concerned.I should not be against even over-representation of the Depressed Classes.What I am against is their statutory separation, even in a limited form, fromthe Hindu fold, so long as they choose to belong to it. Do you realize that ifyour decision stands and the constitution come into being, you arrest themarvelous growth of the work of Hindu.Reformers who have dedicated themselves to their suppressed brethren inevery walk of life?Gandhi added that he was also opposed to the other separate electorates 'only Ido not consider them to be any warrant for calling from me such selfimmolationas my conscience has prompted me in the matter of the DepressedClasses'.That ended Gandhi's correspondence with London.MacDonald was not alone in his bewilderment. Many Indians, some Hindus, wereperplexed. Jawaharlal Nehru was in prison when he heard Gandhi would fast. 'Ifelt angry with him', he writes in his autobiography, 'at his religious andsentimental approach to a political issue, and his frequent references to God inconnection with it.' Nehru 'felt annoyed with him for choosing a side issue forhis final sacrifice'. Untouchability was a side issue, independence the centralissue. For two days, Nehru 'was in darkness'. He thought with sorrow of neverseeing Bapu anymore.Then a strange thing happened to me,' Nehru continues. 'I had quite anemotional crisis, and at the end of it I felt calmer, and the future seemed notso dark. Bapu had a curious knack of doing the right thing at the psychologicalmoment, and it might be that his action—impossible as it was from my point ofview—would lead to great results not only in the narrow field in which it wasconfined, but in the wider aspects of our national struggle... Then came thenews of the tremendous upheaval all over the country... What a magician, Iwww.mkgandhi.org Page 348

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesthought, was this little man sitting in Yeravda Prison, and how well he knewhow to pull the strings that Move people's hearts.'Even Nehru had underestimated Gandhi's magic and Gandhi's political sagacity.The government's fierce repressions against the civil resisters were breaking theback of the movement; it was petering out into pessimism. Gandhi's fastrescued nationalist India from the political doldrums. But compared with thebig result, this was a minor by-product.All Gandhi's adult life he had fought against the 'bar sinister' between casteHindus and Harijans; even as a boy he laughed at his mother's idea that thetouch of an untouchable defiles. Now the British Empire was erecting a politicalreservation for Harijans. With his congenital impulse to assume the bestmotives, he was ready to believe that MacDonald and Hoare were acting in theinterest, as they saw it, of the Depressed Classes. But he knew India better.Legalisms do not make life; Hindus and Harijans might form a joint electorate,but the Harijans' additional separate electorate would blot out the goodpsychological effect of the joint electorate. Given a separate electorate,Harijan candidates and elected representatives would stress what divided themfrom the caste Hindus. A political machine would arise with a vested interest inperpetuating the rift between Harijans and caste Hindus; its political capitalwould be Hindu injustice. Gandhi felt passionately that untouchability was aperversion which would kill the soul of Hinduism and, in turn, poison the soul ofthe Harijans. The MacDonald award threatened to give long life to India's worstsin.Harmony in diversity, love despite differences, was Gandhi's way of eliminatingviolence in thought and action. To divide is to invite war. Gandhi had fasted forHindu-Moslem unity; he did not want two Indias. Now he was faced with theprospect of three Indias. He regarded Hindu-Moslem enmity as politicallydisastrous. The Hindu-Harijan division was politically disastrous and religiouslysuicidal. Gandhi could not countenance the widening of the Hindu-Harijan gulf.The fast, Gandhi said, 'is aimed at a statutory separate electorate, in any shapeor form, for the Depressed Classes- Immediately that threat is removed oncewww.mkgandhi.org Page 349

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesfor all, my fast with end'. He was not fasting against the British, for theGovernment had stated that if Hindus and Harijans agreed on a different andmutually satisfactory voting arrangement it would be accepted. The fast,Gandhi declared, 'is intended to sting Hindu conscience into right religiousaction'.On September 13 Gandhi announced that he would commence his fast untodeath on the 20th. India now witnessed something the world had never seen.On the 13th, political and religious leaders went into action. Mr. M. C. Rajah,an untouchable spokesman in the Legislative Assembly, identified himself withGandhi's position; Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, the great constitutional leader,petitioned the Government to release Gandhi; Yakub Hussain, a Moslem leaderin Madras, urged the Harijans to renounce the separate electorate; RajendraPrasad suggested that Hindus save Gandhi by giving Harijans access to theirtemples, wells, schools and the public roads; Pandit Malaviya convoked aconference of leaders for the 19th; Rajagopalachari asked the country to prayand fast on the 20th.Several deputations asked to see Gandhi in jail. The Government opened thegates and allowed full consultations with him. Devadas Gandhi arrived to act asintermediary with negotiators. Journalists also enjoyed unobstructed access toGandhi.Meanwhile Gandhi wrote copious letters to many friends in India and abroad.'There was no escape from it,' he said in a letter to Miss Slade. 'It is both aprivilege and a duty. It comes rarely to someone in a generation orgenerations.' He had been observing the cat family in the prison, he told MissSlade in the same communication. "We have an addition to the family, did I tellyou? There was a human touch about the mother whilst she was in pain and twoor three days after delivery. She would caress us and insist on being caressed. Itwas a pathetic sight. The care she bestows on the "baby" is very wonderful.Love from us all to you all, Bapu.'On the 20th, Gandhi awoke at 2.30 a.m. and wrote a letter to Tagore whoseapproval he craved. 'This is early morning 3 o'clock of Tuesday,' the Mahatmawww.mkgandhi.org Page 350

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesbegan. 'I enter the fiery gates at noon. If you can bless the effort I want it. Youhave been a true friend because you have been a candid friend often speakingyour thoughts aloud... Though it can now only be during my fast, I will yet prizeyour criticism, if your heart condemns my action. I am not too proud to makean open confession of my blunder, whatever the cost of the confession, if I findmyself in error. If your heart approves of the action I want your blessing. It willsustain me...'Just as Gandhi posted this letter he received a telegram from Tagore: 'It isworth sacrificing precious life', it read, 'for the sake of India's unity and hersocial integrity... I fervently hope that we will not callously allow such nationaltragedy to reach its extreme length. Our sorrowing hearts will follow yoursublime penance with reverence and love.'Gandhi thanked Tagore for 'your loving and magnificent wire. It will sustain mein the midst of the storm I am about to enter.'At 11.30 the same morning, Gandhi took his last meal; it consisted of lemonjuice and honey with hot water. Millions of Indians fasted for twenty-fourhours. Throughout the country prayers were sung.That day, Rabindranath Tagore, whom India and Gandhi affectionately calledThe Poet', addressed his school at Shantiniketan and said, 'A shadow isdarkening today over India like a shadow cast by an eclipsed sun. The people oa whole country is suffering from a poignant pain of anxiety, the universality ofwhich carries in it a great dignity consolation. Mahatmaji, who through his lifeof dedication has made India his own in truth, has commenced his vow extremeself-sacrifice.'Tagore explained the Mahatma's fast.Each country has its own inner geography where her spirit dwells and wherephysical force can never conquer even an inch of ground. Those rulers whocome from the outside remain outside the gate... But the great soul...continues his dominion even when he is physically no longer present... Thepenance which Mahatmaji has taken upon himself is not a ritual but a messagewww.mkgandhi.org Page 351

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesto all India and to the world... Let us try to understand the meaning of hismessage... No civilized society can thrive upon victims whose humanity hasbeen permanently mutilated... Those whom we keep down inevitably drag usdown... We insult our own humanity by insulting man where he is helpless andwhere he is not of our own kin... Mahatmaji has repeatedly pointed out thedanger of those divisions in our country... Against that deep-seated moralweakness in our society Mahatmaji has pronounced his ultimatum... We haveobserved that the English people are puzzled at the step that Mahatmaji hasbeen compelled to take. They confess that they fail to understand it. I believethat the reason of their failure is mainly owing to the fact that the language ofMahatmaji is fundamentally different from their own... I ask them to rememberthe terrible days of atrocities that reddened in blood at their door whendismemberment was being forced between Ireland and the rest of GreatBritain. Those Englishmen, who imagined it to be disastrous to the integrity oftheir empire, did not scruple to kill and be killed, even to tear into shreds thedecency of civilized codes of honour.'The British, Tagore explained, were ready to indulge in ê 'Black and Tan' bloodbath in Ireland to prevent dismemberment of the Empire. Gandhi wasimmolating one Person, himself, to prevent dismemberment of Indian society.This was the language of non-violence. Is that why the West could not decipherit?Tagore saw the possibility of losing Gandhi in the fast. The Very thought sent ashiver through the spine of the nation.If nothing were done to save him, every Hindu would be Mahatmaji's murderer.Gandhi lay on a white iron cot in the shade of a low mango tree in the quietprison yard. Patel and Mahadev Desai sat near him. Mrs. Naidu had beentransferred from the women's ward of Yeravda Jail to nurse and guard him fromexcessive exertion. On a stool were some books, writing paper, bottles ofwater, salt and soda bicarbonate.Outside, the negotiators in conference were racing with death. Hindu leadersgathered in Birla House in Bombay on September 20. There were Sapru,www.mkgandhi.org Page 352

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSir Chunilal Mehta, Rajagopalachari, the president of Congress for that year, G.D. Birla, a very wealthy industrialist and friend of Gandhi, Rajendra Prasad,Jayakar, Sir Purshotamdas Thakurdas, a millionaire patron of schools, andothers. The untouchable delegates were Dr. Solanki and Dr. Ambedkar.Ambedkar, a distinguished lawyer with international experience who hadplayed a big part at the Round Table Conference in London, owned a powerfullybuilt body and strong, stubborn, superior intellect. His father and grandfathersaw service in the British Army. The accumulated bitterness against Hindus thatrankled for centuries in millions of Harijan breasts found expression inAmbedkar's Himalayan hatred. He preferred British raj to Hindu raj; hepreferred Moslems to Hindus and once thought of leading the untouchablecommunity, as a body, into the Mohammedan Church. Age-long Hindu cruelty tohis unhappy brethren filled him with anger, spite and vindictiveness. If anybodyin India could have contemplated with equanimity the death of Gandhi,Ambedkar was the man. He called the fast 'a political stunt'. At conference, hefaced the great Hindu minds, and he must have derived sweet pleasurewatching them court him in o to save their beloved Mahatma.Gandhi had always wanted one electorate for Hindus Harijans, which wouldjointly elect a solid block of Hindu and Harijan members of the legislativecouncils. He even opposed reserving a fixed number of seats in that block forHarijans because it would accentuate the cleavage between the twocommunities. But on the 19th Gandhi told a deputation—much to its relief—that he had become reconciled to reserved seats.Ambedkar, however, demurred: the Harijans who would occupy the reservedseats in the legislatures would be elected jointly by Hindus and Harijans andwould, therefore, feel considerable restraint in airing Harijan grievancesagainst Hindus. If a Harijan denounced Hindus too fiercely the Hindus mightdefeat him in the next election and elect a more docile untouchable.To meet this legitimate objection, Sapru had evolved an ingenious plan whichhe presented to the conference on September 20; all Hindu and Harijanmembers of the legislatures would be elected jointly by Hindu and Harijanwww.mkgandhi.org Page 353

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesvoters. A number of the Hindu-Harijan seats would be earmarked in advance forHarijans. The candidates for a portion of these reserved Harijan seats would benominated in private consultations between Hindus and Harijans. But for theremainder of the reserved seats, Sapru introduced something new: primaries inwhich only Harijans would vote. In those primary elections, a panel of threeHarijan candidates would be chosen for each reserved seat. Then in the final orsecondary elections, Harijans and Hindus would vote jointly for one of thosethree Harijan candidates. The Hindus would have no choice but to vote for oneof them. That would enable the Harijans to place their bravest and bestchampions in the legislatures while retaining the system of joint electorates.Anxiously, the Hindus waited for Ambedkar's views on the scheme. He examinedit minutely. He sought the advice of friends. Hours drifted by. Finally heaccepted, but stated that would draft his own formula to incorporate his ownideas Plus the Sapru plan.Encouraged, but still not quite sure of Ambedkar, the Hindu leaders nowwondered about Gandhi; would he sanction the Sapru innovation? Sapru,Jayakar, Rajagopalachari, Devadas Birla and Prasad took the midnight train andwere in Poona the next morning. At 7 a.m. they were taken into the prisonoffice. Gandhi, already weak after less than twenty-four hours without food;came into the office with a laugh, and taking a place at the centre of the table,announced cheerfully 'I preside'.Sapru explained the plan of the primaries. Others amplified Gandhi asked somequestions. He was noncommittal. Half an hour passed. Finally Gandhi said, 'I amprepared to consider your plan favorably ... But I should like to have the wholepicture before me in writing.' In addition, he asked to see Ambedkar and Rajah.Urgent invitations were sent to Ambedkar and Rajah. A memorandum on theSapru plan was prepared. Rajah, representing Gandhi's untouchables following,accepted it. Ambedkar promised to come.A troubled night passed. In the morning of the 22 nd, Gandhi expresseddispleasure with the scheme: Why should only some candidates for the reservedHarijan seats be elected in the Harijan primaries? Why not all? Why create twowww.mkgandhi.org Page 354

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timessets of Harijan candidates, one chosen by Harijans in the primaries, the otherselected by Hindus and Harijans? He wanted no distinctions between Harijans.Nor did he want Harijan legislators to be under any political debt to Hindus.The negotiators were overjoyed. Gandhi was offering Ambedkar more thanAmbedkar had already accepted.Ambedkar appeared at Gandhi's cot late that afternoon, he did most of thetalking. He was ready to help to save the Mahatma’s life, he said. But 'I wantmy compensation.’Gandhi had already commenced to sink. In previous fasts he had taken waterregularly, on the hour. Now he was listless and drank it irregularly. In previousfasts, massage moderated his aches. This time he refused massage. Sharp painsracked his wasting body. He had to be moved to the bath on a stretcher. Theleast movement, sometimes even speaking, gave him nausea.When Ambedkar said, 'I want my compensation,' Gandhi propped himself uppainfully and spoke for many minutes. He mentioned his devotion to theHarijans. He discussed the Sapru scheme point by point. He did not like it, hesaid. All Harijans should be nominated by Harijans and not just some of them,Gandhi declared. Weakened by the effort, the Mahatma subsided to his pillow.Ambedkar had expected to be put under pressure in the presence of the dyingMahatma to recede from his position. But now Gandhi out- Harijaned theHarijan Ambedkar.Ambedkar welcomed Gandhi's amendment.That day, Mrs. Gandhi arrived; she had been transferred from Sabarmati Prisonto Yeravda. As she slowly moved towards her husband, she shook her head fromside to side reprovingly and said, 'Again, the same story!' He smiled. Herpresence cheered him. He submitted to massage by her, and by a professional,more for her sake than because he wanted it.Friday, September 23, the fourth day of the fast, Dr. Gilder, Gandhi's heartspecialist, and Dr. Patel came from Bombay, and in consultation with prisonwww.mkgandhi.org Page 355

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesphysicians diagnosed the Prisoner's condition as dangerous. Blood pressure wasalarmingly high. Death was possible at any moment.The same day, Ambedkar conferred at length with the Hindu leaders andpresented his new demands for compensation: MacDonald's award had given theDepressed Classes 71 seats in the provincial legislatures. Ambedkar asked for197. Sapru had suggested a panel of three Harijan candidates. Gandhisuggested five; Ambedkar suggested two. There was also the question of areferendum of Harijan voters to decide when the reserved seats should beabolished and the political distinction thus wiped out between Hindus andHarijans; that would be a step towards the merger of the two communities inlife. Gandhi wanted the primaries abolished after five years. Ambedkar heldout for fifteen. Ambedkar did not believe that untouchability would bedestroyed in five years.Later in the day, Ambedkar came to Gandhi. It was a hot sultry day and not amango leaf stirred in the prison yard. Gandhi's blood pressure was rising. Hecould hardly speak above a whisper. Ambedkar bargained hard. The outcomewas indecisive.Saturday, September 24, the fifth day, Ambedkar renewed his talks with theHindu leaders. After a morning's wrangling, he visited Gandhi at noon. It hadbeen agreed between Ambedkar and the Hindus that the Depressed Classeswould have 147 reserved seats instead of the 197 Ambedkar had demanded andthe 71 MacDonald ordered. Gandhi accepted the compromise. Ambedkar wasnow ready to abolish the separate primaries after ten years. Gandhi insisted onfive. 'Five years or my life,' Gandhi said. Ambedkar refused.Ambedkar returned to his Harijan colleagues. Later, he informed the Hinduleaders that he would not accept the abolition of primaries in five years;nothing less than ten.Rajagopalachari now did something which probably saved Gandhi's life. Withoutconsulting Gandhi, he and Ambedkar agreed that the time of the abolition ofthe primaries would be determined in further discussion. This might make areferendum superfluous.www.mkgandhi.org Page 356

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesRajagopalachari rushed to the jail and explained the new arrangement toGandhi.Will you repeat it?'Rajagopalachari repeated it.'Excellent,' Gandhi murmured; he may not have understood precisely whatRajagopalachari was saying; he was faint. But he had acquiesced.That Saturday, the Yeravda Pact, as Indian history knowss it, was drafted andsigned by all the chief Hindu and Harijani negotiators except Gandhi.On Sunday it was ratified in Bombay at a full conferences of the negotiators andothers.But the pact was no pact and Gandhi would not abandon- his fast unless theBritish government consented to substitute s it for the MacDonald Award. Itsverbatim text had been, telegraphed to London where Charles Andrews, Polakand. other friends of Gandhi laboured to get quick action from the government.It was Sunday and ministers had' left town, and Ramsay MacDonald was inSussex attending a funeral.On hearing of the agreement in Poona, MacDonald hurried back to 10 DowningStreet; so did Sir Samuel Hoare and Lord Lothian who had helped to formulatethe MacDonald Award. They pored over the text until midnight on Sunday.Gandhi's life was fast ebbing away. He told Kasturbai who should get the fewpersonal belongings that lay around his cot. Early Monday, Tagore arrived fromCalcutta and sang a selection of his own songs to the Mahatma. They soothedGandhi. Friends from Poona were admitted to play on musical instruments andchant devotional hymns. He thanked them with a nod and a faint smile. Hecould not speak.A few hours later, the British government announced simultaneously in Londonand New Delhi that it had approved the Yeravda Pact. Gandhi could break hisfast.www.mkgandhi.org Page 357

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAt 5.15 on Monday afternoon, in the presence of Tagore, Patel, Mahadev Desai,Mrs. Naidu, the negotiators and Journalists, Gandhi accepted a glass of orangejuice from Kasturbai and broke his fast. Tagore sang Bengali hymns. Many eyeswere wet.Dr. Ambedkar made an interesting speech at the Bombay conference onSunday, September 25th, which ratified the Yeravda Pact or Poona Agreement.Praising Gandhi's conciliatory attitude, Ambedkar said, 'I must confess that Iwas surprised, immensely surprised, when I met him, that there was so much incommon between him and me. In fact whenever any disputes were carried tohim—and Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru has told you that the disputes that were carriedto him were of a very crucial character—I was astounded to see that the manwho held such divergent views from mine at the Round Table Conference cameimmediately to my rescue and not to the rescue of the other side. I am verygrateful to Mahatmaji for having extricated me from what might have been avery difficult situation.'This was not only a polite tribute at a moment of relaxation after hectic days,but also a correct description of Gandhi's attitude. Gandhi did favour theHarijan position over the Hindu position. Indeed, Gandhi had gone so far in hisdesire to meet the Harijans 100 per cent of the way, that he reversed himselfon the key issue of reserved seats. 'My only regret is,' Dr. Ambedkar stated inthat same speech, "why did not Mahatmaji take this attitude at the RoundTable Conference? If he had shown the same consideration for my point of viewthen, it would not have been necessary for him to go through this ordeal.'However,' he added generously, these are things of the past. I am glad that Iam here now to support this resolution' of ratification.At the Round Table Conference in September-December 1931, Gandhi hadopposed Harijan reserved seats in the Hindu block because it divided the twocommunities. But on September 13, 1932, and again on the 19th, Gandhi hadaccepted the idea of reserved seats as an unavoidable and he hoped, passingevil. He accepted the reservation of seats as something infinitely preferable tothe segregation that would arise out of the separate electorate whichwww.mkgandhi.org Page 358

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesMacDonald wanted to introduce. But if Gandhi had done so at the Round TableConference or months before the fast he might not have carried the orthodoxHindus with him. One of the negotiators of the Poona Agreement subsequentlytold me that he had always opposed Gandhi's policies, but Gandhi was Goddescended to earth and 'the gates of Heaven were waiting to receive him'. Thethreat of the Mahatma's death won over the Hindu leaders for Gandhi's policies.Suppose, however, that the Hindu leaders had adopted reservation of seatsbefore the fast. Would the fast have been superfluous? Was the Mahatma'storment unnecessary?The answer to this question is crucial to an understanding of Gandhi's role inIndia's history. By the criterion of cold logic and arid legalisms, Gandhi need nothave fasted to reach an agreement with Ambedkar. But Gandhi's relationshipwith the Indian people was not based on logic and legalism. It was a highlyemotional relationship. For the Hindus, Gandhi was Mahatma, The Great Soul, apiece of God. Were they going to kill him? The moment the fast began, texts,constitutions, awards, elections, etc., lost their significance. Gandhi's life hadto be saved.From September 13, when the fast was announced, to the afternoon ofSeptember 26, when Gandhi drank his first orange juice, every change inGandhi's physical condition, every word pronounced by anyone who had seenhim, every Journey of the least of the negotiators was broadcast to everycorner of the country. A mother hovering over the crib of a tender child duringa high temperature crisis could be no more anxious than India that watched thewhite cot of the sinking Mahatma. No mystic himself, Gandhi affected othersmystically. They became one with him, as one as mother and babe. Reasonwithdrew; passionately, frantically, because the end might have come at anyinstant, Hindus were reacting a single throbbing wish: The Mahatma must notdie.Gandhi had made each Hindu personally responsible for s life. On September15, in a statement widely disseminated, Gandhi said, 'No patched-up agreementbetween Caste Hindus and rival Depressed class leaders will answer the purposewww.mkgandhi.org Page 359

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe agreement to be valid has to be real. If the Hindu mass mind is not yetprepared to banish untouchability root and branch it must sacrifice me withoutthe slightest hesitation'While the negotiators parleyed, therefore, the Hindu community—closes to aquarter of a billion persons—experienced a religious-emotional upheaval. At thevery beginning of the fast week, the famous Kalighat Temple of Calcutta andthe Ram Mandir of Banares, citadel of Hindu orthodoxy, were thrown open tountouchables. In Delhi, Caste Hindus and Harijans demonstratively fraternizedin streets and temples. In Bombay, a nationalist women's organizationorganized a poll in front of seven big temples. Ballot boxes, watched byvolunteers, were placed outside the gates, and worshippers were asked to casttheir votes on the admission of untouchables. The tally was 24,797 for 445against. As a result, temples in which no Harijan foot had ever trod wereopened to all.The day before the fast started, twelve temples in Allahabad were madeaccessible to Harijans for the first time; on the first day of the fast, some ofthe most sacred temples throughout the country opened their doors tountouchables. Every subsequent day, until September 26, and then every dayfrom the 27 to October 2, Gandhi's birthday, which was Anti-UntouchabilityWeek, scores of holy places lowered the bars against Harijans. All temples inthe native states of Baroda, Kashmir, Bhor and Kolhapur cancelled templediscrimination. The newspapers printed the names of the hundreds of templesthat lifted the ban under the impact of Gandhi's fast.Mrs. Swarup Rani Nehru, Jawaharlal's very orthodox mother, let it be knownthat she had accepted food from the hand of an untouchable. Thousands ofprominent Hindu women followed her example. At the strictly Hindu BanaresUniversity, Principal Dhruva, with numerous Brahmans dined publicly withstreet cleaners, cobblers and scavengers. Similar meals were arranged inhundreds of other places.In villages, small towns and big cities, congregations, organisations, citizens'unions, etc., adopted resolutions promising to stop discriminating againstwww.mkgandhi.org Page 360

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesuntouchables; copies of these resolutions formed a man-high heap in Gandhi'sprison yard.Villages and small towns allowed untouchables to use water wells. Hindu pupilsshared benches formerly reserved for untouchables. Roads and streets, fromwhich they were previously excluded, were opened to Harijans.A spirit of reform, penance and self-purification swept the land. During the sixfast days, most Hindus refrained from going to cinemas, theatres, orrestaurants. Weddings were postponed.A cold political agreement between Gandhi and Ambedkar, without a fast,would have had no such effect on the nation; it might have redressed a legalHarijan grievance, but it would have remained a dead letter as far as theHindu's personal treatment of untouchables was concerned. Most Hindus wouldnever have heard of it. The political pact was important only after theemotional churning which Gandhiji's fast gave the country.The fast could not kill the curse of untouchability, which was more than threethousand years old. Access to a temple ls not access to a good job. The Harijansremained the dregs of Indian society. Nor did segregation end when Gandhislowly drank his orange juice.But after the fast, untouchability forfeited its public approval; the belief in itwas destroyed. A practice deeply embedded in a complicated religion full ofmystic overtones and undercurrents was recognized as morally illegitimate. Ataboo hallowed by custom, tradition and ritual lost its potency had beensocially improper to consort with Harijans; in many circles now it becamesocially improper not to consort with them. To practice untouchability brandedone a bigot a reactionary. Before long, marriages were taking place betweenHarijans and Hindus; Gandhi made a point of attending some.Gandhi's 'Epic Fast' snapped a long chain that stretched back into antiquity andhad enslaved tens of millions. Some links of the chain remained. Many woundsfrom the chain remained. But nobody would forge new links; nobody would linkthe links together again. The future promised freedom.www.mkgandhi.org Page 361

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe Yeravda Pact said, "No one shall be regarded as untouchable by reason ofhis birth...' Orthodox Hindus, with large religious followings, signed thatstatement. It marked a religious reformation, a psychological revolution.Hinduism was purging itself of a millennial sickness. The mass purified itself inpractice. It was good for India's moral health. The perpetuation ofuntouchability would have poisoned India's soul just as the retention of itseconomic remnants must hamper India's progress.If Gandhi had done nothing else in his life but shatter the structure ofuntouchability he would have been a great social reformer. In retrospect, thewrestling with Ambedkar over seats, primaries and referendums seems like thatyear's melted snow on the Himalayas. The real reform was religious and social,not political.Five days after the end of the fast Gandhi's weight had given up to ninety-nineand three-quarter pounds, and he was spinning and working for many hours.'The fast was really nothing compared with the miseries that the outcasts haveundergone for ages,' he wrote to Miss Slade. 'And so', he added, 'I continue tohum “God is great and merciful”.’He remained in prison.Gandhi's fast touched Hindu India's heart. Gandhi had a compelling need tocommunicate with the hearts of men, he had an artist's genius for reaching theheart strings of the inner man. But how does one communicate with a hundredor two hundred or three hundred million persons most of whom are illiterateand only five thousand of whom have radios? Gandhi's fasts were means ofcommunication. The news of the fast was printed in all papers. Those who readtold those who did not read that 'The Mahatma is fasting'. The cities knew, andpeasants marketing in the cities knew, and they carried the report to thevillages, and travellers did likewise.Why is the Mahatma fasting?''So that we Hindus open our temples to the untouchables and treat theuntouchables better.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 362

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIndia's ear was listening for more news.The Mahatma is sinking.' 'The Mahatma is dying.' We must hurry.'Gandhi's agony gave vicarious pain to his adorers who knew they must not killGod's messenger on earth. It was evil to prolong his suffering. It was blessed tosave him by being good to those whom he had called The Children of God.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 363

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter VIWithout PoliticsTHE 'Epic Fast' enabled Gandhi to break through a thick, high wall into theimmense neglected field of social reform. Many of his friends were unhappybecause he allowed himself to be 'sidetracked' into welfare work for Harijansand peasants. Politicians wanted him to be political. But to Gandhi vitamins forvillages were the best politics and Harijan happiness the highroad toindependence.Social reform was ever his favoured activity. 'I have always held', he declaredon January 25, 1942, in Harijan, 'that a parliamentary programme at all times isthe least of a nation's activity. The most important and permanent work is doneoutside.' He wanted the individual to do more so that the State would do less.The more work at the bottom, the less dictation from the top.Gandhi's revulsion against government was indeed so strong that he promised inApril 27, 1940, Harijan not to participate in the government of free India. Hewould do his share, he said, 'outside the official world'. He was too religious toidentify himself with any government.This being Gandhi's philosophy, he depended for the success of his social reformwork on special pm-pose voluntary organizations with many active members.In February 1933, Gandhi, still in prison, had started the Harijan Sevak Sangh, asociety to help Harijans, and Harijan, a new weekly which replaced YoungIndia, suspended by the Government. On May 8, he undertook a three weeks'fast for self-purification and to impress the ashram with the importance ofservice rather than indulgence; the presence of an attractive American womanvisitor had caused some backsliding. On the first day of the fast theGovernment released him. It seemed certain, after the physical agony of theseven days of the 'Epic Fast, that twenty-one days without food would kill him.And Britain did not want a dead Gandhi within prison walls.He survived.www.mkgandhi.org Page 364

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesWhy was the short fast almost fatal and the other, three times as long, easy toendure? During the former, he negotiated incessantly and was consumed by adesire to remove the taint of untouchability; his body burned simultaneously. Inthe twenty-one-day fast, spirit and mind were relaxed. His little body was thecreature of a powerful will.As a gesture of friendship to the Government for his release, Gandhi suspendedfor six weeks the civil disobedience campaign which had commenced in January1933. On July 15 he asked Willingdon for an interview. The Viceroy declined.On August 1, Gandhi proposed to march from Yeravda, where he had beenresiding, to the village of Ras. That night, he was arrested with thirty-fourashramites, but released three days later and ordered to remain in the city ofPoona. Half an hour later, he disobeyed the order, and was arrested again andsentenced to a year's imprisonment. He commenced to fast on August 16, wasremoved to hospital in a precarious condition on August 20, and unconditionallyreleased on the 23rd. He nevertheless regarded himself as serving the year'ssentence and announced he would not resume civil disobedience beforeAugust 3, 1934.Until 1939 except for a month's silence to catch up with his work and severallong periods of physical breakdown Gandhi was completely at the disposal ofthe organizations he had founded for mass welfare and education. He gaveSabarmati Ashram to a Harijan group and established headquarters in Wardha,a small town in the Central Provinces. From there, on November 7, 1933, hecommenced a ten-month tour for Harijan welfare; he visited every province inIndia without once going home to relax or rest.On January 15, 1934, a large section of Bihar province suffered a severeearthquake. Gandhi interrupted his tour and visited the stricken area in March;he walked barefoot from village to village, comforting, teaching and preaching.The earthquake, he told the public, 'is a chastisement for your sins', chiefly 'thesin of untouchability such superstition angered Tagore and other enlightenedIndians, the poet denounced the Mahatma. '... physical catastrophes', Tagoredeclared in a statement to the press which he first sent to Gandhi, "has theirwww.mkgandhi.org Page 365

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesinevitable and exclusive origin in certain combinations of physical facts... If weassociate ethical principles with cosmic phenomena then we shall have to admitthat human nature is morally superior to the Providence that preaches lessonsin good behaviour in orgies of the worst behaviour possible... As for us, we feelperfectly secure in the faith that our sins and errors, however enormous, havenot enough force to drag down the structure of creation to ruins... We, who areimmensely grateful to Mahatmaji for inducing by his wonder-working inspirationa freedom from fear and feebleness in the minds of his countrymen, feelprofoundly hurt when any words from his mouth may emphasize the elementsof unreason in those very minds….’Gandhi was not shaken. There is an indissoluble marriage', he replied, "betweenmatter and spirit... The connection between cosmic phenomena and humanbehaviour is a living faith and draws me nearer to God.' The moment Gandhiinvoked God there was no arguing with him. In effect, the overzealous Mahatmawas harnessing God to his propaganda chariot; he was Aijuna using Krishna ascharioteer to fight for the common people.Gandhi's paramount compulsion was to help the poor, and since Gandhi andGandhi's God were partners, the Mahatma enlisted the Almighty in the task. 'Toa people famishing and idle,' he wrote, 'the only acceptable form in which Godcan dare appear is work and promise of food and wages.''India lives in her villages, not in her cities,' he wrote in Harijan on August 26,1936; and several issues later, 'When I succeed in ridding the villages of theirpoverty, I have won Swaraj...' The idea that Gandhi favoured poverty is fiction;he merely urged select idealists to serve the people through self-abnegation.For the nation as a whole, 'No one has ever suggested that grinding pauperismcan lead to anything else than moral degradation,' which is the last thing hewanted. Gandhi insisted that 'If we do not waste our wealth and energy, theclimate and natural resources of our country are such that we can become thehappiest people in the world,' which is what he did want.Gandhi decried the extreme of pauperism and the extreme of wealth.www.mkgandhi.org Page 366

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesBetween 1933 and 1939, Gandhi allowed few matters to deflect him fromwelfare work. It was not smooth sailing. On June 25, 1935, at Poona, in theheart of the late Tilak's Maratha country, a Hindu suspected of opposingequality for Harijans threw a bomb into a car thinking mistakenly that theMahatma was in it. Shortly thereafter, a Gandhi supporter belaboured an anti-Harijan with a lathi. Gandhi fasted seven days in July 1934 to do penance forboth.On October 26, 1934, the All-India Village Industries Association was launchedwith Gandhi as patron and Gandhi's millionaire industrialist friends as backers.At village meetings and in Harijan, Gandhi was now giving the farmingpopulation rudimentary instruction about food. 'Milk and banana make a perfectmeal,' he wrote. Harijan of February 15, 1935, contained an article by Gandhientitled 'Green Leaves and their Food Value' in which he reported 'For nearlyfive months I have been living on uncooked foods The addition of green leavesto their meals will enable villagers to avoid many diseases from which they arenow suffering.' He devoted another article to the debate on 'Cow's Milk versusBuffalo's', and still a third to the supreme Indian problem: rice: In his booklet,Key to Health, and elsewhere, Gandhi gave warning against machine-polishedrice. Polishing removes an overcoat rich in vitamins, especially B1, heexplained; lacking those vitamins, Indians, for most of whom rice is the chiefstaple food, are subject to numerous debilitating diseases, notably beriberiwhich means 'I cannot'. Hand-pounded rice, Gandhi explained, retains thevitamin-rich coating.At other times, Gandhi expatiated on the nutritional value of the mango kerneland the groundnut or peanut. Peanuts were politics to him, as political asprimaries. Repeatedly, too, he gave detailed information on how to prepareanimal manures and how to cure snake bites and malaria.Gandhi knew that the improvement of seed, the proper use of fertilizer and theproper care of cattle could solve basic political problems. Many a civil war inAsia might have been prevented by an additional daily bowl of rice per person.www.mkgandhi.org Page 367

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi also paid attention to non-agrarian aspects of village life. "We have toconcentrate on the village being self- contained, manufacturing mainly for use,'he wrote in Harijan on August 29, 1936. ‘Provided this character of villageindustry is maintained, there would be no objection to villagers using even themodern machines and tools that they can make an^ afford to use. Only theyshould not be used as a means exploiting of others'.In Harijan of July 26, 1942, Gandhi described the ideal Indian village: 'It is acomplete republic, independent of its neighbours for its vital wants, and yetinterdependent for many other wants in which dependence is a necessity. Thusevery village's first concern will be to grow its own food crops and cotton for itscloth. It should have a reserve for its cattle, recreation and playground foradults and children. Then if there is more land available, it will grow usefulmoney crops, thus excluding... tobacco, opium and the like. The village willmaintain a village theatre, school and public hall. It will have its own waterworks ensuring clean supply. This can be done through controlled wells andtanks (reservoirs). Education will be compulsory up to the final basic course. Asfar as possible, every activity will be conducted on a co-operative basis ...' tothis modest blueprint, which, however, seemed like a sketch of Heaven toIndia's permanently underfed farmers, Gandhi added another wild dream:electricity in every village home.Did Gandhi advocate a land reform for India which would give landless or landpoorpeasants the redistributed estates of the big landlords?In the January 2, 1937, issue of Harijan, Gandhi wrote, 'Land and all property ishis who will work it'; but he admitted the landlords into that category thoughhe knew that the landlord class included a large percentage of absenteeowners, intermediaries, agents, moneylenders and other unproductiveelements.'I cannot picture to myself a time when no man shall be richer than another,'Gandhi said. 'Even in the most perfect world, we shall fail to avoid inequalities,but we can and must avoid strife and bitterness. There are numerous exampleswww.mkgandhi.org Page 368

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesextant of the rich and the poor living in perfect friendliness. We have but tomultiply such instances.'Gandhi would have done it by 'trusteeship'.In Bengal once, Gandhi was the guest of a landlord who served him milk in agold bowl and fruit on gold plates. Where did he get these golden plates from?'Gandhi said to himself.'From the substance of the peasants,' Gandhi answered Where their life is onelong-drawn-out agony, how dare he have these luxuries?'Gandhi spared his host, but he shared these thoughts with a meeting oflandlords in 1931 and added, 'Landlords would do well to take time by theforelock. Let them cease to be mere rent collectors. They should becometrustees and trusted friends of their tenants.... They should give the peasantsfixity of tenure, take a lively interest in their welfare, provide well- managedschools for their children, night schools for adults, hospitals and dispensariesfor the sick, look after the sanitation of the villages, and in a variety of waysmake them feel that they, the landlords, are their true friends taking only afixed commission for their manifold services.''Exploitation of their poor can be extinguished,' Gandhi wrote in Harijan on July28, 1940, 'not by effecting the destruction of a few millionaires, but byremoving the ignorance of the poor and teaching them to non-co-operate withtheir exploiters. That will convert the exploiters also.'Gandhi reminded the peasants and workers of their power. There is in English avery potent word, and you have it in French also,' he said. 'All the languages ofthe world have it - it is "No" ... Immediately Labour comes to recognize that ithas got the choice of saying "Yes" when it wants to say "Yes", and "No" when itwants to say "No", Labour is free of Capital and Capital must woo Labour.' Theworker can strike; the peasant can refuse rent.Nevertheless, he declared in Young India of October 7, 1926, 'capital and labourneed not be antagonistic to each other'.www.mkgandhi.org Page 369

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesBut the passage of time and all Gandhi's persuasiveness produced few trustees.No report of 'voluntary abdication by a landlord or mill owner reached Gandhibefore the day of his death. No one answered his 1929 appeal to the 'modellandlord' to 'reduce himself to poverty in order that the peasant may have thenecessities of life.'Gradually, therefore, Gandhi's economic views changed. He continued toadvocate class collaboration. But as he moved nearer the end of his life andfurther from the nineteenth century, he sought new means of removingpoverty. He became reconciled to more state participation in economic affairs.He wanted the law to help in the levelling process. Equality grew moreattractive.In Harijan of July 31, 1937, Gandhi noted that British income surtaxesamounted to 70 per cent. "There is no reason why India should not go to a muchhigher figure.' And, he added, 'Why should there not be death duties?' In anarticle published April 13, 1938, he went still further. 'A trustee has no heir butthe public'. The millionaire's wealth should go to the community, not to his sonwho would only lose morally by inheriting material riches, Gandhi declared.One of the first acts of a free India would be to give grants to theuntouchables, he said, out of 'the pockets of the moneyed classes.' And if therich complain, 'I shall sympathize with them, but I will not be able to helpthem, even if I could possibly do so, because I would seek their assistance mthat process, and without their assistance it would not be possible to raisethese people out of the mire.'In 1941, and again in 1945 in his Constructive Programme, Gandhi warned theIndian capitalists. 'A non-violent system °f government', he wrote, 'is clearly animpossibility so long 48 the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millionsPersists. The contrast between the palaces of New Delhi and the miserablehovels of the poor labouring class nearby cannot last one day in a free India inwhich the poor will enjoy the same power as the richest in the land. A violentand bloody revolution is a certainty one day unless there is a voluntarywww.mkgandhi.org Page 370

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesabdication of riches and the power that riches give, and sharing them for thecommon good.'The response was nil.The power that riches give' troubled him. He began to search for means ofdiffusing it. 'Key industries, industries which the state needs', he wrote on June28, 1939, 'may be centralized.' He was opposed, however, to the concentrationof economic power in the hands of the government. He therefore added, 'Butsupposing the state controlled paper- making and centralized it, I would expectit to protect all the paper that villages can make.' Power houses, he wrote,should be owned 'by village communities or the state', preferably by thevillages.'What would happen in a free India?' I asked Gandhi in 1942. What is yourprogramme for the improvement of the lot of the peasantry?'The peasants would take the land,' he replied. We would not have to tell themto take it. They would take it.'Would the landlords be compensated?' I asked.'No', Gandhi said. That would be fiscally impossible.An interviewer told Gandhi that the number of textile mills was increasing.'That is a misfortune,' he remarked. Better that textiles be made in the homesof the millions of partially employed peasants.'God forbid', Gandhi exclaimed in Harijan on January 28, 1939, 'that Indiashould ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West. The economicimperialism of a single tiny island kingdom (England) is today keeping the worldin chains. If an entire nation of three hundred millions too to similar economicexploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.'Nor did Gandhi regard the mere multiplication of material wants and of objectsto gratify them as the high-road happiness or godliness. He drew no linebetween economics and ethics. 'An economics', he said in Harijan of October 9,1937, 'that inculcates Mammon worship, that enables the strong to amasswww.mkgandhi.org Page 371

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswealth at the expenses of the weak, is a false and dismal science. It spellsdeath. True economics ... stands for social justice and moral values. Gandhiknew that people with full refrigerators, crowded clothes closets, cars in everygarage and radios in every room may still be psychologically insecure andunhappy. 'Rome,' he said, 'suffered a moral fall when it attained high materialaffluence'. What shall it avail a man if he gains the whole world and lose hissoul?' Gandhi quoted. 'In modern terms,' he continued, 'it is beneath humandignity to lose one's individuality and become a mere cog in the machine.I want every individual to become a full-blooded, fully developed member ofsociety.' Next to God, Gandhi's Supreme Being was man the individual. Heaccordingly regarded himself as 'the born democrat'.'No society can possibly be built on a denial of individual freedom. It is contraryto the very nature of man.' Gandhi wrote. 'Just as man will not grow horns or atail so he will not exist as a man if he has no mind of his own.' Therefore,'democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep.'Gandhi disliked the word 'tolerance' but he found no substitute. 'For me,' hesaid 'every ruler is alien who defies public opinion... Intolerance betrays wantof faith in one's cause... We shut the door of reason when we refuse to listen toour opponents or, having listened, make fun of them.''Always keep an open mind,' he admonished.There could, however, be no democracy without discipline. I value individualfreedom,' he wrote, 'but you must not forget that man is essentially a socialbeing. He has risen to his Present status by learning to adjust his individualismto the requirements of social progress. Unrestricted individualism is e law ofthe beast of the jungle. We must learn to strike mean between individualfreedom and social restraint.' It could be done by self-discipline. If theindividual did discipline himself the state would try to discipline the individual,and too much official discipline kills democracy 'We cannot learn discipline bycompulsion,' Gandhi affirmed A dictatorship can exact obedience; it canimplant the habit of robot compliance; it can, by fear, convert man into acringing, kowtowing pigmy. None of that is discipline.www.mkgandhi.org Page 372

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi discouraged the notion that democracy meant economic freedom at theexpense of personal liberty, or political freedom without economic freedom.'My conception of freedom is no narrow conception,' he declared in Harijan ofJune 7, 1942. 'It is coextensive with the freedom of man in all his majesty.''If the individual ceases to count, what is left of society?' he asked. To thosewho argued that dictatorships reduce illiteracy, he replied, 'Where a choice hasto be made between liberty and learning, who will not say that the former hasto be preferred a thousand times to the latter?'Democracy means majority rule, Gandhi agreed. But, 'In matters of conscience,'he said, 'the law of majority has no place; ... it is slavery to be amenable to themajority no matter what its decisions are.'Nor was freedom Gandhi's highest law. ‘Not even for the freedom of Indiawould I resort to an untruth,' he said. "We do not seek out independence out ofBritain's ruin.'Gandhi's hostility to violence and untruth, his objection to the omnipotentState which embodies both, and his economic ideas made him anti-Communist.'India does not want Communism,' Gandhi said as early as November 24, 1921.'All Communists are not bad, as all Congressmen are not angels,' Gandhideclared on January 26, 1941. ‘I have, therefore no prejudice againstCommunists as such. Their philosophy, they have declared it to me, I cannotsubscribe to.'The Communists sent spokesmen to convert him. But his instincts led him toreject their teachings.'I am yet ignorant of what exactly Bolshevism is,' he wrote on December 11,1924. 'I have not been able to study it. I do not know whether it is for the goodof Russia in the long run. But I do know that insofar as it is based on violenceand denial of God, it repels me... I am an uncompromising opponent of violentmethods even to serve the noblest of causes.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 373

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIn 1926, he received some enlightenment and declared. 'Let no one think thatthe people in Russia, Italy and other countries are happy or are independent.'In 1927, Shapuri Saklatwala, an Indian Communist who was a member of theBritish House of Commons, appealed to Gandhi to forsake his mistaken waysand join the Communists. Gandhi replied to the 'impatient comrade' in YoungIndia of March 17, 1927. 'In spite of my desire to offer hearty co-operation,' theMahatma said, 'I find myself against a blind wall. His facts are fiction and hisdeductions based upon fiction are necessarily baseless... I am sorry, but westand at opposite poles.'Communists accused him of consorting with capitalists and taking their money.He did not reply that Communists were tarred with the same brush. He said hetook money from the rich to help the poor. He consorted with capitalists toconvert them. He consorted with Communists as often as they wished to come.‘You claim to be Communists,' he said to one group of Communists, 'but you donot seem to live the life of Communism.' Then he berated them for theirdiscourtesy in debate. On another occasion, he attacked their lack of scruples.'I have it from some of the literature that passes under the name of Communistliterature,' he wrote in Harijan on December 10, 1930, 'that secrecy’,camouflage, and the like are enjoined as necessary for the accomplishment ofthe Communist.' This repelled him.Was Gandhi a Socialist?The Communists call themselves Socialists. The full name of Hitler's Nazi partywas National Socialist Workers' Party, and Mussolini spoke of his regime as'proletarian'. The French Radical Socialists are mild and middle class. Socialismis an overworked word.Gandhi read Karl Marx's Capital in prison and remarked, 'I think I could havewritten it better, assuming, of course, that I had the leisure for the study hehas put in.' If Gandhi meant the style he was certainly right. But Gandhi was noMarxist; he did not believe in class war.www.mkgandhi.org Page 374

