1

July 2014

MAHATMA GANDHI

INTERVIEWS TO AMERICANS

Edited by

E. S. Reddy
 CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I. THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM

Non-cooperation Movement
Frazier Hunt, September 1921
Ms. Gertrude Emerson, 10 December 1921

Non-cooperation Movement to Civil Disobedience

Upton close, 1926

Salt March, Civil Disobedience and Round Table Conference

Dr. Haridas T. Muzumdar, 12 March 1930
The Reverend Sherwood Eddy, December 1930
The Reverend Kirby Page, December 1930
Negley Farson (Chicago Daily News), 1930
William L. Shirer (Chicago Tribune), 22 February 1931
Chicago Tribune, before 23 March 1931
William L. Shirer (Chicago Tribune), 5-21 March and May 1931
James A. Mills (Associated Press of America), 21 March 1931
Edward Holton James, 1931
William L. Shirer (Chicago Tribune), 11 September 1931

Civil Disobedience to “Quit India” Movement

Ms. Paula Lecler, 1936
William B. Benton, September 1937
North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), May 1938
Gobind Bihari Lal, 16 March 1939
Frederick T. Birchall (New York Times), before 23 March 1939
Archibald T. Steele (New York Times), before 17 May 1939
United Press of America, 16 March 1940
New York Times, before 22 April 1940
Francis G. Hickman, 17 September 1940

“Quit India” Movement

W.W. Chaplin (International News Service) and Jack Belden (Life and Time), 6 June 1942
Jack Belden, 6 June 1942
Louis Fischer, 4-9 June 1942
Preston Grover (Associated Press of America), 10 June 1942
Edgar Snow (Saturday Evening Post), 14 July 1942
Archibald T. Steele (Chicago Daily News), 15 July 1942

Towards Independence, 1944-1947

 3

Ralph Coniston (Collier’s), before 25 April 1945

Preston Grover (Associated Press of America), 29 June 1945
Frank E. Bolden (National Negro Press Association), June or July 1945
Louis Fischer, 26 June 1946
Louis Fischer, 17 July 1946
Louis Fischer, 18 July 1946
George E. Jones (New York Times), 21 September 1946
Preston Grover (Associated Press of America), 21 October 1946
Associated Press of America, 6 November 1946

After Partition and Independence of India, 1947-1948

William Stuart Nelson, August 1947
Ronald Stead (Christian Science Monitor), before 2 November 1947
Edgar Snow (Saturday Evening Post), 1948
Margaret Bourke-White, January 1948

II. THE “CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAMME”

Ms. Gertrude Emerson, 1921

Ms. Katherine Mayo, 17 March 1926
Arthur J. Todd, in or before 1927
Aimée Semple McPherson, 1935
An American, 1937
Dr. John de Boer, February 1938
Andrew Freeman, 1946

III. ENDS AND MEANS

Vincent Sheean, 27/28 January 1948

IV. EQUALITY OF RELIGIONS

Rufus Jones, 1 December 1926

Ms. Nellie Lee Holt, December 1926
The Reverend Dr. Henry Hitt Crane, 25 February 1937
The Reverend R.R. Keithahn, 5 March 1937
Ms. Florence Mary Fitch, 16 December 1936

V. CHRISTIAN MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES

The Reverend Frederick B. Fisher, 1917-32

An American Architect and two women, 1924
The Reverend Dr. John R. Mott
-Interview in March 1929
 -Interview on 13/14 November 1936
-Interview in December 1938
The Reverend Eli Stanley Jones, 1932-1934
American Missionary, 18 April 1934
Ms. Lucille McClymonds, 1936
American Teachers, December 1938
The Reverend Jay Holmes Smith, 1 February 1940
The Reverend Ralph Templin, 1940
James E. McEldowney, date not available

VI. PACIFISTS

Dr. Harry Frederick Ward, 1924

Roger N. Baldwin, 12 September 1931
The Reverend Dr. John Haynes Holmes, 12 September 1931
Ms. Irma G. Shapleigh, February 1935
The Reverend Harold E. Fey, 1940
An American Visitor, June 1940
Harold Ehrensperger, 1946
An American Pacifist, July 1947

VII. AFRICAN AMERICANS AND NON-VIOLENCE

An American Visitor, 1929

American Negro delegation, 21 February 1936
Professor Benjamin E. Mays, 31 December 1936
Dr. Channing H. Tobias, 10 January 1937
Ms. Celestine Smith, December 1938
Dr. John, 1942
Deton J. Brooks (Chicago Defender), June 1945

VIII. MASS PRODUCTION AND PRODUCTION FOR THE MASSES

Harold Callender, 16 October 1931

IX. BIRTH CONTROL AND ABSTINENCE

Margaret Sanger, 3 and 4 December 1935

X. OTHER INTERVIEWS

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, September 1911

E.M.S., 7 October 1920
Gordon Law, 1920
 5

Joseph H. Phelan, 1922

Ms. Gertrude Marvin Williams, 1924
Savel Zimand, 1924
Two American Professors, 1924
Mrs. Langeloth and Mrs. Kelly, January 1926
Mrs. Edward Hanley, 1927
Professor Kenneth Saunders, c.1927
William H. Danforth, 22 November 1927
William W. Hall, Jr. 1928
Newton Phelps Stokes, II, 1930
Ms. Patricia Kendall, March 1930
Webb Miller, 1931
Dr. Dodd, 4 September 1934
Swami Paramahansa Yogananda, August 1935
John Gunther, 1938
David Hunter, 1938
James A. Mills (Associated Press of America), 20 May 1938
Dr. Gregg Sinclair, December 1938
An American Visitor, June 1940
William E. Fischer (Life), 1942
Three Correspondents, July 1942
James G. Vail, 27 June 1944
An American Journalist, 1 December 1945
Herbert Hoover, 24 April 1946
An American Journalist, before 24 September 1946
Preston Grover, 26 October 1946
American Journalists, 8 April 1947
Pat Wellington, 2 July 1947
Robert Trumbull (New York Times), 2 October 1947
United States Congressmen, 23 October 1947