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesMinoo Masani, Indian author and India's first Ambassador to Brazil, askedGandhi's opinion of the programme of the Indian Socialist Party. Gandhi repliedin a letter dated June 14, 1934. 'I welcome the rise of the Socialist Party in theCongress,' the Mahatma wrote. 'But I can't say I like the programme as itappears in the printed pamphlet. It seems to me to ignore Indian conditions andI do not like the assumption underlying many of its propositions which go toshow that there is necessarily antagonism between the classes and the massesor between the labourers and capitalists, such that they can never work formutual good. My own experience covering a fairly long period is to thecontrary. What is necessary is that labourers or workers should know theirrights and should also know how to assert them. And since there never has beenany right without a corresponding duty, in my opinion, a manifesto isincomplete without emphasizing the necessity of performance of duty andshowing what duty is.' He invited Masani and friends for a discussion.Gandhi opposed the Socialists for their class-war doctrine, and he condemnedthem when they used violence. Yet as he observed disturbing trends, hebecame more pro-socialist and more favorably disposed to equality. Today',Gandhi wrote in the June 1, 1947 Harijan, 'there is gross economic inequality.The basis of Socialism is economic equality. There can be no rule of God in thepresent state of iniquitous inequalities in which a few roll in riches and themasses do not get enough to eat. I accepted the theory of Socialism even whileI was in South Africa.' His, however, was a moral Socialism.If India were to carry out most of Gandhi's numerous economic prescriptions theresult, two or three decades after his death, might be an economy pivoting ona fully employed, self-governing village enjoying maximum self-sufficiency andminimum mechanization; a city where capitalists and municipal, provincial andfederal governments shared industry and trade; strong trade unions and cooperatives;and one- generation capitalists whose wealth, since they could notbequeath it, would revert to the community.www.mkgandhi.org Page 375

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi's loyalty to truth exceeded his loyalty to political dogma or party. Heallowed truth to lead him without a map. If it took him into an area where hehad to discard some intellectual baggage or walk alone without past associates,he went. He never impeded his mind with STOP signs. Many groups haveclaimed him. But he was the private property of none, not even of Congress. Hewas its leader for years, yet at the Congress convention in Bombay in December1934, having immersed himself in Harijan and peasant uplift work, he ceased tobe a dues-paying member, let alone an officer, of the Congress party. 'I needcomplete detachment and absolute freedom of action,' he said.Gandhi's individualism met maximum freedom from outward Circumstances andmaximum development of inner qualities. His antagonism to British rule waspart of a larger antagonism to fetters of all kinds. His goal was Gita detachmentin politics as in religion.Gandhi's intellectual receptivity and flexibility are characteristics of the Hindumind. There is a Hindu orthodoxy but it is not characteristic of Hinduism. InHinduism it is the intensity and quality of the religious zeal, not so much itsobject, which constitutes religion.In 1942, when I was Gandhi's house guest for a week, there was only onedecoration on the mud walls of his hut: a black and white print of Jesus Christwith the inscription, 'He Is Our Peace'. I asked Gandhi about it. 'I am aChristian,' he replied. 'I am a Christian, and a Hindu, and a Moslem, and a Jew.''All faiths', Gandhi wrote in From Yeravda Mandir in an unintended definition ofreligious tolerance, 'constitute a revelation of Truth, but all are imperfect, andliable to error. Reverence for other faiths need not blind us to their faults. Wemust be keenly alive to the defects of our own faith also, yet not leave it onthat account, but try to overcome those defects. Looking at all religions withan equal eye, we would not only not hesitate, but would think it our duty toblend into our faith every acceptable feature of other faiths.'That paragraph is a portrait of the Gandhi mind; he was the conservative whowould not change his religion, the reformer who tried to alter it, and thetolerant believer who regarded all faiths as aspects of the divine. He was loyalwww.mkgandhi.org Page 376

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesyet critical, partisan yet open-minded, devout yet not doctrinaire, inside yetoutside, attached yet detached; Hindu yet Christian, yet Moslem, yet Jew.Next to Hinduism he was most attracted by Christianity- He loved Jesus. Hindubigots even accused him of being a secret Christian. He considered this "both alibel and a compliment — a libel because there are men who believe me to becapable of being secretly anything... a compliment m that it is a reluctantacknowledgement of my capacity for appreciating the beauties of Christianity.Let me own this- If I could call myself, say, a Christian or a Moslem, with myown interpretation of the Bible or the Koran, I could not hesitate to call myselfeither. For then Hindu, Christian and Moslem would be synonymous terms. I dobelieve that in the other world there are neither Hindus, nor Christians orMoslems.'Gandhi was more specific, however, in an address at the Y.M.C.A. in Colombo,Ceylon, in 1927. 'If then,' he said 'I had to face only the Sermon on the Mountand my own interpretation of it, I should not hesitate to say, 'Oh, yes, I amChristian"... But negatively I can tell you that much of what passes asChristianity is a negation of the Sermon on the Mount. And please mark mywords. I am not at the present moment speaking of the Christian conduct. I amspeaking of the Christian belief, of Christianity as it is understood in the West.'Many Christian missionaries came to Gandhi often, and he had long friendlytalks with Dr. John R. Mott, Bishop Fisher who lived in India for years, andothers. But Gandhi frowned on proselytizing, whether by Christians, Hindus, orMoslems. He said, 'I do not believe in people telling others of their faith,especially with a view to conversion... Faith does not permit of telling. It has tobe lived and then it is self- propagating.'S.K. George, a Syrian Christian of India and lecturer at Bishop's College,Calcutta, wrote a book entitled Gandhi's Challenge to Christianity anddedicated it To Mahatma Gandhi who made Jesus and His Message real to me.'The Reverend K- Mathew Simon, of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Malabar,India, writes of Gandhi, 'It was his life that proved to me more than anythingwww.mkgandhi.org Page 377

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeselse that Christianity is a practicable religion even in the twentieth century.'This suggests how relevant Gandhi is to the problems of our times.Gandhi presented a perplexing problem to Christians in India; he was theworld's most Christ-like person yet not a "Christian’ and so,' exclaims E. StanleyJones, 'one of the most Christlike men in history was not called a Christian atall.' Missionaries frequently tried to convert him to Christianity. (He, speakingsoftly, tried to do the same for them.) But why enroll a saint in a church?Gandhi protested that the missionaries fed the starving and healed the sick inorder to convert them to Christianity. 'Make us better Hindus', he pleaded. Thatwould be more Christian.Christianity has had a good effect on Hinduism. 'The indirect influence ofChristianity has been to quicken Hinduism into life,' Gandhi asserted. The factthat the missionaries' richest recruiting field was the embittered Harijancommunity may have awakened some Hindus to the necessity of supportingGandhi's Harijan work. And Gandhi probably had a good effect on Christianity.Dr. E. Stanley Jones says, 'God uses many instruments, and he may have usedMahatma Gandhi to help Christianize unchristian Christianity.'Gandhi never tried to convert Christians to Hinduism.Although Gandhi was a Hindu reformer and welcomed the play of outsideinfluences on Hinduism, he departed from Hindu customs and beliefs withreluctance. In 1927, Devadas fell in love with Lakshmi, the daughter ofRajagopalachari, and wanted to marry her. But Rajagopalachari was a Brahminand Gandhi a Vaisya, and members of different castes should not marry. Norshould young folks choose their mates; marriages are arranged by parents. Butthe man and maid persisted, and finally the illustrious fathers agreed tosanction the union if the couple still wanted one another after five years ofseparation. So Devadas, who was born in 1900, an Lakshmi waited five painfulyears and married with pomp in Poona on June 16, 1933, in the presence ofboth happy fathers. Gandhi's wedding gift was a hymn book and garland of yarnwhich he had spun.www.mkgandhi.org Page 378

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe conservative traditionalist and the radical iconoclast merged in Gandhi intoa tantalizing unpredictable mixtu3"6The Mahatma's successful assault on untouchability produced the mostrevolutionary change in Hinduism's millennial existence. It would seem that thecorollary of the abolition of untouchability was the abolition of caste, for if onemingled with outcasts surely the barriers between the higher castes shouldcrumble. Yet for many years Gandhi defended caste restrictions.Defending the four Hindu castes, Gandhi said in 1920, 'I consider the fourdivisions to be fundamental, natural and essential.' 'Hinduism', he wrote inYoung India of October 6, 1921, 'does most emphatically discourage interdiningand intermarriage between divisions... Prohibition against intermarriage andinterdining is essential for the rapid evolution of the soul.'The same man said, 'Restriction on intercaste dining and intercaste marriage isno part of the Hindu religion. It crept into Hinduism when perhaps it was in itsdecline, and was then probably meant to be a temporary protection against thedisintegration of Hindu society. Today those two prohibitions are weakeningHindu society.' This was on November 4, 1932.In 1921, the prohibition of intermarriage and interdining was 'essential' to thesoul; in 1932, it was 'weakening Hindu society'.Even this, however, was not Gandhi's final position. Having broken with theorthodox tradition, he characteristically continued to travel further and furtheraway from it, and on January 5, 1946, he declared, in the Hindustan Standard, Itherefore tell all boys and girls who want to marry that ey cannot be married atSevagram Ashram unless one of Parties is a Harijan.' Earlier, he had refused toattend Wedding unless it was an intercaste marriage.From 1921 to 1946 Gandhi had gone full circle; from utter disapproval ofintercaste marriages to approval of only caste marriages.He had opposed marriages between religions. But he came to favour those too.He congratulated Dr. Humayun Kabir, a Moslem writer, on taking Hindu wife,and approved of B. K. Nehru's marrying a Hungarian Jewess.www.mkgandhi.org Page 379

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesCaste is as deeply ingrained in India as the family is in the Western world. YetGandhi could change his views on it. In later years, his ideas on celibacy alsomoderated. In 1935, Professor J. B. Kripalani, a disciple of Gandhi who had firstmet the Mahatma at Shantiniketan in 1915 and again in Champaran in 1917, fellin love with a Bengali girl and wanted to marry her. Gandhi summoned the girl,Sucheta, and tried to dissuade her. 'Marriage will ruin him', he said. It wouldweaken his concentration on social problems. Gandhi advised her to marrysomebody else.A year later, however, Gandhi called Sucheta and gave his approval to themarriage. 'I shall pray for both of you,' he said. Subsequently, he treated her asa daughter.In the ashram, too, Gandhi became more tolerant of marriage and stoppedinsisting that marriages be sexless.As a crusader, Gandhi had to be positive about his opinions. As a devotee of thetruth, he had to be able to change them. He sometimes defended his positionwith a persistence that seemed immodest; yet he also altered it, whennecessary, with a completeness that embarrassed his followers but never him.Though he usually tried to prove his consistency, he admitted hisinconsistencies. He could be adamant and softly yielding. He dictated toCongress in one period and left it to its fate and follies in another. Tremendouspower was at his command but it often remained unused; in very crucial issueshe bowed to the wishes of opponents whom he could have broken with a crookof finger. He had the might of a dictator and the mind of a democrat. Powergave him no pleasure; he had no distorted psychology to feed. The result was arelaxed man- The problem of maintaining an impression of omniscience,infallibility, omnipotence and dignity never occupied him.Part of every leader's equipment is a wall. It may be high and made of brick anda battalion of guards or it may consist of an unanswered question and anenigmatic smile. Its purpose is to lend distance and awe and to obscure frailtiesand secrets. There was no wall around Gandhi. 'I say without the leastwww.mkgandhi.org Page 380

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeshesitation,' he once declared, 'that I have never had recourse to cunning in allmy life.' His mind and emotions were even more exposed than his body.'My darkest hour,' Gandhi wrote in Harijan of December 26, 1936, at the age ofsixty-seven, 'was when I was in Bombay a few months ago. It was the hour ofmy temptation. Whilst I was asleep I suddenly felt as though I wanted to see awoman. Well a man who had tried to rise superior to the instinct for nearlyforty years was bound to be intensely pained when he had this frightfulexperience. I ultimately conquered the feeling, but I was face to face with theblackest moment of my life and if I had succumbed to it, it would have meantmy absolute undoing.' Most people are incapable of such nudity and many wouldthink it unnecessary. But it is the supreme manifestation of life without a wall.He wanted the world to know him, all of him; less than that would not havebeen the truth. And he told the truth about his inner struggles and outercontacts so that others might learn from them. 'As I have all along believed thatwhat is possible for one is possible for all, my experiments have not beenconducted in the closet, but in the open,' Gandhi asserted. To say this soundssomewhat boastful; not to say it would have meant suppressing an inspiringmessage.Gandhi was the eternal teacher. He accordingly made himself accessible to all.The accessibility was not only complete, it was creative.In the 1930s, a young Indian named Atulananda Chakrabarti Wrote a pamphleton the increasingly envenomed Hindu- Moslem problem. He of course sent acopy to the Mahatma. Usually a prominent person in any country limits hisexertion in such cases to the sending of a formal, polite acknowledgement.Gandhi read the brochure and wrote the unknown author a detailed criticism ofits ideas and proposals He also referred to minor matters. For instance, 'At page151, you say India is "thousands of miles wide". Is it? As a matter of fact notmore than 1500. Then you have not given the dates to your quotations in theappendix except in one case... And think of the spelling mistakes.Unpardonable! But the book should serve a useful purpose in spite of thedefects, if you have adhered to the truth.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 381

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesEncouraged by his unexpected attention, Atulananda asked whether he couldcome and live in the ashram for a while. Gandhi invited him and he stayed forseveral weeks. They became friends and corresponded regularly thereafter.Atulananda kept sending his articles to Gandhi for comments; he suggested aculture league to bring Hindus and Moslems together. In one reply, datedAugust 3, 1937, Gandhi wrote:Dear Atulananda, I hope your daughter is well and wholly out of danger. I havegone through your articles carefully. I still do not see light. It seems to me thatno culture league will answer the purpose you and I have in view. It has got tobe done by individuals who have a living faith and who would work withmissionary zeal. Try again, if I have not seen what you see in your proposal. Ishall be patient and attentive. I want to help if I can see my way clear.Yours sincerely,M. K. GandhiThe letter was written by hand in ink on a small sheet of handmade paper.Atulananda continued to concentrate on the Hindu-Moslem tension andsuggested a book about it. Replying by postcard on June 17, 1939, the Mahatmasaid, 'The disease has gone too deep for books to help. Some big action isnecessary. What I do not know as yet, Sincerely, M. K. Gandhi.'Gandhi was in correspondence with many thousands of persons in India andelsewhere. In most cases, a letter became the seed of a prolonged personalrelationship; he remembered members of the correspondent's family andmentioned them by name. Originally approached on a general political orreligious question he would soon be asked for advice on private matters. Hewas a motherly father to multitudes.In August 1947 Gandhi was in Calcutta coping with one of the ugliest crises inIndian history. City streets were running with Hindu and Moslem blood. Onemorning, Amiya Chakravarty came to see him. Amiya had been the literarysecretary of Tagore. A cousin who was very dear to him had just died of anillness, and for comfort he wanted to share his sorrow with the Mahatma. Hewww.mkgandhi.org Page 382

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesstood close to the wall in a corner of Gandhi's room; Gandhi was writing. Whenhe lifted his head, Amiya stepped forward and told him of his cousin's passing.Gandhi made a friendly remark and invited him to the prayer meeting thatevening. When Amiya arrived in the evening, Gandhi handed him a slip of paperand whispered, 'It came straight from the heart so it may have some value'. Thenote read:Dear Amiya, I am sorry for your loss which in reality is no loss. 'Death is but asleep and a forgetting-' This is such a sweet sleep that the body has not to wakeagain and the dead load of memory is thrown overboard. So far as I know,happily there is no meeting in the beyond as we have it today. When theisolated drops melt, they share the majesty of the ocean to which they belong.In isolation they die but to meet the ocean again. I do not know whether I havebeen clear enough to give you any comfort.Love,Bapu.The fact that he cared would have been comfort enough. e cared for one littleperson in the midst of his cares for e whole nation. He was convinced thatpolitics is worth, GSS than zero unless it is an integral part of the everyday 1 eof human beings. Gandhi's unwalled existence was directed to the welfare ofmankind through concern for green vegetables in village diet, the aching heartof a bereaved relative, the choice of a girl's husband, a mud pack for a sickpeasant and an author's spelling. Nobody rises above such little things; theyconstitute life; nobody lives in the rarefied air of isms and theologicalprinciples.Over a long period of years, Gandhi's daily post averaged a hundred letters,often with enclosures. He answered about ten of them himself by hand,dictated the replies to some, and instructed his secretaries how to answerothers. No communication remained without a response. In numerousinstances, where the correspondent did not object, Gandhi replied in Harijan.His weekly contributions to that magazine invariably took him two days of solidwork. These too he wrote by hand; very rarely he dictated them.www.mkgandhi.org Page 383

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAll the remainder of his long day he gave himself to visitors. Ashram membershad their personal and general problems; workers in the organizations whichGandhi had established for Harijan and peasant welfare, the popularization ofkhadi, the development of a nationwide language and for Indian-sponsorededucation wanted guidance; journalists wanted interviews; foreigners asked hisviews on every variety of subject; and always, whether he was in politics or, asin the 1933 to 1939 period, officially withdrawn from politics, the great andsmall leaders of the Indian national movement sought his advice, approval andsupport. A few times in his life he spoke on the telephone. Usually, hisconversations were face-to-face. It was not difficult to obtain an appointmentwith him. Except with a few important Indians or Englishmen, an interviewmight be attended by ten or more persons, but active participation was limitedto Gandhi and the interviewer. Mrs. Margaret Sanger, birth-control advocate,visited Gandhi in December 1935; Yone Noguchi, the Japanese author, mJanuary 1936; Lord Lothian, the British statesman, spent three days in Gandhi'svillage in January 1938. The list of the Mahatma's non-Indian guests looked likean international Who's Who. Outsiders felt that their sojourn in India wasincomplete without a visit to Gandhi.They were right; he came as near being India as one person could be. He calledhimself a Harijan, Moslem, Christian, Hindu, farmer, weaver. He wove himselfinto the texture of India. He had the gift of identification with large masses andwith many individuals. He aimed to free India the hard but lasting way: byfreeing the human beings of India. This would be more difficult than politicalliberation from England. How could it be done? 'I can indicate no royal road forbringing about the social revolution,' he wrote in 1945, 'except that we shouldrepresent it in every detail of our lives.' Gandhi's battlefield, therefore was thehearts of men. There he made his home. He knew better than anybody howlittle of the battle had been fought and won. Yet without the social revolutionin man's daily conduct, he said, 'we will not be able to leave India happier thanwhen we were born'. The social revolution could not produce a new man. A newtype of man would make the social revolution.www.mkgandhi.org Page 384

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter VIIDescent Into WarJAWAHARLAL Nehru was president of the Congress for 1936 and 1937—anunusual honour and a heavy burden. But he himself admitted that Gandhi was'the permanent Super-President' of Congress. It obeyed him. Thanks to Gandhi'ssuggestion, for instance, the twenty-five thousand persons who attended theHaripura annual convention in February 1938 were fed with hand-pounded rice,hand-ground flour, cow's (not buffalo's) milk and cow's butter; of courseeverybody wore khadi. In politics or out of politics, Gandhi could, by virtue ofhis hold on the people and on most Congress leaders, dictate the actions andveto the decisions of Congress if he wished.Only after Gandhi gave his consent did Congress participate in the elections tothe provincial and central legislatures held early in 1937, under the new Britishconstitution, the Act of India of 1935. The boycott of the legislatures, let metell you,' Gandhi explained in Harijan of May 1st, 1937, 'is not an eternalprinciple like that of truth and non-violence.Congress swept the elections in six of India's eleven provinces (Bombay, Madras,United Provinces, Bihar, Centre Provinces and Orissa), was the largest singleparty in Assam, Bengal, and the North-West Frontier Province, but obtained avery small minority of the votes in Sind and the Punjab.Should the Congress accept office in the provinces where it had won a majority?In March 1937, on the advice of Gandhi, it decided in the affirmative on theunderstanding, however, that the British governors of the provinces would notinterfere, and in the hope of using office to organize the country forindependence.The total Congress membership rose from 3,102,113 at the beginning of 1938,to 4,478,720 at the beginning of 1939. But Gandhi, never impressed by merenumbers, warned the party of being corrupted by power and office-seekers. Hesaw 'decay' setting in, and confessed that he could not undertake civilwww.mkgandhi.org Page 385

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesdisobedience because, 'though there is non-violence enough among the masses,there is not enough among those who have to organize the masses'.This reflected his disappointment with Congress leaders. When, therefore, theconvention of 1939 elected Subhas Chandra Bose as president of Congress—hewas president too in 1938, and rode to that session in an ancient vehicle drawnby fifty-one bulls—Gandhi stepped in and forced Bose to resign. Bose openlyadvocated violence and dreamed of an armed revolt against Britain. He wasdynamic and popular and threatened to seize control of Congress from theVallabhbhai Patel machine.Gandhi also condemned the Congress provincial governments for using forceduring strikes and religious riots. As the 1930 decade advanced, Gandhi becamemore uncompromising in his Pacifism. But neither Nehru, nor Bose, nor MaulanaAbul Kalam Azad, the outstanding Moslem leader of Congress, was a pacifist. Ofall India's prominent nationalists, the only one who earned the title of 'Gandhi'was Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known to the country as 'The Frontier Gandhi'.He is a Pathan from the wild, legendary north-west frontier region near theKhyber inhabited by the unruly Afridis, azirs and other mountain tribes; theBritish subsidized but never subdued them. Ghaffar Khan is six feet four, with anew> perfectly oval head and a powerful muscular body. Grey- black stubblecovers his head and face. He was sixty when I saw him in Devadas' home in NewDelhi in 1942; his dark penetrating, flashing eyes were those of a young man ofthirty His father and he were rich, but he renounced wealth to follow theMahatma. He lives in a village (when he is not in jail) and lives like thevillagers. He wears a long, blue-grey blouse and very wide-seat trousers madeof homespun. His feet are bare. His feet are beautifully moulded and his bighands are almost white. After he shook hands he touched his hand to his heart.As Gandhi was of the soil and sand of India, Ghaffar Khan is of its rocks andCrags and raging torrents. The hot blood of sharpshooting, trigger-happymountaineers courses in his veins but he has adopted the philosophy ofcomplete non-violence and so have the thousands of brother Pathans whom heorganised as the Khudai Khidmatgar or Servants of God.www.mkgandhi.org Page 386

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesMillions obeyed Gandhi, myriads adored him, multitudes accounted themselveshis followers, only a handful did as he did. He knew it. The knowledge did notdiminish his volcanic energy or break his steel will. On the contrary; as hewatched the darkness advance dining the 1930s across China, Abyssinia, Spain,Czechoslovakia and above all Germany, his zeal for pure pacifism grew. 'Myfaith is brightest in the midst of impenetrable darkness,' he said on February 6,1939. He saw the Second World War approaching.In 1921, he had written that 'under independence too I would not hesitate toadvise those who would bear arms to do so and fight for the country1. In 1928,answering the Frenchman the Rev. B. de Ligt, Tolstoy's friend Chertkov andother European pacifists who critized him for supporting the two South Africanwars and the first World War, Gandhi declared, 'I did participate in the threeacts of war. I could not; it would be madness for me to sever my connectionwith the society to which I belong.'It would have been normal for Gandhi to be a pacifist fro01 the very beginningof his public career. But basic attitudes rarely come to Gandhi throughcogitation. The absolute pacifism at which he arrived in the mid-1980s waspartly the result of his less hopeful relationship towards the British Empire inwhich he had believed earlier. But chiefly, Gandhi's pacifism came out of hisown inner development.Once, when Gandhi was in prison, a scorpion stung a fellow prisoner; Gandhisucked out the poison. A leper named Parchure Sastri, who was a Sanskritscholar, asked to £>e admitted to Sevagram Ashram. Some members objected;they feared infection. Gandhi not only admitted him; he gave him massage... InMarch 1939 Gandhi undertook a fast unto death on behalf of the civil libertiesof the people of Rajkot, where he had gone to school as a boy. The doctorssought to dissuade the Mahatma. He showed symptoms of myocarditis, aninflammation or hardening of the muscles of the heart.But it was a Gandhian principle to subordinate the flesh to the spirit. Whenmoral considerations made an act imperative, the body had no veto. If the fleshwas weak it suffered or even died; it could not say no.www.mkgandhi.org Page 387

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThis was the source of Gandhi's pacifism. In the past, he had fought in the wars.He had allowed sympathy for Britain and duty to a country to guide him. Norhad he risen above Indian Nationalism. Morality did not yet completelycommand him.However, by the time the Second World War approached, he had achievedmore complete detachment. Also, he said, I was not so disconsolate before(between 1914 and 1918) as I am today.' He envisaged the second war as a'greater horror' than the first; 'the greater horror would prevent me frombecoming the self-appointed recruiting sergeant that I had become during thelast war'.He had little hope of persuading others. But whereas in the past he had resistedall proddings from abroad and pleaded that he could not carry non-violence tothe West while India remained violent, he advised the Abyssinians in 1935 notto fight.'If the Abyssinians had adopted the attitude of non-violence of the strong,'Gandhi said, 'that is, the non-violence which breaks to pieces but never bends,Mussolini would have had no interest in Abyssinia. Thus if they had simply said:'You are welcome to reduce us to dust and ashes, but you will not have oneAbyssinian ready to co-operate with you," what could Mussolini have done? Hedid not want a desert... If the Abyssinians had retired from the field andallowed themselves to be slaughtered, their seeming inactivity would havebeen much more effective though not for the moment visible. Hitler andMussolini on the one hand and Stalin on the other are able to show theimmediate effectiveness of violence. But it is as transitory as that of GenghisKhan's slaughter.'The tragedy of Czechoslovakia and of Germany's Jews touched him even moredeeply. 'The peace of Europe gained at Munich,' where Chamberlain andDaladier betrayed Czechoslovakia to Hitler in September 1938, Gandhi wrote,'is a triumph of violence; it is also a defeat... England and France ... quailedbefore the combined violence of Germany and Italy. But what have Germanyand Italy gained? Have they added anything to the moral wealth of mankind?'www.mkgandhi.org Page 388

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThese words make more sense today than on October 8, 1938, when they werepublished in Harijan. 'The war is only postponed,' Gandhi continuedprophetically. 'During the breathing time, I present the way of non-violence foracceptance by the Czechs. They do not yet know what is in store for them.They can lose nothing by trying the way of non-violence. The fate of RepublicanSpain is hanging in the balance. So is that of China. If in the end they all lose,they will do so not because their cause is not just... I suggest that, if it isbrave, as it is, to die as a man fighting against odds, it is braver, still to refuseto fight and yet to refuse to yield to the usurper....'While touring with Ghaffar Khan in October 1938, among the Pathans of thefrontier, Gandhi wrote a Harijan article entitled 'If I were a Czech'. 'Democracydreads to spill blood,' he said. 'The philosophy for which the two dictators standcalls it cowardice to shrink from carnage.. Science of war leads one todictatorship pure and simple. Science of non-violence can alone lead one topure democracy... Russia is out of the picture just now. Russia has a dictatorwho dreams of peace and thinks he will wade to it through a sea of blood....'It was necessary to give this introduction to what I want to say to the Czechsand through them to all those nationalities which are called "small" or "weak". Iwant to speak to the Czechs because their plight moved me to the point ofphysical and mental distress.' His advice was: 'Refuse to obey Hitler's will andperish unarmed in the attempt. In so doing, though I lose the body, I save mysoul, that is, my honour.'Usually, the pacifist says, 'It is evil to kill.' He therefore abstains from war. Heis answered by those who say, 'I'd rather kill than be killed'. To which, Gandhireplied, 'No, I'd rather be killed.''Man may and should shed his own blood for establishing what he considers tobe his "right", Gandhi wrote in Harijan. 'He may not shed the blood of hisopponent who disputes his "right".'In December 1938 the International Missionary Conference took place atTambaram, near Madras, and when it was over, Christian clergymen, includingDr. John R. Mott, Reverend William Paton, secretary of the Internationalwww.mkgandhi.org Page 389

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesMissionary Council, Reverend Leslie B. Moss, secretary of the Conference ofMissionary Societies of North America, and many others sat at Gandhi's feet inhis ashram in Sevagram. Pyarelal Nayyar took notes. Soon they were crossexamininghim on his formula for the Czechs. ‘You do not know Hitler andMussolini,' one missionary said. ‘They are incapable of any moral response.They have no conscience, and they have made themselves impervious to worldopinion. Would it not be playing into the hands of these dictators if, forinstance, the Czechs, following your advice, confronted them with nonviolence?’Tour argument,' Gandhi objected, 'presupposes that the dictators like Mussoliniand Hitler are beyond redemption.'Discussions of a similar and even more challenging character were provoked byGandhi's counsel to the Jews.Gandhi wrote in Harijan, November 11, 1938:'My sympathies are all with the Jews. They have been the untouchables ofChristianity... A Jewish friend has sent me a book called The JewishContribution to Civilization, by Cecil Roth. It gives a record of what the Jewshave done to enrich the world's literature, art, music, drama, science,medicine, agriculture, etc... the German persecution of the Jews seems tohave no parallel in history. The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitlerseems to have done. If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of andfor humanity, war against Germany to prevent the wanton persecution of awhole race would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war....'Can the Jews resist this organized and shameless persecution? ... If I were aJew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claimGermany as my home even as the tallest gentile German might, and challengehim to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon — And for doing this I should notwait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would haveconfidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If oneJew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or theycannot be worse off than now... The calculated violence of Hitler may evenwww.mkgandhi.org Page 390

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesresult in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to thedeclaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared forvoluntary sacrifice, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into aday of thanksgiving that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even atthe hands of a tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror....'The Jews of Germany can offer Satyagraha under infinitely better auspicesthan the Indians of South Africa. The Jews are a compact, homogeneouscommunity in Germany. They are far more gifted than the Indians of SouthAfrica. And they have organized world opinion behind them. I am convincedthat if someone with courage and vision can arise among them to lead them innon-violent action, the winter of their despair can in the twinkling of an eye beturned into the summer of hope. And what has today become a degrading manhunt can be turned into a calm and determined stand offered by unarmed menand women possessing the strength of suffering given to them by Jehovah...The German Jews will score a lasting victory over the German gentiles in thesense that they will have converted the latter to an appreciation of humandignity.'The Nazi press assaulted Gandhi savagely for these words. It threatenedreprisals against India. 'I should rank myself a coward,' he replied, 'if for fear ofmy country or myself or Indo-German relations being harmed. I hesitated togive what I felt in the innermost recesses of my heart to be one hundred percent sound advice.'The missionaries questioned him closely on his statements about the Jews. Tobe truly non-violent,' he said, 'I must love (my adversary) and pray for him evenwhen he hits me.' The Jews should pray for Hitler. 'If even one Jew acted thus,he would save his self-respect and leave an example which, if it becameinfectious, would save the whole of Jewry and leave a rich heritage to mankindbesides.'Herman Kallenbach was living in Sevagram Ashram at the time. 'He has anintellectual belief in non-violence,' Gandhi remarked, "But he says he cannotpray for Hitler... I do not quarrel with him over his anger. He wants to be non-www.mkgandhi.org Page 391

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesviolent but the sufferings of his fellow Jews are too much for him to bear. Whatis true of him is true of thousands of Jews who have no thought even of "lovingthe enemy". With them, as with millions, "revenge is sweet, to forgive isdivine".' There were few divine Jews or Christians or Hindus. Only one littleHindu and very few of his friends were capable of divine forgiveness.Jewish Frontier, a New York magazine, ridiculed Gandhi's proposal in March1939, and sent him a copy. He quoted at length from the attack. 'I did notentertain the hope... that the Jews would be at once converted to my view.'Gandhi replied. 'I should have been satisfied if even one Jew had been fullyconvinced and converted... It is highly probable that, as the (Jewish Frontier)writer says, "A Jewish Gandhi in Germany, should one arise, could function forabout five minutes and would be promptly taken to the guillotine." But thatdoes not disprove my case or shake my belief in the efficacy of non-violence. Ican conceive the necessity of the immolation of hundreds, if not thousands, toappease the hunger of dictators.... Sufferers need not see the result duringtheir lifetime... The method of violence gives no greater guarantee than that ofnon-violence...' Millions sacrifice themselves in war without any guarantee thatthe world will be better as a result or even that the enemy will be defeated.Yet who does not fiercely resent the suggestion that anybody should die indeliberate non-violent sacrifice?I mentioned the subject to Gandhi in 1946 when Hitler was dead. 'Hitler,'Gandhi said, 'killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. Butthe Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They shouldhave thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs... It would have aroused theworld and the people of Germany... As it is they succumbed anyway in theirmillions.'Gandhi in 1938 and 1939 was seeking a moral substitute for the impending war.He knew his ideas would be rejected. But he had to express them.In December 1938 Mr. Takaoka, a member of the Japanese Parliament, came toSevagram. He deliberately avoided the subject of the Sino-Japanese war; heasked how unity could be achieved between India and Japan.www.mkgandhi.org Page 392

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'It can be possible,' Gandhi replied harshly, 'if Japan ceases to throw its greedyeyes on India.'Takaoka requested a message for the Japanese party which advocated Asia forthe Asiatics. 'I do not subscribe to the doctrine of Asia for the Asiatics if it ismeant as an anti- European combination,' Gandhi affirmed. (Pyarelal publishedthe interview in the December 24, 1938, Harijan.) 'How can we have Asia forthe Asiatics unless we are content to let Asia remain a frog in the well?...'A lady cabled from London to Gandhi on August 24, the day after the Stalin-Hitler pact was signed. 'Please act. World awaiting lead.' The war was a weekoff. Another woman wirelessed from England, Urge you consider immediateexpression of your unshakable faith in reason not force to rulers and all people.'Similar urgent messages poured into Sevagram.It was too late. On September 1, 1939, the Nazi Army invaded Poland.Sunday, September 3, 1939, 11 a.m.; British churches were filled; the Britishgovernment declared war on Germany. I spent that afternoon in the countryoutside Paris. At 5 p.m. a lone plane flew overhead. The radio announced thatFrance had gone to war. We drove back to town. Women stood in the streets oflittle towns gazing morosely into nowhere, into the bleak future. Some bit theirfingernails. Our car paused for a long line of farm horses requisitioned by thearmy—heavy, well-groomed, powerful horses. A farmer put his arm around theneck of his horse, put his cheek against its head, and talked into its ear. Thehorse shook its head up and down. They were saying goodbye. Before it wasover in 1945, more than thirty million persons in all parts of the world saidgoodbye to life. More than thirty million dead men, women and children; morethan a hundred million wounded, hurt and incapacitated; millions of homessmashed; atom bombs dropped on two cities; hopes destroyed; ideals soured;moral values questioned.We have too many men of science, too few men of God,' General Omar N.Bradley, Chief of Staff, United States Army, said in Boston on November 10,1948. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon onthe Mount... The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power withoutwww.mkgandhi.org Page 393

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesconscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know moreabout war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know aboutliving.'Gandhi rejected the atom and grasped the Sermon on the Mount. He was anuclear infant and an ethical giant. He knew nothing about killing and muchabout living in the twentieth century.Only those who have no doubts can reject Gandhi completely.www.mkgandhi.org Page 394

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter VIIIWinston S. Churchill VERSUS Mohandas K. GandhiTHE day the second World War started, England took India into the war byproclamation without consulting any Indians. India resented this additionalproof of foreign control. The next day, nevertheless, Gandhi boarded the firstDelhi train to Simla in response to a telegraphic summons from the Viceroy,Lord Linlithgow, to come to the summer capital. ‘We Do Not Want AnyUnderstanding’, the public at the station chanted as the Mahatma walked tothe train. It was his day of silence, so he smiled and departed.The Viceroy and the Mahatma discussed the nature of the coming hostilities,'and as I was picturing before him the House of Parliament and the WestminsterAbbey and their possible destruction, I broke down. I have becomedisconsolate. In the secret of my heart I am in perpetual quarrel with Cod thatHe should allow such things to go on'.Gandhi had a 'daily quarrel' with God; non-violence had failed; God had failed.But at the end of each quarrel, the Mahatma decided that 'neither God nor nonviolenceis impotent. Impotence is in men. I must try on without losing faith.'Gandhi blamed Hitler for the war. 'Rightly or wrongly, and "respective of whatthe other powers have done before under similar circumstances', he wrote inHarijan of September 16 1939, 'I have come to the conclusion that Herr Hitler isresponsible for the war. I do not judge his claim. It is highly probable that hisright to incorporate Danzig is beyond question if the Danzig Germans desire togive up their independent status. It may be that his claim to appropriate thePolish Corridor is a just claim. My complaint is that he will not let the claim beexamined by an independent tribunal.'Critics said he had talked 'sentimental twaddle' in the Simla interview with theViceroy. 'My sympathy for England and France,' Gandhi replied, 'is not the resultof momentary emotion or, in cruder language, of hysteria.' Equally, 'My wholewww.mkgandhi.org Page 395

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesheart is with the Poles in the unequal struggle in which they are engaged forthe sake of their freedom.'Hitlerism, Gandhi declared, 'means naked ruthless force reduced to an exactscience and worked with scientific precision.' It was thoroughly abhorrent tohim.But what could he do? In addition to his daily debate with God, Gandhi wasinvolved in an interminable argument with Congress, which he admitted,echoed the views of most articulate Indians. With Gandhi non-violence was acreed, with Congress it 'was always a policy1. Congress adopted non-violencefor the expected gains. Gandhi wanted non-violence irrespective of the fruits.The day after war's beginning, Gandhi pledged publicly that he would notembarrass the British government. He would also lend moral support to Englandand her allies; even one who disapproved of war should distinguish betweenaggressor and defender. Further than this, however, he could not go, he couldnot participate in the war effort nor would he defend India against anaggressor. He did not want India to have an army or to use police againstHindu-Moslem rioters. A constabulary to deal gently with bandits andprofessional hooligans was the maximum violence he might countenance-Congress, on the other hand, was ready to support the war effort if specifiedconditions were satisfied.From these different positions, Gandhi and Congress fought a friendly but hardbattle.On September 14, 1939, the Working or Executive Committee of Congressissued a manifesto which condemned Fascist aggression in Poland yet recalledthat the Western democracies had condoned or not opposed similardevelopments in Manchuria, Abyssinia, Spain and Czechoslovakia; it said theWestern democracies must shed their own imperialism before they couldconvincingly contend that they were fighting imperialism and not merely rivals.'A free democratic India will gladly associate herself with other free nations formutual defence against aggression and for economic co-operation....'www.mkgandhi.org Page 396

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi was present, as a guest during the four days of discussion that fatheredthis manifesto. After its adoption, he revealed that Jawaharlal Nehru haddrafted it. 'I was sorry,' Gandhi commented, 'to find myself alone in thinkingthat whatever support was to be given to the British should be givenunconditionally and non-violently.' Gandhi disliked the tit-for-tat offer; Indiawill fight if you make India free. Nevertheless, he commended the manifesto tothe country: 'I hope that the statement will receive the unanimous support ofall parties among Congressmen.'How could he do this, the critics howled; how could he appeal for support of aview he had opposed? 'I would not serve the cause of non-violence,' he replied,'if I deserted my best co-workers because they could not follow me in anextended application of non-violence. I therefore remain with them in the faiththat their departure from the non-violent Method will be confined to thenarrowest field and will be temporary.'Haven't you changed your mind since 1918, some chided.At the time of writing,' he retorted, 'I never think of what I have said before.My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question,but to be consistent with the truth as it may present itself to me at a givenmoment. The result is that I have grown from truth to truth....'Gandhi went beyond his plea for support of a manifesto that conflicted with hisviews; he made himself its spokesman in an interview with the Viceroy onSeptember 26. Lord Linlithgow replied on October 17; England could not yetdefine her war aims. He cautioned India against a too rapid advance towardsself-government. After the war, there would be changes in the direction ofDominion Status, he said.Five days later, accordingly, the Working Committee voted against aidingBritain. It also instructed the Congress ministries of the provinces to resign.Gandhi saw Congress coming closer to him.Hitler overran Norway, Denmark, Holland and Belgium. France was next.Britain's stock was low in India. 'Let us strike now,' many Indians urged.www.mkgandhi.org Page 397

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi replied in Harijan on June 1, 1940: 'I am of the opinion that we shouldwait till the heat of the battle in the heart of the Allied countries subsides andthe future is clearer than it is. We do not seek our independence out of Britains ruin. That is not the way of non-violence.'Time was working for Indian independence. We are nearing our goal withouthaving fired a single shot,' Gandhi said. He wanted only the right to preach nonviolence.France surrendered to Hitler. Panic and in places hope, seized India. Therewere runs on banks. Gandhi called for order. Soberly he predicted that 'Britainwill die hard and heroically even if she has to. We may hear of reverses, but wewill not hear of demoralization.'Whenever Congress rejected Gandhi's pacifism and volunteered to aid theBritish, he did not interfere. Whenever Congress agreed with him and wantedto hinder the war effort, he objected.The Working Committee met in Wardha to review the war crisis. On June 21,1940, it plainly stated that it could not 'go to the full length with Gandhi' onnon-violence. 'So, for the first time,' Nehru wrote in his autobiography, Gandhi'went one way and the Congress Working Committee another....''I am both happy and unhappy over the result,' Gandhi affirmed. 'Happy becauseI have been able to bear the strain of the break and have been given thestrength to stand alone. Unhappy because my word seemed to lose the powerto carry with me those whom it was my proud privilege to carry all these manyyears.'The Viceroy summoned the Mahatma for another audience on June 29. LordLinlithgow recognized Gandhi's indestructible influence; he intimated thatBritain was ready to grant Indians a broader share in the Indian government.The Working Committee met in Delhi early in July to weigh the offer. Gandhihad no use for it. He encountered the astute opposition of Rajagopalachari, theMahatma's warm friend. Rajagopalachari converted Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel,www.mkgandhi.org Page 398

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesthe Mahatma's loyal lieutenant. Only Ghaffar Khan, the 'Frontier Gandhi', sidedwith the Mahatma.Gandhi printed a report of the proceedings; Rajagopalachari thinks that I sufferfrom obsession owing to too much brooding on non-violence. He almost thinksthat my vision is blurred. It was no use returning the compliment though halfjokingI did... I at once saw as clear as daylight that, if my position was notacceptable; Rajaji's was the only real alternative. I therefore encouraged himto persist in his effort, though all the time I held him to be hopelessly 'n thewrong Rajaji, or Rajagopalachari, won a big majority; e abstained.Gandhi failed to convince Congress of the wisdom of pure pacifism in the midstof a war. All acknowledged that he could have killed Rajaji's resolution; indeed,one firm request from the Mahatma and Rajaji would probably have withdrawnit That would have been dictation, however, and Gandhi believed too much inpersonal liberty to exploit his power to make men vote or act against their will.He preferred to break with Congress rather than break its leaders.The Rajaji resolution, adopted, despite Gandhi's disapproval, on July 7,announced that if India were given complete independence and a central Indiagovernment 'it will enable Congress to throw its full weight in the efforts forthe effective organization of the defence of the country'; free-India wouldwage war as one of the allies.Winston Churchill was Prime Minister of Great Britain and stirring England togallant resistance. He had, through the years, made numerous statementsagainst Indian independence. He now had the power to prevent it. On August 8,accordingly, Linlithgow stated that he would invite a number of Indians to joinhis Executive Council and establish a War Advisory Council to meet regularly,but, in the paraphrase of Lord Pethick-Lawrence who became Secretary ofState for India in 1945, 'Britain could not divest herself of the responsibilitieswhich her long association with India had imposed on her. This foreshadowedChurchill's famous dictum of November 10, 1942: 'I have not become the King'sFirst Minister in order to preside at the liquidation of the British Empire.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 399

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesNor, said Linlithgow, could His Majesty's Government contemplate the transferof their present responsibilities to any Indian government whose authority wasdirectly denied by large and powerful elements of the population. Th^9indicated that Britain would not allow Congress to rule India without Moslemconsent. It was the first time Britain gave the Moslem community a veto onIndia's political future.Thoroughly incensed, the Working Committee, according to Lord Pethick-Lawrence's summary of its resolution, 'accused the British government ofrejecting their friendly and patriotic offer of co-operation and making the issueof the minorities an insuperable barrier to India's progress.'Thanks to Churchill, Congress again came back to Gandhi.Gandhi explained the new position in a speech to the All-India CongressCommittee on September 15, 1940, in Bombay: 'I do not want England to bedefeated or humiliated. It hurts me to find St. Paul's Cathedral damaged... It isnot because I love the British nation and hate the German. I do not think theGermans as a nation are any worse than the English or the Italians. We are alltarred with the same brush; we are all members of the vast human family. Idecline to draw any distinctions. I cannot claim any superiority for Indians ... Ican keep India intact and its freedom intact only if I have goodwill towards thewhole of the human family and not merely for the human family which inhabitsthis little spot of the earth called India.'He would ask to see the Viceroy. 'I will tell him that this is the position to whichwe have been reduced: We do not want to embarrass you and deflect you fromyour purpose in regard to the war effort. We go our way and you go yours...'But Congress must have freedom to preach. 'If we carry the people with us,there will be no war effort on the part of our people. If on the other hand,without using any but moral pressure, you find that the people help the wareffort, we can have no cause for grumbling. If you get assistance from thePrinces, from the landlords, from anybody high or low, you can have it, but letour voice also be heard. If you accept my proposal... it will certainly be awww.mkgandhi.org Page 400

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesfeather in your cap. It will be honourable of you, although you are engaged in alife and death struggle, that you have given us this liberty....The Viceroy, Gandhi anticipated, 'may say, "you are a visionary". I may fail inmy mission, but we will not quarrel If he says he is helpless, I will not feelhelpless.'The Viceroy said no, orally and in a confirming letter.Rebuffed and eager to protest against the war and India's helplessness, Gandhiproposed to fast, but he allowed himself to be dissuaded by Mahadev Desai andchose instead the alternative of civil disobedience. He did not, however, launcha campaign of mass Satyagraha. He adopted a milder symbolic form whichcould not impede the war effort; he called on individuals selected by him byname to defy the official ban on propaganda against the war. He first pointedto Vinoba Bhave, a quiet, scholarly Gandhian. Bhave engaged in anti-warpropaganda, was arrested, tried and sentenced to three months' imprisonment.Next, Gandhi designated Nehru. He was arrested and tried. The judge gave himfour years.Patel was chosen next; he informed the Government of his intention and wasarrested before he could make his speech.As a Christmas gesture and in order that harassed British officials might enjoytheir holiday without being called out to make arrests, Gandhi suspended thecivil disobedience from December 25, 1940, to January 4, 1941. In the interval,however, the government seized Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the president ofCongress.After a while, provincial and local Congress committees started submitting toGandhi lists of potential resisters. In sum, 23,223 persons were arrested, mostof them in Nehru s United Provinces. Gandhi had promised Congress to stay outof jail.The person-by-person civil disobedience continued for about a year to the endof 1941. It generated little Public enthusiasm. People were tired of going tojail.www.mkgandhi.org Page 401

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIn December 1941, the British government released those members of theWorking Committee who had been imprisoned. The Second World War hadtaken a menacing turn.On December 7, Japan struck at Pearl Harbour; the next day, Japanese forcesoccupied Shanghai and Siam (Thailand) and made a landing in British Malaya.Twenty-four hours later, the Tokyo navy sank two British battleships, theRepulse and the Prince of Wales, thus crippling England's naval strength in thePacific.The war was moving closer to India. The situation uncovered the old split inCongress between the Gandhian non-violent non-co-operators and those whowould barter support of the war effort for an Indian national government.Gandhi, accordingly, withdrew once more from the Congress leadership.Hong Kong fell to the Japanese late in December 1941. The great British base ofSingapore surrendered to the Japanese in February 1942. In March, Japanoccupied most of Java, Sumatra and other islands of the Dutch East Indies. OnMarch 9th, an imperial Tokyo communique announced that Rangoon, the capitalof Burma, India's neighbour, had been seized.In North Africa, Nazi General Rommel was moving east towards Egypt. TheArabs of Palestine were preparing a friendly welcome for him. Observers talkedof a possible German-Japanese junction in India. From Cairo to Calcutta gloombrooded over the fortunes of the United Nations at War.The American public was disturbed by the low war morale of the Indian people;having been a colony of Britain the noted States understood India's aspirationsdespite the Propaganda fog. President Roosevelt sent Colonel Louis Johnson ashis personal envoy to India; this was an extraordinary act, for India was not asovereign state, and therefore all the more calculated to impress the Britishgovernment with America's concern. In London, United States Ambassador JohnG. Winant tried unsuccessfully to dissuade Prime Minister Churchill from statingpublicly that the Atlantic Charter's self-government clause did not apply toIndia. Face-to-face at the White House and in transatlantic telephoneconversations, Roosevelt had discussed India with Churchill and urged him towww.mkgandhi.org Page 402

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesmake an acceptable offer to the Indian people. Churchill never appreciatedthese prods.Chiang Kai-shek, then in a key war position, made direct representations toPresident Roosevelt and to the British government in favour of Indianindependence.The Labour party was in the British war-time coalition government. Many of itsmembers were friends of Indian freedom; Labour ministers reflected thisattitude in Cabinet deliberations.Pressed on all sides, Churchill consented to send Sir Stafford Cripps to NewDelhi with a proposal. But though the British Empire and the Dutch had lostvaluable outposts, the optimistic, resilient British Prime Minister had more faiththan ever in ultimate military victory, and for the cogent reason that Russiaand the United States were now England's partners. He was neither depressednor defeatist about war prospects when Cripps went out to India.Tall, thin, austere vegetarian, son of a Labour Lord and nephew of BeatriceWebb, the famous Fabian Socialist writer, Stafford Cripps attended exclusiveschools and became an unorthodox, left-wing Labour Member of Parliament. Abrilliant lawyer, he gave a large part of his huge professional income topolitical causes.When the second World War opened, Sir Stafford abandoned his lucrative lawpractice and in November 1939 undertook a trip around the world to discoverwhat people were thinking. He spent eighteen days in India, saw Jinnah,Linlithgow, Tagore, Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhi. (Cripps was thesame age as Nehru and twenty years younger than Gandhi). The Mahatma lay illon the floor of his hut, but as 'a concession to your English bones' he provided astool for Cripps.Sir Stafford drafted a plan for Indian constitutional changes which he presentedto Lord Halifax, the former Lord Irwin, now British Foreign Secretary, who filedit in the archives. Cripps's interest in India was recalled when crisis cloudsdarkened the horizon of Asia in the winter of 1942. Meanwhile, his prestige hadwww.mkgandhi.org Page 403

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesrisen enormously because he was serving as British Ambassador in Moscow whenHitler invaded Russia. He had been appointed to the small inner War Cabinetand was often mentioned as Churchill's successor.Cripps arrived in New Delhi on March 22, 1942, and the same day commencedhis conferences with British officials. On the 25th, Maulana Abul Kalam Azadcalled at 3 Queen. Victoria Road, where Cripps was staying. Therewith beganthe negotiations with representative Indians.Gandhi was in his ashram. He received a telegram from Cripps politely askinghim to come to Delhi. 'I did not wish to go,' Gandhi said to me in June 1942,when I interviewed him at Sevagram, 'but I went because I thought it would dosome good.'On March 27, at 2.15 p.m., Gandhi arrived at 3 Queen Victoria Road andremained with Cripps until 4.25 p.m. Sir Stafford showed the Mahatma the asyet-unpublishedproposals of His Majesty's Government. 'After a brief study,'Gandhi told me in Sevagram, 'I said to Cripps, "Why did you come if this is whatyou have to offer? If this is your entire proposal to India, I would advise you totake the next plane home.'"'I will consider that,' Cripps replied.Cripps did not go home. He proceeded with the conversations Gandhi wenthome to Sevagram. After that first talk, he had no further contact with Cripps.The deliberations continued until April 9th when Congress finally rejected theCripps offer. Later, the Moslem League, the Sikhs, Hindu Mahasabha, theHarijans and Liberals rejected it. Nobody accepted it. The Cripps Mission failed.On April 12th, Sir Stafford went home.The 'Draft Declaration by His Majesty's Government' brought to India by Crippsconsisted of Articles A. B. C. and D which dealt with the post-war period andArticle E which dealt with India's war effort. The first four articles provided fora full-fledged Dominion which, as Cripps explained to a press conference, couldvote itself out of the Commonwealth.www.mkgandhi.org Page 404

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesCongress, and Gandhi, would have accepted that.An assembly consisting entirely of Indians would, after the war, frame aconstitution for India; the representatives in that body of British India would beelected. But one-third of the constituent assembly would be appointed by theprinces of India with whom the British had considerable influence.This did not satisfy Indians who feared that England would seek to retain powerin India by manipulating the autocratic maharajas.Moreover, any province could, if it did not like the future constitution, refuseto accede to the Indian Union. With such non-acceding Provinces,' reads theDraft Declaration, 'should they desire, His Majesty's Government will beprepared to agree upon a new constitution, giving them the same status as theIndian Union....'This could have led to the establishment of many India s, a Hindu India, aMoslem India, a Princely India, perhaps a Sikh India. But Gandhi had said thatthe vivisection of India was a sin.The Cripps terms of the future post-war settlement violated basic Congress andGandhian principles. That Azad, Nehru and Rajagopalachari, the Congressspokesmen, should nevertheless have negotiated with Cripps shows how eagerthey were to come to an agreement about the present.Article E regarding the immediate war-time arrangement stated: 'His Majesty'sGovernment must inevitably bear the responsibility for and retain control anddirection of the defence of India as part of the total war effort' but invited theleaders of the Indian people to participate in it.Gandhi did not wish to fight this war and therefore Article E was to himunacceptable. Congress did wish to contribute to the war effort. But it foundArticle E vague and restrictive. All documents show that throughout thepourparlers with Cripps the efforts of Azad, Nehru and Rajagopalachari weredirected to expanding the responsibility and activity of Indians in the wareffort; the British, on the other hand, sought to limit them. It was on this pointthat the talks broke down.www.mkgandhi.org Page 405

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesOfficial British sources blamed the failure of the Cripps mission on Gandhi'spacifism. Others blamed Cripps and Churchill. Nehru said, 'After Gandhiji leftDelhi there was no consultation with him of any kind and it is entirely wrong toimagine that the rejection was due to his pressure.' Nehru reiterated this viewin his book, The Discovery of India, Published in 1946, years after the heat ofthe Cripps controversy had died away.In 1946, Gandhi said to me, 'They have asserted that I had influenced thenegotiations after I left Delhi. But that is a lie.'Englishmen have told me,' I informed him, 'that you telephoned from Sevagramto Delhi and instructed Congress to reject the Cripps offer. They declare theyhave a record of that conversation.''It is all a tissue of lies,' he declared. 'If they have a record of the telephoneconversation let them produce it.'It is easy to see how Gandhi's pacifism would mislead people in interpreting thecollapse of the Cripps talks. Gandhi rejected the Cripps offer because of hispacifism and, too, out of devotion to the idea of a united India. Since Gandhicould at all time, whether or not he actively led Congress, bend it to his will, itwould be natural to deduce that in rejecting the Cripps proposal, Congressobeyed Gandhi. This appears logical but it omits Gandhi's psychology. Onnumerous occasions before Cripps, and on one subsequent occasion whichdetermined the fate of India, Gandhi gave Congress a free hand even when hedisliked the intended act of Congress. That was his non-violence. Non-violencewas more than non- killing to Gandhi, more than non-hurting. It was freedom.Had he coerced his followers, he would have been a violent dictator. He knewthat many Congress leaders wished to participate in the conduct of the war. Hewould not interfere.Some day the official British and American reports on the Cripps mission (LouisJohnson functioned as intermediary at one stage) will be published. Severalinteresting documents have already been published.www.mkgandhi.org Page 406

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesOn March 10, the day before Churchill announced that Cripps was going toIndia, Roosevelt sent a long cable to Churchill about India. Dipping intoAmerican history between 1783 and 1789 for an analogy, the Presidentsuggested a stopgap government that would function for 'five or six years.'Perhaps', Roosevelt declared, 'some such method... might cause the people ofIndia to forget hard feelings and to become more loyal to the British Empire....''India,' Roosevelt added in the cable to Churchill, is 'none of my business' and'for the love of Heaven do not bring me into this, though I do want to be ofhelp.'Robert E. Sherwood, who quotes this dispatch in his book Roosevelt andHopkins, declares, 'It is probable that the only part of the cable with whichChurchill agreed was Roosevelt's admission that it is 'none of my business...''Hopkins', Sherwood continues, 'said a long time later that he did not think thatany suggestions from the President to the Prime Minister in the entire war wereso wrathfully received as those relating to the solution of the Indian problem.As one of Churchill's closest and most affectionate associates has said to me,"The President might have known that India was the one subject on whichWinston would never move a yard." An inch would be more like it.On Sunday, April 12, 1942, Harry Hopkins was at Chequers, the Prime Minister'scountry residence, when he received a cable request from Roosevelt to doeverything possible to prevent the breakdown of the Cripps negotiations; thePresident also wired Churchill saying:'I am unable regretfully to agree with the point of view you express in yourmessage to me that the American public believes the negotiations have failedon general broad lines. The general impression here is quite the contrary. Thealmost universal feeling is that the deadlock has been due to the unwillingnessof the British government to concede the right of self-government to the Indianpeople notwithstanding the Indians' willingness to entrust technical military andnaval defence control to the competent British authorities. American Publicopinion cannot understand why, if the British government is willing to permitcomponent parts of India to secede from the British Empire after the war, it iswww.mkgandhi.org Page 407

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesnot willing to permit them during the war to enjoy what is tantamount to selfgovernment.'Roosevelt added, 'I gather that last Thursday night (April 9th), agreement wasalmost reached.'Cripps had been working eagerly for an agreement, and when the Britishgovernment's Draft Declaration was rejected he made a new offer to Congress.'Cripps', Churchill told Hopkins, 'had presented a new proposal to Nehru withoutconsultation with the Governor General (Viceroy).'The new offer brought an understanding measurably near 'It was perfectlyclear,' Hopkins reported, 'that the Governor General was irritated with thewhole business.' The Viceroy telegraphed Churchill. Churchill ordered Cripps towithdraw the new unauthorized proposal and return to England.Louis Johnson informed Roosevelt. Roosevelt wired Hopkins to see Churchill andtry to reopen the negotiations.Churchill, 'probably with some vehemence', Sherwood suspects, replied toRoosevelt through Hopkins. The upshot of it was that he did not trust Congress.'Churchill said that he personally was quite ready to retire to private life if thatwould be any good in assuaging American public opinion...' In any case, thenegotiations could not be reopened because Cripps had already left India. 'Indiawas one area', Hopkins felt, 'where the minds of Roosevelt and Churchill wouldnever meet.'Obviously, the minds of Gandhi and Churchill would never meet.In 1935, Churchill had declared, 'Gandhism and all that it stands for mustultimately be grappled with and finally crushed.' It stood for India'sindependence. For the first time since 1935, Churchill was in office. Cripps, theLabour anti- imperialist, was the victim of Churchill. He was the envoy of theChurchill government, and 'We mean to hold our own was Churchill's policy onIndia. Churchill regarded India as Britain's property. How could he haveauthorized Cripps to give it away? Only when Churchill was replaced by CrippsLabour party did India win independence.www.mkgandhi.org Page 408

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChurchill and Gandhi were alike in that each gave his life to a single cause. Agreat man is all of one piece like good sculpture. Churchill's absorbing purposewas the preservation of Britain as a first-class power. During the war he showedlittle interest in peace aims. He was bound to the past. He was a product of thenineteenth century and he loved it. He loved Empire, royalty and caste. LloydGeorge despised the British upper classes, the generals, the nobility. He foughtthem. Churchill wanted to perpetuate them. His attachment was not so muchto them as to the nineteenth century that made them. The nineteenth centurywas the British century, the century of Pax Britannica after the defeat ofNapoleonic France and before the rise of the Kaiser's Germany, the century ofthe flowering of the British Empire under Queen Victoria. Britain's past glorywas Churchill's god. The upper classes were synonymous to him with thegreatness of his country. So was parliamentary democracy. So was India.Churchill fought the Second World War to preserve the heritage of Britain.Would he permit the half-naked fakir to rob her of that heritage? If Churchillcould help it, Gandhi would not be striding up the steps of the Viceroy's palaceto negotiate or parley.From the time he became the King's First Minister in 1940 to the day his partywent out of office in 1945, Churchill was in conflict with Gandhi. It was acontest between the past of England and the future of India.A British cartoonist once drew Churchill in a loincloth and, m the next panel,Gandhi in top hat, frock coat and striped trousers, smoking a long cigar andcarrying a cane and brief-case. The device suggested how different they wereunder the surface.Churchill is the Byronic Napoleon. Political power is poetry to him. Gandhi wasthe sober saint to whom such power was anathema. The British aristocrat andthe brown plebeian were both conservatives, but Gandhi was a non-conformistconservative. As he grew older Churchill became more Tory, Gandhi morerevolutionary. Churchill loved social traditions. Gandhi smashed social barriers.Churchill mixed with every class, but lived in his own. Gandhi lived witheverybody. To Gandhi, the lowliest Indian was a child of God. To Churchill, allwww.mkgandhi.org Page 409

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIndians were the pedestal for a throne. He would have died to keep Englandfree, but was against those who wanted India free.www.mkgandhi.org Page 410

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter IXMy Week with GandhiWHAT an unhappy country! That was my first impression of India in May 1942,and the impression was deepened by my two months' stay. Rich Indians wereunhappy, poor Indians were unhappy, the British were unhappy.One did not have to be in India for more than a few days to realize howabysmally poor the people were. American and many European farmers wouldconsider it bad for business to keep their livestock in accommodation asunhealthy as the tenements I visited with Dr. Ambedkar in Bombay; hundreds ofthousands lived in them. Gandhi was fully dressed compared to the nakednessof peasants one saw in villages. The vast majority of Indians are always,literally always, hungry.The expectation of life,' says the 1931 British official census report on India, is'26.56 years for females and 26.91 for males.' The average person born in Indiacould look forward to only twenty-seven years of life.According to British figures, one hundred and twenty five million Indianscontracted malaria annually and only a few could afford a grain of quinine. Halfa million Indians died of tuberculosis each year.Climate is only part of the explanation; an Indian community had a death ratefive times higher than a neighbouring British settlement.Despite disease and mortality, India's population was increasing by five millioneach year. This was the biggest problem of the nation. In 1921, India had304,000,000 inhabitants; in 1931, 338,000,000; in 1941, 388,000,000. In thesame twenty years the area under cultivation was practically stable andindustry did not appreciably expand. The poorer the country the higher thebirth rate. The higher the birth rate the poorer the country.The British in India stressed their achievements. But they did not deny thecankers. They blamed the Hindu religion and Moslem backwardness; Indianswww.mkgandhi.org Page 411

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesblamed England. It was an atmosphere in which work and life were becomingincreasingly unsatisfactory for the British.Englishmen whose families had made India their career for more than a centuryknew that there was no future for them here. India did not want them and theysensed it and were sad. Sir Gilbert Laithwaite, the Viceroy's private secretary,and Major-General Molesworth, Assistant to Wavell as Commander-in-Chief,bicycled to and from work under the hot Indian sun to save petrol though theyhad cars and drivers. Many of the British were good men, but India preferred tobe ruled by bad Indians. Governing unwilling India was no longer 'fun'; theBritish officials were as sick of India as India was of them. Twenty years ofGandhi's non-violence had destroyed their faith in the future of the Empire.A typical New Delhi university student delivered a passionate diatribe againstBritan. I said to him, “Tell me, since you dislike the British want Japan toinvade and conquer India?”'No', he replied, "but we Indians pray that God may give the British enoughstrength to stand up under the blows they deserve.'Some Indians went to the length of preferring Japan to England.No Indian party or group was supporting the war except the Communists. AfterHitler invaded Russia in June 1941, they supported Britain, and the Britishimperialists in India supported them but did not relish the unnatural liaison.I heard Nehru address a hundred thousand in Bombay. The Communists formeda heckling island in the vast ocean of brown faces and white clothes. 'This is apeople's war,' they chorused.'If you think it is a people's war go and ask the people,' Nehru shouted. That andthe public's hostile reaction silenced them. They knew he told the truth and theBritish knew it too.'I would fight Japan sword in hand,' Nehru declared, 'but I can only do so as afree man.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 412

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIndia could have been held if it had had no freedom, just as a dictator can ruleby complete suppression. But the moment Nehru was free enough to say he wasnot free, India's freedom was inevitable. That is why Gandhi always insisted onfreedom of speech as the irreducible minimum. The British administrators inIndia saw this even when London did not."We will be out of here two years after the war ends,' Sir Reginald Maxwell,Home Member in the Viceroy's Council, told me in his home at dinner. He was incharge of police and internal order, and the Indians hated him, but he had noillusions because to him Empire was a daily grind while to Churchill it wasromance.The Viceroy said to me, we are not going to remain in India. Of course,Congress does not believe this. But we will not stay here. We are preparing forour departure.'When I reported these opinions to Indians they did not believe them. Theyargued bitterly: Churchill and many lesser Churchills in New Delhi and theprovinces will obstruct '^dependence or vitiate it by vivisecting the country.Nehru said to me, 'Gandhi has straightened our backs and stiffened our spines.'You cannot ride a straight back.Independence was near. But the present was so black that few could see thefuture. History had stood still so long in India that nobody foresaw how fast itwas about to move. Indians resented the stagnation; it gave them a sense offrustration.In Bombay I talked to J. R. D. Tata, the head of the big steel-chemicalsairlines-textiles-hotelstrust. His father was Parsi, his mother French; he speaksexcellent English and French and is intelligent and cultured. He said he wasunhappy because strangers ruled his country. On his desk stood several brightlypolished two-inch anti-tank shells which a Tata mill was making for the British— and a plastic plaque of Mahatma Gandhi.An American general stationed in India said 'the British are like a drop of oil in abucket of water'.www.mkgandhi.org Page 413

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe Viceroy talked about Gandhi. 'Make no mistake about it,' he asserted. 'Theold man is the biggest thing in India... He had been only good to me... If he hadcome from South Africa and been only a saint he might have taken India veryfar. But he was tempted by politics. Make no mistake. His influence is verygreat.'Gandhi, he said, was now contemplating some kind of civil disobediencecampaign. 'I have been here six years,' Lord Linlithgow declared, 'and I havelearned restraint. I sit here until late in the evening studying reports andcarefully digesting them. I will not take precipitate action. But if * felt thatGandhi was obstructing the war effort I would have to bring him under control.'He struck the desk with his hand and the four telephones tinkled.I said it would be bad if Gandhi died in jail.'I know', the Viceroy agreed. 'He is old, and you know you can't feed the oldman. He is like a dog and can empty his stomach at will... I hope none of thiswill be necessary but I have a grave responsibility and I cannot permit the oldman to interfere with the war effort.'Nehru was going down to Sevagram to consult the Mahatma about thecontemplated civil disobedience action. I asked him to arrange an interview forme. Soon I received a telegram reading: "Welcome. Mahadev Desai."I got out of the train at the small town of Wardha, was met by an emissary fromGandhi and slept on the roof of a Congress hostel; all night the orange-whitegreenCongress flag played a Morse code in the breeze. Early in the morning, Itook a tonga with Gandhi's dentist for Sevagram. (A tonga is a one-horse, twowheelvehicle in which passengers sit behind the driver with their backs to thehorse.) I tried to make him talk about Gandhi's teeth. He talked about Britishpolitics.The tonga stopped where the dirt road met the village. There stood Gandhi. Hesaid, 'Mr. Fischer,' with a British accent and we shook hands. He greeted thedentist and turned round and I followed him to a bench. He sat down, put hispalm on the bench and said, 'Sit down.' The way he sat down first and the waywww.mkgandhi.org Page 414

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeshe touched the bench with his hand was like saying, 'This is my house, come in.'I felt at home immediately.Each day I had an hour's interview with Gandhi: there was also an opportunityfor conversation at meals; in addition, I walked with him once or twice a day. Iusually arrived for the morning constitutional while he was still sitting on hisbed in the open air eating mango pulp. Between spoonfuls he plunged intoserious discussion. Breakfast finished, he accepted a towel and a longrectangular, narrow-necked, corked bottle of water from Kasturbai and washedhis hands before starting on the stroll across nearby fields. Kasturbai, withsunken face, straight mouth and square jaw, seemed to listen attentively, but Idid not hear or see her say a single word to her husband during the entireweek, nor he to her At meals and prayers she sat slightly behind his leftshoulder fanning him solicitously. She always looked at him; he rarely looked ather, yet he wanted her nearest to him and there appeared to be perfectunderstanding between them.During walks, Gandhi kept his arms on the shoulders of two young girls or boysbut moved forward with long quick strides and kept up a rapid conversationwithout losing breath or, apparently, tiring. The walk lasted not less than halfan hour. When he returned I was ready for rest and leaned against a post whilehe continued to speak.Gandhi was well built, with fine muscular bulging chest, thin waist, and longthin firm legs, bare from sandals to short, tight loincloth. His knees werepronounced bulges and his bones wide and strong; his hands were big and thefingers big and firm. His chocolate-coloured skin was soft, smooth and healthy.He was seventy-three. His finger nails, hands, feet, body were immaculate; theloincloth, the cheesecloth cape he occasionally wore in the sun, and thefolded, moistened kerchief on his head were bright white. Once a drop ofyellow mango juice stained his loincloth and he scratched it intermittentlyduring an hour.His body did not look old. He did not give one a feeling that he was old. Hishead showed his age. His head was large, wide at the top and tapering down towww.mkgandhi.org Page 415

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesa small face; big ears extended away from it abruptly. His upper lip, coveredwith a black-and-white stubble moustache, was so narrow that it almost metthe fat, down-pointed nose. The expression of his face came from his soft andgentle eyes, the sensitive lower lip which combined self-control with strengthand showed suffering, and the ever-present smile revealing naked gums. (Hewore his dentures only for eating and took them out and washed them inpublic; he wore gold-rimmed bifocals, he shaved his face everyday with astraight razor, but sometimes one of the men or women disciples shaved him.)His facial features, with the exception of his quiet, confident eyes, were uglyand in repose his face would have been ugly, but it was rarely in repose.Whether he was speaking or listening, it was alive and registering actively. Hespoke with a low, sing-song, undistinguished voice (many Indians have the samesing-song when they speak English) and he gestured eloquently, but not always,with the fingers of one hand. His hands were beautiful.Lloyd George looked like a great man. One could not help seeing that Churchilland Franklin D. Roosevelt had stature and distinction. Not Gandhi. (Nor Lenin).Outwardly he had nothing remarkable about him; perhaps the lower lip. Hispersonality was in what he was and what he had done and what he said. I feltno awe in Gandhi's presence. I felt I was in the presence of a very sweet,gentle, informal, relaxed, happy, wise, highly civilized man. I felt, too, themiracle of personality, for by sheer force of personality, without anorganization—Congress was a loose organization—or government behind him,Gandhi had radiated his influence to the far ends of a disunited country and,indeed, to every corner of a divided world. He did it not through his writings;few people anywhere had read his books, and his articles, though known abroadand republished widely in India, were not the source of his hold on people. Hereached people through direct contact, action, example and loyalty to a fewsimple, universally flouted principles: non-violence, truth, and the exaltation ofmeans above ends.The big names of recent history: Churchill, Roosevelt, Lloyd George, Stalin,Lenin, Hitler, Woodrow Wilson, the Kaiser, Lincoln, Napoleon, Metternich,www.mkgandhi.org Page 416

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesTalleyrand, etc., had the Power of states at their disposal. The only non-officialfigure comparable to Gandhi in his effect on men's minds is Karl Marx whosedogma, however, was a prescription for a system of government. One has to goback centuries to find men who appealed as strongly as Gandhi did to theconscience of individuals. They were men of religion, in another era. Gandhishowed that the spirit of Christ and of some Christian fathers and of Buddhaand of some Hebrew prophets and Greek sages could be applied in moderntimes and to modern politics. He did not preach about God or religion; he was aliving sermon He was a good man in a world where few resist the corrodinginfluence of power, wealth and vanity. There he sat, four fifths naked, on theearth in a mud hut in tiny Indian village without electricity, radio, runningwater, or telephone. It was a situation least conducive to awe, pontification, orlegend. He was in every sense down-to-earth. He knew that life consists of thedetails of life.'Now put on your shoes and hat,' Gandhi said. 'Those are two indispensablethings here. Don't get a sunstroke.' It was 110° with practically no shade exceptinside the huts, which were like heated ovens. 'Come along,' he said in afriendly tone of mock command. I followed him to the common dining hallwhich consisted of two long walls of matting connected by a third back wall ofthe same material. Where one entered, the building was open to the elements.Gandhi sat down on a cushion near the entrance. At his left was Kasturbai, onhis right Narendra Dev, an Indian Socialist leader whom the Mahatma hadundertaken to cure of asthma. I was Dev's neighbour. There were about thirtydiners. Women sat apart. Several bright-eyed, brown-faced youngsters,between the ages of three and eight, were opposite me. Everyone had a thinstraw mat under him and a brass tray in front of him on the ground. Male andfemale waiters, members of the ashram, moved noiselessly on bare feet,depositing food on the trays. A number of pots and pans were placed nearGandhi's legs. He handed me a bronze bowl filled with a vegetable stew inwhich I thought I discerned chopped spinach leaves and pieces of squash. Awoman poured some salt on my tray and another gave me a metal tumbler withwww.mkgandhi.org Page 417

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswarm water and another with warm milk. Then she came back with two littleboiled potatoes in their jackets and some soft, flat wheat-cakes baked brown.Gandhi handed me one hard, paper-thin wheat cake from a metal container infront of him.A gong sounded; a robust man in white shorts stopped waiting on the trays,stood erect, closed his eyes leaving only a white slit open—it made him lookblind—and started a high- pitched chant in which all others, including Gandhi,joined. The prayer ended with 'Shanti, Shanti, Shanti' which, Dev said, means'Peace'.Everyone started eating with their fingers, fishing out the vegetable stew witha wheat-cake folded in four. I was given a tea-spoon and then some butter forthe cake. Gandhi munched busily, stopping only to serve his wife, Dev and me."You have lived in Russia for fourteen years', was his first political remark tome. What is your opinion of Stalin?'I was very hot, and my hands were sticky, and I had commenced to discover myankles and legs from sitting on them, so I replied briefly. ‘Very able and veryruthless.'‘As ruthless as Hitler?' he asked.'At least.'After a pause, he turned to me and said, 'Have you seen the Viceroy?' I told himI had, but he dropped the subject.You can have all the water you want,' he told me. We take good care that it isboiled. And now eat your mango.' 1 began to peel it and several people, Gandhitoo, laughed. He explained that they usually turned it in their hands andsqueezed it to make it soft and then sucked on one end, but be added that Iwas right to peel it to see whether it was good.Lunch was at eleven and dinner just before sundown. Kurshed Navroji, amember of the ashram and grand-daughter of Dadabhai Navroji, brought mywww.mkgandhi.org Page 418

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesbreakfast—tea, biscuits or bread with honey and butter and mango—to the mudwalledbamboo-roofed guest hut where I lived.At lunch on the second day, Gandhi handed me a tablespoon for the vegetabledish. He said the tablespoon was more commensurate with my size. He offeredme a boiled onion from his pot. I asked for a raw one instead; it was a relieffrom the flat food of the menu.At lunch on the third day, Gandhi said, 'Fischer, give me your bowl and I willgive you some of the vegetables.' I said I had eaten the mess of spinach andsquash four times in two days and had no desire for more.You don't like vegetables,' he commented.'I don't like the taste of these vegetables three days running.''Ah,' he exclaimed, 'you must add plenty of salt and lemon'."You want me to kill the taste,' I interpreted.'No,' he laughed, 'enrich the taste.'"You are so non-violent you would not even kill a taste,' I said.'If that were the only thing men killed. I wouldn't mind,' he remarked.I wiped the perspiration from my face and neck. 'Next time I'm in India...'Gandhi was chewing and seemed not to have heard me so I stopped.'Yes', he said, 'the next time you are in India...'"You either ought to have air-conditioning in Sevagram or live in the Viceroy'spalace.''All right,' Gandhi acquiesced.He encouraged banter. One afternoon when I came to his hut for the dailyinterview, he was not there. When he arrived he lay down on his bed. 'I willtake your blows lying down, he said, inviting questions. A Moslem woman gavehim a mud pack for his abdomen. This puts me in touch with my future,' hesaid. I did not comment.'I see you missed that one,' he noted.www.mkgandhi.org Page 419

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesI said I had not missed it but thought he was too young to think about returningto the dust.'Why,' he declared, 'you and I and all of us, some in a hundred years, but allsooner or later, will do it.'On another occasion he quoted a statement he had made to Lord Sankey inLondon; "Do you think,' he had said, 'I would have reached this green old age if Ihadn't taken care of myself? This is one of my faults.''I thought you were perfect,' I ventured.He laughed and the eight or ten members of the ashram who usually sat in onthe interviews laughed. (He had asked me whether I objected to theirpresence.) 'No', he declared. 'I am very imperfect. Before you are gone you willhave discovered a hundred of my faults and if you don't, I will help you to seethem.'Usually the hour's interview began with his finding the coolest place in the hutfor me to sit. Then with a smile he would say, 'Now', inviting "blows'. As thehour was about to end he would, with an unerring time sense, look at his big'dollar' watch and proclaim, 'Now, your hour is up.' He was minutely punctual.One day when I was leaving his hut after a talk, he said, 'Go and sit in a tub.' Iwondered whether that was the Indian equivalent of 'go sit on a tack'. Butcrossing the sun-baked hundred yards between Gandhi's hut and the guest hut,the heat made the inside of my head feel dry and I decided that sitting in a tubwould be a very good idea. In fact I thought I could improve on it. Adjoining theone living-room bedroom of the guest hut was a small water room with cementfloor on which stood a variety of pots, pitchers, tubs and bowls; of DadabhaiNavroji, brought my breakfast—tea, biscuits or bread with honey and butter andmango—to the mud-walled bamboo-roofed guest hut where I lived.At lunch on the second day, Gandhi handed me a tablespoon for the vegetabledish. He said the tablespoon was more commensurate with my size. He offeredme a boiled onion from his pot. I asked for a raw one instead; it was a relieffrom the flat food of the menu.www.mkgandhi.org Page 420

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAt lunch on the third day, Gandhi said, 'Fischer, give me your bowl and I willgive you some of the vegetables.' I said I had eaten the mess of spinach andsquash four times in two days and had no desire for more.‘You don't like vegetables,' he commented.'I don't like the taste of these vegetables three days running.''Ah,' he exclaimed, 'you must add plenty of salt and lemon'."You want me to kill the taste,' I interpreted.'No,' he laughed, 'enrich the taste.'"You are so non-violent you would not even kill a taste,' I said.'If that were the only thing men killed. I wouldn't mind,' he remarked.I wiped the perspiration from my face and neck. 'Next time I'm in India...'Gandhi was chewing and seemed not to have heard me so I stopped."Yes', he said, 'the next time you are in India...'‘You either ought to have air-conditioning in Sevagram or live in the Viceroy'spalace.''All right,' Gandhi acquiesced.He encouraged banter. One afternoon when I came to his hut for the dailyinterview, he was not there. When he arrived he lay down on his bed. 'I willtake your blows lying down, he said, inviting questions. A Moslem woman gavehim a mud pack for his abdomen. This puts me in touch with my future,' hesaid. I did not comment.'I see you missed that one,' he noted.I said I had not missed it but thought he was too young to think about returningto the dust.'Why,' he declared, 'you and I and all of us, some in a hundred years, but allsooner or later, will do it.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 421

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesOn another occasion he quoted a statement he had made to Lord Sankey inLondon; "Do you think,' he had said, 'I would have reached this green old age if Ihadn't taken care of myself? This is one of my faults.''I thought you were perfect,' I ventured.He laughed and the eight or ten members of the ashram who usually sat in onthe interviews laughed. (He had asked me whether I objected to theirpresence.) 'No', he declared. 'I am very imperfect. Before you are gone you willhave discovered a hundred of my faults and if you don't, I will help you to seethem.'Usually the hour's interview began with his finding the coolest place in the hutfor me to sit. Then with a smile he would say, 'Now', inviting "blows'. As thehour was about to end he would, with an unerring time sense, look at his big'dollar' watch and proclaim, "Now, your hour is up.' He was minutely punctual.One day when I was leaving his hut after a talk, he said, Go and sit in a tub.' Iwondered whether that was the Indian equivalent of 'go sit on a tack'. Butcrossing the sun-baked hundred yards between Gandhi's hut and the guest hut,the heat made the inside of my head feel dry and I decided that sitting in a tubwould be a very good idea. In fact I thought I could improve on it. Adjoining theone living-room bedroom of the guest hut was a small water room with cementfloor on which stood a variety of pots, pitchers, tubs and bowls; an old womankept them filled with water. Six or seven times a day I would step into thisbathroom, slip off the two pieces of clothing and sandals I wore, and take astanding splash bath with the aid of a cup.The worst ordeal of the day was typing the complete record of myconversations with Gandhi and others in the ashram, and with Nehru who camefor two days of that week. After five minutes I was tired and wet all over withperspiration. Stimulated by Gandhi's suggestion to sit in a tub, I placed a smallwooden packing case in one of the tin wash-tubs filled with water, put a foldedTurkish towel on the packing case, then set a somewhat larger wooden packingcase just outside the tub and placed my portable typewriter on it. Thesearrangements made, I sat down on the box in the tub and typed my notes. Atwww.mkgandhi.org Page 422

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesintervals of a few minutes, when I began to perspire, I dipped a bronze bowlinto the tub and poured the water over my neck, back and legs. By that methodI was able to type a whole hour without feeling exhausted. The innovationstirred the ashram to mirth and jolly comment. It was not a glum community.Gandhi saw to that. He made eyes at the little children, provoked adults tolaughter and joked with all and sundry visitors.I asked Gandhi to be photographed with me. 'If a photographer is around byaccident,' he replied, 'I have no objection to being seen in a photograph withyou.'That,' I said, 'is the biggest compliment you have paid me.''Do you want compliments?' he inquired.'Don't we all?''Yes,' Gandhi agreed, 'but sometimes we have to pay too dearly for them.'Dining the week he inquired whether I knew Upton Sinclair, Dr. Kellogg, thefood specialist of Battle Creek, Michigan, and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. But Inoticed no general curiosity. He focused his attention on issues which he couldaffect and on questions put to him.I said I had been told that the Congress party was in the hands of big businessand that he himself was supported by Bombay mill-owners. 'What truth is therein these assertions?' I probed.'Unfortunately they are true', he affirmed. 'Congress hasn't enough money toconduct its work. We thought in the beginning to collect four annas from eachmember per year and operate on that. But it hasn't worked.'What proportion of the Congress budget,' I pressed 'is covered by rich Indians?''Practically all of it,' he admitted. 'In this ashram, for instance, we could livemuch more poorly than we do and spend less money. But we do not and themoney comes from our rich friends.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 423

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times(There is a famous quip attributed to Mrs. Naidu, which Gandhi enjoyedtremendously, to the effect that 'it costs a great deal of money to keepGandhiji living in poverty.')'Doesn't the fact that Congress gets its money from the moneyed interestsaffect Congress politics?' I asked. 'Doesn't it create a moral obligation?''It creates a silent debt,' he stated. 'But actually we are very little influencedby the thinking of the rich. They are sometimes afraid of our demand for fullindependence... The dependence of Congress on rich sponsors in unfortunate. Iused the word "unfortunate". It does not pervert our policy.''Isn't one of the results that there is a concentration on nationalism almost tothe exclusion of social and economic Problems?'No', he replied. 'Congress has from time to time, especially under the influenceof Pandit Nehru, adopted advanced social Programmes and schemes foreconomic planning. I will have those collected for you.'Most of the money for the maintenance of Gandhi's ashram and of Gandhi'sorganizations for Harijan and peasant uplift and the teaching of a nationallanguage came from G. D Birla, millionaire textile manufacturer at whose housein New Delhi the Mahatma sometimes lived. Birla first saw Gandhi in 1920 inCalcutta. On Gandhi's arrival at the railway station, Birla, then a young broker,and several friends unhitched the horses of the Mahatma's landau and pulled itthrough the streets. Birla became a devotee. He did not agree with some of theMahatma's policies, but that did not matter; Gandhi was his 'father', he says.Had Birla believed in the spinning wheel he would have had to close his mills,but he did not believe in it. After the death of Birla's wife, he never remarriedand became a Brahmachari; that was probably part of the bond between himand Gandhi. Gandhi first went to Birla's house in 1933 for ten days.Subsequently, he stayed a number of times for shorter or longer periods. Often,however, Gandhi preferred to make his headquarters in the Delhi Harijancolony near Kingsway; his upkeep there cost Birla fifty rupees a day. Theashram, including its hospital and dairy, cost Birla an estimated fifty thousandrupees a year and he supported it after 1935; he never kept accounts of whatwww.mkgandhi.org Page 424

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeshe gave Gandhi. But Gandhi wrote out in his own hand every smallest item ofexpenditure and presented it to Birla who tore it up before Gandhi's eyeswithout examining it. In addition, Birla backed many welfare institutions inwhich Gandhi was interested. His outlay for Gandhian enterprises ran intomillions of rupees. Gandhi's friendship gave Birla prestige and satisfaction andperhaps even business advantages, for he learned many political secrets fromthe Mahatma. But had the occasion demanded, Gandhi might have led a strikeof Birla's mill workers, as he did in the case of his friend and financial backer,Ambalal Sarabhai of Ahmedabad. Gandhi was tolerant of capitalists even whenhe opposed capitalist exploitation; he was equally tolerant of Englishmen afterhe turned against the British Empire. He would undoubtedly have stayed inChurchill's house. He was too sure of his purity and purpose to think he could becontaminated. To Gandhi nobody was an untouchable, neither Birla, nor aCommunist, nor a Harijan, nor an imperialist. He fanned the spark of virtuewherever he discovered it. He allowed for the diversity of human nature andthe multiplicity of man's motives.Early in the week I spent at the ashram in June 1942, it became obvious thatGandhi was determined to launch a civil disobedience campaign with a view tomaking England 'Quit India'. That was to be the slogan.Gandhi felt that unless England purged herself by leaving India the war couldnot be won and the peace could not be won.One afternoon, after Gandhi had talked at length about the reasons that wereprompting him to start civil disobedience against the British government, I said,'It seems to me that the British cannot possibly quit India altogether. Thatwould mean making a present of India to Japan; England would never agree,nor would the United States approve. If you demand that the British pack upand go bag and baggage, you are simply asking the impossible; you are barkingup a tree. You do not mean, do you, that they must also withdraw theirarmies?'For at least two minutes Gandhi said nothing. The silence in the room wasalmost audible.www.mkgandhi.org Page 425

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesYou are right,' Gandhi said at last. 'No, Britain and America and other countriestoo can keep their armies here and use Indian Territory as a base for militaryoperations. I do not wish Japan to win the war. But I am sure that Britaincannot win unless the Indian people become free. Britain is weaker and Britainis morally indefensible while she rules India. I do not wish to humiliateEngland.''But if India is to be used as a military base by the democracies, many otherthings are involved. Armies do not exist in a vacuum. For instance, the westernallies would need good organization on the railroads.''Oh', he exclaimed, 'they could operate the railroads. They would need order inthe ports where they received their supplies. They could not have riots inBombay and Calcutta these matters would require co-operation and commoneffort''Could the terms of this collaboration be set forth in a treaty of alliance?''Yes', he agreed, 'we could have a written agreement...''Why have you not said this?' I asked. 'I must confess that when I heard of yourproposed civil disobedience movement I was prejudiced against it. I believethat it would impede the prosecution of the war. I think the war has to befought and won. I see complete darkness for the world if the Axis wins. I thinkwe have a chance for a better world if we win.'There I cannot quite agree,' he argued. 'Britain often cloaks herself in the clothof hypocrisy, promising what she later does not deliver. But I accept theproposition that there is a better chance if the democracies win.''It depends on the kind of peace we make,' I said.'It depends on what you do during the war,' he corrected.'I am not interested in future promises. I am not interested in independenceafter the war. I want independence now. That will help England win the war.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 426

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times"Why,' I again inquired, 'have you not communicated your plan to the Viceroy?He should be told that you have no objection now to the use of India as a basefor allied military operations.''No one has asked me,' he replied weakly.Several of Gandhi's most intimate disciples were unhappy over his readiness totolerate British and other armed forces in India. They felt his statement to mea serious blunder- He himself admitted publicly that he had changed his mind-"There was obviously a gap in my first writing,' he said in Harijan shortly aftermy interview with him.’ I filled it in as soon as it was discovered by one of mynumerous interviewers. Non-violence demands the strictest honesty, cost whatit may. The public have therefore to suffer my weakness, if weakness it be. Icould not be guilty of asking the Allies to take a step which would involvecertain defeat... Abrupt withdrawal of the Allied troops might result in Japan'soccupation of India and China's sure fall. I had not the remotest idea of anysuch catastrophe resulting from my action...'Before I left the ashram Mahadev Desai asked me to tell the Viceroy thatGandhi wished to see him. The Mahatma was prepared to compromise andperhaps to abandon the projected civil disobedience movement. In New Delhi,later, I received a letter from Gandhi for transmission to President Roosevelt.The accompanying note said, characteristically, 'If it does not commend itselfto you, you may tear it to pieces.'He was malleable. 'Tell your President I wish to be dissuaded,' he told me. Hewas deeply convinced, however, that India should be granted self-governmentduring the war; if the anti-Axis powers did not understand this he would call itto their attention by a civil disobedience campaign. "Your President,' Gandhideclared one afternoon, 'talks about the Pour Freedoms. Do they include thefreedom to be free?'Gandhi felt that the democratic position on India was morally indefensible.Roosevelt or Linlithgow could dissuade him by changing the position. Otherwisehe had no doubts. Nehru and Azad did. Rajagopalachari had resigned from theCongress leadership because of his differences with the Mahatma. Gandhi couldwww.mkgandhi.org Page 427

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesnot be shaken. He convinced Nehru and Azad. Nehru had considered the foreignand domestic Situation inopportune. 'I argued with him for days together,'Gandhi reported. 'He fought against my position with a Passion which I have nowords to describe.' Nehru's personal contacts, Gandhi explained, 'make him feelmuch more the misery of the impending ruin of China and Russia... In thatmisery he tried to forget his old quarrel with (British) imperialism'. But beforeNehru left the ashram 'the logic of facts', as Gandhi put it, 'overwhelmed him'.Indeed, Nehru became such a staunch supporter of the proposed civildisobedience campaign that when I asked him subsequently in Bombay whetherGandhi ought to see the Viceroy, he replied, *No, what for?' Gandhi was stillhoping for an audience with Linlithgow.I left the ashram on June 10th in the car that took Azad and Nehru to theCongress hostel in Wardha. Several hours later, the car returned to Sevagram tofetch Gandhi for further consultations with the two Congress leaders. At threein the afternoon, Gandhi entered the hostel alone. Three- quarters of a milefrom Wardha the car had broken down. Gandhi got out and walked the distancein the broiling Indian afternoon June sun. When he reached the house he was ina gay mood; if he suffered from fatigue it was not noticeable and must haveretreated before the pleasure of being able to comment on the unrealiability of'these new-fangled technical achievements of the industrial age'.He had great charm. He was a remarkable natural phenomenon, quiet andinsidiously overwhelming. Intellectual contact with him was a delight becausehe opened his mind and allowed one to see how the machine worked. He didnot attempt to express his ideas in finished form. He thought aloud; herevealed each step in his thinking. ‘You heard not only words but also histhoughts. You could therefore follow him as he moved to a conclusion. Thisprevented him from talking like a propagandist; he talked like a friend. He wasinterested in an exchange of views, but much more in the establishment of apersonal relationship.Even when evasive Gandhi was frank. I was asking him about his dreams of thepost-independence India. He arguewww.mkgandhi.org Page 428

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesback and forth. You want to force me into an admission,' he said, 'that wewould need rapid industrialization. I will not be forced into such an admission.Our first problem is to get rid of British rule. Then we will be free, withoutrestraints from the outside, to do what India requires. The British have seen fitto allow us to have some factories and also to prohibit other factories. No, forme the paramount problem is the ending of British domination.'That, obviously, was what he wanted to talk about; he did not conceal hisdesire. His brain had no blue pencil. He said, for instance, that he would go toJapan to try to end the war. He knew, and immediately added, that he wouldnever get an opportunity to go and, if he went, Japan would not make peace.He knew too that his statement would be misinterpreted. Then why did hemake it? Because he thought it.Gandhi asserted that a federal administration would be unnecessary in anindependent India. I pointed out the difficulties that would arise in the absenceof a federal administration. He was not convinced. I was baffled. Finally hesaid, 'I know that despite my personal views there will be a centralgovernment.' This was a characteristic Gandhi cycle: he enunciated a principle,defended it, then admitted with a laugh that it was unworkable. In negotiation,this faculty could be extremely irritating and time-wasting. In Personalconversation, it was attractive and even exciting. He himself was sometimessurprised at the things he said. His thinking was fluid. Most persons like to beproved right. So did Gandhi. But frequently he snatched a victory out of anerror by admitting it.Old people are prone to reminiscences. Lloyd George would commence toanswer a question on current events and soon be talking about his conduct ofthe first World War or a campaign for social reform early in the century. Atseventy- three, Gandhi never reminisced. His mind was on things to come.Years did not matter to him because he thought in terms of the unendingfuture. Only the hours mattered because they were the measure of what hecould contribute to that future.www.mkgandhi.org Page 429

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi had more than influence, he had authority, which is less yet better thanpower. Power is the attribute of a machine: authority is the attribute of aperson. Statesmen are varying combinations of both. The dictator's constantaccretion of power, which he must inevitably abuse, steadily robs him ofauthority. Gandhi's rejection of power enhanced his authority. Power feeds onthe blood and tears of its victims. Authority is fed by service, sympathy andaffection.One evening, I watched Mahadev Desai spin. I said I had been listening carefullyto Gandhi and studying my notes and wondering all the time what was thesource of his hold on people; I had come to the tentative conclusion that it washis passion.That is right,' Desai said.'What is the root of his passion?' I askedThis passion,' Desai explained, 'is the sublimation of all the passions that flesh isheir to.''Sex?''Sex and anger and personal ambition.... Gandhi is under his own completecontrol. That generates tremendous energy and passion.'It was a subdued, purring passion. He hid a soft intensity, a tender firmness andan impatience cotton-wooled in patience- Gandhi's colleagues and the Britishsometimes resented his intensity, firmness and impatience. But he retainedtheir respect, often their love, through his softness, tenderness and patience.Gandhi sought approval; he was very happy when the great Tagore agreed withhim. But he could defy the whole world and his political next-of-kin.Gandhi was a strong individual, and his strength lay in the richness of hispersonality, not in the multitude of his possessions. His goal was To be, not Tohave. Happiness came to him through self-realization. Fearing nothing, hecould live the truth. Having nothing he could pay for his principles.www.mkgandhi.org Page 430

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesMahatma Gandhi is the symbol of the unity between personal morality andpublic action. When conscience dwells at home but not in the workshop, office,classroom and market-place, the road is wide open to corruption and crueltyand to dictatorship.Gandhi enriched politics with ethics. He faced each morning's issues in the lightof eternal and universal values. He always distilled a permanent element out ofthe ephemeral. Gandhi thus broke through the framework of usual assumptionswhich cramp a man's action. He discovered a new dimension of action.Unconfined by considerations of personal success or comfort, he split the socialatom and found a new source of energy. It gave him weapons of attack againstwhich there was often no defence. His greatness lay in doing what everybodycould do but doesn't.'Perhaps he will not succeed,' Tagore wrote of the living Gandhi. 'Perhaps hewill fail as the Buddha failed and as Christ failed to wean men from theiriniquities, but he will always be remembered as one who made his life a lessonfor all ages to come.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 431

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XWill PowerIN May, June and July 1942, one felt a suffocating airlessness in India. Indiansseemed desperate. British generals, U. S. General Joseph W. Stilwell and asmall armed remnant, and thousands of Indian refugees were straggling out ofBurma to escape the conquering Japanese. Japan was next door to India.England apparently lacked the strength to protect India from invasion. VocalIndians were irritated and exasperated by their utter helplessness. There wasthe national emergency; tension was mounting; danger threatened; opportunityknocked; but Indians had no voice and no power to act.Gandhi found the situation intolerable. Resignation was alien to his nature. Hebelieved and had taught a vast following that Indians must shape their owndestiny.The Cripps mission awakened many hopes; India might gain the right to guideher fate. Now the hopes were dashed. Indians were to be supine spectators inan hour of decision. Anger swept the country.In the light of subsequent events, it appears clear that 1942 or 1943 or 1944was the best time to grant India independence. For, since Britain and otherUnited Nations would keep their troops in the country as long as the war lasted,the transfer of power to a provisional Indian government could be achievesmoothly and with the least likelihood of riots, chaos, °r attempts at a separatepeace with Japan. Real power would remain in British hands. This would haveavoided the hundreds of thousands of deaths and the millions of humantorments and tragedies which attended the liberation of India in 1947.Gandhi could not have foreseen the black future, but he did sense the urgentneed of an immediate change. He was determined to exert maximum pressureon England for the early establishment of an independent national government.www.mkgandhi.org Page 432

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi's formula was 'not to put any obstacle in the way of the British forces';not to assist the British actively; and to offer complete passive resistance tothe Japanese.'If the Japanese come,' Indians asked, 'how are we to resist them non-violently?''Neither food nor shelter is to be given', Gandhi replied in the June 14, 1942,Harijan, 'nor are any dealings to be established with them. They should bemade to feel that they are not wanted. But of course things are not going tohappen quite so smoothly as the question implies. It is a superstition to thinkthat they will come as friendlies.... If the people cannot resist fierce attackand are afraid of death, they must evacuate the infested place in order to denycompulsory service to the enemy.'On July 26th, answering similar questions in Harijan, Gandhi wrote, 'I wouldrather be shot than submit to Japanese or another power.' He recommendedthe same preference to his friends.Gandhi, the absolute pacifist, would have wished India to give anunprecedented demonstration of a successful non-violent defeat of an invadingarmy. Yet he was not so Unrealistic as to forget that a fierce war to the deathof countries raged. In Harijan of June 14, 1942, Gandhi declared, Assuming thatthe National government is formed and if it answers my expectations, its firstact would be to enter into a treaty with the United Nations for defensiveoperations against aggressive powers, it being common cause that India willhave nothing to do with any of the Fascist powers and India would be morallybound to help the United Nations.'Asked by Reuters in London to amplify this encouraging pronouncement, Gandhicabled, there can be no limit to what friendly independent India can do. I hadin mind a treaty between the United Nations and India for the defence of Chinaagainst Japanese aggression.'Would Gandhi, then assist the war effort? No. United Nations armies would betolerated on Indian soil and Indians could enlist in the British Army or renderother help. But if he had anything to say, the Indian Army would be disbandedwww.mkgandhi.org Page 433

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesand the new Indian national government would use 'all its power, prestige andresources' to bring about world peace.Did he expect this to happen? No. 'After the formation of the NationalGovernment', he said, 'my voice may be a voice in the wilderness andnationalist India may go war-mad.'Nationalist India might well have gone 'war-mad' if only to shake off theoppressive frustration of inaction. Nehru, Azad and Rajagopalachari were eagerto have a national government for its own sake, to be sure, but also in order tofight the war. They were militantly anti-fascist. Nehru said, we would fight inevery way possible with non-violence and with arms, by making it a people'swar, by raising a people's army, by increasing production...' But if Britain didnot enable them to do these things, they must continue the struggle forindependence. 'Passivity on our part at this moment', Nehru declared, 'would besuicidal... It would destroy and emasculate us.' Fear of India's emasculation wasan ever present motive- Today the whole of India is impotent,' Gandhicomplained m the same context. In different ways, both Nehru and Gandhiwere concerned with building up the manhood of their people- Gandhi wantedto give them inner strength through confidence- He inspired that feeling in hisIndian and foreign visitors.As the summer of 1942 wore on, it became clear that London would not departfrom the spurned Cripps proposal. Nehru had waited for a sign fromWashington; he had hoped Roosevelt would prevail upon Churchill to makeanother move in India. No sign came. Some Congressmen wondered whetherthe country would respond to a call for civil disobedience, and some fearedthat it would respond violently. Gandhi had no doubts. He was registering anation's blind urge to self- assertion.He did not contemplate the overthrow of the British government. 'A non-violentrevolution,' he explained, 'is not a programme of seizure of power. It is aprogramme of transformation of relationships ending in a peaceful transfer ofpower....'www.mkgandhi.org Page 434

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'British rule in India must end immediately,' the Working Committee of Congressresolved in Wardha on July 14; foreign domination 'even at its best' is an eviland a 'continuing injury The frustration left by the Cripps Mission 'has resultedin a rapid and widespread increase of ill-will against Britain and a growingsatisfaction at the success of Japanese arms. The Working Committee view thisdevelopment with grave apprehension, as this, unless checked, will inevitablylead to a passive acceptance of aggression. The Committee hold that allaggression must be resisted.... The Congress would change the present ill-willagainst Britain into good-will and make India a willing partner in a jointenterprise... This is only possible if India feels the glow of freedom.'Congress, the resolution continued, did not wish to embarrass the Alliedpowers; it is therefore 'agreeable to the stationing °f the armed forces of theAllies in India...'If this appeal failed, the resolution concluded, Congress will be reluctantlycompelled' to start a civil disobedience campaign which 'would inevitably beunder the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi'.The resolution still required the approval of the larger All- India CongressCommittee summoned to convene in Bombay early in August. From Sevagram,meanwhile, Gandhi issued an appeal To Every Japanese'. 'I must confess', hebegan 'that though I have no ill-will against you, I intensely dislike your attackupon China... you have descended to imperial ambition. You will fail to realizethat ambition and may become the authors of the dismemberment of Asia, thusunwittingly preventing world federation and brotherhood without which therecan be no hope for humanity.'He warned Tokyo not to exploit the situation to invade India. You will be sadlydisillusioned if you believe that you will receive a willing welcome from India...we will not fail in resisting you with all the might that our country canmuster....'Then he went to Bombay. To A. T. Steele, of the New York Herald Tribune,Gandhi said, 'If anybody could convince me that in the midst of war, the Britishwww.mkgandhi.org Page 435

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesgovernment cannot declare India free without jeopardizing the war effort, Ishould like to hear the argument.''If you were convinced,' Steele asked, 'would you call off the campaign?''Of course,' Gandhi replied. 'My complaint is that all these good people talk atme, swear at me, but never condescend to talk to me.'Linlithgow had talked to him in 1939 and 1940, but not thereafter.Several hundred Congress leaders assembled for the A.I.C.C. session on August7, and after deliberating all day of the 7th and 8th they adopted a slightlymodified version of the Wardha resolution; they adopted one by declaring thatan Indian government would resist aggression 'with all the armed as well as thenon-violent forces at its command'-this was an un-Gandhian touch inserted bythe Nehru-Azad school —and crossed one bridge before they reached it bycautioning the Congress rank and file that if their leaders were arrested andprevented from issuing instructions they must obey the general instructionswhich read, 'non-violence is the basis of this movement.'Shortly after midnight of August 8, Gandhi addressed the A.I.C.C. delegates.The actual struggle does not commence this very moment,' he emphasized. Youhave merely placed certain powers in my hands. My first act will be to waitupon His Excellency the Viceroy and plead with him for the acceptance of theCongress demand. This may take two or three weeks. What are you to do in themeanwhile? I will tell you. There is the spinning wheel... But there is somethingmore you have to do... Every one of you should, from this very moment,consider himself a free man or woman and even act as if you are free and nolonger under the heel of this imperialism...' He was reversing the materialisticconcept that conditions determine psychology. No, psychology could shapeconditions. What you think, you become,' he once said.The delegates went home to sleep. Gandhi, Nehru and scores of others wereawakened by the police a few hours later—before sunrise—and carried off toprison. Gandhi was sent into a palace of the Aga Khan at Yeravda, near Poona.Mrs. Naidu, Mirabehn, Mahadev Desai and Pyarelal Nayyar, arrested at the samewww.mkgandhi.org Page 436

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timestime, were quartered with him. The next day, Kasturba got herself arrested byannouncing that she would address a meeting in Bombay at which Gandhi hadbeen scheduled to speak. She and Dr. Sushila Nayyar, who had been giving hermedical care, joined the Gandhi jail company. The British were veryaccommodating.In an interview with the Viceroy after my week with Gandhi I conveyed themessage entrusted to me at Sevagram: Gandhi wished to talk with Linlithgow.The Viceroy replied, that is a matter of high policy and will have to beconsidered °n its merits'; 1942 was Churchill's first opportunity in officeto cope with a civil disobedience movement in India. The British governmentpreferred suppression to discussion.The moment the prison doors closed behind Gandhi the sluice gates of violenceopened. Police stations and government buildings were set on fire, telegraphlines destroyed, railroad ties pulled up and British officials assaulted; a numberwere killed. Individuals and groups dedicated to destruction roamed thecountryside. Soon a powerful underground movement sprang into existence led,in most cases, by members of the Socialist party, a segment of the Congressparty. Socialist leaders Jaiprakash Narayan, Mrs. Aruna Asaf Ali and others,political children of Gandhi but recent students of Karl Marx, acquired the halosof heroes as they moved secretly across the land fomenting rebellion. Staidcitizens harboured and financed them while the British police hunted them. HisMajesty's writ no longer ran and his officials no longer appeared in many areaswhere Indians set up independent village, town and district governments. Thesewere, in most cases, skeleton structures whose propaganda value exceededtheir administrative effectiveness. Yet in some regions, notably in Tilak'straditionally militant Maharashtra, it was not till 1944 that the British returnedto ride.Even Gandhi was in a bellicose mood. With that irrepressible ability to take thecentre of the stage, the jailed Mahatma's personality broke through the walls ofthe Aga Khan's desolate palace and besieged the mind first of the Britishgovernment and then of the Indian people.www.mkgandhi.org Page 437

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesHe was no sooner in jail than he wrote a letter to Sir Roger Lumley, thegovernor of Bombay, protesting against his own transportation from the train tothe prison by car while his comrades went by motor truck. He wanted noprivileges, he said, 'except for the special food'. The palace, he wrote, was'commodious'; could not Sardar Patel, who had been ill, and his daughter whonursed him, be moved into it? The final point: on the train he had seen in apaper the Government's justification of its policy; it contained 'some grosslyinaccurate statements which I ought to be allowed to correct. This and similarthings I cannot do, unless I know what is going on outside the jail.' Yetnewspapers had been forbidden to him.Lumley's secretary replied he could not have newspapers or Patel. He mightwrite personal letters to his family.Didn't the Government know, Gandhi answered, that 'for over thirty-five years Ihave ceased to live a family life' and had been living an ashram life? He wantedto be in touch with the various voluntary organizations he had founded forHarijan uplift, khadi, the development of a national language, etc. TheGovernment then made a concession he could write to ashram members onpersonal questions but not about the organizations. Gandhi refused to availhimself of the privilege.Gandhi now turned on the Viceroy. Ever since President Roosevelt's interventionin the Indian crisis and Churchill's offer to 'assuage' United States public opinionby resigning, a gigantic propaganda battle had been going on to win Americanapproval of British policy in India. Gandhi knew this. In his first letter from jailto the Viceroy on August 14, Gandhi accused the Government of 'distortions andmisrepresentations'. The letter was many pages long. Linlithgow, addressing'Dear Mr. Gandhi', answered in a paragraph that 'it would not be possible for meeither to accept your criticism or change the policy.'Gandhi waited several months. On New Year's Eve, 1942, he wrote, Dear LordLinlithgow, This is a very personal letter... I must not allow the old year toexpire without disburdening myself of what is rankling in my breast against you.I have thought we were friends... However what has happened since August 9thwww.mkgandhi.org Page 438

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesmakes me wonder whether you still regard me as a friend. I have not perhapscome in such close touch with any occupant of your throne as with you.' Thenhe voiced what apparently hurt him most: "Why did you not, before takingdrastic action, send for me, tell me your suspicions and make yourself sure ofyour facts? I am quite capable of seeing myself as others see me'. TheGovernment had made the charge that he was responsible for the violencethroughout the country and expected him to condemn it. How could he whenhe had only the official version? By accusing him without giving him freedom toreply, by holding him and his followers in prison despite their good intentions,the Government had 'wronged innocent men'.Therefore, Gandhi concluded, he had decided to 'crucify the flesh by fasting'.This was a last resort and he would be glad not to fast. 'Convince me of myerror or errors and I shall make ample amends. You can send for me... Thereare many other ways if you have the will... May the New Year bring peace to usall! I am, your sincere friend, M. K. Gandhi.'The Viceroy received this letter fourteen days later; minor officials had delayedit. He answered in a letter marked 'Personal'. It was a two-page letter.Newspapers had been supplied to Gandhi's prison after the early period withoutthem. He knew of the arson and murders. Linlithgow was therefore 'profoundlydepressed... that no word of condemnation for that violence and crime shouldhave come from you'. If Gandhi wished to dissociate himself from these actsYou know me well enough after these many years to believe that I shall be onlytoo concerned to read with the same close attention as ever any message whichI receive from you... Yours sincerely, Linlithgow.''I had almost despaired of ever hearing from you,' Gandhi's reply began. 'Pleaseexcuse my impatience. Your letter gladdens me to find that I have not lostcaste with you. My letter of December 31 was a growl against you. Yours is acounter-growl... Of course I deplore the happenings that have taken place sinceAugust 9. But have I not laid the blame for them at the door of the Governmentof India? Moreover, I could not express any opinion on events which I cannotinfluence or control and of which I have but a one-sided account... I am certainwww.mkgandhi.org Page 439

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesthat nothing but good could have resulted if you had stayed your hand andgranted me the interview which I had announced, on the night of August 8th, Iwas to seek... convince me that I was wrong and I will make ample amends....'Linlithgow responded quickly saying he had no choice 'but to regard theCongress movement and you as its authorized and fully empoweredspokesman... as responsible for the sad campaign of violence and crime'. Herepelled Gandhi's charge that the Government was at fault. He asked theMahatma to 'repudiate or dissociate yourself from the resolution of August 8and the policy which the resolution represents' and to 'give me appropriateassurances as regards the future...' He had asked the Governor of Bombay toforward Gandhi's letter without delay.It was the Government, Gandhi's return letter stated, that 'goaded the peopleto the point of madness'. The Congress resolution of August 8 was friendly tothe United Nations and to England. The Government's violence was 'leonine'.The arrests started the trouble. Yet the Viceroy blamed him for the violencethough he had worked all his life for non-violence. 'If then I cannot get soothingbalm for my pain, I must resort to the law prescribed for Satyagrahis, namely, afast according to capacity.' It would commence on February 9 and end twentyonedays later. ‘Usually, during my fasts, I take water with the addition of salt.But nowadays, my system refuses water. This time therefore I propose to addjuices of citrus fruit to make water drinkable. For my wish is not to fast untodeath, but to survive the ordeal, if God so wills. The fast can be ended soonerby the Government giving the needed relief.’The Viceroy replied immediately, on February 5, with a many-page letter. Hestill held Congress responsible for 'the lamentable disorders'. Sir ReginaldMaxwell, the Home Member of Linlithgow Executive Council, had made a fullstatement of this charge in the assembly and this would be sent to the prisoner.The letter reiterated the charge and added details. 'Let me in conclusion sayhow greatly I regret having regard to your health and age, the decision' to fast.He hoped he would not fast. But it was Gandhi's responsibility. 'I regard the useof a fast for political purposes as a form of political blackmail for which there iswww.mkgandhi.org Page 440

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesno moral justification and understood from your own previous writings that thiswas also your view.'Besides, Gandhi had written that one may fast only against those who love you,not against a tyrant.By return post, Gandhi denied that his decision to fast was contrary to hisprevious writings. 'I wonder whether you yourself have read those writings...Despite your description of it as "a form of political blackmail", it is on my partan appeal to the Highest Tribunal for justice which I have failed to secure fromyou. If I do not survive the ordeal I shall go to the Judgment Seat with thefullest faith in my innocence. Posterity will judge between you as arepresentative of an all-powerful government and me a humble man who triedto serve his country and humanity through it.'Two days before the fast was to commence the Government offered to releaseGandhi for its duration. He and his associates in prison could go wherever theyliked. Gandhi refused. If he was released, he said, he would not fast.Thereupon, the Government announced that he would be responsible for anyresults; meanwhile, he could invite into the jail any doctors he wanted to haveand also friends from the outside.The fast commenced on February 10, 1943, a day later than scheduled. Thefirst day he was quite cheerful and for two days he took his customary morningand evening half-hour walks. But soon the bulletins became increasinglydisquieting- On the sixth day, six physicians, including British official doctors,stated that Gandhi's condition had 'further deteriorated'. The next morning SirHomi Mody, Mr. N. R. Sarker and Mr. Aney, three Indians in the Viceroy'sExecutive Council, whose membership indicated their pro-government and anti-Congress attitude, resigned from the Council in protest against the Governmentaccusations which had caused Gandhi to undertake the fast. A debate on thefast took place in the Central Legislature. From all over the country, theGovernment was bombarded with demands to release the Mahatma. Elevendays after the fast began, Linlithgow rejected all suggestions to liberateGandhi.www.mkgandhi.org Page 441

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesDr. B. C. Roy came from Calcutta to attend Gandhi. The British physiciansurged intravenous feedings to save the Mahatma. The Indian physicians said itwould kill him; he objected to injections. The body could reject medicinestaken orally, Gandhi always argued, but it was helpless before injections, andhis mind therefore rebelled against them; they were violence.Crowds gathered around Yeravda. The Government allowed the public to comeinto the palace grounds and file through Gandhi's room. Devadas and Ramdas,his sons, arrived.Horace Alexander, the British Friend, attempted to intervene with theGovernment. He was rebuffed. Mr. Aney, who had just resigned from theViceroy's Council, visited the sinking Mahatma.Gandhi had been taking water without salt or fruit juice. Nausea plagued him.His kidneys began to fail and his blood became thick. On the thirteenth day ofthe fast the pulse grew feeble and his skin was cold and moist. Kasturbai kneltbefore a sacred plant and prayed; she thought his death was near.Finally, the Mahatma was persuaded to mix a few drops of fresh moosambi fruitjuice with the drinking water. Vomiting stopped; he became more cheerful.On March 2, Kasturbai handed him a glass containing six ounces of orange juicediluted with water. He sipped it f0r twenty minutes. He thanked the doctorsand cried copiously while doing so. He lived on orange juice for the next fourdays and then went on a diet of goat's milk, fruit juice and fruit pulp. Hishealth improved slowly.India's prominent non-Congress leaders now started agitating for Gandhi'srelease and for a new government policy of conciliation. Sir Tej Bahadur Sapruand others asked permission to see Gandhi; Linlithgow refused.On April 25, William Phillips, Roosevelt's personal envoy in India and formerUnited States Under-Secretary of State, said to foreign correspondents beforeleaving for home, 'I should have liked to meet and talk with Mr. Gandhi. Irequested the appropriate authorities for permission to do so and I wasinformed that they were unable to grant the necessary permission.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 442

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesLinlithgow's behaviour had induced unwonted bitterness in Gandhi, and whenthe Viceroy, whose usual five-year term had been prolonged because of the waremergency, was finally preparing to leave India, Gandhi wrote to him onSeptember 27, 1943, as follows:Dear Lord Linlithgow, on the eve of your departure from India I would like tosend you a word.Of all the high functionaries I have had the honour of knowing none has beenthe cause of such deep sorrow to me as you have been. It has cut me to thequick to have to think of you as having countenanced untruth, and thatregarding one whom you at one time considered your friend. I hope and praythat God will someday put it into your heart to realize that you, arepresentative of a great nation, have been led into a grievous error. With goodwishes, I still remain your friend, M. K Gandhi.Linlithgow replied on October 7:Dear Mr. Gandhi, I have received your letter of September 27. I am indeed sorrythat your feelings about any deeds or words of mine should be as you describe.But I must be allowed, as gently as I may, to make plain to you that I am quiteunable to accept your interpretation of the events in question.As for the corrective virtues of time and reflection, evidently they areubiquitous in their operation and wisely to be rejected by no man. I amsincerely, Linlithgow.Before and after the fast, Gandhi wrote long letters, some of which were ofpamphlet length, to Sir Reginald Maxwell, Lord (formerly Sir Herbert) Samueland others, seeking to controvert their public assertions about events andconditions in India. But none of them was published and his letter to Samuel,sent on May 15, 1943, was not delivered in London until July 25, 1944.Throughout, Gandhi continued to maintain that he could 'accept noresponsibility for the unfortunate happenings' in India, that he was neither anti-British nor pro-Japanese and that he could have been dissuaded from taking anysteps against the government.www.mkgandhi.org Page 443

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe facts are: Gandhi never launched the civil disobedience movement.Congress had merely authorized him to launch it, but he had stated that itwould not begin until he gave the order. First he would seek an interview withthe Viceroy. The country was in a violent mood; Gandhi knew it; conceivably hemight have chosen a form of civil disobedience, like the Salt March, which didnot lend itself to mass violence. Had Gandhi remained at liberty he might haveprevented his followers from engaging in the destruction of property andpersons. He might have fasted against them. At least, he could have curbed thegeneral violence. He would not have added to it. The British gained nothingfrom Gandhi's arrest except the satisfaction, tempered by headaches, of havinghim under lock and key. Gandhi's freedom would have mollified many Indians.His arrest inflamed them. It deepened the widespread impression thatEngland did not intend to part with power in India. Hence the revolt. It wasintensified by the 1943 famine in Bengal in which, according to British officialfigures, a million and a half Indians died. Indians said the government mighthave prevented the famine or, at a minimum, undertaken emergency feeding.That was one of Wavell's first steps on ascending the Viceroy's throne inOctober 1943.For Gandhi, this stay in prison was an unrelieved tragedy. The widespreadviolence and his inability to deal with it made him unhappy. The government'saccusation that he was to blame for the disturbances when it knew his devotionto non-violence and when it knew that he had never actually started civildisobedience impressed him as unfair and untrue; the injustice pained him. Itwas to protest against the charge—not to force the British to release him—thathe had fasted. A perfect yogi might have remained indifferent to what otherssaid. Gandhi was not completely detached.The tragedy was deepened by personal loss. Six days after Gandhi entered theAga Khan's palace, Mahadev Desai, who was arrested with him, had a suddenheart attack and lost consciousness. 'Mahadev', Mahadev,' Gandhi called.'If only he would open his eyes and look at me he would not die,' Gandhi said.'Mahadev, look, Bapu is calling you,' Kasturbai exclaimed.www.mkgandhi.org Page 444

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesBut it was the end.Mahadev Desai, who was past fifty, had served Gandhi devotedly and efficientlyfor twenty-four years as secretary, adviser, chronicler, friend and son. TheMahatma was stunned by the death. He went daily to the spot in the palacegrounds where the ashes were buried.Soon a still greater personal sorrow overtook Gandhi.Gandhi spent much time in prison teaching his wife Indian geography and othersubjects. She failed, however, to memorize the names of the rivers of thePunjab, and on examination by Gandhi she said Lahore, which is the capital ofthe Punjab, was the capital of Calcutta, a city which is the capital of Bengal.He had little success in his persistent efforts to improve her reading and writingof Gujarati. She was seventy- four.Ba, or Mother, as everybody called Mrs. Gandhi, still paid homage to Brahmansfor their high-caste status and regarded them as possessing specialendowments; she asked one Brahman who worked in the jail when they wouldbe released. But she had rid herself of anti-untouchable prejudices, was aregular spinner and a sincere but not uncritical Gandhian. One day she wasannoyed with Gandhi and said to him, 'Didn't I tell you not to pick a quarrelwith the mighty government? You did not listen to me and now we all have topay the penalty. The government is using its limitless strength to crush thepeople.''Then what do you want me to do... write to the government and ask for theirforgiveness?'No, she did not ask that. But, she exclaimed, why do you ask the British toleave India? Our country is vast. We can all live there. Let them stay if theylike, but let them stay as brothers.''What else have I done?' Gandhi replied. 'I want them to go as rulers. Once theycease to be our rulers, we have no quarrel with them.'Ah, yes, she agreed with that. She apparently worshipped him withoutunderstanding.www.mkgandhi.org Page 445

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesKasturbai had been ailing, and in December 1943 she became seriously ill withchronic bronchitis. Dr. Gilder and Dr. Nayyar tended her, but she asked for Dr.Dinshah Mehta, a nature cure expert who had treated Gandhi, and an Ayurvedicor Indian-medicine practitioner. In deference to her Wishes, Gandhi bombardedthe government with letters to admit them. The practitioner tried all his art fora number of days during which the modern-medicine physicians withdrew fromthe patient. When he confessed defeat, Dr. Gilder, Dr Nayyar and Dr. JivrajMehta resumed their efforts, but they too failed. The government gavepermission for her sons and grandsons to visit her. Ba especially asked for herfirst-born, Hiralal, who had been estranged from his parents.Gandhi sat by his wife's bed for many hours. He ordered all medicines to bestopped and all food except honey and water. It was more important, he said,for her to have peace with God. 'If God wills it,' he said, 'she will pull through,else I would let her go, but I won't drug her any longer.'Penicillin, then rare in India, was flown from Calcutta; Devadas had insisted onit. Why do you not trust God?' Gandhi said to him. 'Do you wish to drug yourmother even on her deathbed?'Gandhi had not known that penicillin was given by injection. On being told, heforbade it. Most of the day, Gandhi sat on her bed, holding her hand. Fellowprisoners sang Hindu hymns. On February 21 Hiralal arrived, summoned hastilyby the government. He was drunk and had to be removed from Kasturbai'spresence. She cried and beat her forehead. (Hiralal attended his father'sfuneral without being recognized and spent that night with Devadas. He died, aderelict, in a tuberculosis hospital in Bombay on June 19, 1948).The next day, her head resting in Gandhi's lap, she died. At the funeral, Gandhioffered a prayer borrowed from Hindu, Parsi, Moslem and Christian scriptures.Devadas lit the pyre. The ashes were buried besides those of Mahadev Desai inthe prison grounds.When Gandhi returned from the cremation, he sat on his bed in silence andthen, from time to time, as the thoughts came, he spoke: 'I cannot imagine lifewithout Ba... passing has left a vacuum which never will be filled— we livedwww.mkgandhi.org Page 446

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timestogether for sixty-two years... If I had allowed the penicillin it would not havesaved her... And she passed away in my lap. Could it be better? I am happybeyond measure.'Gandhi had been in correspondence on political issues with the new Viceroy,Lord Wavell. Immediately after Kasturbai's death, Wavell said in a letter to theMahatma, 'I take this opportunity to express to you deep sympathy from mywife and myself at the death of Mrs. Gandhi. We understand what this loss mustmean to you after so many years of companionship.'Gandhi was touched. In his reply he wrote, 'Though for her sake I havewelcomed her death as bringing freedom from living agony, I feel the loss morethan I had thought I should.' Then he explained their intimate relationship toWavell, whom he had never met. We were a couple outside the ordinary,' hesaid. Their continence, after the age of thirty- seven, 'knit us together as neverbefore. We ceased to be two different entities... The result was that shebecame truly my better half.'Six weeks after Kasturbai's passing, Gandhi suffered a severe attack of benigntertian malaria, during which he was delirious. Temperature rose to 105. Ablood count showed a very high germ content. At first he thought he could cureit with a fruit-juice diet and fasting; he accordingly refused to take quinine.After two days he relented; he took a total of thirty-three grains of quinine intwo days and the fever disappeared. In all subsequent examinations, parasiteswere absent and the malaria never recurred.On May 3 Gandhi's physicians issued a bulletin saying his anaemia was worse andhis blood pressure low. 'His general condition is again giving rise to severeanxiety.' Agitation for his release swept India. A heavy armed guard was placedaround the prison. At 8 a.m., May 6, Gandhi and his associates were released. Asubsequent analysis showed that he had hookworm (ankylostomiasis) andamoebiasis °f the intestines.This was Gandhi's last time in jail. Altogether, he spent 2089 days in Indian and249 days in South African prisons.www.mkgandhi.org Page 447

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi went to Juhu, by the sea near Bombay, where he stayed in the home ofShantikumar Moraiji, whose father was from Porbander, Gandhi's birthplace,Mrs. Naidu and Mrs. Pandit, Jawaharlal Nehru's sister, were there at the sametime.Mrs. Moraiji suggested that the Mahatma see a moving picture film; he hadnever seen either a silent movie or a talkie. After some urging, he agreed.Mission to Moscow was being exhibited in a nearby suburb. Mechanicalequipment and the film were brought to the Moraiji's home and, together withabout one hundred other persons, Gandhi viewed Mission to Moscow.'How did you like it?' Mrs. Moraiji asked.'I didn't like it,' he said. He hadn't liked the ballroom dancing and the women inscanty dresses; he considered it improper.Friends complained that he had viewed a foreign picture, not one of Indianmanufacture. He accordingly saw Ram Rajya, based on an ancient legend of anideal moral king.For his relaxation, somebody read Gandhi a delightful, tranquil children's bookby Pearl S. Buck entitled The Chinese Children Next Door.The doctors were curing Gandhi and he was curing himself with silence,'medical silence', he called it. At first it was total; after a few weeks, he wouldspeak between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. which was prayer-meeting time.After several weeks he plunged into work again.www.mkgandhi.org Page 448

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XIJinnah And GandhiMOHAMED Ali Jinnah, who considered himself Gandhi's opposite number, livedin a large, crescent-shaped marble mansion from which a classic flight ofmarble stairs and a series of carefully moulded terraces led down to the sea atBombay. He had built it during the second World War and he apologized, when Isaw him in 1942, that it was still inadequately furnished. His little study,however, and other parts of the great house on Malabar Hill revealed thecultured and opulent touch.Jinnah was over six feet tall and weighed nine stone. He was a very thin man.His well-shaped head was covered with thick, long, silver-grey hair brushedstraight back. His shaven face was thin, the nose long and aquiline. Thetemples were sunken and the cheeks were deep holes which made hischeekbones stand out like high horizontal ridges. His teeth were bad. When notspeaking, he would pull in his chin, tighten his lips, knit his big brow. The resultwas a forbidding earnestness. He rarely laughed.Jinnah wore a knee-length straw-coloured tunic, tight white Indian trousersthat clung to his bony legs and black patent- leather pumps. A monocle dangledfrom a black cord. He often dressed in European clothes. He was, wrote GeorgeE. Jones in the New York Times of May 5, 1946, 'undoubtedly one of the bestdressed men in the British Empire'.Jinnah, the first child of a rich skins, hide and gum-arabic merchant, was bornon Christmas Day 1876—seven years later than Gandhi—in the Kathiawarpeninsula, Gandhi's birthplace; his native language was Gujarati. 'Jinnah' is aHindu name; the family were recent converts to Islam. Jinnah was a KhojaMoslem. Many Khojas carry Hindu names and maintain the Hindu joint familysystem. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Khojas attempted toreturn to Hinduism but were rebuffed.www.mkgandhi.org Page 449

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesHinduism and Mohammedanism are dissimilar religions, but Hindus andMohammedans are far less dissimilar. Most Moslems of India are convertedHindus, coverted by the invading Arabs, Afghans and Persians who beganthrusting into India during the eighth century. Jinnah said converted Hinduswere 75 per cent of the Moslem community; Nehru put it at 95 per cent. Inparts of India, Moslems worship in Hindu temples. There are castes among someIndian Moslems. In many areas, Hindus and Moslems are indistinguishable fromone another in appearance, costume, customs and language. Hindi and Urdu,the predominant tongues of Hindus and Moslems respectively, are written withdifferent scripts and the former has absorbed mote Sanskrit words while thelatter uses more Persian words, but Hindus understand Urdu and Moslemsunderstand Hindi. Hinduism is an insidious, emotional religion, native to India,which clings to the descendants of those who were converted to the Koran bythe sword. Religious leaders have succeeded in widening the gulf and poisoningthe relations, yet ties remain. Jinnah, Gandhi, Nehru, the Viceroy, Wavell andall the British officials, Hindus and Moslems one met in India agreed that Hindusand Moslems lived peacefully side by side in the villages—and the villages is 80per cent of India. In the Indian Army, moreover, Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs,Christians, in fact all religions and races, ate, slept, trained and waged warside by side without friction.I suggested to Jinnah that religious hatreds, nationalism and boundariesplagued humanity and had caused the war; the world needed harmony, not newdiscords.'You are an idealist,' he replied. 'I am a realist. I deal with what is. Take, forinstance, France and Italy. Their customs and religion are the same. Theirlanguages are similar. Yet they are separate.''Do you want to create here the mess we have in Europe?' I asked.'I must deal with the divisive characteristics which exist,' he said.Jinnah was not a devout Moslem. He drank alcohol and ate pork, which are un-Islamic acts. He seldom visited the mosque and knew no Arabic and little Urdu.In his forties, he went outside his religion to marry a Parsi girl of eighteen;www.mkgandhi.org Page 450

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswhen his only child, a beautiful daughter, married a Parsi- turned Christian, hedisowned her. His wife left him and died shortly thereafter in 1929. In theremaining years, his sister Fatima, a dental surgeon who looked like him, washis constant companion and adviser. 'Moslem women are the real force behindtheir men,' she said.Early in his career, Jinnah tried to unite Hindus and Moslems. On returning fromLondon where he studied law at Lincoln's Inn, and after establishing a lucrativepractice in Bombay, he threw himself into politics. Addressing the MoslemLeague in 1917 on the alleged threat of Hindu domination, he said, "Fear not.This is a bogey which is put before you to scare you away from the co-operationand unity which are essential to self-government.'Jinnah was once a leader of the Congress party. 'I have been in this movementfor thirty-five years,' he said to me in the first of two interviews at his home.'Nehru worked under me in the Home-Rule Society. Gandhi worked under me. Iwas active in the Congress party. When the Moslem League was organized Ipersuaded Congress to congratulate the League as a step towards Indianfreedom. In 1915, I induced the League and Congress to meet at the same timein Bombay so as to create the feeling of unity. My goal was Hindu-Moslem unity.The British, seeing a danger in such unity, broke up an open meeting. Theclosed sessions, however, continued. In 1916, I again persuaded the twoorganizations to meet simultaneously in Lucknow and was instrumental inbringing about the Lucknow Pact in which both agreed on elections andweightage. So it was until 1920 when Gandhi came into the limelight. Adeterioration of Hindu-Moslem relations set in. In 1931, at the Round TableConference, I had the distinct feeling that unity was hopeless, that Gandhi didnot want it. I was a disappointed man. I decided to stay in England. I did noteven go back to India to sell my possessions but sold them through an agent. Iremained in England until 1935. I took up law practice before the Privy Council,and contrary to my expectations, I was a success. I had no intention ofreturning to India. But each year friends came from India and told me ofconditions and told me how much I could do. Finally, I agreed to go back.www.mkgandhi.org Page 451

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesHe had been speaking breathlessly, with excitement. He paused, puffed on hiscigarette. 'I tell you all this,' he continued, 'to show that Gandhi does not wantindependence. He does not want the British to go. He is first of all a Hindu.Nehru does not want the British to go. They want Hindu raj.'Writing 'In Memory of Jinnah', in the London Economist of September 17, 1949,a correspondent, who knew Jinnah well, declared that while Jinnah waspractising law in London someone 'repeated to him that Nehru, whom hedespised and hated, had imprudently said at a private dinner party that "Jinnahwas finished." Outraged, Jinnah packed up and sailed back to India at once justto "show Nehru"... To Cleopatra's nose as a factor in history one should perhapsadd Jinnah s pride.'George E. Jones, the New York Times correspondent who interviewed Jinnahseveral times, writes in his book, Tumult in India, 'Jinnah is a superb politicalcraftsman, a Machiavelli in the amoral sense of that description... His personaldefects are a somewhat hostile reserve, conceit and a narrow outlook... He isan extremely suspicious man, who feels that he has been wronged many timesin his life. His repressed intensity borders on the psychotic. Withdrawn andisolated, Jinnah is arrogant to the point of discourtesy....'Jinnah withdrew from the Congress party just when Gandhi, backed by themasses, ousted the rich lawyers from control. He never liked Gandhi. At publicmeetings in those days, he would refer to Gandhi as 'Mr. Gandhi' which mostIndians regarded as less respectful than Mahatma or Gandhiji; yet whenmembers of the audience protested he persisted. Later, after he returned toIndia and became the undisputed leader of the anti-Congress Moslem League,he zealously guarded his prestige. In 1939, upon the outbreak of the war, theViceroy invited Gandhi and Jinnah to the palace. Gandhi offered to come toJinnah's house to fetch him. Jinnah welcomed that appearance of theobeisance. But he refused to go in Gandhi's car. They both rode in his.Subsequently, when they conferred, Jinnah insisted that the meetings takeplace in his home. Gandhi, who was completely indifferent to suchconsiderations, gladly complied.www.mkgandhi.org Page 452

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesVanity, jealousy and dislike undoubtedly play a major role in politics. Some ofthe great political feuds of history were personal before they became political.The Hindu-Moslem problem, to be sure, would have existed Jinnah or noJinnah. His intensity and hates blew on the coals and brought forth flames.Apart from Jinnah, all the leading figures in his Moslem League were largeestate owners and landholding noblemen. They watched the rising tide ofpeasant discontent with counting concern. In the North-West Frontier Province,the Congress party, led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the 'Frontier Gandhi', wasa popular movement of Moslem peasants directed against Moslem landowners.In the United Provinces, Moslem and Hindu peasants made common causeagainst Moslem and Hindu landlords.The landlords who financed the Moslem League used religion to divide Moslemfrom Hindu peasants.Owing to Islamic precept, the bulk of Moslem wealth was invested in landinstead of trade or industry. Hindu and Parsi business men often preferred toengage their own co-religionists. Mohammedans, moreover, encounteredconsiderable difficulty in entering government employ; their education wasusually inferior to that of Hindus, Parsis and Christians. The Moslem urbanmiddle class, which began to emerge in the twentieth century, looked to Jinnahto get them British government jobs, and he did so by persuading theauthorities to establish quotas for Moslems irrespective of qualifications.The Moslem upper class (the landlords) and the Moslem middle class were readyfor Jinnah. But they needed the peasantry for numbers. They soon discoveredthat they could win it by arousing religious passions. The formula was Pakistan,a separate Moslem state. Such a state would be officered by Moslems and in itHindu and Parsi firms would be at a disadvantage. The landlords believed theyhad less to fear from a country they controlled than from an independent,liberal, secular India where a land reform that would dispossess them wasexpected to be one of the first pieces of legislation.One hundred million compared to three hundred million Hindus, the Moslemscould never hope to win a political majority unless religious aims ceased towww.mkgandhi.org Page 453

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesdominate politics. The separate religious electorates, introduced by Lord Minto& 1909, militated against such a consummation. In a number of districts,however,—the North-west Frontier, Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan, Kashmir andBengal—Moslems formed a majority. Pakistan, as Jinnah conceived it, wouldembrace the sixty million Mohammedans thickly settled in these Moslemmajorityprovinces where they were safe from Hindu domination. But toachieve Pakistan, Jinnah would have to inflame Moslem religious andnationalistic sentiments and risk inflaming in turn similar feelings among Hindusat the cost of the forty million Moslems dispersed in provinces where Hinduswere the majority.Jinnah was prepared to take this plunge.The irreligious Jinnah wished to build a religious state. Gandhi, whollyreligious, wanted a secular state.The hope of religious peace in India lay in the unifying nationalism written onthe Gandhi-Nehru-Azad-Rajagopalachari banner. No doubt, the relationsbetween Hindu and Moslems required adjustments and mutual concessions anddepended greatly on economic expansion which would lessen the competitionfor government posts and increase business opportunities. Gandhi had enoughfaith in man to think that, with patience, it could be done.Jinnah, on the other hand, urged immediate bisection. Herbert L. Matthews, aveteran foreign correspondent of the New York Times, quotes a frank admissionby Sikander Hyat Khan, the Moslem prime minister of the Punjab, 'that heconsidered a Bengal Moslem as foreign as a Chinese'. Yet Jinnah believed thatthe Punjab and Bengal yearned to be one in Pakistan.The fact is that India, a backward country without adequate communications,still lived in the grip of provincialism, like Europe in the Middle Ages. Gandhiwanted to use the cement of nationalism to make it one; Jinnah wanted to usethe dynamite of religion to make it two.The bisection of India could not be done gently with a surgeon's scalpel. Itcould only be achieved with a blunt butcher's knife and heavy cleaver, andwww.mkgandhi.org Page 454

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesleave broken bones mutilated muscles, severed nerves and bruised brain matterrobbed of the capacity to think. The partitioning of the United States or Francewould be no more painful.The tragedy of partition hung over Gandhi's head from the time of his liberationin 1944 to the day of his death in 1948.In June 1944 Gandhi, partially recuperated from his illness, came back into thepolitical arena. He asked Viceroy Wavell to receive him. Wavell replied, 'Inconsideration of the radical difference in our points of view, a meetingbetween us at present could have no value.'Gandhi now focused his attention on Jinnah. Gandhi had always felt that ifCongress and the Moslem League came to an agreement, the British would haveto grant India independence.Spurred by Rajagopalachari, who evolved a formula for a Congress-Leagueunderstanding, Gandhi wrote to Jinnah on July 17, 1944, suggesting talks.Gandhi addressed Jinnah as 'Brother Jinnah' and signed, Tour brother, Gandhi.'Jinnah's reply was addressed to 'Dear Mr. Gandhi' and was signed 'M. A. Jinnah.'In subsequent letters, Gandhi addressed Jinnah as 'Qaid-e-Azam' or GreatLeader, a recently assumed title. Jinnah still wrote, 'Dear Mr. Gandhi.'The correspondence was voluminous. Gandhi arrived at Jinnah's Bombay housefor the first meeting at 3.55 p.m. on September 9 and remained till 7 p.m. Hereturned at 5.30 p.m. on 11th and stayed for two hours. The two menconferred a third time on the 12th for two and a half hours, twice on the 13thfor a total of three and a half hours, again on the 14th, again on the 15th andso on. After each conversation they wrote long letters to one anotherconfirming and continuing the oral arguments. At one stage, Gandhi suggestedthat he be allowed to address the executive council of the Moslem League and,if the council rejected his proposal, that he should go before an openconvention of the League. Jinnah called the suggestion 'most extraordinary andunprecedented', and repulsed it.www.mkgandhi.org Page 455

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe talks broke down on September 26 and then the entire correspondence waspublished in the newspapers.The wall between Gandhi and Jinnah was the two-nation theory. 'By all thecanons of international law, we are a nation,' Jinnah wrote. ‘We are a nationwith our own distinctive culture and civilization, language and literature, artand architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of value and proportion,legal laws and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and traditions,aptitudes and ambitions.'Gandhi did not make an effort to controvert this large statement. He merelysaid, 'I find no parallel in history for a body of converts and their descendantsclaiming to be a nation apart from the parent stock.' Do people change theircharacteristics when they change their religion? Would there be a third nationin India if several million people adopted Christianity and a fourth if severalmillion joined the Jews?The cleavage on this cardinal issue was known in advance. Then why thediscussions?'Can we not agree to differ on the question of "two nations", Gandhi pleaded,'and yet solve the problem on the basis of self-determination?'Gandhi proposed that Baluchistan, Sind, the North-West Frontier Provincewhere Moslems constituted a majority; and those parts of Bengal, Assam andthe Punjab where Moslems were a majority, should vote on whether to secedefrom the Indian Union. 'If the vote is in favour of separation,' Gandhi explained,'it shall be agreed upon that these areas shall form a separate state as soon aspossible after India is free.' The two states, he urged, would then set up one,unified administration of foreign affairs, defence, internal communications,customs, commerce and the like.'Jinnah said 'No' three times: he wanted the partition while the British were inIndia, not after India was free; he wanted complete separation with no unifiedadministration; and he had his own remarkable plan for a referendum.www.mkgandhi.org Page 456

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAccording to Jinnah's plan, only Moslems would vote in the plebiscite and if themajority of the voting Moslems voted for separation then the entire provincewould go to Pakistan. 'Separation', according to an analysis of Jinnah's viewsmade by the British Embassy in Washington 'for the information of Britishofficials,' 'must be decided on by the votes of Moslems only.'But the British census gave the Moslem population of Assam as 3,442,479, thenon-Moslem 6,762,254. Yet Jinnah was demanding that a majority of the3,442,479 determine the fate of the entire province.The Moslem population of the Punjab was 16,217,242, the non-Moslem12,201,577; the Moslems were not more than 56 per cent of the total. Actually,two or three million Moslems, at most, would have been entitled to cast votes.And if a majority of the two or three million voted for Pakistan then the entireprovince of over twenty-eight million would become a part of Pakistan.In Bengal, Moslems were 52 per cent of the population. A Moslem majority forsecession would necessarily be a minority of the total number of inhabitants.Gandhi, obviously, could not agree to such a proposition. Jinnah did not havethe power to effect it by force. Only the British could give it to him.'Mr. Jinnah', reads the "Note on the Gandhi-Jinnah Conversation" compiled bythe British Embassy in Washington (Lord Halifax was Ambassador), 'is in a strongposition; he has something to give which Mr. Gandhi wants very badly andwithout delay, Moslem co-operation in putting pressure on the Britishgovernment to hand over a substantial installment of power at once...Mr. Gandhi, on the other hand, has got nothing to give which Mr. Jinnah is notprepared to wait for; in Mr. Jinnah's eyes, the prospect of independence a yearor two earlier is as nothing compared with security for Moslems. It is obviousthat Mr. Jinnah is content to wait and see how near Mr. Gandhi will come tothe price for which he is holding out.'This is a shrewd analysis of the tactics of a shrewd bargainer. Jinnah could waitfor independence. Gandhi felt this was the best time to get independence.www.mkgandhi.org Page 457

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesHistory now intervened to upset Jinnah's calculations. Then the able Jinnahupset history.www.mkgandhi.org Page 458

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XIIOn The Eve of IndependenceON August 30, 1944, Wendell Willkie received me in his law office overlookingNew York harbour. He was a good man. His death in September 1944 leftAmerica poorer. The war is about seven-tenths won,' he said, 'and the peace isabout nine-tenths lost.' He had toured the East and noted the perpetuation ofold conflicts between Europe and Asia, white man and coloured man, free manand colonial slaves. He realized that there would either be a new world or anew world war.Others too were beginning to see that war with a dictatorship creates a moralobligation to expand the area of freedom.The nearer England came to victory the clearer it became that political changesin India could not be delayed.By 1945, India was too restive to hold, and Britain had suffered too heavily inthe war to contemplate the colossal expenditure of men and treasure thatwould have been required to suppress another non-violent contest with Gandhior a violent contest if he lost control. The exhaustion which compelled Britainto cut her commitments in Greece, Turkey, the Arab countries and otherstrategic regions after the war was apparent during the war.It was especially apparent to Lord Wavell. The Indian administration,' LeopoldS. Amery, Secretary of State for India, said in the House of Commons on June14, 1945, overburdened by great tasks laid upon it by the war against Japanand by planning for the post-war period, is further strained by the politicaltension that exists'. Wavell directed the Indian administration.Wavell was a general and a poet and an unusual person. During my first talkwith him in New Delhi in 1942, I remarked that he looked tired. "Yes,' heagreed, 'I am tired after three years of military defeats and setbacks.' Then hepaid a tribute to Nazi Marshal Rommel who administered the defeats. At eachwww.mkgandhi.org Page 459

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timessubsequent meeting, Wavell brought the conversation around to Rommel andpraised his genius.Wavell had a body like a solid thick tree trunk. His legs were thick and bentoutward. His hair was dense and grey- black. All the wrinkles and deep lines ofhis gnarled face seemed to end in his blind left eye which was partly open andriveted one's attention. Five rows of ribbons made a bright patch on the leftbreast of his khaki uniform.He talked philosophy and quoted Matthew Arnold. When I walked with him oncein the immense garden behind his house in New Delhi he reminisced aboutservice in the Caucasus during the first World War and sang a verse of'Allahverdi', a popular Georgian drinking song. He was informal and friendly anddid not behave like a commander- in-chief or an imperial administrator.Wavell's hero was General Allenby under whom he had fought in the first WorldWar. He was writing a long biography of Allenby and allowed me to read part ofthe neatly typed Manuscript tied in red ribbons. The prose was exquisite. Themost dramatic episode of the book was Allenby's fierce conflict with the Britishgovernment over the political status of Egypt. Allenby was High Commissionerof Egypt after the First World War While serving in that capacity he becameconvinced that Britain should end her protectorate and grant Egyptindependence. But his pleas from Cairo failed to sway the Men in Whitehall. Heaccordingly appeared in London to face an all-star Cabinet which includedLloyd George, Lord Curzon, Milner and Winston Churchill, all of them opponentsof Egyptian independence and 'the most determined,' Wavell wrote, 'had beenWinston Churchill.' Allenby's arguments did not move the ministers. Hethreatened to resign. He was the conqueror of Jerusalem, the man who brokethe back of the Turks in the war, and had a strong hold, consequently, on theloyalty and imagination of the British people. Lloyd George did not want to riskan open break with Allenby and capitulated.I wrote to Wavell, 'Lloyd George, Curzon and Churchill probably adduced asplausible objections to the independence of Egypt as those one can hear todayin British circles in New Delhi against the independence of India, yet Allenbywww.mkgandhi.org Page 460

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesstood his ground and won. You are convinced that he was right and the Cabinetwrong. Governments are often wrong. The whole history of Europe between1919 and 1939 is a record of wrong policies. There is little in the recent acts ofBritish Cabinets to suggest that London's present attitude to India is a pillar ofwisdom.'Wavell was then Commander-in-Chief and he limited himself to military affairs.In 1944, however, Churchill appointed him Viceroy.Wavell went to London in March 1945.An editorial in The Times of March 20, 1945 summarizing numerous letters in itscorrespondence columns and its own views said, 'There is a general convictionthat it is for this country to resume the political initiative.... First, it isproposed that Britain should now begin a gradual remodeling of the structure,staffing and procedure of the governmental machine in preparation for thecomplete transfer of power to Indian hands; and, secondly, that the persistenceof the antagonisms now sundering the parties and interests of India constitute areproach to British as well as Indian statesmanship....'British opinion, even conservative opinion, was deserting Churchill'sintransigent stand on India.Wavell stayed in London for nearly two months. Prophets were predicting aLabour party triumph in the impending British general election. Policy abroadusually reflects politics at home. And Wavell still had four years as Viceroy.In April 1945, on the eve of the San Francisco Conference to draft the charterof the United Nations, Indian and foreign correspondents sought a statementfrom Mahatma Gandhi, 'India's nationalism spells internationalism,' he declared.There will be no peace for the Allies or the world,' he asserted, 'unless theyshed their belief in the efficacy of war and its accompanying terrible deceptionand fraud, and are determined to hammer out a real peace based on thefreedom and equality of all races and nations... Freedom of India willdemonstrate to all the exploited races of the earth that their freedom is nearand that in no case will they henceforth be exploited.www.mkgandhi.org Page 461

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'Peace,' Gandhi added, 'must be just. In order to be that it must neither bepunitive nor vindictive. Germany and Japan should not be humiliated. Thestrong are never vindictive. Therefore the fruits of peace must be sharedequally. The effort then will be to turn them into friends. The Allies can provetheir democracy by no other means.'But he feared that behind the San Francisco Conference 'lurk the mistrust andfear which breed war.'Gandhi saw that freedom was the twin of peace, and fearlessness the parent ofboth. Who could doubt that India would be free before 1960 and most of southeastAsia as well? Who could doubt that until they were free they could makethe West's life a nightmare and Europe's recovery impossible? To preventanother war the victors would have to remove the ills which conduce to the'rotten world' of which Sumner Welles had spoken.These ideas were beginning to shape Britain's attitude towards India.Government policy is like a ticker tape; the old message is still visible when thefirst words of the new message appear. A country can have two conflictingpolicies or parts of two conflicting policies. Actually there is no such thing as agovernment; there are many men and women in a government and some maypull in one direction and some in another.Wavell brought back to New Delhi the British government's approval of a newplan for India which he broadcast on June 14. The same day he releasedMaulana Abul Kalam Azad, the president of the Congress party, JawarharlalNehru and other leaders who had been in prison since the morning of August 9,1942. He also summoned India's outstanding politicians to Simla, the summercapital, for June 25.Congress leaders showed no bitterness about their long imprisonment withouttrial. They agreed to come. Jinnah attended as president of the Moslem Leagueand Liaquat Ali Khan as secretary of the League. Khizr Hyat Khan andKwaja Sir Nazimuddin were invited in their capacity of former prime ministersof their provinces. In addition, Master Tara Singh represented the Sikhs and Mr.www.mkgandhi.org Page 462

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSivaraj the Harijans. Gandhi was not a delegate but he went to Simla andremained throughout the discussions.According to the Wavell plan the Viceroy and Commander- in-Chief would bethe only Englishmen in the Viceroy's Executive Council. All the others would beIndians. Indians would thus take charge of foreign affairs, finance, police, etc.The Viceroy would appoint the Indian members of his Council but he undertookto do so from list of names submitted by the several parties. The Viceroy wouldstill have the right to veto the decisions of the Council, but he promisedpublicly that the veto power 'will of course not be exercised unreasonably.'Most politically Indians took help at his word, for if he abused the veto theIndians could withdraw from the Council and forbid any of their party membersto succeed them; that would have put an end to the Wavell plan and togovernment with popular support.The Simla conference nevertheless failed. Wavell placed the blame on Jinnah.The plan provided for 'equal proportions of Moslems and Caste Hindus,' in theViceroy's Council. The Congress objected. Congress was a much largerorganization than the Moslem League. The whole history of Congress was abattle against differentiating between caste and outcaste Hindus. So eager wasCongress for a settlement, however, that it accepted the formula.Wavell, who worked indefatigably at Simla, then asked the party leaders fortheir lists. All complied except Jinnah. 'I therefore,' Wavell said in a publicstatement, 'made my provisional selections, including certain Moslem Leaguenames... When I explained my solution to Mr. Jinnah, he told me that it wasnot acceptable to the Moslem League, and he was so decided that I felt itwould be useless to continue the discussions.'Jinnah torpedoed the Simla conference for one discernible reason: he insistedthat all Moslems in the Viceroy's Council must be designated by him as theleader of the Moslems of India.The Moslem League had gained strength during the war and won most electionsagainst Moslem candidates who were not in the League. But neither Wavell norwww.mkgandhi.org Page 463

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi, who made Congress policy behind the Simla scenes, could admitJinnah's claim to represent Moslem India. There were many Moslems inCongress; President Azad was a Moslem and Congress wanted him in theViceroy's Council. Khizr Hyat Khan, former premier of the Punjab, was anti-Jinnah and anti-Pakistan; so were other outstanding Moslems.Moreover, Congress would have been untrue to its secular nature and toGandhi's principles if it had accepted the role of a purely Hindu organization.Congress aspired to be a national not a religious body; it could not allow itselfto be identified with one religious community.On this rock, the Simla conference foundered. The British authorities in India,or Britain, were not ready to act without Jinnah's co-operation.During the Simla conference, the war in Europe had come to an end. On July26, the Labour party decisively defeated the Conservatives; Clement R. Attleereplaced Winston Churchill as Prime Minister.On August 14 Japan's surrender was accepted by the Powers.The British Labour government immediately announced that it sought 'an earlyrealization of self-government in India and summoned Wavell to Whitehall.Their conclusions were announced by Attlee in London and Wavell in New Delhion September 19, 1945.Elections to the central and provincial legislatures were the first step. ThenWavell would renew his efforts to form an Executive Council supported by themain Indian parties and to restore popular government in the provinces. Guidedby the results at the polls, he would convene an assembly to draft constitutionfor a united India.The All-India Congress Committee, habitually distrustful, considered theproposals 'vague, inadequate and unsatisfactory. But the government wasconciliatory; more Congress prisoners were released; three high officers of theIndian National Army who had deserted in Malaya and Burma and joined theJapanese were brought to trial in Delhi Fort, defended by Nehru and otherlawyers, sentenced to life imprisonment and then set free.www.mkgandhi.org Page 464

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAll parties agreed to contest the elections.Congress won the overwhelming majority of the non- Moslem seats in thelegislatures, the Moslem League the overwhelming majority of the Moslemseats.The deadlock remained unbroken.In December 1945, Wavell, speaking in Calcutta appealed to the Indian peopleto avoid strife and violence when they stood 'at the gate of political andeconomic opportunity.'Gandhi was in Calcutta, too. He spent many hours with Richard Casey, theAustralian who served as British Governor of Bengal. He also spent an hour withthe Viceroy- As he left the Viceroy's house in Calcutta a vast multitude blockedthe road and would not allow his car to advance until he had spoken. He stoodup in the car and said, 'India has attained her great position in the East becauseof her message of peace.' Thereupon the crowd opened a corridor for him sothat he could drive to his ashram eight miles outside the city. Along the entireroute, Indians touched the dust of the road before and after he passed.The same day, Jinnah made a statement in Bombay. We could settle the Indianproblem in ten minutes, he declared, if Mr. Gandhi would say, "I agree thatthere should be Pakistan; I agree that one-fourth of India, composed of sixprovinces—Sind, Baluchistan, the Punjab, the North-west Frontier Province,Bengal and Assam-with their present boundaries, constitute the Pakistan state.'But Gandhi could not say that and did not say it;> he regarded the vivisectionof India as blasphemy.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 465

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XIIIIndia In SuspenseGANDHI had been saying that he wanted to live a hundred and twenty-fiveyears but without becoming 'an animated corpse, a burden to one's relativesand society.' How would he keep physically fit? He first explained how he hadkept physically fit. In 1901 he threw away the medicine bottle and substitutednature cures and regular habits of eating, drinking and sleeping. Moreimportant, he developed 'detachment of mind', the key to longevity. 'Everyone',Gandhi said 'has a right and should desire to live 125 years while performingservice without an eye to result.'Dedication to service and renunciation of the fruits thereof are 'an ineffablejoy' a 'nectar' which sustains life. It leaves 'no room for worry or impatience'.Egotism is the killer; unselfishness the life preserver.The Mahatma now adopted an additional cause; nature cure. He called it his'latest born'; the older children—khadi, village industries, the development of anational language, food-growing, independence for India, freedom for Indiansand world peace—continued to receive his energetic care. For the new baby, atrust was set up with Gandhi as one of three trustees. Dr. Dinshah Mehta,Gandhi's physician, had a nature-cure clinic in the city of Poona and it wastherefore agreed, as the trust's first venture, to expand the clinic into a naturecureuniversity.But one silent Monday Gandhi abruptly decided to abandon the project. It'dawned upon me', he confessed, 'that I was a fool to think that I could everhope to make an institute for the poor in a town.' He had to carry nature-cureto the poor and not expect the poor to come to him. This mistake had a moral:'Never take anything for gospel truth even if it comes from a Mahatma unless itappeals to both ... head and heart.' Gandhi disliked automatic obedience.He would start nature-cure work in a village; 'that is real India', he wrote, 'myIndia, for which I live'. He did so immediately. He settled down for a shortwww.mkgandhi.org Page 466

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswhile in Uruli, a village of three thousand inhabitants on the Poona-Sholapurrailway line with plenty of water, a good climate, fruit farms, a telegraph andpost office, but no telephone.The first day, thirty peasants appeared at the nature-cure centre. Gandhihimself examined six. In each case, he prescribed the same thing; thecontinuous recitation of God's name, sun baths, friction and hip baths, cow'smilk, buttermilk, fruit juices and plenty of water. The reciting of God's name,however, should be more than lip movement; it must absorb the entire beingthroughout the recitation and throughout life. 'All mental and physicalailments,' Gandhi explained simply, 'are due to one common cause. It istherefore but natural that there should be common remedy.' Almost everyone issick in body or mind, he said. Repeating 'Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama'while intensively concentrating on godliness, goodness, service and selflessnesspaves the way for the remedial functions of mudpacks, sitz baths and massage.Gandhi was himself a proof of the power of mind and mood over matter.Gandhi was occupied with health throughout his entire adult life and indeed inhis youth when he nursed his dying father. He doctored everyone within reach.Pain in others pained him. He was capable of boundless compassion.The loving mother fervently yet vainly wishes she could take her child's illnessupon herself. Gandhi's fasts were suffering self-inflicted in the hope ofalleviating the sufferings of untouchables, strikers, Hindus and Moslems. He didpenance for those who inflicted pain.The inner compulsion to relieve misery and assuage pain comes very close tobeing Gandhi's deepest urge. It is the kind of love, the root of non-violence, thespur to service. Gandhi believed his mission was to heal. He was India's doctor.The India of the last two years of his life gave him ample work.There was famine in the land, food and clothing famine. 'Grain and clothdealers must not hoard, must not speculate,' he wrote on February 17, 1946.'Food should be grown on all cultivable areas wherever water is or is madeavailable- All ceremonial functions should be stopped...'www.mkgandhi.org Page 467

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesHe had been wandering over Bengal, Assam and Madras. In one locality, sixhundred thousand people came to a meeting. 'Grow More Food' was his slogan.'Spin,' he begged. 'Every pint of water, whether from bathing and ablutions orfrom the kitchen should be turned into backyard vegetable beds,' he toldtownspeople. "Vegetables could be grown in earthen pots and even in olddiscarded tins.'Hunger raised the question of the nation's high birth rate. 'Let me say,' hestated, 'that propagation of the race rabbit- wise must undoubtedly be stopped,but not so as to bring greater evils in its train. It should be stopped by methodswhich in themselves ennoble the race,' by 'the sovereign remedy of selfcontrol.'Shortages provoked looting of shops and other violent outbursts. Heavy riotingtook place in Bombay. In Calcutta, Delhi and other cities mobs engaged inarson, compelled passers-by to shout slogans, and forced Englishmen to removetheir hats. Gandhi reprimanded them severely. Indian sailors in the British navyin the harbour of Bombay mutinied and were only with difficulty persuaded byCongress leaders to desist.'Now that it seems we are coming into our own,' Gandhi wrote on February 10,1946, 'indiscipline and hooliganism,' which were increasing 'ought to go, andcalmness, rigid discipline, co-operation and goodwill must take their place ... Ihug the hope', he continued, 'that when real responsibility comes to the peopleand the dead weight of a foreign army of occupation is removed, we shall benatural, dignified and restrained....''Let me affirm that I love the Englishman as well as the Indian,' he wrote inMarch.Prime Minister Attlee announced that a British Cabinet mission, consisting ofLord Pethick-Lawrence, the Secretary of State for India; Sir Stafford Cripps,President of the Board of Trade; and Albert V. Alexander, First Lord of theAdmiralty, were coming to India to settle the terms of liberation.'Emphatically,' Gandhi affirmed, 'it betrays want of foresight to disbelieveBritish declarations and precipitate a quarrel in anticipation. Is the officialwww.mkgandhi.org Page 468

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesdeputation coming to deceive a great nation? It is neither manly nor womanlyto think so.'The Cabinet Mission arrived from England in New Delhi on March 23 andimmediately began to interview Indian leaders. Gandhi came to Delhi to meetthe British ministers and 'at my request', writes Pethick-Lawrence, 'in spite ofthe trying weather conditions in Delhi during the ensuing months, he remainedin touch with us and with the Congress Working Committee during the wholeprogress of the negotiations.' Gandhi stayed in the untouchables' slums whereCripps, Pethick-Lawrence and Alexander, as well as many Indians, visited himregularly. Sometimes, too, Gandhi went to Willingdon Crescent, the houseoccupied by the Mission, and on one occasion, by arrangement, he encounteredPethick- Lawrence on his evening walk and thus avoided the publicity thatattended everyone of Gandhi's acts.After weeks of goings and comings with no definite result, the Cabinet Missioninvited the Congress and the Moslem League to send four delegates each to aconference in Simla. Gandhi was not a delegate but he made himself availablein the summer capital for consultation. At a subsequent stage Nehru and Jinnahwrestled with the issues privately. There was no agreement. The two Indianparties did not wish to accept the onus of devising a plan or of agreeing withone another.Finally, Gandhi told the Cabinet Mission to suggest a plan to the Indian parties.The Cabinet Mission's plan, published on May 16, 1946, was Britain's proposal forthe liquidation of British power in India. Whether you like the Cabinetdelegation's announcement or not,' Gandhi told his prayer meeting that day, 'itis going to be the most momentous one in the history of India and thereforerequires careful study.'Gandhi pondered the announcement for four days and then stated that after'searching examination... my conviction abides that it is the best document theBritish government could have produced in the circumstances.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 469

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesRejecting a facile and popular Indian charge, Gandhi said in Harijan of May 26,1946. The Congress and the Moslem League did not, could not agree. We woulderr grievously if at this time we foolishly satisfy ourselves that the differencesare a British creation.'The British government's 'one purpose,' the Mahatma said, 'is to end British ruleas early as can be.''Voluminous evidence,' the Cabinet mission's statement declared, 'has shown analmost universal desire, outside the supporters of the Moslem League, for theunity of India.Nevertheless,' 'We were greatly impressed by the very genuine and acuteanxiety of the Moslems lest they should find themselves subjected to aperpetual Hindu-majority rule. This has become so strong and widespreadamongst the Moslems that it cannot be allayed by mere paper safeguards. Ifthere is to be internal peace in India it must be secured by measures which willinsure to the Moslems a control in all matters vital to their culture, religion andeconomic and other interests.'The Mission therefore examined 'closely and impartially the possibility of apartition of India'.What was the result?On the basis of statistics given in the statement, the Cabinet Mission provedthat in the north-western area of Pakistan the non-Moslem minority wouldconstitute 37.93 per cent, and in the north-eastern area it would amount to48.31 per cent, while twenty million Moslems would remain outside Pakistan asa minority in the other India. These figures show,' the statement said, 'that thesetting up of a separate sovereign State of Pakistan on the lines claimed by theMoslem League would not solve the communal minority problem.'The Mission then considered whether a smaller Pakistan, which excluded non-Moslem areas, was feasible. 'Such a Pakistan,' the statement noted, 'is regardedby the Moslem League as quite impracticable.' It would have necessitated thedivision of the Punjab, Bengal and Assam between the two new states, whereaswww.mkgandhi.org Page 470

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesJinnah demanded those three provinces in their entirety. We ourselves', theMinisters affirmed, 'are also convinced that any’ solution which involves aradical partition of the Punjab and Bengal, as this would do, would be contraryto the wishes of a very large percentage of the inhabitants of these Provinces.Bengal and the Punjab each has its own common language and a long historyand tradition. Moreover, any division of the Punjab would of necessity dividethe Sikhs, leaving substantial bodies of Sikhs on both sides of the boundary.'The division of India, the Mission said, would weaken the country's defencesand violently tear in two its communications and transport systems. 'Finallythere is the geographical fact that the two halves of the proposed PakistanState are separated by some seven hundred miles and the communicationsbetween them both in war and peace would be dependent on the goodwill ofHindustan...We are therefore unable to advise the British government,' the statementannounced, 'that the power which at present resides in British hands should behanded over to two entirely separate sovereign States.'Instead, the British Ministers recommended a united India, embracing bothBritish India and the native states, with one federal government to deal withforeign affairs, defence and communications. In the national legislature, amajority of those voting and a majority of the Hindus as well as a majority ofthe Moslems voting would be required to decide any major communal orreligious issue.Newly elected provincial legislatures would elect the members of a nationalConstituent Assembly. It would draft India's constitution.Meanwhile, the Cabinet Mission announced, Lord Wavell would proceed withthe formation of an interim or provisional government.In a peroration, the Cabinet statement declared that the Indian people now had'the opportunity of complete independence... in the shortest time and with theleast danger of internal disturbance and conflict.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 471

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThat same day, May 16, 1946, Cripps, Pethick-Lawrence and Wavell, speakingon the radio, explained and extolled the plan. Cripps called attention to thedanger of nationwide famine and the need of preventing a breakdown ofadministrative machinery. 'Let no one doubt for one moment our intentions,' hebegged. Pethick-Lawrence addressed his audience as 'a great people.' This termhad political significance, for the Moslem leaders always spoke of 'peoples'. Hepleaded with the Moslems to accept the plan; it gave them the advantages of aPakistan without its disadvantages. Wavell spoke of the necessity ofmaintaining the union of India and closed with a verse from Longfellow:Thou too, sail on, O Ship of State,Sail on, O Union, strong and great,Humanity with all its fears,With all the hopes of future yearsIs hanging breathless on thy Fate.Jinnah criticized the Cabinet Mission on May 21. He insisted that Pakistan wasthe only solution and deplored the 'commonplace and exploded argumentsaimed at it by Pethick-Lawrence, Cripps and Alexander... It seems,' he charged,'that this was done by the Mission simply to appease and placate the Congress.'Jinnah said he would have preferred a Union with no Union legislature and anexecutive branch with an equal number of Moslems and Hindus. If there was tobe a national legislature, it too should, he felt, consist of as manyrepresentatives from Pakistan as from Hindustan; and 'in regard to any matterof a controversial nature,' a three- fourths majority would be necessary in theexecutive and the legislature. All these ideas were ignored by the Britishministers, he complained. Small wonder. They would have made governmentimpossible.On June 4, nevertheless, the Moslem League accepted the Cabinet Mission'splan.Everything depended on what the Congress party would do.www.mkgandhi.org Page 472

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe Congress Working Committee withdrew to Mussoorie, a summer resort inthe hills, to escape the debilitating heat and suffocating dust storms of Delhi,and took Gandhi with them.India's eyes were on Mussoorie. The Working Committee deliberated withGandhi. The meetings were more fateful than they knew.Foreign correspondents followed Gandhi to Mussoorie. 'What would you do ifyou were dictator of India for a day?' one of them asked.If the journalist had expected Gandhi's answer to contain some hint of the longdelayedCongress decision, he was disappointed. 'I would not accept it,' Gandhireplied, but if he did he would spend the day cleaning out the hovels of theHarijans in New Delhi and converting the Viceroy's palace into a hospital. Whydoes the Viceroy need such a big house?' he exclaimed.Well, sir,’ the journalist persisted, ‘supposes they continue your dictatorshipfor a second day?'The second day,' Gandhi said with a laugh, 'would be a prolongation of thefirst.' This provoked general gaiety among the Indians present.Still no word of the Congress response to the Cabinet Mission's proposal!On June 8, refreshed by the pine-scented breezes that blew down from thecool, wooded slopes, Gandhi returned in a car to New Delhi where the Congressdeliberations would be continued. Rajagopalachari, no longer a member of theWorking Committee (nor was Gandhi), had come from Madras to Delhi to urgeacceptance of the British plan.A week passed and still no word from Congress on whether it would accept orreject the Cabinet Mission's proposal.On June 16, Lord Wavell announced that Congress and the Moslem League hadfailed to agree on the composition of a provisional government and he wastherefore appointing fourteen Indians to posts in that government.www.mkgandhi.org Page 473

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesCongress now had to answer two questions: to join or not to join the provisionalgovernment; to enter or not to enter the Constituent Assembly and draft a newconstitution for a free united India.www.mkgandhi.org Page 474

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XIVGandhi RevisitedIARRIVED at the New Delhi airport on June 25, 1946, and drove to the ImperialHotel. I was tired from the flight from Cairo; I needed a bath and shave. But Ihad an uncontrollable impulse to see Gandhi immediately. My first act in India,I felt, should be to have a word with Gandhi. So instead of making sure I had aroom in the hotel, I left my luggage in the lobby and took a taxi to Gandhi'slittle stone hut in the Harijan colony.He was at his evening prayer meeting in an open space outside the hut.Approximately a thousand persons were at the services. Gandhi in loincloth, amoist white pad on his head, his feet on his thighs; sat in the centre of a largeelevated wooden platform with several disciples. His eyes were closed.Occasionally he opened them and beat time with his hands to the singing. Onthe ground, in front of the platform, sat the women worshippers; behind themthe men. The curious stood around on the periphery of the congregation. TheIndian and foreign correspondents were there, also Mridula Sarabhai, Nehru andLady Cripps.I posted myself at the foot of the three wooden steps where Gandhi woulddescend from the prayer platform. 'Ah, there you are,' he said; 'well, I have notgrown better-looking in these four years.''I would not dare to differ with you' I replied. He threw back his head andlaughed. Taking me by the elbow, he walked towards his hut; he asked aboutmy trip, my health and my family. Then, probably sensing that I would like tostay for a talk, he said, 'Lady Cripps is here to see me. Will you walk with metomorrow morning?'Later that evening I went to the house of Abul Kalam Azad, the Congresspresident, for dinner with him, Nehru, Mr. Asaf Ali and other members of theCongress Working Committee. They seemed tense, and listened with specialattention to the government news broadcast. Earlier that day, Congress hadwww.mkgandhi.org Page 475

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesfinally communicated its decisions to the Cabinet Mission and Wavell, but nopublic announcement had yet been made.The Working Committee had decided, I learned, to accept the British plan forthe future constitution of India but not to participate in the provisionalgovernment.The next morning I was up early enough to sip a cup of luke-warm black tea andeat a banana and find a taxi which brought me to Gandhi's hut at 5.30. Wewalked for half an hour. He talked most of the time about the negotiations withthe Cabinet Mission.I lunched with Patel and Rajagopalachari in Birla House, talked for an hour inthe same mansion with Miss Slade, and spent the evening with Patel.The following day, June 27, I went to Gandhi again at 5.30 a.m. and walkedwith him for thirty minutes. Sir Stafford and Lady Cripps received me at 9.30for a friendly and helpful interview. I kept the taxi because I had anappointment with Jinnah for 10.30.After going a short distance, the taxi coughed and coughed and stood still. TheSikh driver tinkered under the bonnet, but as the time of my meeting withJinnah drew near I became increasingly alarmed and finally, after trying in vainto persuade the chauffeur of a government car to earn some extra money,hired a tonga. Hunger had apparently made the horse unresponsive to whipsand oaths and I arrived at Jinnah's house thirty-five minutes late. I wasadmitted into his study after a short wait. I offered profuse apologies,explained that my taxi had broken down, that no other taxi was available, thatthe tonga was slow and that I loathed being unpunctual. He said frigidly, 'I trustyou are not hurt.' I said it was not that kind of breakdown; the mechanism hadsimply refused to function. He was sympathetic but formal and continued totalk about the incident.When I could disentangle myself from the discussion of taxi and tonga Iremarked, 'It seems India is about to become independent.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 476

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesHe did not answer. He did not say anything. He pulled in his chin, lookedsternly at me, stood up, extended his hand and said, 'I will have to go now.'I once more apologized for keeping him waiting, I had not reckoned with thetaxi difficulty and could I see him another day in New Delhi? No, he would bebusy. He was going to Bombay and I would soon be in Bombay; could I see himthere? No, he would be too busy. He had by this time brought me to the door. Ishall never know whether he was offended by my being late or by my statementon the imminence of India's freedom.Over the week-end, I absorbed as much as possible about the politicalsituation. Patel's sharp mind was my best help. On Monday, July 1, I flew toBombay and on Tuesday evening I commenced a three-day sojourn atDr. Dinshah Mehta's nature-cure clinic in Poona where Gandhi was staying. Partof the time, Nehru was there.I travelled with Gandhi to Bombay on July 5 and spent the 6th and 7th at thesessions of the All-India Congress Committee which debated the WorkingCommittee's decisions on the Cabinet Mission plan and listened to the Mahatmaon the subject.Later that month I toured Maharashtra with Jayaprakash Narayan, the Socialistleader, and arrived at Panchgani, in the rain-soaked hills, on July 16, for aforty-eight-hour visit to Gandhi.Gandhi did not seem to have aged since 1942; his stride was not as long andlusty, but walking did not tire him nor did days of interviews. He was in almostconstant good humour.At the beginning of my first morning stroll with him in New Delhi he askedabout the rumours of war with Russia. I said there was a good deal of talk aboutwar but perhaps it was only talk. 'You should turn your attention to the West,' Iadded.'I?' he replied. 'I have not convinced India. There is violence all around us. I ama spent bullet.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 477

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSince the end of the second World War, I suggested, many Europeans andAmericans were conscious of a spiritual emptiness. He might fill a corner of it.India needs material goods and perhaps had the illusion that they broughthappiness. We had the material goods but knew they did not bring happiness.The West was groping for a solution.'But I am an Asiatic,' he commented. 'A mere Asiatic.' He laughed; then after apause, 'Jesus was an Asiatic.'In this, and in subsequent conversations, I thought I detected a despondentnote with an optimistic undertone; if he lived 125 years he would have enoughtime to finish his work.It was 8.30 in the evening when I arrived at the stone building of the Poonanature-cure clinic. I was shown his room and walked in. He was sitting on apallet; a white shawl enveloped him from neck to ankles. He did not look up.When he finished writing the postcard, he raised his head and said, 'Ah'. I kneltin front of him and we shook hands. He had a way, which none of his heirs hasinherited, of figuratively putting his arms around you and making you feelwelcome to his house and India."You have come by the Deccan Queen,' he remarked. 'On that train there is nofood.'I said I didn't mind, I had already been promised dinner. 'The weather hereseems wonderful,' I volunteered. "You tortured yourself in the summer heat ofSevagram,' where I had seen him in 1942.'No', he objected, 'it wasn't torture. But in New Delhi I would melt ice in thebath and sit in it as you did in Sevagram. I was even unashamed to receivepeople in my bath and dictate in the bath. Here in Poona the weather isdelightful.' He appeared very relaxed.Presently, without any question from me, he spoke at length about violence.'First,' he said, 'there is South Africa. A man has been killed there in connectionwith the recent disturbances. He was innocent. Also, they have tied Indians totrees and whipped them. This is lynch law. And now these riots in Ahmedabadwww.mkgandhi.org Page 478

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesbetween Hindus and Moslems. The trouble is that one side begins stabbing andkilling and then the other does likewise. If one side did not avenge its deathsthe thing would stop. It is the same in Palestine. The Jews have a good case. Itold Sidney Silverman, the British M. P., that the Jews have a good case. If theArabs have a claim to Palestine the Jews have a prior claim, because they werethere first. Jesus was a Jew. He was the finest flower of Judaism. You can seethat from the four stories of the four apostles. They had untutored minds. Theytold the truth about Jesus. Paul was not a Jew, he was a Greek, he had anoratorical mind, a dialectical mind and he distorted Jesus. Jesus possessed agreat force, the love force, but Christianity became disfigured when it went tothe West. It became the religion of kings.'He reverted to the Jewish question in Hitler Germany. 'But I did not intendtalking with you tonight,' he declared, 'and you have not eaten.'I rose to go. 'Sleep well,' I said.'I always sleep well. Today was my day of silence and I slept four times. I fellasleep while I was on the rack.''During his massage,' a woman doctor interpreted.*You must get massage here,' Gandhi urged.After dinner, I passed Gandhi's bed on the open-air stone terrace. Two womendisciples were massaging his feet and shins. His bed was a mattress-coveredwooden plank with two bricks under it to raise the head higher than the feet. Amosquito net hung over the bed. Several young women were sitting on the matsnear him and laughing. He called out to me, 'I hope you will be up in time tohave breakfast with me.' He said first breakfast was at 4.'I'd rather be excused from that one.'Then second breakfast at 5.'I made a face and everybody laughed."You had better have third breakfast with me at 9,' he said.’ ‘get up at 6.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 479

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesI was up at 6.30. When I stepped out into the courtyard, Gandhi was chattingwith an Indian. He greeted me and we started on his morning walk.'You said last night,' I recalled, 'that Paul altered the teachings of Jesus. Willthe people around you do the same?'You are not the first to mention this possibility,' he replied. I see through them.Yes, I know they may try to do just that. I know India is not with me. I have notconvinced enough Indians of the wisdom of non-violence.'Again he talked at length about the persecution of coloured races in South AfriAfrica. He inquired about the treatment of Negroes in the United States. 'Acivilization,' he said, 'is to be judged by its treatment of minorities.'After a massage age by a powerful Ceylonese who kneaded the muscles till theyached, I felt better and looked into Gandhi's room. It had no do no door, only acurtain which I pushed aside. He noticed me and said, 'Come in, you are alwayswelcome.' He was writing at g an article for Harijan and submitting toquestions in the vernacular by three Indians. I went in and out until 11 a. m.Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, a Christian princess who served him as first Englishlanguagesecretary, was reading Reuters news bulletins to him. Now and thenhe muttered 'Hm'. The South African items made him shake his head sadly.'President Truman,' a flash radiogram stated 'yesterday signed the Indian theIndian immigration and naturalization bill.' Gandhi asked ^ked about theprovisions of the new law. How many Indians would be granted citizenship andhow many could immigrate? Are Chinese and Japanese admitted into the UnitedStates?'More than any, anyone else,' I said to Gandhi, 'the man who is responsible forthe passage of the bill is the President of the India League of America, J. J.Singh. Would you write him a letter?' He promised and gave me the letter a fewdays later.Gulbai, Dr. Me Mehta's wife brought me a heaped bowl of peeled and slicedfruit and placed it on the mat. Gandhi had already had his this third breakfast,so I ate while he talked. He said he was trying to create a classless andwww.mkgandhi.org Page 480

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timescasteless India. He yearned for the day when there would be only one caste andBrahmans ns would marry Harijans. 'I am a social revolutionist,' he asserted."Violence is bred by inequality, non-violence by equality.' Gandhi's religionmerged with his sociology.I said I knew that the mounting prejudice against coloured people in SouthAfrica disturbed him; he had fought it for twenty years. 'But I hope', I added,'you will do nothing violent in this connection. You are a violent man.' Helaughed. 'Some of your fasts are violent,' I continued.You want me to confine myself to violent words,' he commented.Yes'.'I do not know when I am going to fast,' he explained. 'It is God who determinesthat. It comes to me suddenly. But I will not act rashly. I have no desire to die.'Sudhir Ghosh, a youthful Cambridge University graduate, came in to bid Gandhigoodbye. He was going to England and the Mahatma was giving him a letter ofintroduction to Prime Minister Attlee. Gandhi's go-between with the CabinetMission, Ghosh had so distinguished himself by his intelligent and gracioushandling of delicate diplomatic tasks that Gandhi was asking him to be hisliaison with Attlee, Cripps, Pethick-Lawrence and others in London. Like many ahead of state, Gandhi wished to be his own 'foreign minister'. Usually, theofficial foreign minister resents the intrusion.That afternoon, before the prayer meeting, an Indian in his twentiesapproached me and said he was the editor of a Hindu Mahasabha weeklypublished in Poona and would I give him a message. I said I did not approve ofthe Hindu Mahasabha any more than I approved of the Moslem League; bothstood for religion in politics. 'The Hindu Mahasabha,' I declared with someacerbity, 'stands for Hindu supremacy. Do you like white supremacy?' Weparted.Hundreds of Poona citizens stood in a field on the other side of the clinic's lowfence while Gandhi and his friends conducted the services on a woodenplatform on this side of the fence. During the singing it commenced to rain;www.mkgandhi.org Page 481

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesworshippers put up their black umbrellas. A murmur of protest arose from thosein the rear and all umbrellas were lowered. Somebody held one over Gandhi. Afew hundred yards away two Indian teams in white flannels were playingcricket.Before dinner, Gandhi invited me to walk with him. 'Surely you are not going towalk in the rain,' I protested lightly.'Come along, old man,' he said and stretched out his arm.I had been given a private room that opened on the terrace where Gandhislept. Late in the evening, when I was about to retire, I passed Gandhi's bed. Igreeted him silently with a raised hand but he called out, "You must sleep welltonight. But we will disturb you with our prayer at 4.''I hope not,' I said and approached him.He addressed himself to Mrs. Mehta in Hindustani or Gujarati, and I thought hewas scolding her. "We are talking about you and you are curious,' Gandhiremarked.'Somehow I knew it,' I replied. 'Now you have made it worse by telling me butnot disclosing what you were talking about. I should offer Satyagraha againstyou until you tell me.''All right,' he laughed.'I will sit by your bed all night.''Come along,' he said with a lilt.'I will sit here and sing American songs.''All right, you will sing me to sleep.'Everybody was enjoying the fun.Gandhi's laughter was physical and mental; it was amusement plus agreementor at least amusement pi118 tolerance. It was the laughter of a man who is notafraid to be caught with his visor up and his guard down.www.mkgandhi.org Page 482

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIt had grown late and I wished them good night. 'I talked to Mrs. Mehta. Gandhihad scolded her because she served my breakfast in his room at 11 instead of 9and this had held up the noonday meal of the others and besides she had givenme special food; no one should receive privileged treatment.I awoke very fit and went to Gandhi's room. He invited me to walk. I requestedhis views on the next step in the Indian political situation. 'The British', heanswered with alacrity, 'must ask Congress to form a coalition government. Allthe minorities will co-operate.'"Would you include members of the Moslem League?''Of course', he replied. 'Mr. Jinnah can have a highly important post.'He left me for a while to talk to a young Indian woman. I had noticed himwalking up and down the terrace with her the day before in agitatedconversation. Then she had gone away and a young man stepped to Gandhi'sside and they talked together for about a quarter of an hour. Pyarelal told mewho they were. She was an untouchable and limped from an accident. Theyoung man, likewise a Harijan, was her husband and he had had a forearmamputated. They were having marital difficulties and Gandhi wanted to patchup their relations.When we resumed our constitutional, he began a discussion of Europe andRussia. I said Moscow had nothing to give the world; it had gone nationalistic,imperialistic and Pan-Slav. This could not feed the West. The democracies werebeginning to realize that world peace would only come with internationalismand spiritual regeneration.Why do you want me to go to the West?'"Not go to the West, but speak to the West.'"Why does the West need me to tell them that two times two are four? If theyrealize that the way of violence and war is evil why am I necessary to point outthe obvious truth? Besides, I have unfinished work here.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 483

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'Nevertheless,' I said, 'the West needs you. You are the antithesis to materialismand therefore the antidote to Stalinism and statism.' He talked about theincrease of the spirit of violence in India since 1942.Pedestrians gathered to watch Gandhi as we moved to and fro on the path thatled to the city. There were factories nearby and occasionally their whistlesblew, but he never stopped talking; nor did he lift his voice; he talked throughthe noise.I asked whether he had read my book A Week with Gandhi. He had, and apartfrom a few minor errors (I mis-stated Kasturbai's age, for instance) he thoughtwell of it. He had also read my Men and Politics; he read it in his 'library,' as hecalled the lavatory where he kept a shelf of books.Nehru arrived at the clinic with Krishna Menon who later became Indian HighCommissioner in London. 'Nehru', Gandhi said to me, 'has an oratorical mind.'Menon, Nehru, I and several others lunched together in the large commondining-room. I was served mutton chops. By request, I shared my portion withNehru.Gandhi knew that Nehru ate meat and smoked; he did not object. But Nehrunever smoked in Gandhi's presence. (Only Maulana Abul Kalam Azad did, andGandhi always reminded the girls in advance to bring in an ashtray.) Nehru hasinfinite charm, grace, tenderness and talent to express himself in words.Gandhi called him an artist. His years at Harrow and Cambridge made him veryBritish and other years in prison made him very bitter. During his longimprisonment between 1942 and 1945 he had grown completely grey andcompletely bald but no less handsome. In his private life and public life he hassuffered much. His smile, which reveals two rows of fine white teeth, melts theheart alike by its cheer and its unintended sadness.Gandhi loved Nehru as a son and Nehru loved Gandhi as a father. Nehru neverhid the deep difference between his outlook and Gandhi's. He spoke and wroteabout it frequently. Gandhi welcomed the frankness. Their affection for oneanother did not depend on agreement.www.mkgandhi.org Page 484

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSomething far down in Nehru's psyche rebels against surrender. He was repelledby the unquestioning obedience which most Indian leaders gave Gandhi. Hequestioned and argued and resisted—and finally surrendered. He fights for theindependence of his personality. He balks against conquest. When he submitshe does so with meekness and grace. Gandhi knew his frailties and he himselfhas come to recognize his limitations. In politics all his life, Nehru nevermastered the intricacies of party politics as the Mahatma and Patel did. He isthe tribune not the organizer, a spokesman to the outside, not the manipulatorinside. He appeals most to intellectuals but not with intellect; his appeal is tothe heart. In India, that is an asset. He is an aristocrat whose love foraristocrats is no impediment to his love of the people. One of the world'sforemost statesmen, he is not a statesman at all. He is a good person lostamong statesmen. The people give him adulation; he lends it to those who rimthe machine of government.In India Nehru is addicted to gusts of temper and bursts of indignation. Onoccasions, he bodily assaulted men who aroused his indignation. He has endlessphysical courage. Sometimes, in press conferences, he makes unconsideredstatements of defiance. These may all be strivings towards strength. There canbe no doubt that it was Gandhi's vast inner strength and clarity, among otherthings, that so fascinated and captivated Jawaharlal.Nehru's books show beauty of soul, nobility of ideal and egocentrism. Gandhiseemed entirely extrovert; he was no burden to himself. Nehru must alwayscope with his own problem.In the afternoon of that second day at the nature-cure clinic, Nehru sat crossleggedon my bed for an hour while I occupied the only chair. He had gone tohis beloved native Kashmir on a visit; the Maharaja forbade his entry. Hegrappled with an Indian soldier, equipped with bayoneted rifle, who barred hisway at the frontier post. Now he said, 'I am convinced that the British Agentwould not have kept me out of Kashmir while I was engaged in the CabinetMission negotiations without first consulting the Viceroy, and, that being so, itdoes not appear that they are getting ready to leave India.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 485

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesKrishna Menon shared this scepticism.I asked Nehru whether he considered himself a Socialist. 'I am a Socialist butnot a Marxist,' he replied. 'I am a Socialist but I don't believe in any dogma.' (In1948, in New Delhi, he told me that as he grew older he judged people 'more bytheir personal character than their isms' and that he had moved 'closer to Christand Buddha, especially Buddha', and further, therefore, from Marx, Lenin andStalin and closer to Gandhi).Nehru spent several hours of the afternoon alone with Gandhi; nobodydisturbed them. Late in the afternoon, I went to Gandhi's room and found himspinning. I said I thought he had abandoned spinning. 'No, how could I?' heasked. There are four hundred million Indians. Subtract one hundred millionchildren, waifs and others; if the remaining three hundred million would spinan hour each day we would have Swaraj.''Because of the economic or spiritual effect?' I asked.'Both,' he said. 'If three hundred million people did the same thing once a daynot because a Hitler ordered it but because they were inspired by the sameideal we would have enough unity of purpose to achieve independence.'When you stop spinning to talk to me you are delaying Swaraj.'Yes' he agreed, 'you have postponed Swaraj by six yards.'Prime Minister Kher of Bombay province and Moraiji Desai, the Home Member ofthe province, visited Gandhi to report on the continuing Ahmedabadintercommunity riots. At nine in the evening I accompanied Nehru and Menon toDesai's residence in Poona. Desai blamed Moslems for the disturbances. Shortlybefore midnight, Nehru and Menon took the train to Bombay.The next morning Gandhi and about ten companions and I walked to the Poonastation and boarded the express to Bombay. The party had the use of a specialthird-class carriage with a hard wooden bench down the length of each outerwall and another down the centre of the carriage. It rained heavily throughoutthe journey, and soon water began to pour from the roof and through openingsin the window frames and door. Large puddles formed on the floor. At awww.mkgandhi.org Page 486

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesnumber of stops en route, local Congress leaders boarded the train forconferences with Gandhi. Between times, he wrote a brief article for Harijanand corrected another article. He looked up at me once and smiled and weexchanged a few remarks. When his editorial work was finished he stretchedout on the wooden bench and in a moment he was sleeping serenely. He sleptfor about fifteen minutes.Gandhi occupied a place near a window. At all stations immense crowdsgathered despite the downpour. At one stop, two boys, about fourteen years ofage, wet to their brown skins, their hair dripping, jumped up and down outsideGandhi's window, moved their bent arms up and down and yelled, 'Gandhiji,Gandhiji, Gandhiji.' He smiled.I said, ‘What are you to them?'He put his fists with thumbs upward to his temples and replied, 'A man withhorns, a spectacle.'Gandhi left the train at a suburban station to avoid the crowd at the Bombayterminus. He and the other Congress leaders were congregating in Bombay for ameeting of the All-India Congress Committee (A.I.C.C.) which would debate theWorking Committee decisions to accept the Cabinet Mission's long-term plan fora constitution but to refuse participation in the interim government.The two-day session took place in a hall built like a theatre. The floor of thestage was covered with white cotton homespun. Leaders clothed in somewhatfiner white homespun sat on the floor of the stage and leaned on large bolstersplaced against the scenery. To the left and rear of the centre of the stage wasa big divan covered with white homespun. It was unoccupied. Nehru, in clingingwhite cotton trousers, a white blouse reaching half way down his thighs and anapricot-coloured sleeveless vest, presided. He used a microphone erected nearhis chair. Two hundred and fifty-five voting delegates sat in the hall togetherwith hundreds of visitors and several score Indian and foreign journalists.www.mkgandhi.org Page 487

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAccess to the stage from the well of the theatre was by a short flight of woodensteps. A speaker would mount to the top step, leave his or her sandals thereand walk barefoot to the microphone.During the deliberations, a woman came to the stage from behind the scenesand put a flat box on the divan. Shortly after, Gandhi walked on, sat down onthe divan, opened the box and started spinning. His entrance was applaudedbriefly by the standing delegates. He acknowledged their welcome with asmile. It is considered undignified to make too much noise with handclapping orexclamations.The second day, Sunday, July 7, Gandhi, in loincloth, addressed the Committeefrom a sitting position on the white divan. He spoke Hindustani into amicrophone but the mechanism was defective and he was barely audible.The speech, delivered extemporaneously, was published verbatim in Harijanand all Indian dailies. It consisted of about 1700 wards and he pronounced themslowly, in approximately fifteen minutes, as though he were talking to oneperson in his hut.He said:'I have been told that some of my previous remarks about the Cabinet Mission'sproposals have caused a good deal of confusion in the public mind. As aSatyagrahi it is always my endeavour to speak the whole truth and nothing butthe truth. I never have a wish to hide anything from you. I hate mentalreservations. But language is at best an imperfect medium of expression. Noman can express fully in words what he feels or thinks. Even seers and prophetsof old have suffered under that disability....'I did say in one of my speeches at Delhi in regard to the Cabinet Mission'sproposals that I saw darkness where I saw light before. That darkness has notyet lifted. If possible it has deepened. I could have asked the WorkingCommittee to turn down the proposal about the Constituent Assembly if I couldsee my way clearly. You know my relations with the members of the WorkingCommittee. Babu Rajendra Prasad might have been a High Court Judge, but hewww.mkgandhi.org Page 488

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeschose instead to act as my interpreter and clerk in Champaran. Then there isthe Sardar (Patel). He has earned the nickname of being my Yes-man. He doesnot mind it. He even flaunts it as a compliment. He is a stormy petrel. Once heused to dress and dine in the Western style. But ever since he decided to casthis lot with me my word has been law to him. But even he cannot see eye toeye with me in this matter. They both tell me that whereas on all previousoccasions I was able to support my instinct with reason and satisfy their head aswell as heart, this time I have failed to do so. I told them in reply that whilstmy own heart was filled with misgivings I could not adduce any reason for it orelse I would have asked them to reject the proposals straightaway. It was myduty to place my misgivings before them to put them on their guard. But theyshould examine what I had said in the light of reason and accept my point ofview only if they were convinced of its correctness.'They were not convinced of its correctness and therefore the WorkingCommittee took a middle course by approving the provisions for the futureconstitution of India but holding aloof from the interim government. TheSocialist faction of the A.I.C.C., and some others, were fighting the WorkingCommittee's compromise. They advocated abstention from the ConstituentAssembly as well as from the interim government. They wished to followGandhi's instinct even though he had not supported it with rational argument.'...I am surprised that Jayaprakash Narayan said yesterday" Gandhi continued,'that it would be dangerous to participate in the proposed Constituent Assemblyand therefore you should reject the Working Committee's resolution. I was notprepared to hear such defeatist language from the lips of a tried fighter likeJayaprakash... A Satyagrahi knows no defeat.'Nor would I expect a Satyagrahi to say that whatever Englishmen do is bad. TheEnglish are not necessarily bad. There are good men and bad men among theEnglish people as among any other people. We ourselves are not free fromdefects. The English could not have risen to their present strength if they hadnot some good in them. They have come and exploited India because wequarreled amongst ourselves and allowed ourselves to be exploited. In God'swww.mkgandhi.org Page 489

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesworld unmixed evil never prospers. God rules even where Satan holds swaybecause the latter exists only on His sufferance.' Then he talked about nonviolenceand the 1942 civil disobedience movement.We must have patience and humility and detachment... The ConstituentAssembly is going to be no bed of roses but only a bed of thorns. You may notshirk it...'Let us not be cowardly, but approach our task with confidence and courage...Never mind the darkness that fills my mind. He will turn it into light.'Everybody handclapped two or three times.The vote was 204 in favour of the Working Committee's compromise and 51against. The negative poll was considered large; it reflected the doubts presentin Gandhi's, Nehru's, in fact most members' minds about British intentions. Aftermore than a hundred and fifty years of British tutelage and eighty-nine years ofthe British Empire, no Indian could completely divest himself of distrust.I spent a number of days in the hot, dank Bombay of the monsoon summer andthen left with Jayaprakash Narayan and his wife Prabhavati to tour theMaharashtra en route to Gandhi's new residence in Panchgani. We travelled toPoona by train and thence by car.The ancient car broke down several miles outside the town and we proceededby a commercial passenger bus. Arrangements had been made for Socialistdelegations to greet Jayaprakash along the road. Wherever they appeared—sixtimes during the journey—the bus stopped, Jayaprakash, Prabhavati and Istepped out, the local folks made little speeches, each of us received a garlandof most fragrant blooms placed around the neck and a tightly packed bouquetor an armful of bananas to carry. In several places, after we had returned tothe bus, a woman came in and touched our knuckles with a tiny metal handcovered with a colourless, perfumed cream. We rode in a cloud of scent.Throughout the repeated ceremonies, the passengers in the bus and the driverwaited patiently without demur.www.mkgandhi.org Page 490

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesJayaprakash stayed over to address an evening meeting in Satara whilePrabhavati and I, in a borrowed car, drove over the hills and through the miststo Panchgani. We arrived near midnight; the town was dark and dead. Straypedestrians could not tell us where Gandhi was stopping. We were compelledto get out of the car at every stone summer villa, walk up the steps to theporch and see whether anybody was sleeping there. On one porch, we sawGandhi lying among his disciples.In the morning Prabhavati put her head on Gandhi's feet and he patted her withsweet affection. About lunch time, Jayaprakash arrived. He and I were the onlyvisitors so I had ample opportunity for conversation with Gandhi.He began by asking me what I had learned. I had noticed a sharp cleavagebetween those who believed in the Constituent Assembly and those who didnot.Gandhi: 'I do not consider the Constituent Assembly non- revolutionary. I amconvinced that it is a perfect substitute for civil disobedience.'L. F.: ‘You think the British are playing the game?'Gandhi: 'I think the British will play the game this time.'L.F.: ‘You believe they are withdrawing from India?'Gandhi: ‘You.’L.F.: 'I believe it, too, but I cannot convince Jayaprakash. But supposing theBritish do not leave, you will offer your kind of protest, not Jayaprakash's?'Gandhi: 'No, Jayaprakash will have to join me. I will not pit myself against him.In 1942, I said I was sailing out on uncharted waters. I will not do it now. I didnot know the people then. I know now what I can do and what I cannot.L. F.: ‘You did not know in 1942 that there would be violence?'Gandhi: 'Correct.'L. F.:' 'So if the Constituent Assembly fails you will not stage a civildisobedience campaign?'www.mkgandhi.org Page 491

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi: 'Not unless the Socialists and the Communists are subdued by thattime.'L. F.: That is not likely...'Gandhi: 'I cannot think of civil disobedience when there is so much violence inthe ear in India. Today some Caste Hindus are not playing the game by theuntouchables.'L. F.: 'By some Caste Hindus you mean some Congress-men?'Gandhi: "Not many Congressmen. But there are some who have not banisheduntouchability from their hearts. That is the tragedy... The Moslems also feelthey are wronged. In an orthodox Hindu house a Moslem will not be permittedto sit on the same carpet with a Hindu and have his meal. That is false religion.India is falsely religious. It must get true religion.'L. F.: "You have not succeeded with Congress?'Gandhi: 'No, I have not. I have failed. Something, however, has beenaccomplished. The Harijans are admitted to the temples in Madura and in manyother holy places, and the Caste Hindus worship in the same temples.'That was the end of our morning talk. Gandhi was 'turning the searchlightinward' and instead of finding fault with others the beam helped him to find thefaults of Congress and the Hindus. Some Hindus did not like it. They preferredto blame Jinnah and England.In the early afternoon, Jayaprakash had an hour with Gandhi. One of thesecretaries translated to me part of her notes.Jayaprakash: 'Congress is not organizing the strength of the country. Merit doesnot count in Congress today. Caste and family relationships count. This is themain reason we Socialists will not go into the Constituent Assembly. We feltthat the Working Committee was overcome by a kind of helplessness. "If we donot accept the British proposal what can we do?" they were saying. This is anattitude of weakness. They expect the British to devise ways and means ofbringing about an agreement between Congress and the Moslem League. Wewww.mkgandhi.org Page 492

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesshould have said to the British, "You go. We will settle this ourselves!" If theBritish do not like it they can put us in jail.'Gandhi: 'Jail is jail for thieves and bandits. For me it is a palace. I was theoriginator of jail-going even before I read Thoreau. Tolstoy wrote that I haddiscovered something new; he wrote it in a Russian daily paper. A Russianwoman translated it for me. I have fought the government from inside jails.Jail-going can bring Swaraj if the philosophy behind it is correct.... But todayjail-going would be a farce.'Jayaprakash: 'Today we should send Englishmen to jail.'Gandhi: 'Why? How? There is no need of it. This is a mere figure of speech andshould not come from lips like yours. Even after violent warfare it would not benecessary. This is how Churchill talked of what he would do to Hitler. Andwitness the folly and the wickedness of the trial of the Nazi war criminals.Some of those who try the criminals are just as criminal.'Congress had formed the governments of a number of provinces, andJayaprakash and Gandhi saw mounting corruption and nepotism there. TheSocialists, moreover, together with many non-Socialist Congressmen, wouldhave gloried in one last struggle to oust the British. They believed freedom isnot real unless you forcibly expel your master. They suspected that the Britishwould, with Moslem League connivance, seek to maintain a foot-hold in India.Jayaprakash therefore was in an anti-constitutional, anti-legal mood, a militantmood, whereas Gandhi, disillusioned by the Socialist and other violence in1942, 1943 and 1944, was less militant than ever before in his career. Thatmade his 'misgivings' about the Cabinet Mission's plan all the more painful.Widespread violence had knocked from his hand the special weapon he hadforged: civil disobedience. The Constituent Assembly, consequently, was hisonly alternative.Gandhi had entered on the road of anguish that led to his death.www.mkgandhi.org Page 493

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi gave me more than an hour in the afternoon. He reverted to the Negroquestion in America. After a while, I said, 'Since my arrival in India, I have metsome intelligent people....'Gandhi : 'Ah, have you? Not many.'L. F.: "You and two or three others.' He laughed. 'And some say Hindu-Moslemrelations are better and some say they are worse.'Gandhi : 'Jinnah and other Moslem leaders were once members of Congress.They left it because they felt the pinch of Hindu patronizing. In the beginning,the leading Congressmen were theosophists. Mrs. Annie Besant attracted mevery much. Theosophy is the teaching of Madame Blavatsky. It is Hinduism at itsbest. Theosophy is the brotherhood of man. They took me to Mrs. Besant (inLondon) I was just a student from Bombay. I could not understand the Britishascent. It was an ordeal for me. I felt quite unworthy of going to Mrs. Besant.Cultivated Moslems joined the theosophists. Later, Congress membership grewand with it the Hindu patronizing attitude. The Moslems are religious fanatics,but fanaticism cannot be answered with fanaticism. Bad manners irritate.Brilliant Moslems in Congress became disgusted. They did not find thebrotherhood of man among the Hindus. They sayIslam is the brotherhood of man. As a matter of fact, it is the brotherhood ofMoslems. Theosophy is the brotherhood of man. Hindu separatism has played apart in creating the rift between Congress and the League. Jinnah is an evilgenius. He believes he is a prophet.'L. F.: 'He is a lawyer.'Gandhi: *You do him an injustice. I give you the testimony of my eighteen daysof talks with him in 1944. He really looks upon himself as the saviour of Islam.'L. F.: 'The Moslems are rich in temperament and spirit. They are warm andfriendly.'Gandhi: Yes.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 494

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesL. F.: 'But Jinnah is cold. He is a thin man. He pleads a case, he does notpreach a cause.'Gandhi: 'I agree he is a thin man. But I don't consider him a fraud. He has cast aspell over the Moslem, who is a simple-minded man.'L. F.: 'Sometimes I think the Moslem-Hindu question is the problem of finding aplace for the new Moslem middle class in an underdeveloped India. India iseven too underdeveloped to offer a place to the poor. Jinnah won over themiddle class because he helped it to compete with the older entrenched Hindumiddle class. Now he is bridging the chasm between the landlord and peasant.He has done it with Pakistan.'Gandhi: *You are right. But Jinnah has not won the peasant. He is trying to winhim. The peasant has nothing in common with the landlord or middle class.Landlords crush the peasants. The franchise does not reach the poor. Even theBritish electorate is not informed.'L. F.: 'I think it is. It is better informed than ever.'Gandhi: 'It is better informed but not well informed.'L. F.: 'How can Congress, with its Hindu stamp, win the Moslems?'Gandhi: 'In the twinkling of an eye, by giving equality to untouchables.Hinduism has to reform itself. I have every hope. Improvement is verygradual...'L. F.: 'I understand there is less contact between Hindus and Moslems.'Gandhi: 'Political contact in the upper stratum is breaking down...'L. F.: 'Jinnah told me in 1942 you did not want independence.'Gandhi: 'And what do I want?'L. F.: 'He said you want Hindu rule.'Gandhi: 'He is utterly wrong. That is absurd. I am a Moslem, a Hindu, aBuddhist, a Christian, a Jew, a Parsi. He does not know me when he says I wantHindu rule. He is not speaking the truth. He is speaking like a pettifoggingwww.mkgandhi.org Page 495

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeslawyer. Only a maniac resorts to such charges ... I believe that the MoslemLeague will go into the Assembly. But the Sikhs have refused. They are stiffneckedlike the Jews.'L. F.: "You are stiff-necked too.'Gandhi: 'I?'L. F.: "You are a stiff-necked man. You are stubborn. You like everything yourway. You are a sweet-tempered dictator.' This aroused general laughter amongthe secretaries and disciples in which Gandhi heartily joined.Gandhi: 'Dictator? I have no power. I have not changed Congress. I have acatalogue of grievances against it.'L. F.: "What did you learn from your eighteen days with Jinnah?'Gandhi: 'I learned that he was a maniac. A maniac leaves off his mania andbecomes reasonable at times. I have never regretted my talks with him. I havenever been too stubborn to learn. Every one of my failures has been a steppingstone. I could not make any headway with Jinnah because he is a maniac, butmany Moslems were disgusted with Jinnah for his behaviour during the talks.'L. F.: 'What is the solution?'Gandhi: 'Jinnah has twenty-five years more to work.'L. F.: 'He wants to live as long as you do.'Gandhi: 'Then he must live till am 125.'L. F.: *You had better not die, it would kill him and then you would be amurderer.' (Laughter) 'He will die the day after you.'Gandhi : 'Jinnah is incorruptible and brave... If Jinnah stays out of theConstituent Assembly the British should be firm and let us work the plan alone.The British must not yield to Jinnah's force. Churchill did not yield to Hitler.'L. F.: 'The British do not yield to force but they yield to the force ofcircumstances...'www.mkgandhi.org Page 496

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe next morning, I heard Sushila Pie, a schoolteacher who had joined Gandhi'sstaff, singing in the next room. When she came out on to the veranda I askedwhy she had been singing.'Because I am happy,' she replied.'And why are you happy?'We are happy because we are near Bapu,' she said.Jayaprakash and I were leaving that day for Bombay; Prabhavati was stayingwith Gandhi. She had worked with Gandhi for many years. The women in theMahatma s entourage—Miss Slade, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Sushila Nayyar,Prabhavati Narayan and others—loved Gandhi and he loved them. It was afather-daughter relationship of more than usual warmth and interdependence.Miss Slade became physically ill on a number of occasions when she wasseparated from Bapu or when she was worried about his health. Her bond withhim was one of the remarkable platonic associations of our age. He often saidto her, 'When this body is no more there will not be separation, but I shall benearer to you. The body is a hindrance.'Rajkumari and Miss Slade would kiss his hand; he would stroke their cheeks. Hesaid that he deliberately surrounded himself with women to prove that hismastery over 'lust' was not achieved by avoiding women. But after his 'lustdream' in 1936 he took a six weeks' silence and did not put his hand on women'sshoulders. He told his women secretaries about that dream before he wrote ofit in Harijan. He shared his innermost thoughts with them.Some of the female disciples were jealous when Gandhi appeared to favour oneabove the other. He was aware of it and tried to be impartial. He enjoyed theircompany and devotion. Whether they did not marry because of attachment tohim or whether they were attached to him because they would not marry it isfolly to guess. One was married but remained continent. They were all valiantAmazons of his causes.Tagore, who loved Gandhi, wrote of the Mahatma, 'He condemns sexual life asinconsistent with the moral progress of man and has a horror of sex as great aswww.mkgandhi.org Page 497

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesthat of the author of The Kreutzer Sonata, but, unlike Tolstoy, he betrays noabhorrence of the sex that tempts his kind. In fact, his tenderness for woman isone of the noblest and most consistent traits of his character and he countsamong the women of his country some of his best and truest comrades m thegreat movement he is leading.'On July 18, I had my last talk with the Mahatma. 'If the Working Committee hadresponded to your "groping in the dark", or your instinct, as you also called it,they would have rejected the Cabinet Mission's plan for the ConstituentAssembly?' I began.Gandhi: Yes, but I did not let them.'L. F.: You mean you did not insist.'Gandhi: 'More than that. I prevented them from following my instinct unlessthey felt likewise. It is no use conjecturing what would have happened. Thefact is, however, that Dr. Rajendra Prasad asked me, "Does your instinct go sofar that you would prevent us from accepting the long term proposals whetherwe understand you or not?" I said, 'No, follow your reason since my own reasondoes not support my instinct. My instinct rebels against my reason. I haveplaced my misgivings before you because I want to be faithful to you. I myselfhave not followed my instinct unless my reason backed it.'L. F.: 'But you told me that you follow your instinct when it speaks to you onoccasions, as, for instance, before certain fasts.'Gandhi: Yes, but even in these cases my reason was there before the fastbegan...'L. F.: Then why do you inject your instinct into the present political situation?'Gandhi: 'I did not. But I was loyal. I wanted to retain my faith in the bona fidesof the Cabinet Mission. So I told the Cabinet Mission that my instinct hadmisgivings. "Supposing," I said to myself, "they meant ill; they would beashamed. They will say, 'He says his instinct tells him this, but we know thereason.' Their guilty conscience would prick them."www.mkgandhi.org Page 498

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesL. F.: 'It did not. Does that mean the Cabinet Mission's intentions were honest?'Gandhi: 'I do not retract anything from the original certificate I gave them...'L. F.: Toil are strongly constitutionalist now because you fear violence?'Gandhi: 'I say we must go into the Assembly and work it. If the British aredishonest they will be found out. The loss will not be ours but theirs andhumanity's.'L. F.: 'I think you are afraid of the spirit of the Indian National Army and SubhasChandra Bose (its hero who went to Germany and Japan during the secondWorld War.) It is widespread. He has captured the imagination of the youth andyou are aware of it and you fear that mood. The young generation isindocentric.'Gandhi: 'He has not captured the imagination of the country. It is too wide aterm, but a section of the youth and of the women follow him... The Almightyhas reserved mildness for India. "The mild Hindu" is used as a term of reproach.But I take it as a term of honour, just like Churchill's "Naked Fakir." Iappropriated it as a compliment and even wrote about it to Churchill. I toldChurchill I would love to be a naked fakir but was not one as yet.'L. F.: 'Did he answer?'Gandhi: "Yes, he acknowledged my letter through the Viceroy in a courteousmanner. But to resume... The unsophisticated women, untouched andunspoiled by civilization, so-called, are with me.'L. F.: 'But you admire Bose. You believe he is alive. (He had been reportedkilled in an airplane accident.)Gandhi: 'I do not encourage the Bose legend. I did not agree with him. I do notnow believe he is alive. Instinct made me believe to the contrary at one time,because he had made himself into a legendary Robin Hood.'L. F.: 'My point is this: Bose went to Germany and Japan, both fascist countries.If he was pro-fascist you can have no sympathy with him. If he was a patriotwww.mkgandhi.org Page 499

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesand believed that India would be saved by Germany or Japan, especially in1944, he was stupid and statesmen cannot afford to be stupid.'Gandhi : You have a high opinion of statesmen. Most of them are stupid ... Ihave to work against heavy odds ... There is an active mood of violence thathas to be combated and I am doing it in my own way. It is my implicit faith thatit is a survival which will kill itself in time... It cannot live. It is so contrary tothe spirit of India. But what is the use of talking? I believe in an inscrutableProvidence that presides over our destinies — call it God or by any name youlike.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 500

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XVPilgrim's ProgressCONGRESS would not participate in the provisional government because LordWavell had, on Jinnah's insistence, refused to allow it to nominate a Moslem forone of the government posts. True, Wavell had stipulated publicly that thecomposition of the interim government would not constitute a precedent.Congress feared it would, and refused adamantly to recognize Jinnah's right toveto a Congress Moslem's appointment to the Cabinet.Wavell accordingly again asked Congress and the League to submit lists of itscandidates for positions in the government, but, in deference to Congress,stressed that no side could bar the nominees of the other. Jinnah thereupon,declined the invitation to participate in the provisional government. On August12, 1946, Wavell commissioned Nehru to form the government. Nehru went tosee Jinnah and offered him a choice of places in the government for theMoslem League. Jinnah refused. Nehru then organized a government consistingof six Congressmen, of whom five were caste Hindus and one a Harijan, and, inaddition, one Christian, one Sikh, one Parsi and two Moslems who were not ofthe Moslem League. Wavell announced that it was open to the Moslem Leagueto name five of its members to the provisional government. Jinnah was notinterested.The Moslem League declared August 16 'Direct Action Day". Savage riots lastingfour days broke out in Calcutta.'Official estimates', writes Lord Pethick-Lawrence, 'placed the casualties atsome five thousand killed and fifteen thousand wounded, and unofficial figureswere higher still.'Sir Shafaat Ahmed Khan, a Moslem who had resigned from the Moslem Leagueto join Nehru's interim government, was waylaid in a lonely spot in Simla atdusk on August 24 and stabbed seven times. 'Obviously political,' high Britishauthorities said of the assault.www.mkgandhi.org Page 501

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesOn September 2, Nehru became Prime Minister of India. 'Our representativesand leaders have broken into the citadel of power,' J. B. Kripalani, the newpresident of Congress, declared.Gandhi was living in the untouchables' quarter in New Delhi on September 2. Hewoke very early that morning and wrote a letter to Nehru on the duties of thenew government. This was a red-letter day in India's history, he told his eveningprayer meeting and he felt grateful to the British but in no mood for jubilation.'Sooner, rather than later, complete power will be in your hands,' he promisedthe audience, 'if Pandit Nehru, your uncrowned king and Prime Minister, and hiscolleagues, did their part.' The Moslems were the brothers of the Hindus even ifthey were not in the government as yet, Gandhi continued, and a brother doesnot return anger with anger.But Jinnah proclaimed September 2 a day of mourning and instructed Moslemsto display black flags. The next day in Bombay, Jinnah said: 'The Russians mayhave more than a spectator's interest in Indian affairs, and they are not very farfrom India either.'Sir Firoze Khan Noon, a big Punjab landowner and a Moslem League leader, hadspoken in the same vein. 'If our own course is to fight,' he asserted, 'and if inthat fight we go down, the only course for the Moslems is to look toRussia.'Gandhi did not misread these signs. 'We are not yet in the midst of civil war', hestated on September 9, 'but we are nearing it.' Shootings and stabbingsoccurred in Bombay throughout September. A Moslem black flag was like a redflag to a Hindu. Trouble spread to the Punjab. Violence shook Bengal and Bihar.The Moslem League announced that it would abstain from the nationalConstituent Assembly.Alarmed by the disturbed state of the nation, Wavell redoubled his efforts towin Moslem League adherence to the new government. Jinnah finally agreed,and appointed four Moslem League members and one untouchable who was anopponent of Gandhi. The> Moslem League always proclaimed itself a religiouswww.mkgandhi.org Page 502

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesbody representing the Moslems of India. Why then should it have appointed anuntouchable, a Hindu? Obviously to annoy Congress and the caste Hindus. It wasa bad augury for the new government. And, in fact, Nawabzada Liaquat AliKhan, Finance Member and foremost League spokesman in the government,announced that he and his colleagues did not recognize the government as acoalition and felt no obligation to co-operate with Nehru and the otherCongress ministers. The government was a house divided—by religion.Everyday Gandhi preached against the uninterrupted violence between the twocommunities. 'Some people even rejoice,' he said, 'that Hindus are now strongenough to kill in return those who tried to kill them. I would far rather thatHindus died without retaliation...'At the same time he remembered his other causes and stressed the need formore khadi production; he protested against maltreatment of Harijans: 'If thereis an epidemic they are beaten and cannot draw water from the wells. Theylive in hovels.' He wanted the Salt Tax completely annulled, but he asked thepeople to be patient in this regard; the new ministers were overwhelmed withunaccustomed tasks.Most Congress ministers and many of their assistants as well as provincialofficials came to Gandhi's hut in the Harijan quarter for frequent visits—sometimes daily—to ask his advice and approval. Gandhi was 'super-PrimeMinister.'He wrote on leprosy and the need of collective prayer, on the regime in Indianjails and discrimination in South Africa, on lagging food production and the godsin the Hindu pantheon. Each day he gave instructions for his meals the nextday. Whenever possible, he made diary entries. 'It seems to be so very hard,' hewrote one night, 'to maintain detachment of mind in the midst of raging fire.'And he told a friend 'Why could I not suffer this anguish with unruffled calmnessof spirit? I am afraid I have not the detachment required for living to 125 years.'The raging fire of Hindu-Moslem strife gave him no rest. Yet his faith in humanbeings persisted. 'In Bombay a Hindu gave shelter to a Moslem friend the otherday,' he wrote on October 15. 'This infuriated a Hindu mob who demanded thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 503

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeshead of the Moslem friend. The Hindu would not surrender his friend. So bothwent down literally in deadly embrace. This was how it was described to meauthentically. Nor is this the first instance of chivalry in the midst of frenzy.During the recent blood bath in Calcutta, stories of Moslems having, at the perilof their lives, sheltered their Hindu friends and vice versa were recorded.Mankind would die if there were no exhibition anytime and anywhere of thedivine in man.'Gandhi now went in search of the divine in maddened man.Widespread Moslem attacks on Hindus had taken place during October in thedistant Noakhali and Tippera rural areas of east Bengal. These seemed to alarmthe Mahatma more than urban disturbances. Hitherto, inter-religious amity hadprevailed in India's villages. If now community hatred invaded the country-sideit might doom the nation to destruction. Gandhi decided to go to the scene ofthe trouble. Unless he could stem the violence life would have no attraction forhim. Friends tried to dissuade him. His health was poor. The Congress membersof the government wanted him nearby. 'All I know is that I won't be at peacewith myself unless I go there,' he replied. He wondered whether he wouldaccomplish anything. But he had to try. He told people not to come to thestation to see him off and get his blessing. He was in no mood for it.They came in hordes. The government gave him a special train (the British haddone likewise) because when he went by the regular express the crowds thatwanted to catch a glimpse of him delayed the train for hours and disrupted alltraffic schedules. At the big cities where the special stopped, vast multitudesbeleaguered the stations and swarmed over the tracks. They mounted the roofof the station, broke glass windows and wooden shutters, and created an earsplittingdin. Several times the conductor gave the signal for departure butsomeone pulled the emergency cord and the train stopped with a jerk. At onestation the railway authorities turned the fire hose on the people but the waterflooded Gandhi's compartment. He arrived in Calcutta five hours late—tiredfrom the noise and commotion, and sad.www.mkgandhi.org Page 504

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe day he left New Delhi, thirty-two persons were killed in another interreligiousriot in Calcutta; military reinforcements rushed to the scene. Policeand troops were kept busy night and day dispersing bands of hooligans whoattacked one another with kerosene bombs, bricks and soda water bottles. Theday after his arrival in Calcutta, Gandhi paid a brief courtesy call on SirFrederick Burrows, the British governor, and a longer visit to Mr, H. S.Suhrawardy, the Moslem prime minister of Bengal province. The next day,October 31, he again saw Suhrawardy and together they drove through desertedstreets piled two-feet high with uncollected garbage and saw many rows ofstores and houses gutted in the most recent as well as in the Augustdisturbances. He was overcome, Gandhi said, by 'a sinking feeling at the massmadness that can turn man into less than a brute.' Yet he remained anoptimist. This could not go on much longer; he thought the citizens of Calcuttawere already beginning to sicken at their own hideous excesses.He was going to Noakhali, the rural area where Moslems had killed Hindus,forcibly converted Hindus to Islam, ravished Hindu women and burned Hinduhomes and temples. 'It was the cry of outraged womanhood,' he told his prayermeeting, 'that has peremptorily called me to Noakhali... I am not going to leaveBengal until the Last embers of the trouble are stamped out. I may stay on hiere for a whole year or more. If necessary, I will die here. But I will notacquiesce in failure. If the only effect of my presence in the flesh is to makepeople look up to me in hope and expectation which I can do nothing tovindicate, it would be far better that my eyes were closed in death.'Many members of the congregation wiped tears from their eyes.But worse woes were in store for the sorrowing Mahatma. In the neighbouringprovince of Bihar, with a population of 31,000,000 Hindus and 5,000,000Moslems, the events in Noakhali and Tippera had incensed the majoritycommunity; October 25 was declared 'Noakhali Day'. Speeches by Congressmenand sensational news paper headlines whipped the Hindus into hysteria andthousands paraded the streets and country lanes shouting 'Blood for blood'. Inthe next week, 'the number of persons officially verified is killed by rioters'www.mkgandhi.org Page 505

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswrote the Delhi correspondent of the London Times, was 4580; Gandhi later putthe total at more ten thousand. They were preponderantly Moslem.The news of the Bihar atrocities reached Gandhi in Calcutta and filled him withgrief. He addressed a manifesto to the Biharis: 'Bihar of my dreams seems tohave falsified them... The misdeeds of the Bihari Hindus many justifyQaid-e-Azam's taunt that the Congress is a Hindu organization in spite of itsboast that it has in its ranks a few Sikhs, Moslems, Christians, Parsis andothers... Let not Bihar, which has done so much to raise the prestige ofCongress, be the first to dig its grave.'As penance, Gandhi announced, he would keep himself 'on the lowest dietpossible', and this would become 'a fast unto death if the erring Biharis havenot turned over a new leaf.'Expecting vengeance in Bengal for the horrors of Bihar, Nehru and Patel, andLiaqat Ali Khan and Abdur Rab Nishtar, two Moslem members of the interimgovernment, hurried by air from Delhi to Calcutta. Lord Wavell also came. Thesacred Islamic festival of the Id impended when Moslems might rise to fervourand frenzy. The ministers appealed to the populace to remain calm. Soldierspatrolled the city and countryside.Nehru and Patel begged Gandhi not to fast unto death; they and the nation,needed him.From Calcutta, the four ministers flew to Bihar. Infuriated by what he saw andheard, Prime Minister Nehru threatened to bomb Bihar from the air if theHindus did not desist from killings. 'But that was the British way Gandhicommented. 'By suppressing the riots with the aid of the military they would besuppressing India's freedom,' he said. 'And yet what was Panditji to do ifCongress had lost control over the people?'Nehru announced he would remain in Bihar until the province became calm. OnNovember 5, Gandhi sent a letter to him there saying, 'The news from Bihar hasshaken me... If even half of what one hears is true, it shows that Bihar hasforgotten humanity... My inner voice tells me, "You may not live to be a witnesswww.mkgandhi.org Page 506

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesto this senseless slaughter... Does it not mean that your day is over?" The logicof the argument is driving me irresistibly towards a fast.'The Id holiday passed quietly in Calcutta and elsewhere. Reassuring messagesreached the Mahatma from Bihar. His duty lay in Noakhali where frightenedHindus were fleeing before Moslem violence. Fear is the enemy of freedom anddemocracy. Non-violent bravery is the antidote to violence. He would teach theNoakhali Hindus to be brave by being brave with them. Equally important,Gandhi wanted to know whether he could influence Moslems. If they were notaccessible to the spirit of non-violence and non-retaliation and brotherhood,how could there be a free, united India?'Supposing someone killed me,' Gandhi said. "You will gain nothing by killingsomeone in retaliation. And if you think over it, who can kill Gandhi exceptGandhi himself? No one can destroy the soul.'Did he think a Moslem in Noakhali might murder him and was he afraid that inrevenge Hindus would massacre Moslems throughout India?The impulse to go to Noakhali was irresistible. He abandoned the idea of a fastfor Bihar.Gandhi left Calcutta on the morning of November 6. Noakhali is one of the leastaccessible areas of India. It lies in the water-logged delta of the Ganges andBrahmaputra rivers. Transport and daily living present gigantic difficulties.Many villages can be reached only by small boats. Even the bullock cart, symbolof retarded India, cannot traverse the roads of the district. Phillips Talbot,correspondent of the Institute of Current Affairs of New York, spent four daystravelling by rail, steamer, bicycle, hand-poled ferry and on foot from Calcuttato a settlement where the Mahatma had pitched his camp. The region, fortymiles square, is thick with human beings, 2,500,000 of them; 80 per cent areMoslem- It was rent by civil strife and steeped in religious bitterness. Somevillages had been laid in ruins.Gandhi deliberately accepted the physical and spiritual challenge presented bythis remote region. Month after month he persevered. 'My present mission,' hewww.mkgandhi.org Page 507

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswrote from Noakhali on December 5, 'is the most difficult and complicated oneof my life... I am prepared for any eventuality. "Do or Die" has to be put to thetest here. "Do" here means Hindus and Mussulmans should learn to live togetherin peace and amity. Otherwise, I should die in the attempt.'Several ministers of the Bengal government and a group of Gandhi's secretariesand assistants had accompanied him to Noakhali. He dispersed his disciplesamong the villages and remained along with Professor Nirmal Bose who was hisBengali interpreter, Parasuram, his permanent stenographer, and Manu Gandhi.He said he would prepare his own food and do his own massage. Friendsprotested that he needed police protection against Moslems; Sushila Nayyar, hisdoctor, should remain near him, they said. No, she and her brother Pyarelaland Sucheta Kripalani and even young Abha, the wife of Kanu Gandhi and Kanuhimself, each of them must settle alone in a village, often a hostile, isolatedvillage and by their example and love wean it from the ways of violence.Pyarelal was laid low with malaria. He sent a note to Gandhi asking whetherSushila could not come to nurse him. 'Those who go to the villages have to gothere with a determination to live or die there,' Gandhi replied. 'If they mustfall ill they have to get well there or die there. Then alone could the goinghave any meaning. In practice this means that they must be content with homeremedies or the therapy of nature's "five elements." Dr. Sushila has her ownvillage to look to. Her services are not at present meant for the members of ourparty. They are pre-mortgaged to the village folk of East Bengal.' He wassubjecting himself to the same cruel, unyielding discipline.Gandhi lived in forty-nine villages during his Noakhali Pilgrimage. He would riseat four in the morning, walk three or four miles on bare feet to a village, staythere one or two or three days talking and praying incessantly with thehabitants and then trek to the next village. Arrived in a Place, he would go to apeasant's hut, preferably a Moslem's hut, and ask to be taken in with hiscompanions. If rebuffed he would try the next hut. He subsisted on local fruitsand vegetables and goat's milk if he could get it. This was his life fromwww.mkgandhi.org Page 508

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesNovember 7, 1946, to March 2, 1947. He had just passed his seventy-seventhbirthday.The walking was difficult. Gandhi developed chilblains. But he rarely put onsandals. The Noakhali troubles arose because he had failed to cure the peopleby non-violence. This was therefore a pilgrimage of penance and in penancethe pilgrim wears no shoes. Sometimes hostile elements strewed broken glass,brambles and filth in his path. He did not blame them; they had been misled bytheir politicians. In many places, walking involved the crossing of bridges builtover low, marshy land. The bridges stood on bamboo stilts often ten or fifteenfeet high and consisted of four or five bamboo poles about four inches indiameter lashed together with jute rope or vines. These crude shakingstructures occasionally had one side-rail for support often not. Once Gandhi'sfoot slipped and he might have fallen to the muddy earth far below, but henimbly regained his balance. To become proficient and fearless in suchcrossings he practised, wherever he could, on bridges a few inches above theground.Mr. Arthur Henderson told the House of Commons on November 4, 1946, thatthe dead in the Noakhali and contiguous Tippera districts had not yet beencounted but 'will', according to estimates, 'be low in the three figures category.'The Bengal government put the number of casualties at 218; some families,however, hid their victims out of fear. Over ten thousand houses were looted inthe two districts. In Tippera 9895 persons were forcibly converted to Islam; inNoakhali inexact data suggested that the number of converts was greater.Thousands of Hindu women were abducted and married to Moslems againsttheir will. Gandhi was deeply depressed by the conversions and abductions.To convert Hindu women Moslems broke their bangles and removed the'happiness mark' on their foreheads which showed they were not widows. Hindumen were compelled to grow beards, to twist their loincloths the Mosleminstead of the Hindu way, and to recite the Koran. Stone idols were smashedand Hindu temples desecrated. Worst of all, Hindus were made to slaughtertheir cows if they had any or, in any case, to eat meat. It was felt that thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 509

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesHindu community would not accept back into its fold one who had killed asacred beast or partaken of its flesh.In the beginning, several of Gandhi's associates suggested that he should urgeHindus to abandon the affected areas and settle in other provinces. Hepassionately rejected such defeatism. To exchange populations would be arecognition of the impossibility of keeping India united. Moreover, it woulddeny a basic tenet of Gandhi's faith: that an affinity exists or can easily beestablished between people who are different or think themselves different.Love and tolerance between the unlike are greater virtues than between thelike.After he had studied the problem in Noakhali, Gandhi decided it was necessaryto choose one Moslem and one Hindu in each village who would guarantee thesafety of all the inhabitants and die, if need be, in their protection. With this inview, he interviewed members of both religious communities. He was oncesitting on the floor of a hut in the midst of a group of Moslems and discoursingon the beauties of non-violence. Sucheta Kripalani passed a note to theMahatma saying that the man on his right had killed a number of Hindus in therecent riots. Gandhi smiled faintly and went on speaking. Unless you hang themurderer—and Gandhi did not believe in hanging—you must try to cure him withgoodness. If you imprison him there will be others. Gandhi knew he was dealingwith a social disease; the liquidation of one or many individuals could notextirpate it. The criminals who feared retribution would remain on the highwayand repeat their crimes. Gandhi therefore forgave them and told them so, andtold the Hindus to forgive them; indeed he told them that he shared their guiltbecause he had failed to remove Hindu-Moslem antagonisms.The world is full of such antagonisms and the ordinary individual is their victimas well as their agent. 'But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them thatcurse you, do good to them that hate you and pray for them which despitefullyuse you and persecute you... For if ye love them which love you, what rewardhave ye?' Thus Jesus spoke. Thus Gandhi lived.www.mkgandhi.org Page 510

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGenerations back, the ancestors of many Noakhali Moslems to whom Gandhiwas appealing had been Hindus and were forcibly converted to the Koran by thesword. Either they retained part of the Hindu temper or the Gandhism methodhas a universal application. To one village, for instance, Gandhi had sent ayoung Moslem disciple, Miss Amtul Salam. She found that Moslems continued tomistreat their Hindu neighbours. 'In the Gandhian tradition', reports PhillipsTalbot, 'she decided not to eat until Moslems returned a sacrificial sword whichduring the October upheaval had been looted from a Hindu home. Now, a fastconcentrates very heavy social pressure on its objects, as Indians have longsince learned. The sword was never found. Possibly it had been dropped into apond. Whatever had happened, the nervous Moslem residents were almostready to agree to anything when Gandhi arrived in that village on the twentyfifthday of Miss Salam's fast. Her doctor reported that life was ebbing. Afterhours of discussion (which... Gandhi took as seriously as the Cabinet Delegationnegotiations) Gandhi persuaded the village leaders to sign a pledge that theywould never molest Hindus again.'The return of the sword would have symbolized amity, Gandhi explained.Gandhi and his associates were working against heavy odds. In the beginning ofhis tour, Moslems flocked to his prayer meetings. But politicians in Calcuttadiscouraged this practice. And Mohammedan priests inveighed against it. Theymade the charge that the Mahatma was suborning the faithful. SometimesGandhi would interrupt his services to let the Moslems withdraw temporarily tothe fringe of the congregation and turn west to Mecca and say their prayers. Hehad an attraction for Moslems which neither political Moslems nor religiousMoslems relished.Gandhi addressed his meetings in Hindustani. Then an interpreter gave theBengali translation. Gandhi would sit on the prayer platform during thetranslation and make notes of his own speech which he would then publish:'Some Moslems feared that he had come to suppress them. He could assurethem that he had never suppressed anyone in his life.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 511

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'I have told our people,' Gandhi said in an interview, 'not to depend on militaryand police aid. You have to uphold democracy, and democracy and dependenceon the military and police are incompatible.' He wanted to restore a sense ofpopular security by changing the minds of the people. 'For me,' he told a friend,'if this thing is pulled through it will be the crowning act of my life... I don'twant to return from Bengal in a defeatist way. I would rather die, if need be,at the hand of an assassin.'At times, his closest co-workers were afraid of what might happen to themalone in remote villages. You are not to rush into danger unnecessarily,' heinstructed them, 'but unflinchingly face whatever comes in the natural course.'January 6 was Gandhi's day of silence and his prayer meeting address was readto the congregation while he sat and listened and nodded assent. They were inthe little village of Chandipur and he told them why he was there: 'I have onlyone object in view and it is a clear one: namely that God should purify thehearts of Hindus and Moslems and the two communities should be free fromsuspicion and fear of one another. Please join with me in this prayer and saythat God is the Lord of us both and that He may give us success.'Why did he have to come such a long way to do this? 'My answer is that duringmy torn- I wish to assure the villagers to the best of my capacity that I bear notthe least ill-will towards any. I can prove this only by living and moving amongthose who mistrust me.'In this village Gandhi received information that Hindus who had fled during theriots were beginning to return. On the other hand, attendance at prayermeetings was dwindling. 'But,' Gandhi wrote, reporting his own speech, Tie saidthat even then there would be no reason for him to give up his mission indespair. He would then roam from village to village taking his spinning wheel.With him it was an act of service to God.'On January 17 the newspapers stated that during the last six days Gandhi hadbeen working twenty hours out of every twenty-four. He had spent each ofthose days in a different village and the people were flocking to his hut foradvice, comfort and confessions.www.mkgandhi.org Page 512

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesAt Narayanpur village, a Moslem gave him shelter for the night and food duringthe day. Gandhi thanked him publicly. Such hospitality was becoming morefrequent.His Moslem host asked Gandhi why he did not come to an understanding withJinnah instead of subjecting himself to such a strenuous pilgrimage. A leader,he replied, was made by his followers. The people must make peace amongthemselves and 'then their desire for neighbourly peace would be reflected bytheir leaders... If a neighbour was ailing would they run to the Congress or theLeague to ask them what should be done?'Would not literacy help, Gandhi was asked. He held that it was not enough. TheGermans were literate yet they succumbed to Hitler. 'It is not literacy orlearning that makes a man,' Gandhi said, 'but education for real life. Whatwould it matter if they knew everything but did not know how to live inbrotherliness with their neighbours?''If the question is between taking one's own life or that of the assailant, whichwould you advise?''I have no doubt in my mind,' Gandhi declared, 'that the first should be thechoice.'Five thousand persons came to his prayer meeting On January 22 in the villageof Paniala where, several weeks earlier, a large inter-community dinner hadtaken place with Hindus, Moslems and untouchables sitting shoulder toshoulder. 'What in your opinion is the cause of the communal riots?' someoneasked.The idiocy of both communities,' he replied.The prayer meeting at Muraim on January 24 was the largest of the pilgrimage.Gandhi attributed it to the successful fast of Miss Amtul Salam, who was adevout Moslem and a member of the Mahatma's ashram.What should a woman do if she is attacked?' Gandhi was asked at Palla onJanuary 27. 'Should she commit suicide?'www.mkgandhi.org Page 513

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'Surrender', he answered, 'has no room in my plan of life. A woman should mostcertainly take her own life rather than surrender.'Was she to carry poison with her or a knife?'It is not for me to prescribe the means,' Gandhi said. 'And behind the approvalof suicide in such circumstances is the belief that one whose mind is preparedfor even suicide will have the requisite coin-age for such mental resistance andsuch internal purity that her assailant will be disarmed.'Sometimes economic questions were raised at prayer meetings. Did Gandhithink the landowners' share in crops should be reduced from one-half to onethird?Yes, he welcomed the move. 'The land belongs to the Lord of us all andtherefore to the worker on it. But until that ideal state of things came aboutthe movement towards the reduction of the landlord's portion was in the rightdirection.' Many of the landlords were Hindus, and the riots were partly causedby resentment against high rents.Dr. Sushila Nayyar was stationed in the village of Changirgaon. She wanted togo to the hospital in the Sevagram Ashram which she had set up, but theMoslem patients begged her to stay and she stayed. She also reported thatMoslems were, of their own accord, returning some of the loot they took inOctober. 'A happy omen,' Gandhi called it. If the infection spread, the courtswould have less work to do. He aspired to no truce imposed by the military; hewanted a change of heart.Four young Moslem men came to Gandhi's hut for an exchange of views. Theirvisit gave him joy; he sought intimate contact with the people. He told them,incidentally that the figures on Moslem killings of Hindus in Noakhali has beenexaggerated; there were not thousands. The Hindus had behaved much worse inBihar.At Srinagar village on February 5 the volunteers had erected a platform andcanopy. This was a waste of labour and money, Gandhi chided them. 'All Ineed,' he told the prayer meeting, 'is a raised seat with something clean andwww.mkgandhi.org Page 514

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timessoft to rest my fatless and muscleless bones.' Then he laughed and showed histoothless gums.He lectured next day's congregation on cleanliness. He liked to walk barefooton the village streets and on the road, but why did they spit and clear theirnoses on them? He sometimes had to wear sandals. No doubt, chronic povertywas responsible for the prevalence of disease in India, but chronic breach ofthe laws of sanitation was no less responsible, he said.The poorer Moslems attended Gandhi's meetings in larger numbers than therich. Tales reached him that the propertied and educated Moslems werethreatening the poor with economic sanctions. They displayed anti-Gandhiposters. Returning from Bishkatali in the Tippera district on February 20,Gandhi walked through beautiful bamboo woods and coconut groves. Hangingfrom trees he saw placards reading, 'Remember Bihar, Leave TipperaImmediately"; 'Repeatedly you have been warned, Yet you insist on roamingfrom house to house. You must leave for your own good'; 'Go, where you areneeded. Your hypocrisy will not be tolerated. Accept Pakistan.'Yet crowds at meetings grew in size.In Raipura, on a Sunday, Gandhi was present at a dinner given by Hindumerchants to two thousand persons, including caste Hindus, Moslems, Harijansand Christians. The local Moslem priest took Gandhi to the village mosque.Elsewhere a student asked Gandhi whether it was not true that Christianity andIslam were progressive religions and Hinduism static or retrogressive. 'No,' hereplied, 'I have noticed no definite progress in any religion. The world wouldnot be the shambles it has become if the religions of the world wereprogressive.''If there is only one God,' a questioner said, 'should there not be only onereligion?''A tree has a million leaves,' Gandhi replied. There are as many religions asthere are men and women, but they are rooted in God.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 515

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesA written query was handed to the Mahatma: 'Should religious instruction formpart of the school curriculum as approved by the State? Do you favour separateschools for children belonging to different denominations for facility ofreligious instruction?'Gandhi replied, 'I do not believe in state religion even though the wholecommunity has one religion. State interference will probably always beunwelcome. Religion is purely a personal matter.... I am also opposed to Stateaid partly or wholly to religious bodies. For I know that an institution or groupwhich does not manage to finance its own religious teaching is a stranger totrue religion. This does not mean that State schools would not give ethicalteaching. The fundamental ethics are common to all religions.'Moslem critics warned him not to discuss purdah. How dare a Hindu tell theirwomen to expose their faces? He nevertheless discussed it. Segregation ofwomen was a species of violence and led to other forms of compulsion.On March 2, 1947, Gandhi left Noakhali for Bihar province. He promised toreturn some day. He promised to return because his mission had not beencompleted. He had not established the brotherhood of Hindus and Moslems inNoakhali. Relations had improved perceptibly but insufficiently.Gandhi's task in Noakhali consisted in restoring inner calm so that the refugeeHindus could return and feel safe and so that Moslems would not attack themagain. The malady was deep; the violent eruptions, however, were infrequentand ephemeral. Gandhi, therefore, did not despair. He felt that the localcommunities, undisturbed by outside political propaganda, could live in peace.The call of Noakhali had been insistent. Gandhi might have sent a message fromDelhi or preached a sermon. But he was a man of action, a Karma-yogi. Hebelieved that the difference between what we do and what we could do wouldsuffice to solve most of the world's problems. All his life he endeavoured toeliminate that difference. He gave his maximum.www.mkgandhi.org Page 516

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XVIAsia's Message To The WestLATE in, November 1946 Prime Minister Attlee summoned Nehru, DefenceMinister Baldev Singh, Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan to 10 Downing Street for anextraordinary conference.The Constituent Assembly was to meet in New Delhi on December 9; Jinnah hadrepeatedly declared that the Moslem League would boycott it. The object ofthe Downing Street conference was to bring the Moslem League into theconstituent Assembly. For, if the Assembly was a predominantly Congressaffair, with the Moslems outside, how, the argument ran, could Englandtransfer power to it and leave India?Originally, the Moslem League had accepted the Cabinet Mission's plan of May16, 1946, and thereby agreed to go into the Constituent Assembly. Later,however, it had withdrawn.The issue on which Jinnah withdrew from the Assembly provoked hotdiscussions and fierce hatreds. What was it?Article 19 of the Cabinet Mission's plan stipulated that the Constituent Assemblywould first meet in New Delhi for a short, formal session and then break up intothree sections corresponding to three groups of provinces: Group A comprisedthe centre, the heart of India and was overwhelmingly Hindu; Group B includedthe North-west Frontier Province, Sind and the Punjab was largely Moslem inpopulation; Group C, in the north-east, consisted of Bengal and Assam.Each section would draft a constitution for its group of provinces. But if aprovince did not like the constitution it could stay out of the group.Thus Hindu Assam would be required to sit in Section C with Moslem Bengal andparticipate in the drafting of a constitution for Group C. But should Assamdislike the final constitution it could secede from Group C and stand alone, orpossibly, join Group A. The sections were compulsory, the groups voluntary.www.mkgandhi.org Page 517

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi objected. He said it was compulsion and a waste of effort. SupposeBengal, which would have a big majority in Section C, drew up a constitutionthat tied Assam to Group C. And why should the North-west Frontier Province,which, though predominantly Moslem had always been anti-Jinnah, be forced tosit with the Punjab and Sind?The sections and groups were introduced into the Cabinet Mission's plan inorder to satisfy Jinnah; they were a half-way or perhaps quarter-way house toPakistan. They divided India into three federated units. For that very reasonGandhi rejected them.While Gandhi was in Noakhali, the Congress organizations of neighbouringAssam sent emissaries to him to ask for guidance. He told them bluntly torefuse to go into the sections even if the national Congress leaders told them togo in.It was to resolve this difficulty that Nehru, Baldev Singh, Jinnah and Liaquat AliKhan made their hasty aeroplane trip to London early in December.During his stay in London, Jinnah declared publicly that he expected India to bedivided into a Hindu state and a Moslem state. He shared Mr. Churchill'sapprehensions,' he added, 'regarding the possibility of civil strife and riots wIndia.' Both halves of the declarations were programme rather than prophecy.There had already been enough riots to lead the British to expect more unlessJinnah got the half-Pakistan or quarter- Pakistan implicit in the sections andgroups. But although Attlee succeeded, after great exertion, in bringing theCongress and League ministers into his Downing Street office the conferenceended in disagreement.Attlee thereupon announced on December 6 that if the Constituent Assemblyadopted a constitution without the co-operation of the Moslem League 'HisMajesty's Government could not, of course, contemplate ... forcing such aconstitution upon any unwilling parts of the country.'This meant that one part of India would accept the constitution and anotherpart might reject it. Again India faced partition.www.mkgandhi.org Page 518

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSoon after Nehru's return from London he made the long journey from NewDelhi to the village of Srirampur in Noakhali and, on December 27, 1946,reported to the Mahatma on the historic failure to agree in Downing Street.But Gandhi repeated his advice to Assam and to the Sikhs, to remain aloof fromthe constitutional sections and groups. He regarded them as devices to splitIndia and refused to countenance anything that contributed to division.The All India Congress Committee, however, resolved on January 6, 1947, by avote of 99 against 52, to accept the sections.Gandhi's influence in Congress was waning.Gandhi had gone to Noakhali to reinforce the human bond between Hindus andMoslems before politics and legal enactments tore it asunder. He dreaded theconsequences of the bisection of India. In New York, on October 16, 1949,Prime Minister Nehru stated that he would have fought to the end against theestablishment of Pakistan if he had foreseen the dire results that flowed fromit.Perhaps Gandhi intuitively anticipated these results. The division of Indiacaused the violent death of hundreds of thousands of Indians. It caused fifteenmillion refugees to wander unhappily from their homes into distant uncertainty.It provoked the war in Kashmir. It brought gigantic economic losses to all partsof the country. It fed a continuing religious- nationalistic bitterness withdisastrous potentialities.Even though the Congress leaders were not as perceptive as Gandhi they knewthat no good could come of partition. Why then did they acquiesce in Attlee'sDecember 6 statement?In 1942, Congress President Maulana Azad said to me in Nehru's presence thatCongress abhorred the idea of the division of India but could not reject itindefinitely if the Moslems wanted it. He was opposed, however, he said, to'divorce before marriage.' First they must try to live together in a unitedindependent India and if it did not work then there would be time enough toseparate.www.mkgandhi.org Page 519

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesNow Nehru, Patel, Azad and the other Congress members had had a taste ofmarriage; they had been silting in the Government with Moslem Leaguers whoobviously entered the cabinet to disrupt it. The experience was a harrowingone. It frayed the nerves of the Congress leaders. It destroyed their faith inCongress-League collaboration.Gandhi still believed in Hindu-Moslem friendship. Nehru and Patel werereconciled to the constitutional sections knowing that this might be thebeginning of Pakistan but seeing no way out except civil war. They hopedJinnah would be happy with the division into three federated states and forgoPakistan.The next step was a statement by Prime Minister Attlee in the House ofCommons on February 20, 1947, that England would leave India "by a date notlater than June 1948. Simultaneously, it became known that Lord (AdmiralLouis) Mountbatten, a great-grandson of Queen Victoria, would succeed LordWavell as Viceroy; he would be the twentieth and last British Viceroy of India.To whom would Britain transfer power? On this key question Attlee, accordingto Lord Pethick-Lawrence, 'was less precise.' His Majesty's government, Attleeasserted, would have to determine whether power should be handed over 'tosome form of central government' or in some areas 'to the existing provincialgovernments' or 'in some other way as may seem most reasonable and in thebest interests of the Indian people.'Nehru found this rather vague but he welcomed the whole statement as 'wiseand courageous'; it removed 'all misconception and suspicion'.The Working Committee, in its session during the first week of March, officiallyapproved of Attlee's new utterance and, in view of the impending 'swift transferof power', invited the Moslem League to talks. Simultaneously, the Committeetook cognizance of the widespread bloodshed in the populous Punjab. Indeed,it took such a sombre and serious view of events there that it envisaged 'adivision of the Punjab into two provinces, so that the predominantly Moslempart may be separated from the predominantly non-Moslem part.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 520

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe Punjab situation was ominous. According to a reply given on May 21, 1946,in the House of Commons by the Earl of Listowel, the Secretary of State forIndia and Burma, 4014 persons had been killed in disturbances in India betweenNovember 18, 1946, and May 18, 1947, and of these, 3024 were killed infighting between Moslems and Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab.Disturbed by events further west, Gandhi left East Bengal for Bihar. Without aday's respite, he began a tour of the province. In village and city, he chastisedthe Bihari Hindus. They 'had forgotten in a fit of insanity that they were humanbeings.'One day he listened for hours to reports by Moslems and Hindus aboutcontinued tension. Nobody could assure him 'that things had completely settleddown to complete normality.'The recital so tired him mentally that he had to take a brief nap beforeservices.Another day he apologized for coming to prayers in a car; the Biharis 'shouldknow the art of welcoming people in a quiet and dignified manner instead ofthe present embarrassing manner.' Thousands had tried to come near enough totouch him or kiss his feet.Wherever he went he preached repentance and restitution. All kidnappedMoslem women should be returned. Compensation should be paid for propertylooted or destroyed.A telegram arrived from a Hindu warning the Mahatma not to condemn Hindusfor what they had done. Gandhi mentioned the telegram at his prayer meetingand said, 'I would forfeit my claim to being a Hindu if I bolstered thewrongdoing of fellow Hindus or of any other fellow being.' He cautioned themagainst avenging the killings of Hindus in the Punjab.He knew that even worshipful Hindus were irritated by his message of love.Nevertheless, he began collecting money at all his meetings for the relief ofaggrieved Moslems. In Patna, two thousand rupees were gathered at oneassembly and a number of women contributed their personal jewellery.www.mkgandhi.org Page 521

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesBefore he spoke in any locality, Gandhi visited the ruined homes of Moslems orMoslem families who had suffered death or physical injury. The deeper hepenetrated into the Bihar tragedy the more it obsessed him; he would not leavethe province until 'both the communities had become friendly with one anotherand no longer needed his services.' He insisted that Hindus should call back theMoslems who had fled and rebuild their huts and re-establish them in business.He summoned Hindus guilty of atrocities to surrender.The day Gandhi arrived in the town of Masurhi "fifty persons' he reported, *whowere wanted in connection with the riot cases' surrendered to the police. Hewelcomed that, and hoped others would follow suit. If the criminals lacked thecourage to surrender to the authorities they should come to him or to GhaffarKhan, 'the Frontier Gandhi', or to General Shah Nawaz of the Indian NationalArmy, who were accompanying him on the tour, and confess.As his car moved across the countryside, groups of Hindus signalled him to stopand gave him purses for Moslems. This was the way to stop violence, not withthe aid of the military and the police.Hindus were boycotting Moslem stores and firms. He begged them to abandonsuch intolerance. He asked them to recant publicly in order to reassure theMoslems. 'But he was sorry to say that not one Hindu got up to give the neededassurance .... There was little cause for wonder, therefore, if the Moslemswere afraid to return to their villages.' he warned them that 'Indians might losethe golden apple of independence.' There was renewed agitation among Biharisto avenge the Moslem attacks on Hindus and Sikhs in the Punjab. 'If ever youbecome mad again,' he cried out, 'you must destroy me first.' It was his fourthweek in Bihar.On March 22, 1947, Lord Mountbatten, handsome in white naval uniform,arrived in New Delhi with his wife, Edwina, the Vicereine; their charm andinformality and his first political declaration made a fine impression. Twentyfourhours later, Jinnah stated publicly that partition was the only solution;otherwise there would be 'terrific disasters.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 522

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesWithin four days of his arrival, Mountbatten invited Gandhi and Jinnah to thepalace. Gandhi was deep in Bihar. Mountbatten offered to bring him out byaeroplane. Gandhi said he preferred a means of locomotion used by themillions. At the station, before the train left Patna, the Mahatma collectedmoney for Harijan relief.Gandhi conferred with Mountbatten for two and a quarter hours on March 31.The next day Gandhi visited the Asian Relations Conference which had beensitting in New Delhi since March 23; delegates attended from most countries ofAsia and from five constituent republics of the Soviet Union. Asked to speak, hesaid he would deliver an address at the closing session the next day, but ifthere were any questions now he would try to answer them.Did he believe in One World and could it succeed under present conditions?'I will not like to live in this world if it is not to be one,' Gandhi replied.'Certainly I should like to see this dream realized in my lifetime. I hope that allthe representatives who have come here from the Asian countries will strivetheir level best to have only one world.' If they worked with 'fixeddetermination' the dream could come true.Answering a Chinese delegate's question about a permanent Asia Institute, hedrifted far from the subject and discussed what was uppermost in his mind. 'Iam sorry,' he said, 'that I have to refer to the conditions we see today (inIndia). We do not know how to keep peace between ourselves.... We think wemust resort to the law of the jungle. It is an experience which I would not likeyou to carry to your respective countries.'He turned to the problem of Asia. 'All the Asian representatives have cometogether,' he began. 'Is it in order to wage a war against Europe, againstAmerica, or against other non-Asiatic? I say most emphatically, "no", this is notIndia's mission ... It will be a sorry thing if we go away from this conferencewithout a fixed determination that Asia shall live and live as free as everywestern nation. I just wanted to say that conferences like the present shouldmeet regularly and if you ask me where, India is the place.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 523

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe next day he delivered his promised address before the conference. He firstapologized for speaking English. He admitted that he had hoped to collect histhoughts but had no time. On the way to the meeting he had asked GhaffarKhan for a piece of paper and pencil to make some notes. 'I got a pen instead ofa pencil. I tried to scribble a few words. You will be sorry to hear that thatpiece of paper is not by my side though I remember what I wanted to say.'Then he rambled: They were assembled in a city, but cities were not India. Thereal truth was in the villages and in the untouchable homes of the villages. Thevillages, to be sure, were dungheaps full of 'miserable specimens of humanitywith lustreless eyes.' But in them was wisdom.The East, he proceeded, had submitted to a cultural conquest by the West.Yet, the West had originally received its wisdom from the East: Zoroaster,Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Rama and lesser lights.He asked the conference to understand the message of Asia. 'It is not to belearned through Western spectacles or through the atomic bomb. If you want togive a message to the West it must be the message of love and the message oftruth. I do not want merely to appeal to your head,' he said suddenly. 'I want tocapture your heart.'He hoped Asia's message of love and truth would conquer the West. 'Thisconquest will be loved by the West itself. The West is today pining for wisdom.'It was structurally a poor speech but full of essential wisdom and of the essenceof Gandhi. Most of the delegates had probably not heard such simple, sincerewords for many years.Between March 31 and April 12 Gandhi conferred with Mountbatten six times.Jinnah had an equal number of talks with the hard-working Viceroy.What did they talk about? 'Before I would get down to any actual solution of theproblem,' Mountbatten said in an address before the Council of the RoyalEmpire Society in London on October 6, 1948, when his task in India was done,'I just wanted to talk to them to get to know them, to get together and gossip.Thus Gandhi told me about his early life in South Africa, Mr. Jinnah about hiswww.mkgandhi.org Page 524

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesearly life in London and I told them a bit about my early life. Then, when I feltI had some sort of understanding with the men I was dealing with, I startedtalking to them about the problem before us.'The problem was the fate of 400,000,000 people, the fate of India, perhaps thefate of Asia. Mountbatten's assignment was to take Britain out of India by June1948. The schedule required him to propose a solution by the end of 1947. Thiswould allow the British Parliament enough time to pass the necessarylegislation for the liberation of India by June 1948. But on the spot, he told theRoyal Empire Society, he and his advisers agreed that this would be too slow.Trouble had started, he said, on August 16, 1946, Jinnah's Direct Action Day.There followed the massacres of Hindus in Noakhali and Hindu reprisals inBihar; then 'the Moslems massacred the Sikhs at Rawalpindi (in the Punjab)' anda rising took place in the North-West Frontier Province. 'I arrived out there,'Mountbatten stated, 'to find this terrible pendulum of massacres swinging widerand wider; if it was not stopped there was no telling where India might end....'Personally,' Mountbatten continued, 'I was convinced that the right solution forthem would have been to keep a United India' under the May 16, 1946, plan ofthe British Cabinet Mission. But the plan presupposed the co-operation andgoodwill of all parties. "Mr. Jinnah,' however, Lord Mountbatten told the RoyalEmpire Society, 'made it abundantly clear from the first moment that so longELS he lived he would never accept a United India. He demanded partition, heinsisted on Pakistan.' Congress, on the other hand, favoured an undivided India.But, Mountbatten stated, the Congress leaders agreed that they would acceptpartition in order to avoid a civil war. The Viceroy 'was convinced that theMoslem League would have fought.'But how was India to be divided? Congress refused to let large non-Moslemareas go to Pakistan. That automatically meant,' Mountbatten explained, 'apartition of the great provinces of the Punjab and Bengal.'"When I told Mr. Jinnah,' Mountbatten said in his historic review before theRoyal Empire Society, 'that I had their provisional agreement to partition hewas overjoyed. When I said that it logically followed that this would involvewww.mkgandhi.org Page 525

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timespartition of the Punjab and Bengal he was horrified. He produced the strongestarguments why these provinces should not be partitioned. He said that they hadnational characteristics and that partition would be disastrous. I agreed, but Isaid how much more must I now feel that the same considerations applied tothe partitioning of the whole of India. He did not like that and startedexplaining why India had to be partitioned and so we went round and round themulberry bush until finally he realized that either he could have a united Indiawith an unpartitioned Punjab and Bengal or a divided India with a partitionedPunjab and Bengal and he finally accepted the latter solution.'Gandhi did not approve of any kind of partition in April 1947 and refused untilhis death to approve of it.On April 15, at the request of Mountbatten, Gandhi and Jinnah issued a jointstatement deploring the 'recent acts of lawlessness and violence that havebrought the utmost disgrace on the fair name of India' and denouncing 'for alltime the use of force to achieve political ends.' This came at the end of afortnight in which Jinnah had convinced Mountbatten that if he did not achievehis political ends India would be rent by civil war.During that fortnight, Gandhi lived in the untouchables' quarter on Kingsway,Delhi and conducted a public prayer meeting there every evening. The firstevening he asked those present whether they would object to the recitation ofsome verses from the Koran. Several objectors raised their hands.www.mkgandhi.org Page 526

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XVIITragic VictoryIT was very hot in Bihar in April, and Gandhi could not stand the strain ofextensive travel among the villages. But he would have to go if the Hindus didnot repent and bring back the Moslems who had fled in fear. He received aletter suggesting that he should retire to the forest as Krishna had done; thecountry had lost faith in non-violence, the correspondent stated, and theBhagavad-Gita, moreover, did not teach non-violence. He reported this to hisprayer meeting in Patna.He heard of renewed rioting in Noakhali.Yet, several developments encouraged him. At Gandhi's request General ShahNawaz, a Moslem and hero of the Indian National Army, had remained in Bihar.Shah Nawaz now said that Moslems were returning to their villages and thatHindus and Sikhs were helping them. A Sikh had been invited to a mosque.This information made Gandhi feel that 'if the Hindus were true Hindus andbefriended the Moslems the present all- enveloping fire would be extinguished.'Bihar was a big province. Its example would inspire others. Peace in Biharwould 'dissolve' the trouble in Calcutta and elsewhere. His mother, 'an illiteratevillage woman', Gandhi said, had taught him that the atom reflected theuniverse; if he took care of his immediate surroundings the universe would takecare of itself.Nehru telegraphed Gandhi to come back to Delhi. The Congress WorkingCommittee was convening on May 1 for a great historic decision. Gandhi madethe five hundred-mile trip by hot train.Mountbatten had been extremely active, visiting provinces, talking to leaders,steeping himself in the problem of India's future. As his thoughts crystallized hesaw no escape from Pakistan.www.mkgandhi.org Page 527

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesMountbatten accordingly put the question to the Congress party. Would theyaccept the partition of India? Nehru had already told a United ProvincesPolitical Conference on April 21 that The Moslem League can have Pakistan ifthey wish to have it, but on condition that they do not take away other parts ofIndia which do not wish to join Pakistan.'Would the Working Committee take the same stand? Gandhi was opposed to it.Patel wavered; he would have put Jinnah's threats to the test of force. Hewould have used the central government to suppress Moslem violence. But inthe end he too acquiesced. 'I agreed to partition as a last resort when wereached a stage when we would have lost all,' he revealed two and a half yearslater. Rather than risk a civil war or the loss of independence, Congress wasreconciled to Pakistan.Pakistan was the high price they paid for freedom.Gandhi made no secret of his chagrin. The Congress', he told his prayer meetingin the untouchables' colony in Delhi on May 7, 'has accepted Pakistan anddemanded the division of the Punjab and Bengal. I am opposed to any divisionof India now as I always have been. But what can I do? The only thing I can do isto dissociate myself from such a scheme. Nobody can force me to accept itexcept God.'Gandhi went to see Mountbatten. His advice to the British was to leave withtheir troops and 'take the risk of leaving India to chaos or anarchy'. If the Britishleft India, Gandhi explained, there might be chaos for a while; ‘We would stillgo through the fire no doubt but that fire would purify us.'Mountbatten's mind was too precise and military to build the future on achance. Yet, not only do most individuals do exactly that; in a war, nationsoften gamble with their lives. Every battle is a 'calculated risk' in which thecalculation is quite theoretical. To Gandhi, the division of India was an absoluteevil, as evil as Britain's submission to Hitler would have been in 1940, andrather than resign himself to it he would have accepted all the possiblematerial losses.www.mkgandhi.org Page 528

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThis, however, was only the abstract aspect of Gandhi's suggestion. In concreteform, its simplicity concealed its astuteness. The British could not abandonIndia without a government. Gandhi's advice to England to leave India to chaosmeant giving India to Congress. If England refused, Gandhi wanted Congress toleave the government. The burden of maintaining peace in the country wouldthen have rested solely on the British, who sought no such responsibility.The choice that Gandhi put to the British therefore was: Let Congress rule Indiaor rule it yourself in these troubled times.Gandhi saw that no Pakistan was possible unless the British created it, and theBritish would not create Pakistan until Congress accepted it; they would notsplit India and antagonize the majority in order to placate Jinnah and theminority. Therefore Congress should not accept it.Nobody listened to Gandhi. 'Our leaders were tired and shortsighted,' writes anintimate collaborator of Gandhiji. The Congress leaders were afraid to delayindependence. Gandhi would have delayed it in the hope of ultimately winningfreedom for a united country instead of independence for two hostile Indias.In the summer of 1948, I asked Nehru, Patel and others in India why Gandhi hadnot attempted to prevent Congress from accepting Pakistan; if nothing less hadavailed he might have coerced them by fasting.It was Gandhi's way, their composite reply ran, to compel agreement even onthe most crucial issue. That is true, but the complete answer goes deeper.Congress acquiesced in Pakistan and stayed in the Government. The onlyalternative would have been to reject Pakistan, leave the government andstake everything on a restoration of the people's sanity and peacefulinclinations. But Gandhi saw that the leaders had no faith in this alternative.He might have induced them to vote for his view in committee; he could nothave infused them with faith in it except by proving that Hindus and Moslemscould live together amicably. The burden of proof was on Gandhi. And time wasrunning out fast.www.mkgandhi.org Page 529

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi hurried across the continent to Calcutta. To get Pakistan, Bengal wouldhave to be partitioned between Pakistan and Hindustan. If he could impress theBengal Moslems with the painful results of such vivisection and if he wouldcheck the rising Hindu sentiment for the division of Bengal, he might preventPakistan.'When everything goes wrong at the top,' Gandhi asked in Calcutta, 'can thegoodness of the people at the bottom assert itself against the mischievousinfluence?' This was his hope.Bengal has one culture, one language, he argued. Let it stay united. They hadreunited Bengal after Lord Curzon partitioned it; could they not rebuff Jinnahbefore he partitioned it?After six days in Calcutta, Gandhi went to Bihar. Despite the torrid heat, hetravelled to the villages. His refrain was the same: 'If the Hindus showed thespirit of brotherliness, it would be good for Bihar, for India and for the world.'On May 25, in response to a summons from Nehru, Gandhi again returned toNew Delhi. Mountbatten, his mind made up, had flown to London. Rumour hadit that India would be partitioned, that the plan would be announced soon. Butwhy, Gandhi wondered. The Cabinet Mission had rejected partition andPakistan on May 16, 1946. What had happened since then to alter the situation?The riots? Were they yielding to hooliganism? 'I must cling to the hope,' Gandhisaid, 'that Britain will not depart a hair's breadth from the spirit and letter ofthe Cabinet Mission's statement of May 16 of last year...''He is burning the candle at both ends,' Dr. Sushila Nayyar reported. He was stillstriving to reverse the tide towards partition. If the effort killed him what did itmatter? 'In the India that is shaping today there is no place for me,' he said; hisvoice shook with emotion. 'I have given up the hope of living 125 years. I maylast a year or two. That is a different matter. But I have no wish to live if Indiais to be submerged in a deluge of violence as it is threatening to do.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 530

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesYet he could not be a pessimist for long. Nehru brought Dr. Lo Chia-luen, theChinese Ambassador, to Gandhi's untouchable hut. 'How do you think things willshape themselves?" Dr. Lo asked.'I am an irrepressible optimist,' Gandhi said. "We have not lived and toiled allthese years that we should become barbarians as we appear to be becoming,looking at all the senseless bloodshed in Bengal, Bihar and the Punjab. But Ifeel that it is just an indication that, as we are throwing off the foreign yoke,all the dirt and froth is coming to the surface. When the Ganges is in flood, thewater is tin-bid; the dirt comes to the surface. When the flood subsides, yousee the clear, blue water which soothes the eye. That is what I hope for andlive for. I do not wish to see Indian humanity becoming barbarian.'Mountbatten, meantime, had been working in London on a plan to divide IndiaThe Mountbatten plan provided for the division not only of India but of Bengal,the Punjab and Assam if their people wished. In the case of Bengal and thePunjab, the recently elected provincial legislatures would decide. If Bengalvoted to partition itself, then, the Moslem-majority district of Sylhet in Assamwould determine by popular referendum whether to join the Moslem part ofBengal.'Nor is there anything in this plan', the text read, 'to preclude negotiationsbetween communities for a united India.'The scheme was thus permissive and involved no legal compulsion by Britain.Bengal and the Punjab might vote to remain united, in which case there wouldbe no partition and no Pakistan. But even if Pakistan came into being, it andthe other India could subsequently unite.Before leaving England, Mountbatten saw Churchill who promised to supportthe plan in the House of Commons.On June 2, 1947 Herbert L. Matthews, telegraphing to the New York Times onthe eve of the announcement of the plan, said, 'Mr. Gandhi is a very real worry,since if he decides to go on a "fast unto death" it would well wreck the wholeplan.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 531

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe next day, Prime Minister Attlee announced the plan in the House ofCommons and Mountbatten revealed it on the New Delhi radio. In his broadcast,the last Viceroy said frankly, 'I am, of course, just as much opposed to thepartition of provinces as I am to the partition of India herself.' The plan, heknew, was imperfect, especially because of its effect on the five millionfighting Sikhs of the Punjab. Any conceivable line through that province wouldleave some Sikhs in Pakistan against their wishes.Nehru, Patel and the Working Committee had approved the plan; their approvalbecame official when the All-India Congress Committee, sitting in New Delhi,on June 15 voted 153 for the plan, 29 against, with some abstentions.After the resolution had been adopted, Professor J. B. Kripalani, the presidentof Congress, delivered a brief speech which explained why Congress hadabandoned Gandhi.The Hindu and Moslem 'communities', Kripalani said, 'have vied with each otherin the worst orgies of violence ... I have seen a well where women with theirchildren, 107 in all, threw themselves to save their honour. In another place, aplace of worship, fifty young women were killed by their menfolk for the samereason. ... These ghastly experiences have no doubt affected my approach tothe question. Some members have accused us that we have taken this decisionout of fear. I must admit the truth of this charge, but not in the sense in whichit is made. The fear is not for the lives lost or of the widows' wail or theorphans' cry or of the many houses burned. The fear is that if we go on likethis, retaliating and heaping indignities on each other, we shall progressivelyreduce ourselves to a state of cannibalism and worse. In every fresh communalfight the most brutal and degraded acts of the previous fight become the norm.'This is the cruel truth of all violence.'I have been with Gandhiji for the last thirty years,' Kripalani continued. 'Ijoined him in Champaran. I have never swayed in my loyalty to him. It is not apersonal but a political loyalty. Even when I have differed with him I haveconsidered his political instinct to be more correct than my elaboratelywww.mkgandhi.org Page 532

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesreasoned attitudes. Today also I feel that he with his supreme fearlessness iscorrect and my stand defective.Why then am I not with him? It is because I feel that he has as yet found no wayof tackling the problem on a mass basis.' The nation was not responding toGandhi's plea for peace and brotherhood.‘Gandhi knew this. 'If only non-Moslem India were with roe, he declared, 'Icould show the way to undo the proposed partition... Many have invited me tohead the opposition. But there is nothing in common between them and meexcept the opposition... Can love and hate combine?'Ninety-five per cent of Gandhi's mail was abusive and hateful. The Hindu lettersasked why he was partial to Moslems and the Moslem letters demanded that hestop obstructing the creation of Pakistan.A Marathi couple from the Tilak country came up to Delhi, camped near theuntouchables' quarter and announced to Gandhi that they had begun a fastwhich would last until Pakistan was abandoned. He addressed them at twosuccessive prayer meetings. Are you fasting against Pakistan, he asked, becauseyou hate Moslems or love Moslems? If you hate Moslems you may not fast. If youlove Moslems, you should go and teach other Hindus to love them. The youngcouple abandoned the fast.The Hindus did not love Moslems enough and the Moslems did not love Hindusenough. India would therefore be divided between them.Gandhi considered partition 'a spiritual tragedy". He noted preparations forbloody strife. He saw the possibility of a 'military dictatorship' and then'goodbye to freedom' 'I do not agree with what my closest friends have done orare doing,' he said.Thirty-two years of work, Gandhi stated, have come to 'an inglorious end'. OnAugust 15, 1947 India would become independent. But the victory was a cold,political arrangement: Indians would sit where Englishmen had sat; a Tricolourwould wave in place of the Union Jack. That was the hollow husk of freedom. Itwww.mkgandhi.org Page 533

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswas victory with tragedy, victory that found the army defeating its owngeneral.'I cannot participate in the celebrations of August 15,' Gandhi announced.Independence brought sadness to the architect of independence. The Father ofhis country was disappointed with his country. 'I deceived myself into the beliefthat people were wedded to non-violence ...' he said. Indians had betrayednon-violence which was more important to him than Indian independence.Mountbatten told the Royal Empire Society on October 6, 1948, that in IndiaGandhi 'was not compared with some great statesman like Roosevelt orChurchill. They classified him simply in their minds with Mohammed and withChrist.' Millions adored the Mahatma, multitudes tried to kiss his feet or thedust of his footsteps. They paid him homage and rejected his teachings. Theyheld his person holy and desecrated his personality. They glorified the shelland trampled the essence. They believed in him but not in his principles.Independence Day, August 15, found Gandhi in Calcutta fighting riots. Hefasted all day and prayed. He issued no message to the nation. Invited to thecapital to participate in the formal inauguration of the nation's Life, herefused to attend. There is disturbance within,' he wrote toRajkumari Amrit Kaur the next day. In the midst of festivities, he was sad. 'Isthere something wrong with me,' he asked, 'or are things really going wrong?'Freedom had come to India and Gandhi was perplexed and perturbed: his Gitadetachment was impaired. 'I am far away from the condition of equipoise,' hedeclared.But faith never left him, nor did he contemplate retiring to a cave or a wood.'No cause that is intrinsically just can ever be described as forlorn,' heasserted."You must not lose faith in humanity,' He wrote to Amrit Kaur on August 29.'Humanity is an ocean. If a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean doesnot become dirty.www.mkgandhi.org Page 534

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesHe had kept his faith in man. He had kept his faith in God. He had kepttherefore his faith in himself. 'I am a born fighter, who does not know failure,'he assured a prayermeeting Audience.Partition was a fact, but 'it is always possible by correct conduct to lessen anevil and eventually even to bring good out of evil; Gandhi said.He still hoped his faith would move people, but how? 'I am groping today,' hedeclared. He was full of 'searching questions' ab0ut himself. 'Have I led thecountry astray?'A lesser man might have sulked or grown bitter or plotted the discomfiture ofthose who thwarted him. Gandhi turned the searchlight inward; perhaps it washis fault.'I can echo your prayer that I may realize peace and find myself,' lie wrote in aletter to Kurshed Naoroji. 'It is a difficult task but I am after it.''O Lore, ‘he exclaimed, 'Lead us from darkness into light.'He was approaching his seventy-eighth birthday. The world he had built laypartly in ruins all around him. He must begin building a new. Congress was toomuch a political party; it must become an instrument for the constructiveuplift of the people He wrote two articles in Harijan on the virtues of nonviolent,non-revolutionary, God-loving, equalitarian Socialism He was seekingnew directions. He was old in body and you? In spirit, old in experience andyoung in faith. Future p.ans lifted past troubles from his back.He had gone to Calcutta and been taken into a Moslem house in an area wherethe stones were slippery with fresh blood and the air acrid with the smoke ofburning homes. The Moslem family to whom the house belonged were friendlyto him. For the moment I am no enemy,' he wrote Amrit Kaur. He rejoicedmore in the smallest triumph of brotherhood than in the politicalindependence of a country.The bereaved came to him in the lowly house and he wiped their tears. Hefound solace in the balm he gave others. He had discovered his new task. It washis old task; to assuage pain, to spread love, to make all men brothers.www.mkgandhi.org Page 535

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSt. Francis of Assisi, hoeing his garden, was asked what he would do if he weresuddenly to learn that he was to die at sunset that day.He said: 'I would finish hoeing my garden.'Gandhi continued to hoe the garden in which he had worked all his days.Sinners had thrown stones and filth into the garden. He continued to hoe.Pertinacity was Gandhi's antidote to frustration and tragedy. Action gave himinner peace.www.mkgandhi.org Page 536

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XVIIIGandhi Hoes His GardenTHE British had left India. Politically literate, they had read the handwriting onthe Indian wall: Tour day is done'. The handwriting was Gandhi's.By the will of Indians, Lord Mountbatten remained as Governor-General of theIndian Union. It had been agreed that Mountbatten would also be Governor-General of Pakistan and thus a symbol of unity. But Jinnah substituted himself.Pakistan bisected India. Pakistan itself was bisected. It counted 38,000,000inhabitants in north-west India and 45,000,000 in north-east India. Between thetwo parts lay nearly 800 miles of the Indian Union.In Moslem Pakistan there were many million Hindus and Sikhs. Of the330,000,000 residents of the Indian Union, some 42,000,000 were Moslems.Five hundred and fifty of the 565 native states quietly acceded to the IndianUnion. Three joined Pakistan. Most of the maharajas and nawabs becameoverpaid pensioned puppets. Elephants went begging.The frontier that divided India in two divided families separated factories fromraw materials, crops from markets. The army was divided; the treasury was tobe divided. The non-Moslems of Pakistan were worried about their future. TheMoslems of the Indian Union were anxious. In each of the new dominions,fighting broke out between ruling majority and frightened minority.One India could have lived in peace. Vivisection sundered vital arteries; out ofthem flowed human blood and the poison of religious hate.Calcutta and the western part of Bengal province remained in the Indian Union.Eastern Bengal went to Pakistan. Twenty-three per cent of the population ofCalcutta was Moslem. The Hindus and Moslems fought.How does a religious riot commence? On April 17, 1938, three Hindus and aMoslem were sitting on their haunches in the Northbrook Gardens in Bombayplaying cards. They had been drinking. They quarrelled over the game.www.mkgandhi.org Page 537

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'Rumours of a Hindu-Moslem disturbance,' reads an official report, 'spread in thecity resulting in panic which was taken advantage of by hooligans and strayassaults, stabbing and stone-throwing commenced .... Orders were issuedprohibiting the carrying of lethal weapons and prescribing the routes for Hinduand Moslem funeral processions. Troops were also asked to stand by .... A clashthat threatened to assume serious proportions was soon brought under control.Sporadic assaults, however, continued for a few days and altogether there werefourteen deaths and injuries to ninety-eight persons.' The police arrested 2488persons.That was in the quiet, normal, pre-Pakistan days of 1938. With tension at itspeak in 1947, especially in a city like Calcutta where the inhabitants aresqueezed together herring- barrel fashion in filthy slums, a little Moslem girlpulling a Hindu girl's hair or a Hindu boy calling a Moslem boy names mightprecipitate a mortal riot. Passion and poverty converted men into tinder.On this inflammable material-, Gandhi undertook to sprinkle the sweet watersof peace.Gandhi had arrived in Calcutta on August 9, 1947. For an entire year, ever sinceJinnah's Direct Action Day on August 16, 1946, Calcutta had been torn by bloodystrife. Gandhi and H. S. Suhrawardy, the former prime minister of Bengal,walked arm in arm through streets tense with religious frenzy. Suhrawardydrove a car with Gandhi as his passenger through riotous areas. Violenceseemed to melt away wherever they passed. Thousands of Moslems and Hindusembraced one another shouting 'Long Live Mahatma Gandhi', 'Long Live Hindu-Moslem unity.' Huge crowds fraternized at Gandhi's daily prayer meetings. AfterAugust 14 no disturbances were reported in Calcutta. Gandhi had calmed thestorm. The press paid tributes to the magician in loincloth.On the night of August 31 Gandhi had gone to bed in the Moslem house. Atabout 10 o'clock he heard angry noises. He lay still. Suhrawardy and severalfemale disciples of the Mahatma could be heard attempting to pacify someintruders. Then glass crashed; window panes had been broken with stones andfists. A number of young men entered the house and commenced kicking inwww.mkgandhi.org Page 538

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesdoors. Gandhi got out of bed and opened the door of his room. He was face toface with enraged rioters. He touched his palms together in greeting. A brickwas thrown at him. It hit a Moslem friend standing by his side. One of therioters swung a lathi stick which narrowly missed Gandhi's head. The Mahatmashook his head sorrowfully- The police arrived; the police chief appealed toGandhi to retire to his room. Then the officers hustled the intruders out of thehouse. Outside, tear gas was used to disperse aJ1 unruly mob of Moslemsinfuriated by the presence of A bandaged Moslem who, they alleged, had beenstabbed by Hindus.Gandhi decided to fast.In a statement to the press on September 1, he said, 'T put in an appearancebefore a yelling crowd does not always* work. It certainly did not last night.What my word in person cannot do, my fast may. It may touch the hearts of allthe warring factions in the Punjab if it does in Calcutta. I therefore beginfasting from 8.15 tonight to end only if and when sanity returns to Calcutta.'It was a fast unto death. Unless sanity returned, the Mahatma would die.September 2, groups and delegations commenced streaming to Gandhi'sresidence. They would do anything to save his life, they said. That was thewrong approach, he explained. His fasts were 'intended to stir the conscienceand remove mental sluggishness'. Saving his life must be incidental to a changeof heart.Leaders of all communities and many organizations called on the Mahatma. Hereceived them all and talked with them. He would not resist from the fast untilcommunal harmony had been restored. Prominent Moslems and an official ofthe Pakistan Seamen's Union visited Gandhi and assured him they would work tokeep the peace. More Moslems came. The fast impressed them; it was for theirsafety and for the rehabilitation of their destroyed homes.On September 4, municipal officials reported to Gandhi that the city had beenabsolutely quiet for twenty-four hours. They also told him that as proof of theirwish for communal peace 500 policemen of North Calcutta, including the Britishwww.mkgandhi.org Page 539

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timespolice officers had commenced a twenty-four-hour sympathy fast whileremaining on duty. The leaders of hooligan bands, burly ruffians, came and satat Gandhi's bedside and wept and promised to refrain from their usualdepredations. Hindu, Moslem and Christian representatives, workers, merchantsand shopkeepers gave a pledge in Gandhi's presence that there would be nomore trouble in Calcutta. He believed them, he said, but this time he wanted awritten promise. And before they signed the promise they must know this; ifthe promise was broken he would commence 'an irrevocable fast' which nothingon earth could stop until he died.The city leaders withdrew to deliberate. It was a serious moment and theywere conscious of the responsibility. They nevertheless drafted and signed thepledge. At 9-15 p.m. on September 4, Gandhi drank a glass of sweet lime juicewhich Suhrawardy handed him. He had fasted seventy-three hours.From that day, through the many months when the Punjab and other provincesshook with religious massacres, Calcutta and both parts of Bengal remainedriot-free. Bengal remained true to its plighted word.On September 7, Gandhi left Calcutta for New Delhi en route to the Punjab.Another part of the garden needed hoeing.At the station Gandhi was met by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajkumari AmritKaur and others. Gloom covered their faces. Riots were raging through Delhi.Sikh and Hindu refugees from the fires of the Punjab were flooding the city.They had occupied the untouchables' colony where the Mahatma used to stay.He would have to live in the 'palatial Birla House', as Gandhi called it.Gandhi's room in Birla House was on the ground floor, about a foot above theearth. It was approximately 25 feet by 16 feet in area and some 10 feet high. Abathroom adjoined it. When Gandhi arrived he had all the furniture removed.Visitors sat on the floor and he slept on the terrace outside the room. Anelectric heater and electric lamp were available for use. The room was wherethe prayer meetings were held on the right side of the house and furthest fromthe area of the Birla grounds. To go to prayers Gandhi would step down to thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 540

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesearth through a high window and then walk under a long row of red sandstonepergolas covered with luxurious vines.On arriving at the house Gandhi learned that no fresh fruit or vegetables wereavailable; vital services had been disrupted by the riots in Delhi which, he said,resembled a city of the dead.With passion and without restraint, Gandhi now gave himself to the task ofbringing Delhi to its senses—it and the Punjab. Nothing else mattered. In formeryears, he had permitted doctors to measure his blood pressure. Now he said,'Leave me alone. I must work and do not want to know about my bloodpressure.' His circulatory system, the physicians said, had not deteriorated inten years, nor did he have more wrinkles on his face or body. A cataractdiscovered in 1939 by an eye specialist had not progressed. His ears hadbecome very sensitive to loud noises. He slept five to six hours every night andhalf an hour to an hour during the day; he always slept soundly and rarelytalked in his sleep. On one occasion, he made arm motions during his sleep andwhen he woke, Dr. Nayyar asked him what had happened and he said he haddreamt he was scaling a wall. He was always fresh and keen in the morning.Despite acute distress over the political situation, Gandhi continued to takeexcellent care of his body. He enjoyed lying for ten to twenty minutes in a veryhot bath at a temperature of 100 or 101 Fahrenheit. Sometimes it made himgiddy. If a shower-bath was available he finished with a cold one.In these months of hard travel and tremendous mental pressure, he ate less.His formula was: Under-eat when overworked. There was much work to bedone.The very first day in Birla House Gandhi visited Dr. Zakir Hussain at Okla, avillage fourteen miles outside New Delhi.Zakir Hussain, a stately scholar with a noble head and character, presided overthe Jamia Millia Islamia, a Moslem religious academy at Okla. Gandhi hadcollected money for the school. He had also appointed Dr. Zakir Hussainchairman of the national society for basic education; he did it at a conferencewww.mkgandhi.org Page 541

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswhere everybody except Hussain had accepted Gandhi's ideas on training forchildren.The Okla academy, a collection of small, new, clean-looking buildings, lies in aregion redolent with Moslem tradition and rich in ruins of ancient Mogul fortsand mosques. But in August 1947 it found itself engulfed in a sea of angryHindus and Sikhs to whom everything Moslem, whether man or building, washateful. At night the teachers and students of the academy stood guard,expecting an assault. All lights were out. In a circle around them they could seeMoslem villages in flames and Moslem homes burning like torches. Nearby is theJumna River. Night after night they could hear Moslems jumping into the riverto escape their pursuers. But the pursuers would jump in after them and thenthere was a scuffle and splash and the victim would be held down till hedrowned or gave one last anguished scream as the knife cut his throat. Nearerand nearer the ring of attackers came. One dark night a taxicab arrived at theJamia Millia grounds; out of it stepped Jawaharlal Nehru. He had driven alonethrough the belt of madmen that circled Delhi in order to stay with Dr. Hussainand his students and protect them if harm came.The moment Gandhi heard of the danger that threatened the Moslem academyhe went out in a car and spent an hour with Zakir Hussain and talked with theteachers and the boys. His presence hallowed the academy; after that it wassafe.The same day Gandhi visited several refugee camps; he was urged to go with anarmed guard; the Hindus and Sikhs might attack him as pro-Moslem and theMoslems might attack him as a Hindu and anybody crazed by deaths orabductions in the family might attack him without reason. He went withoutescort.Throwing caution and health considerations to the wind, Gandhi now developedinordinate energy, criss-crossing the city many times each day to tour riotousareas, visit refugee camps in and outside the city and speak several times a dayto thousands of embittered, uprooted specimens of humanity. 'I think of thepoor refugee in Delhi, in both East Punjab (Indian Union) and West Punjabwww.mkgandhi.org Page 542

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times(Pakistan) today while it is raining, he told his prayer meeting onSeptember 20. 'I have heard that a convoy of Hindus and Sikhs fifty-seven mileslong is pouring into the Indian Union from West Punjab,' he said. 'It makes mybrain reel to think how this can be. Such a happening is unparalleled in thehistory of the world and it makes me, as it should make you, hang my head inshame.'Gandhi was not exaggerating; the fifty-seven-mile long convoy was one ofseveral in the Great Migration in which at least 15,000,000 people trekkedhundreds of miles not to new homes and opportunities but to homelessness,sometimes to death and disease. Out of the part of the Punjab assigned toPakistan, moving in the general direction of New Delhi, came millions of Hindusand Sikhs fleeing the knives and clubs of Moslems. Out of the Indian Union,moving towards Pakistan, came millions of Moslems fearing the daggers andlathis of Hindus and Sikhs. Police protection had become a thing of the past.Police and even military were animated by the same passions as the aggressorsand often helped them to loot and kill.A few tired policemen and groups of young volunteers were all thatdistinguished the 'convoys' from disorganized flights of panicked people. Theyfled in their bullock carts or, if they had never owned a cart or it was takenfrom them, they fled on foot, whole families, adults carrying children, carryingthe sick in baskets, carrying the aged on their shoulders. Frequently the sickwere abandoned and left to die on the dusty road. Cholera, smallpox and otherdiseases scourged the migrant hordes. For days and weeks the convoys crawledforward leaving corpses behind to mark their route. Vultures hovered over theline of March waiting for weary wanderers to drop to the ground. Few familieshad salvaged enough food to support health. If they did it was stolen or foughtfor; the losers starved, the victors existed a little longer. Sometimes hostileconvoys, advancing in opposite directions, camped during the night in thevicinity of one another and continued their senseless vendetta.The Nehru government set up camps outside Delhi to catch the migrants beforethey entered the city and care for them. But endless thousands escaped thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 543

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timescordons. They took what they could seize in the town. They slept in doorwaysand courtyards, on pavements, in gutters, on streets. They lay on the asphalt,exhausted. Unheeding drivers might run over them.The Delhi home of a Moslem gone to Pakistan was considered legitimate booty;the refugees occupied it. Moslem stores were looted. Where Moslems resisted,riots occurred. Reduced to primitive living, the displaced persons yielded toprimitive passions.In this city of the dead and the mad, Mahatma Gandhi tried to spread thegospel of love and peace. Moslems must remain even if they were molested, hesaid; 'the Hindus and Sikhs who molested them discredited their religion and didirreparable harm to India.' He urged holders of unlicensed arms to surrenderthem to him; 'driblets have been coming to me voluntarily.''I must be pardoned for putting first blame on the Hindus and Sikhs,' he told aprayer audience consisting chiefly of Hindus and Sikhs. 'I will not rest till everyMoslem in the Indian Union who wishes to be a loyal citizen of the Union is backin his home living in peace and security and until the Hindus and Sikhs havereturned to their homes.' But the Hindu and Sikhs were afraid to return toPakistan, nor did they wish to relinquish the homes of Moslems, who had fled toPakistan and whom Gandhi was inviting to return.Gandhi had planted himself, alone athwart a raging torrent.He went to a meeting of about five hundred members of the Rashtriya SevakSangha or R.S.S., a highly disciplined organization of young militant Hindus.They were fiercely anti-Moslem, and many of them were fiercely opposed tohim because he tried to protect Moslems. But he told them that they would killHinduism by their intolerance. If Pakistan was maltreating Hindus that was nojustification for their maltreating Moslems. 'There is no gain in returning evilfor evil.' He was indeed a friend of the Moslems, but also a friend of the Sikhsand Hindus. 'Both sides appear to have gone crazy. The result can be nothingbut destruction and misery’ for both sides. The R.S.S, Gandhi said, was 'a wellorganized,well-disciplined body. Its strength could be used in the interests ofIndia or against it.' Allegations had been made against the R.S.S., Gandhiwww.mkgandhi.org Page 544

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesdeclared; it had been accused of fomenting riots and planning assassinations. 'Itis for you to show by your uniform behaviour that the allegations are baseless.'After his speech, Gandhi invited questions. One question and answer wasrecorded.'Does Hinduism permit killing an evil-doer?''One evil-doer cannot punish another,' Gandhi replied.'To punish is the function of the government, not of the public.'October 2, 1947, was the Mahatma's seventy-eighth birthday. Lady Mountbattenand foreign diplomats came to congratulate him; sheaves of telegrams weredelivered from abroad and all parts of India. Many Moslems sent greetings. Therich sent money. Refugees sent flowers. 'Where do congratulations come in?'Gandhi asked. Would it not be more appropriate to send condolences? There isnothing but anguish in my heart. Time was whatever I said the masses followed.Today, mine is a lone voice... I have lost all desire to live long, let alone 125years... I cannot live while hatred and killing mar the atmosphere...I therefore plead with you to give up the present madness.'He did not feel depressed; he felt helpless. 'I invoke the aid of the allembracingPower to take me away from this "vale of tears" rather than makeme a helpless witness of the butchery by man become savage ... If He wants meHe will keep me on earth yet awhile.'He visited refugee camps that were filthy. Refugees who were not untouchablesrefused to clean. He chastised that weakness in Hindus. Cold weather wasapproaching. He appealed for blankets, quilts and cotton sheets for thehomeless.The Punjab is the granary of India. The turmoil in it had stamped the harvestinto the dust and the Indian Union was feeling greater hunger than usual.Gandhi nevertheless opposed rationing because it entailed centralization, redtape, speculation and corruption.www.mkgandhi.org Page 545

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesEach evening he announced how many blankets he had received. Blankets werebetter than quilts because quilts got wet with dew. But quilts, he said, could becovered with old newspapers at night.Gandhi hoped to leave for the Punjab. But Delhi was not at peace. A Moslemshopkeeper, thinking that things had settled down, opened the shutters of hisshop. The same instant, a bullet killed him.One evening Gandhi went to the Delhi Central Jail and conducted a prayerservice for three thousand prisoners. 'I am seasoned ex-prisoner myself,' he toldthem with a laugh.'What should jails be like in free India?' he asked.'All criminals should be treated as patients and the jails should be hospitalsadmitting this kind of patients for treatment and cure.' He closed by expressingthe wish that Hindu, Moslem and Sikh prisoners live together in fraternity.The news from Calcutta was good. Why, he asked his prayer meeting at BirlaHouse, could Delhi not follow the peaceful example of Calcutta?Each evening Gandhi asked his prayer congregation whether anybody objectedto the reading of some verses from the Koran. Usually there were two or threeobjectors. Then he asked whether the other worshippers would harbour any illfeeling for the objectors. They said they would not. Would the objectorsremain quiet during the Koran readings? They would. He read the verses. Thiswas a lesson in tolerance and discipline. He did not expect all to agree. Heexpected all to remain non-violent despite disagreements.With the refugees came harrowing tales of savagery. A man swung an infant byits foot and bashed its head against a wall. Two men took a child by the feetand tore its body in two down the middle. A Moslem mob laid siege to a village:after long resistance the Hindu and Sikh men came out and surrendered; thewomen had huddled inside the stockade which enclosed the village well. TheMoslems were coming to fetch them; a woman jumped into the well; anotherwoman jumped after her; in the next four minutes, seventy-three women haddrowned themselves on top of one another in the well.www.mkgandhi.org Page 546

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThese memories bred new atrocities. Assume that some Moslems had killedHindus because they were Hindus and that most Moslems condoned thosekillings. To hate, suspect and wish to hurt all Moslems because they wereMoslems made the Hindus as immoral as the Moslems. (The argument could alsobe applied to Hindu killings of Moslems.) Moreover, if Hindus sought to justifytheir actions by proving that the Moslems had commenced the atrocities itmerely meant that the Hindus had allowed themselves to become as evil as theMoslems whom they abominated because of that evil; they had been conqueredby the spirit of their tormentors.Fearing retaliation, Moslems in the Indian Union decided to escape to Pakistan.Fearing reprisals, the Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan were trekking to the IndianUnion. A vast region was churning with hate, murder and migrating millions.In the midst of the upheaval stood the little man in the loincloth. A reprisal fora reprisal, a death for death, he was saying, means death for India.Lady Mountbatten visited a refugee camp; she brought Gandhi a message; therefugees wanted to see him. Similar messages arrived from other camps, Hinducamps and Moslems camps. He went as often as he could. Two hundredthousand displaced persons were packed into Kurukshetra Camp in east Punjaband more were pouring in each day from west Punjab. Gandhi had a session ofthe Congress Working Committee to attend so he addressed the camp by radioon November 12, 1947; 'I can serve you best by drawing attention to yourshortcomings. That has been my life's motto, for therein lies true friendship andmy service is not only to you or to India; it extends to the world, for I know nobarriers of race or creed. If you can get rid of your failings, you will benefit notonly yourself but the whole of India.'It hurts me to know that so many of you are without shelter. This is a realhardship particularly in the cold weather ... You must help in the maintenanceof discipline ... You must take the sanitation of the place in your hands. I askyou ... everyone of you, men, women and children to keep Kurukshetra clean... share your rations, be content with what you get ... You must live for othersand not only for yourselves. Idleness is demoralizing.' He urged them to spin.www.mkgandhi.org Page 547

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSporadic violence in Delhi continued. In the early disturbances 137 mosques hadbeen damaged; some had been converted into Hindu temples with idols. Gandhiconsidered 'such desecration a blot on Hinduism and Sikhism. He went to a Sikhcelebration attended by 100,000 bearded Sikhs and their families. Hecondemned their violence against Moslems. Sikhs, he said, had been drinkingand rioting. 'Keep your hearts clean and you will find that all other communitieswill follow you.'Gandhi also criticized the Indian government. 'Our statesmen', he wrote in aletter to Madame Edmond Privat, 'have for over two generations declaimedagainst the heavy- expenditures on armaments under the British regime, butnow that freedom from political serfdom has come, our military expenditurehas increased and still threatens to increase and of this we are proud. There isnot a voice raised against it in our legislative chambers.' He called it 'madimitation of the tinsel of the West'. But he still hoped that India would 'survivethis death dance' and 'occupy the moral height that should belong to her afterthe training, however imperfect, in non-violence for an unbroken period ofthirty- two years since 1915.''When it is relevant,' Gandhi wrote, 'truth has to be uttered, howeverunpleasant it may be ... Misdeeds of the Hindus in the Indian Union have to theproclaimed by the Hindus from the house-top if those of the Moslems inPakistan are to be arrested or stopped.' As a Hindu he was sternest with Hindus.www.mkgandhi.org Page 548

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XIXThe Future of IndiaGANDHI seldom made an adverse criticism without suggesting a concrete cure.He had criticized the Congress Party and the new government of independentIndia. What did he propose?Gandhi was quick to see that the freedom of India raised the question offreedom in India. How could India remain a democracy?There was only one major party, the Congress Party, and it enjoyed vastprestige as the party of Gandhi, Nehru and Patel, the party which had foughtand won the battle for liberation from Britain. Other parties like the HinduMahasabha and the Communists were insignificant.The question Gandhi pondered was: Could the Congress party guide and curbthe government? He had not studied political conditions in the Soviet Union orFranco's Spain or other totalitarian countries, but by intuition he arrived atconclusions which others had reached after long experience and analysis; herealized that a one-party system could actually be a no-party system, for, whenthe government and party are one, the party is a rubber stamp and leads only afictitious existence.If the one important party of India, the Congress, did not maintain anindependent, critical attitude towards the government, who could act as abrake on any autocratic tendencies that might develop in the government?Without free criticism and potent opposition, democracy dies.Without political criticism and opposition, a nation's intellect, culture andpublic morality stagnate; big men are purged and small men become kotowingpygmies. The leaders surround themselves with cowards, sycophants andgrovelling yes-men whose automatic approval is misread as a tribute togreatness.www.mkgandhi.org Page 549

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesCould the Congress Party, with aid from Gandhi and from the free press,prevent such a development in India?On November 15, 1947, in the presence of Gandhi, Professor J. B. Kripalani,president of Congress, informed the All-India Congress Committee that he wasresigning his position. He had not been consulted by the government nor beentaken into its full confidence. Although, 'it is the party from which thegovernment of the day derives its power", Kripalani said, the governmentignored the party. Gandhi, Kripalani revealed, felt that in these circumstancesthe resignation was justified.Nehru and Patel were the heads of the government. They were also leaders ofthe Congress party. Their popularity and hold on the Congress machine enabledthem to dominate the party. They identified themselves with the party. Whythen should they accept the Congress president as a curb on their power? Whyshould they give him a veto on their proposals?The choice of a successor to Kripalani assumed key importance. The election ofa puppet who obeyed the government would signalize the elimination ofeffective political opposition.Gandhi attended the meeting of the Congress Working Committee which was toelect the new president. It was Mahatma's day of silence. When nominationswere opened, he wrote the name of his candidate on a small piece of paperand passed it to Nehru. Nehru read the name aloud: Narendra Dev, the Socialistleader. Nehru supported Narendra Dev's candidature. Others opposed it.The Socialists were then still inside the Congress Party.But their ideological, political and personal differences with right-wingCongressmen presumably encouraged Gandhi in the belief that they might beable to control and check certain trends within the government.The morning session of the Working Committee closed at 10 a. m; no vote wastaken.At noon, Nehru and Patel summoned Rajendra Prasad and, without consultingGandhi urged him to be a candidate for the presidency of Congress. Dr. Prasad,www.mkgandhi.org Page 550

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesa member of the Working Committee, was a lawyer who first met Gandhi inChamparan in 1917 during the struggle for the indigo sharecroppers.Prasad went to Gandhi in Birla House at 1 p. m. and told the Mahatma aboutthe offer. 'I don't like it,' Gandhi said.'I cannot remember ever having dared to oppose Gandhi,' Dr. Prasad stated inrecounting these events. 'Even when I differed with him I felt he must be rightand followed him.'On this occasion, too, Prasad agreed with Gandhi and promised to withdraw hiscandidacy.Subsequently, however, Prasad was persuaded to change his mind. He became,the new Congress president. He was a gentle, modest, compliant, retiring,well-intentioned, high- minded person more inclined to serve than to lead. Hewas sixty-three.Gandhi had been defeated by the Congress machine and by the key men in thegovernment.Gandhi now tried a different approach.During the first half of December 1947 he held a series of conferences with hismost trusted collaborators outside the government. They were the ConstructiveWorkers, the men and women who directed the several organizations set up byGandhi over the years to remove untouchability, spread the use of Hindustanias the national language, extend basic education, improve food cultivation,develop village industries and encourage hand spinning. The ConstructiveWorkers were devoted to non-violence; they believed in Gandhi not merelybecause he was the chief instrument of India's political independence butbecause they considered him the chief agent for India's social reform.Gandhi wanted all these organizations to combine. But he did not want theConstructive Workers 'to go into power politics; it would spell ruin. Or elsewhy,' Gandhi asked, 'should not I myself have gone into politics and tried to runthe government my way? Those who are holding the reins of power today wouldwww.mkgandhi.org Page 551

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeseasily have stepped aside and made room for me, but whilst they are in chargethey carry on only according to their own lights.'But I do not want to take power into my hands,' Gandhi assured his friends. 'Byabjuring power and devoting ourselves to pure, selfless service of the voters wecan guide and influence them. It would give us far more real power than weshall have by going into the Government. A stage may come when the peoplethemselves may feel and say that they want us and no one else to wield power.The question could then be considered. I shall most probably not be alive then.'Unable to guide Congress, Gandhi planned to build a new vehicle which wouldpush the government and, in an emergency, carry the government's load. Itwould be in politics without seeking political power except as a last resort.Instead of trying to win votes it would teach the masses 'to use their votesintelligently', Gandhi said.'Under adult suffrage,' he declared, 'if we are worth our salt, we should havesuch a hold on the people that whomsoever we choose would be returned.' Toassist in this task Gandhi wanted to attract more intellectuals. 'Ourintelligentsia,' he told the conference of Constructive Workers, 'are not lackingin sympathy. Reason, as a rule, follows in the footsteps of feeling. We have notsufficiently penetrated their hearts to convince their reason.' That is a key toGandhi: heart and mind were one, but heart ruled.Why could not the constructive welfare work be done by the Congress Party orby the government? a delegate asked.'Because Congressmen aren't sufficiently interested in constructive work,'Gandhi replied simply. We must recognize the fact that the social order of ourdreams cannot come through the Congress Party of today....There is so much corruption today,' Gandhi asserted, 'that it frightens me.Everybody wants to carry so many votes in his pocket, because votes givepower.' (Kripalani described the trouble as 'redtapism, jobbery, corruption,bribery, black- marketing and profiteering'.) Therefore, Gandhi emphasized,'banish the idea of the capture of power and you will be able to guide powerwww.mkgandhi.org Page 552

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesand keep it on the right path ... There is no other way of removing thecorruption that threatens to strangle our independence at its very birth.'He who is immune to the temptation of power can best oppose the men inpower, Gandhi felt. His limited experience told him that legislators and judgeswere too close to the machinery of power to check-and-balance the executive;only those outside government, he contended, could check-and- balance thosein government.Yet even his own high authority was no match for the power of a governmentborn of his efforts and whose members touched his feet in obeisance.www.mkgandhi.org Page 553

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XXThe Last FastRICHARD Symonds, a British friend who had met Gandhi in Bengal while doingrelief work there, fell ill with typhoid in New Delhi in November 1947. Gandhiinvited the patient to Birla House.Once the doctor advised brandy for the sick man. The house was searched anda bottle of brandy found; on being asked, Gandhi, a strict prohibitionist, saidhe had no objection to it being given to Symonds. He took the same attitudesubsequently when sherry was recommended to Symonds.On the approach of Christmas, Gandhi asked a group of Indian Christian girls todecorate Symond's room with holly and gay festoons; on Christmas Eve, at theMahatma's suggestion the girls came and sang carols.Gandhi spent at least a few minutes and often much longer, with the patienteach day. His only interference in the cure was to urge the application of mudpacks to the abdomen. For the rest, his chief contribution to the restoration ofthe Englishman's health was to make him laugh whenever he was with him.Symonds had been to Kashmir and wanted to discuss the situation with Gandhi,but except on the Mahatma's day of silence he never got a chance, for Gandhientertained Symonds with funny stories and jokes from the moment he cameinto the room till the moment he left. The Kashmir problem was too grave for apatient.Kashmir, including the beautiful Vale of Kashmir, is at the top of the world, innorthernmost India. Its Hindu maharaja had ruled his 800,000 Hindu subjectsand 3,200,000 Moslem subjects with equal disregard of their welfare andfreedom. In September 1947 the Pakistan government abetted incursions intoKashmir by the wild warriors of the tribal area between the North-west Frontierand Afghanistan; subsequently Pakistan regular troops invaded Kashmir.Alarmed and helpless, the maharaja asked that his state be admitted into theIndian Union. On October 29 the accession was officially announced, and thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 554

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesmaharaja thereupon appointed as his prime minister Sheik Abdulla, a Moslem,whom he had held in prison for protracted periods. Simultaneously, the NewDelhi authorities rushed troops to Kashmir by air and road. Without the airlift,Kashmir would have been overrun and annexed by Pakistan. Soon Kashmir andneighbouring Jammu, likewise the realm of the maharaja, became the scene ofa small war between India and Pakistan which seriously drained the financialresources, patience and military establishments of both Dominions. Moslemscalled it 'Holy War'.In a Christmas Day broadcast, Gandhi approved of India's action in sendingtroops to Kashmir to repel the tribal invaders. He condemned suggestions topartition the State between India and Pakistan. He regretted the fact thatNehru had submitted the dispute to the United Nations. At the U.N., he toldHorace Alexander, the British pacifist, considerations of international 'powerpolitics' rather than merit would determine the attitude of countries towardsthe Kashmir issue. Gandhi therefore urged India and Pakistan to 'come for anamicable settlement with the assistance of impartial Indians'; that, he said,would 'enable the Indian Union's representation to the U.N. to be withdrawnwith dignity'. If direct negotiations failed, Gandhi contemplated mediation byone or two Englishmen; in his talk with Horace Alexander, the Mahatmamentioned Philip Noel-Baker, a member of the British Labour Government, asan acceptable mediator. He also envisaged the possibility of a plebiscite orreferendum among the inhabitants of the disputed region.The Indian government, however, rejected mediation and arbitration;bitter U. N. debates continued interminably while tempers and militaryexpenditures rose.Gandhi always combined high politics with low politics. He talked Kashmir withNehru one day, and the next day he went to a village and told the peasants howto mix 'the excreta of animals and human beings' with rubbish to make 'valuablemanure'. They must improve their cattle, he advised further. Hinduscomplained that Moslems killed cows, Gandhi said, but Hindus killed cows 'byinches through ill treatment'. The villagers' address to him had lauded thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 555

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesvirtues of non-violence. 'But I know how such an address is prepared,' he statedin his reply. 'Someone writes it out and someone else reads it parrotwise andthat is the end of it.' Did they practise non-violence? 'There must be consistencybetween one's thoughts, words and actions.'By this touchstone, Gandhi was great; greater in fact after India becameindependent than before. On the eve of his departure from India after severalmonths' sojourn, the Reverend Dr. John Haynes Holmes of the CommunityChurch in New York wrote to Gandhi saying, 'I count these last months to be thecrown and climax of your unparalleled career. You were never so great as inthese dark hours.' Dr. Holmes had talked with Gandhi and knew his mood. 'Ofcourse,' he wrote to the Mahatma 'you have been sad, well- nigh overborne, bythe tragedies of recent months, but you must never feel that this involves anybreakdown of your life work.'Gandhi printed the praise in Harijan of January 11, 1948, under the caption: 'Isit Deserved?' His answer was 'I wonder if the claim can be proved.' In the sameissue of the paper, Gandhi printed another letter from a European friend, whohad written to comfort him. 'I for one, and I am sure I speak the heart of untoldmillions,' the friend declared, 'feel it my bounden duty to express my deepestgratitude to you for giving the whole of your life to what you felt to be the oneway to salvation for mankind, non-violence.''I must not flatter myself with the belief nor allow friends like you to entertainthe belief,' Gandhi replied, 'that I have exhibited any heroic and demonstrablenon-violence in myself. All I can claim is that I am sailing in that directionwithout a moment's stop ....'Gandhi's views on these matters were sober and modest. But he was tooinvolved emotionally in his life work to be objective about it. He could not seehimself in historic perspective. He was too disappointed by the failure of othersto judge his own success correctly.Would it be right to judge Christ by his crucifiers and detractors?www.mkgandhi.org Page 556

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi was too great to succeed. His goals were too high, his followers toohuman and frail.Gandhi did not belong to India alone. His failures in India in no wise detractfrom his message and meaning to the world. He may be very dead in India andvery alive outside India. Ultimately he may live there and here.It is the manner of Gandhi's life that matters, not his immediate effect on hisimmediate neighbours.Jesus may have thought that God had forsaken Him and Gandhi may havethought his people had forsaken him. The verdict of history cannot beanticipated by those who make it.The stature of a man is in the eye of the beholder. Harassed, unhappy,thwarted by those who adored him. Gandhi could not have seen what heightshe attained in the last months of his life. In that period he did something ofendless value of any society: he gave India a concrete, living demonstration ofa different and better life. He showed that men could live as brothers and thatbrute man with blood on his hands can respond, however briefly, to the touchof the spirit. Without such moments humanity would lose faith in itself. Foreverafter, the community must compare that flash of light with the darkness ofnormal existence.The fact that Gandhi's fast restored Calcutta to its senses and peace, the factthat his presence reduced the mass killings in Delhi to occasional outbursts, thefact that his fleeting visit to Dr. Zakir Hussain's Okla academy gave it immunityto violence, the fact that hardened bandits laid their arms at his feet, the factthat Hindus would listen to Koran verses and that Moslems would not object tohearing the holy words of Islam from the mouth of a Hindu—all this remains toinspire or haunt those whose actions would suggest that they have forgotten it.It is the seed of conscience and the source of hope.On January 13, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi commenced his last fast. It engraved animage of goodness on India's brain.www.mkgandhi.org Page 557

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe killings in Delhi had ceased. Gandhi's presence in the city had produced itseffect. But he was still in 'agony'. 'It is intolerable to me,' he said, 'that a personlike Dr. Zakir Hussain, for instance, or for that matter Shaheed Suhrawardy (theex-prime minister of Bengal) should not be able to move about in Delhi asfreely and with as much safety as I myself.' Gandhi wanted to go to Pakistan tohelp the Hindus and Sikhs there, but how could he when the Moslems of Delhihad not obtained full redress? 'I felt helpless,' he said. 'I have never put up withhelplessness in all my life.'He therefore fasted; it was an 'all-in fast', to death. 'It came to me in a flash.'He had not consulted Nehru or Patel or his doctors. To the charge that he hadacted impatiently when the situation was improving, he replied that he hadwaited patiently since the riots started a year ago; the spirit of inter- religiouskilling was still aboard in the land. 'It was only when in terms of human effort Ihad exhausted all resources ... that I put my head on God's lap ... God sent methe fast... Let our sole prayer be that God may vouchsafe me strength of spiritduring the fast that the temptation to live may not lead me into a hasty orpremature termination of the fast.'The fast, Gandhi declared on the first day, was directed to 'the conscience ofall', to the Hindus and Moslems in the Indian Union and to the Moslems ofPakistan. If all or any one of the groups responds fully, I know the miracle willbe achieved. For instance, if the Sikhs respond to my appeal as one man I shallbe wholly satisfied. He would go and live among the Sikhs of the Punjab.‘We are steadily losing hold on Delhi.' Gandhi asserted; he feared arecrudescence of violence in the capital, and if Delhi goes, India goes and withthat the last hope of world peace.' Hindus had been murdered in Karachi, thecapital of Pakistan, and elsewhere in the Moslem Dominion. With his fingertips,the Mahatma sensed the danger of a new wave of riots. In Delhi refugees wereejecting Moslems from their homes, and demands had been heard to banish allthe Moslem inhabitants of the city. 'There is storm within the breast,' Gandhisaid; 'it may burst forth any day.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 558

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesHe had brooded over the situation for three days without telling anybody. Whenat last he decided to fast 'it made me happy'. He felt happy for the first time inmonths.He knew he might die, 'but death for me would be a glorious deliverance ratherthan that I should be a helpless witness to the destruction of India, Hinduism,Sikhism and Islam.' His friends, he announced must not rush to Birla House totry to dissuade him. Nor must they be anxious. 'I am in God's hands.' Instead ofworrying about him they should 'turn the searchlight inward; this is essentially atesting time for all of us'.On the first day of the fast he walked to the evening prayer meeting andconducted the services as usual. 'A fast weakens nobody during the first twentyfourhours after a meal,' he told the congregation with a smile. A writtenquestion passed to him on the platform asked who was to blame for the fast.No one, he replied, 'but if the Hindus and Sikhs insist on turning out theMoslems of Delhi they will betray India and their religions; and it hurts me'.Some taunted him, he said, with fasting for the sake of the Moslems. They wereright. 'All my life I have stood, as everyone should stand, for minorities andthose in need ....'I expect a thorough cleansing of hearts,' he declared. It did not matter whatthe Moslems in Pakistan were doing. Hindus and Sikhs should rememberTagore's favourite song: 'If no one responds to your call, Walk alone, Walkalone.'He would break his fast when Delhi became peaceful 'in the real sense of theterm.'On the second day of the fast, the doctors told Gandhi not to go to prayers, sohe dictated a message to be read to the congregation. But then he decided toattend and addressed the worshippers after the hymns and holy scriptures hadbeen chanted. He had been deluged with messages, he said. The most pleasantwas from Mridulla Sarabhai in Lahore, Pakistan. She wired that his Moslemfriends, including some in the Moslem League and Pakistan government wereanxious for his safety and asked what they should do.www.mkgandhi.org Page 559

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesHis answer was: The fast is a process of self-purification and is intended toinvite all who are in sympathy with the mission of the fast to take part in theprocess of self- purification .... Supposing there is a wave of self-purificationthroughout both parts of India. Pakistan will become pak, pure ... Such aPakistan can never die. Then, and only then, shall I repent that I ever calledpartition a sin, as I am afraid I must hold today...As a child, he revealed, after listening to his father's discussions with friends ofother communities, he had dreamed of real amity between religions. 'In theevening of my life, I shall jump like a child to feel that the dream has beenfulfilled.' Then his wish to live 125 years would be revived.'I have not the slightest desire that the fast should be ended as soon aspossible,' he assured the congregation. 'It matters little if the ecstatic wishes ofa fool like me are never realized and the fast is never broken. I am content towait as long as it may be necessary, but it will hurt me to think that peoplehave acted merely to save my life.'In this fast Gandhi did not wish to be examined by the physicians. 'I havethrown myself on God,' he told them. But Dr. Gilder, the heart specialist ofBombay, said the doctors wished to issue daily bulletins and could not tell thetruth unless they examined him. That convinced the Mahatma and he relented.Dr. Sushila Nayyar told him there were acetone bodies in his urine.That is because I haven't enough faith,' Gandhi said.'But this is a chemical,' she protested.He looked at her with a faraway look and said, 'How little science knows. Thereis more in life than science and there is more in God than in chemistry.'He could not drink water; it caused nausea. He refused to add some drops ofcitrus juice or honey to the water to prevent nausea. The kidneys werefunctioning poorly. He had lost much strength; his weight dropped two poundseach day.The third day he submitted to a high colonic irrigation. At 2-30 in the morninghe awoke and asked for a hot bath. In the tub he dictated a statement towww.mkgandhi.org Page 560

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesPyarelal asking the Indian Union government to pay the government of Pakistan550,000,000 rupees, or approximately £ 40,000,000. This was Pakistan's share inthe assets of pre-partition India; the New Delhi authorities had delayedpayment, and Gandhi was demanding immediate transfer of the money. Havingdictated the memorandum, he felt giddy and Pyarelal lifted him out of thewater and sat him in a chair. The Mahatma's weight was down to 107 pounds,his blood pressure 140.98.The Indian Union government paid out the money.That day, Gandhi occupied a cot which stood in an enclosed porch at the sideof Birla House. Most of the time he lay in a crouched position, like an embryo,with his knees pulled up towards his stomach and his fists under his chest. Thebody and head were completely covered with a white khadi cloth which framedthe face. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be asleep or half conscious.An endless queue filed past at a distance of ten feet. Indians and foreigners inthe line were moved to pity as they observed him; many wept and murmured aprayer and touched their palms together in a greeting which he did not see.Acute pain was written on his face. Yet even in sleep or semi-consciousness,the suffering seemed to be sublimated; it was suffering dulled by theexhilaration of faith, suffering moderated by an awareness of service. His innerbeing knew that he was making a contribution to peace and he was therefore atpeace with himself.Before prayers at 5 p. m. he was fully awake but he could not walk to theprayer ground and arrangements were made for him to speak from his bed intoa microphone connected with a loud-speaker at the prayer ground and with theAll- India Radio which would broadcast his remarks throughout the country.'Do not bother about what others are doing,' he said in a weak voice. 'Each of usshould turn the searchlight inward and purify his or her heart as much aspossible. I am convinced that if you purify yourselves sufficiently you will helpIndia and shorten the period of my fast ... You should think how best toimprove yourselves and work for the good of the country ... No one can escapewww.mkgandhi.org Page 561

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesdeath. Then why be afraid of it? In fact, death is a friend who bringsdeliverance from suffering.'He could speak no further. The rest of his message was read for him.Journalists had submitted questions to him and he was answering them orally.'Why have you undertaken a fast when there was no disturbance of any kind inany part of the Indian Dominion?'"What was it if not a disturbing disturbance', he replied, 'for a crowd to makean organized and a determined effort to take forcible possession of Moslemhouses? The disturbance was such that the police had reluctantly to resort totear gas and even a little shooting, if only overhead, before the crowddispersed. It would have been foolish for me to wait till the last Moslem hadbeen turned out of Delhi by subtle, undemonstrative methods which I woulddescribe as killing by inches.'The charge had been made that he was fasting against Vallabhbhai Patel, theassistant Prime Minister and Home Minister, whom some regarded as anti-Moslem. Gandhi denied it and said those seemed like an attempt to create agulf between him and Nehru on the one hand and Patel on the other.The fourth day, Gandhi's pulse was irregular. He allowed the doctors to take anelectro-cardiogram and give him another irrigation. Maulana Abul Kalam Azadpleaded in vain with the Mahatma to drink some water with citrus juice. Gandhihad been drinking no water and passing no urine. The physicians warned himthat even if he survived the fast he would suffer permanent, serious injury.Unheeding, he spoke to the prayer meeting by microphone from his cot andboasted that his voice was stronger than the day before. 'I have never felt sowell on the fourth day of a fast,' he stated. 'My sole guide, even dictator, isGod, the Infallible and Omnipotent. If He has any further use for this frail bodyof mine He will keep it in g spite of the prognostications of medical men andwomen. I am n in His hands. Therefore, I hope you will believe me when I saythat I dread neither death nor permanent injury even if I survive. But I do feelthat this warning of medical friends should, if the country has any use for me,hurry the people up to close their ranks.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 562

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesHe insisted on addressing the prayer meeting by microphone for two minutes.This was followed by the reading of a statement which he had dictated earlier.The government of the Indian Union was paying Pakistan 550,000,000 rupees.This, Gandhi hoped, would lead to an honourable settlement of the Kashmirquestion and all outstanding differences between the two Dominions.'Friendship should replace the present enmity .... What will be Pakistan'scounter gesture?'On January 17, Gandhi’s weight was stabilized at 107 pounds. He wasaccumulating water apparently from the irrigations. He suffered from nauseaand was restless. But for hours he rested quietly or slept. Nehru came andcried. Gandhi sent Pyarelal into the city to ascertain whether it was safe forMoslems to return. Hundreds of telegrams arrived from princes. From Moslemsin Pakistan, from every corner of India. Gandhi felt gratified, but his writtenstatement that day was a warning 'Neither the Rajas nor Maharajas nor theHindus or Sikhs or any others will serve themselves or India as a whole if at this,what is to me sacred juncture they mislead me with a view to terminating myfast. They should know that I never feel so happy as when I am fasting for thespirit. This fast has brought me higher happiness than hitherto. No one needdisturb this happy state unless he can honestly claim that in his journey he hasturned deliberately from Sa.tan towards God.'On January 18, Gandhi felt better. He permitted some light massage. Hisweight remained at 107 pounds.Ever since 11 a. m. on the 13th when Gandhi commenced to fast-_ committeesrepresenting numerous communities, organizations and refugee groups in Delhihad been meeting in the house of Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the new Congresspresident, in an effort to establish real peace among divergent elements- It wasnot a matter of obtaining signatures to a document. That would not satisfyGandhi. They must make concrete pledges which they knew their followerswould carry out. If the pledges were broken Gandhi could easily and quicklyascertain the fact and then he would fast irrevocably to death. Conscious of thewww.mkgandhi.org Page 563

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesresponsibility, some representatives hesitated and went away to consult theirconscience and subordinates.At last, on the morning of the 18th, the pledge was drafted and signed andoven- a hundred delegates repaired from Prasad's home to Birla House. Nehruand Azad were already there. The Chief of Police of Delhi and his deputy werealso present; they too hack! Signed the pledge. Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs,Christians and Jews attended. The Hindu Mahasabha and the R.S.S. wererepresented.Jarab Zahid Hussain-Saheb, the High Commissioner (Ambassador) of Pakistan inDelhi, was also present.Prasad opened the conference with the fasting Mahatma by explaining thattheir pledge included a promise and programme for implementation. Theundertakings were definite. ‘We take the pledge 'that we shall protect the life,property and faith of the Moslems and that the incidents which have takenplace in Delhi will not happen again.'Gandhi listened and nodded.We want to assure Gandhiji,' Point Two, 'that the annual fair atKwaja Qutab-ud-Din Mazar will be held this year as in previous years.'This was a reference to a fair held regularly at a Moslem shrine"-outsidethe city.The specific nature of this promise seemed to brighten Gandhi's face.'Moslems will be able to move about in Subzimandi, Karol Bagh, Paharganj andother localities just as they could in the past.The mosques which have been left by Moslems and which are now in thepossession of Hindus and Sikhs will be returned. The areas which have been setapart for Moslems will not be forcibly occupied.'Moslems who had fled could return and conduct their business as before.These things,' they assured him, 'will be done by our personal efforts and notwith the help of the police or military.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 564

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesPrasad accordingly begged the Mahatma to discontinue the fast.A Hindu representative then reported to Gandhi on the touching scenes offraternization that had taken place that morning when a procession of 150Moslem residents of Subzimandi was given an ovation and then feted by theHindus of the locality.Gandhi had been kept informed of the deliberations in Rajendra Prasad's house;he had originally formulated several of the points which the delegates werepresenting to him as adopted.Gandhi now addressed the group before him. He was moved, he said, by theirwords. But 'your guarantee is nothing worth and I will feel and you will one dayrealize that it was a great blunder for me to give up the fast if you holdyourself responsible for the communal peace of Delhi only.' The press hadreported interreligious troubles in Allahabad. Representatives of the HinduMahasabha and R.S.S., Gandhi continued, were in the room and had signed thepledge for Delhi. 'If they are sincere about their professions surely they cannotbe indifferent to outbreaks of madness in places other than Delhi.' This was aclear implication of the guilt of these two organizations. 'Delhi,' Gandhicontinued, 'is the heart of the Indian Dominion and you are the cream of Delhi.If you cannot make the whole of India realize that the Hindus, Sikhs andMoslems are all brothers, it will bode ill for the future of both Dominions. Whatwill happen to India if they both quarrel?'Here Gandhi, overcome with emotion, broke down; tears streamed down hishollow cheeks. Onlookers sobbed; many wept.When he resumed his voice was too weak to be heard and Dr. Sushila Nayyarrepeated aloud what he whispered to her. Were they deceiving him, Gandhiasked. Were they merely trying to save his life? Would they guarantee peace inDelhi and release him so he could go to Pakistan and plead for peace there? DidMoslems regard Hindus as infidels who worshipped idols and who shouldtherefore be exterminated?www.mkgandhi.org Page 565

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesMaulana Azad and other Moslem scholars spoke and assured Gandhi that his wasnot the Islamic attitude. Genesh Dutt speaking for the R.S.S. and the HinduMahasabha, pleaded with Gandhi to break his fast. The Pakistan ambassadoralso addressed a few friendly words to the Mahatma. A Sikh representativeadded his pledge.Gandhi sat on the cot, silent and sunk in thought. The assembly waited. Finally,he announced that he would break the fast. Parsi, Moslem and Japanesescriptures were read and then the Hindu verse:Lead me from untruth to truth,From darkness to light,From death to immortality.The girls of Gandhi's entourage sang a Hindu song and 'When I survey theWondrous Cross', Gandhi's favourite Christian hymn.Thereupon, Maulana Azad handed Gandhi a glass filled with eight ounces oforange juice which Gandhi slowly drank.If the pledge was kept, Gandhi said, it would revive his wish to live his full spanof life and serve humanity. That span, according to learned opinion,' hedeclared, 'is at least 125 years, some say 133.'The same afternoon, Gandhi had a talk with Arthur Moore, former editor of theBritish-owned daily Statesman. 'He was lightsome and gay,' Moore wrote, 'andhis interest while he talked with me was not in himself but in me, whom heplied with probing questions.'When he awoke that morning, Nehru had decided to fast until evening insympathy with Gandhi. Then the Prime Minister was summoned to Birla Housewhere he witnessed the giving of the pledge and the breaking of the fast. 'Seehere,' Nehru said to Gandhi in mock censure, 'I have been fasting; and now thiswill force me to break my fast prematurely.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 566

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesGandhi was pleased. In the afternoon he sent some documents to Nehru with anote saying he hoped he had ended his fast. 'May you long remain the jewel ofIndia,' Gandhi added. Jawahar is 'jewel' in Hindustani.Gandhi told his evening prayer meeting that he interpreted the pledge asmeaning, 'Come what may, there will be complete friendship between theHindus, Moslems, Sikhs, Christians and Jews, a friendship not to be broken.'Sir Mohamed Zafrullah Khan, the Foreign Minister of Pakistan, informed the U.N. Security Council at Lake Success that 'a new and tremendous wave of feelingand desire for friendship between the two Dominions is sweeping thesubcontinent in response to the fast.'The national boundary between Pakistan and the Indian Union is an unhealedcut through the heart of India and friendship is difficult to achieve.Nevertheless, Gandhi's last fast did perform the miracle not merely of pacifyingDelhi but of putting an end to religious riots and violence throughout bothDominions.That partial solution of a problem which is worldwide stands as a monument tothe moral force of one man whose desire to serve was greater than hisattachment to life. Gandhi loved life and wanted to live. But through thereadiness to die he recovered the capacity to serve, and therein lay happiness.In the twelve days that followed the fast he was happy and jolly; despondencyhad fled and he was full of plans for further work. He courted death and founda new lease on life.www.mkgandhi.org Page 567

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesChapter XXIThe Last ActTHE first day after the fast Gandhi was carried to prayers in a chair. In hisspeech, which was only faintly audible, he reported that an official of theHindu Mahasabha, which believed in Hindu supremacy and was the parent ofthe militant anti-Moslem R.S.S., had repudiated the Delhi peace pledge. Gandhisaid he was sorry.The second day he again had to be carried to prayers. In the course of his usualremarks, he declared he hoped to recuperate rapidly and then go to Pakistan topursue the mission of peace.At question time, a man urged Gandhi to proclaim himself a reincarnation ofGod. 'Sit down and be quiet,' Gandhi replied with a tired smile.While Gandhi was speaking, the noise of an explosion was heard. 'What is it?' heasked. 'I don't know.' The audience was agitated. 'Don't worry about it,' he said.'Listen to me.'A hand-made bomb had been thrown at the Mahatma from the nearby gardenwall.The next day Gandhi, having walked to the prayer meeting, told theworshippers that congratulations had poured in on him for remaining unruffleddining the incident. He said he deserved no praise; he had thought it wasmilitary practice. 'I would deserve praise,' he asserted, 'only if I fell as a resultof such an explosion and yet retained a smile on my face and no malice againstthe doer. No one should look down on the misguided youth who had thrown thebomb. He probably looks upon me as an enemy of Hinduism.'The young man, Gandhi continued, should realize that 'those who differ withhim are not necessarily evil'. He urged the supporters of such young people todesist from their activity. 'This is not the way to save Hinduism. Hinduism canonly be saved by my method.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 568

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesSikhs visited Gandhi and assured him that the would-be assailant was not aSikh. "What does it matter,' Gandhi asked, 'whether be was a Sikh or a Hindu ora Moslem? I wish all perpetrators well.'An illiterate old woman had grappled with the grenade- thrower and held himtill the police came. Gandhi commended 'the unlettered sister on her simplebravery.' He told the Inspector General of Police not to molest the young man.Instead, they should try to convert him to right thinking and right doing. Norshould the worshippers be angry with the 'miscreant'. You should pity him,'Gandhi said.The young man's name was Madan Lal. He was a refugee from the Punjab, hadfound shelter in a mosque in Delhi and been evicted when the police, underpressure of Gandhi's wishes, commenced clearing Moslem places of worship.'I had seen with my own eyes horrible things in Pakistan,' Madan Lai testified athis trial. 'I had also been an eye-witness to the shooting down of Hindus inPunjab towns and in Delhi by troops from the south.'Aroused, Madan Lad had joined a group of men who were plotting to killGandhi. When the grenade failed to reach its target and Madan Lai wasarrested, his fellow conspirator, Nathuram Vinayak Godse, came to Delhi.Godse, age thirty- five, was the editor and publisher of a Hindu Mahasabhaweekly in Poona in Tilak's Maratha country, and he was a high degree,Chitpawan Brahman.Subsequently, Godse, Madan Lal and seven others were tried together. The triallasted more than six months. Among other things, Madan Lal said he wasangered by the Indian Union's payment of 550,000,000 rupees to Pakistan. Thisexasperated Godse.'I sat brooding intensely on the atrocities perpetrated on Hinduism and its darkand deadly future if left to face Islam outside and Gandhi inside,' Godsetestified, 'and .... I decided all of a sudden to take the extreme step againstGandhi.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 569

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesThe success of Gandhi's last fast especially infuriated Godse. He resented theMahatma's insistence that refugees be evacuated from the mosques. He wasbitter because no demands were made on the Moslems.Godse began hovering around Birla House. He wore a khaki jacket. In a pocketof the jacket he kept a small pistol.Gandhi's prayer meeting on Sunday, January 25, 1948, had an unusually heavyattendance. Gandhi was pleased. He told the people that they should bringstraw mats or thick khadi to sit on because the ground in winter was cold anddamp. It gladdened his heart, he continued, to be told by Hindu and Moslemfriends that Delhi had experienced 'a reunion of hearts'. In view of thisimprovement, could not every Hindu and Sikh who came to prayers bring along'at least one Moslem?' To Gandhi this would be concrete evidence ofbrotherhood.But Hindus like Madan Lal and Godse and their ideological sponsors wereincensed by the presence of Moslems at Hindu services and the reading ofselections from the Koran. Moreover, they seemed to hope that the death ofGandhi might be the first step towards the violent reunification of India. Theywished, by removing him, to make the Moslems defenceless, little realizing thathis assassination would have the opposite effect by showing the country howdangerous and undisciplined extreme anti-Moslems could be.Despite the relaxation that followed his fast, Gandhi knew the great difficultiesfacing the new, inexperienced government. He had lost confidence in theability of Congress. Much, very much, now depended on the two topgovernment leaders, Prime Minister Nehru and Deputy Prime Minister Patel.They did not always see eye to eye. They were temperamental opposites.There had been friction between them. It worried Gandhi. Indeed, things hadcome to such a pass that Gandhi wondered whether Nehru and Patel could worktogether in the government. Forced to make a choice, the Mahatma might havepreferred Nehru. He appreciated Patel as an old friend and skilledadministrator, but loved Nehru and was sure of his equal friendship for Hindusand Moslems. Patel had been suspected of political pro-Hinduism.www.mkgandhi.org Page 570

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesIn the end, Gandhi decided that Nehru and Patel were indispensable to oneanother. The government would be seriously weakened if it lost either. Gandhiaccordingly wrote Nehru a note in English saying he and Patel 'must holdtogether' for the good of the country. At 4 p.m. on January 30, Patel came tosee Gandhi in Birla House to hear the same message.At 5.05 Gandhi, troubled because he was late, left Patel and, leaning his armson Abha and Manu, hurried to the prayer ground. Nathuram Godse was in thefront row of the congregation, his hand in his pocket gripping the small pistol.He had no personal hatred of Gandhi, Godse said at his trial, at which he wassentenced to be hanged: 'Before I fired the shots I actually wished him well andbowed to him in reverence.'In response to Godse's obeisance and the reverential bows of other members ofthe congregation, Gandhi touched his palms together, smiled and blessed them.At that moment, Godse pulled the trigger. Gandhi fell, and died murmuring,'Oh, God.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 571

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesABOUT AUTHORLOUIS FISCHER was born in 1896 in Philadelphia. He taught school several yearsbefore he became a journalist. In 1921 he was sent to Berlin by the “New YorkPost" and spent most of the next twenty-five years on roving assignments inEurope and Asia.He is one of the outstanding authorities on Russia, where he spent years, andon India and the Middle East. After covering the Spanish Civil War, he was inFrance when World War II broke out and he spent the first few months of theconflict practically commuting between London and Paris. Since the war hetravelled throughout the world.Louis Fischer has written: "Empire", "Dawn of Victory', " A Week with Gandhi ","The Soviets in World Affairs", "Men and Politics", "The Great Challenge","Gandhi and Stalin", "The Life of Mahatma Gandhi", etc.www.mkgandhi.org Page 572

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