GLOSSARY
 INTRODUCTION

Gandhi never visited America and was hardly known in that country before 1921. British
censorship prevented news of the national upsurge for freedom in India in 1919 from reaching
the United States. There was hardly any mention in the American press of the nation-wide
demonstrations against the repressive Rowlatt Acts and the police violence resulting in hundreds
of deaths; or of the deliberate massacre by the army of over a thousand people at a meeting in
Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar to protest the arrest of their leaders.1 The first interview with
Gandhi by the correspondent of a major American newspaper was by Frazier Hunt of Chicago
Tribune in 1921.

On 20 April 1921, the Reverend Dr. John Haynes Holmes, pastor of the Community Church in
New York, delivered a sermon on “Who is the Greatest Man in the World Today?” and chose
Gandhi after describing the merits of Romain Rolland and Vladimir Lenin. He said: “When I
think of Gandhi, I think of Jesus Christ.”2 But he had little information about Gandhi and his
sermon contained several errors. The sermon was not reported by media and reached only a
limited number of people.3

Gandhi does not seem to have met many Americans until then.

On the fateful night of his first visit to Pretoria in 1893 – after being thrown out of a train in
Pietermaritzburg, assaulted on a coach on the way to Standerton, denied accommodation in a
hotel in Johannesburg – when no one came to meet him, it was an African American who took
him to Johnston’s Family Hotel. The owner of the hotel, Mr. Johnston, an American, gave him a
room and, after ascertaining that other guests had no objection, let him eat in the dining room.4

He probably met some American missionaries – white and black - in South Africa. He visited
the home of Robert Shemeld, a missionary and his wife, in Pretoria several times.5 On his visit
to London in 1909 in a deputation of Transvaal Indians, he met Myron H. Phelps, a supporter of

1 The first reference to Gandhi in the New York Times was on 19 July 1921 in an article by Clair Price.
Earlier, on 16 April 1919, the New York Times reported, in a despatch from London, the protests against
Rowlatt Act, citing an India Office statement, which referred to violence by the protesters. On 19 April, it
reported another statement by the India Office, that a mob in Amritsar defied the proclamation forbidding
public meetings and “in the firing that ensued 200 casualties were caused.” According to official figures,
379 persons were killed and 1,137 were injured in a terrible massacre.
2 Dr. Haridas T. Muzumdar, The Enduring Greatness of Gandhi an American Estimate, being the Sermons
of Dr. John Haynes Holmes and Dr. Donald S. Harrington (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House,
1962), pages 3-25.
3 One of the members of the Community Church, Ms. Blanche Watson, took serious interest in Gandhi. She wrote
several books and articles on Gandhi and the Indian national movement. Two of her books were published in India:
Gandhi, voice of the new revolution: a study of non-violent resistance in India, with a foreward by the Reverend
John Haynes Holmes, published by Saraswaty Library, Calcutta in 1922; and Gandhi and non-violent resistance: the
non-co-operation movement of India: Gleanings from the American press, published by Ganesh, Madras, in 1923.
4 M.K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Part II, Chapter X.
5 E.S. Reddy, Mahatma Gandhi: Letters to Americans (Bombay and New York: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan,
1998), pages 200-201. In his interview to John R. Mott, Gandhi refers to the story of a Negro clergyman,
with a Herculean frame in South Africa, saying "pardon me brother", when insulted by a white man. The
clergyman was probably an African American.
 7

Indian nationalists in America.6 He was interviewed in Johannesburg by Ms. Carrie Chapman

Catt, an American suffragette, in 1911. She did not publish her account of the interview until
1922.7

After his return to India, Gandhi met Sam Higginbottom (1874-1958), an American
missionary, in 1916 and they exchanged correspondence on means to deal with poverty in India.
Mr. Higginbottom established the Allahabad Agricultural Institute in 1918 and was President of
the Allahabad Christian College for many years. Gandhi sought his advice on several occasions.
He was a member of the Board of Advisers of the All India Village Industries Association, set up
by Gandhi in 1934.8 Gandhi developed a friendship with the Reverend Frederick B. Fisher, a
Methodist missionary and friend of Rabindranath Tagore, whom he met in 1917. In 1921, he
met Samuel E. Stokes, Jr., a missionary and social worker, who joined the Indian national
movement and served a term in prison.9 All the three became life-long friends of Gandhi.

It was only after the Non-cooperation Movement was launched that hundreds of Americans
began visiting or writing to Gandhi.

Gandhi was, however, interested in America even while he was in South Africa. Indian
Opinion, his weekly newspaper, carried several reports about events in the United States. Gandhi
wrote articles about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, as well as Dr. Booker T.
Washington, an African-American leader and educator whom he admired.10 An article in
Indian Opinion on 6 March 1909 highly praised Dr. Washington for setting up institutions for the
industrial education of Negroes and suggested that this was an example which may very well be
taken to heart by the Indians in South Africa.11 In another article in 1910, he pointed to the
growing colour prejudice in America and the denial of the vote to Indians.12 He heard about Dr.
W.E.B. Du Bois, an eminent scholar and leader of the Pan-African movement.13

In the first decade of the twentieth century there was violence against Sikh immigrants to the
United States and mobs drove them out of some towns. The common suffering of African
Americans and Indians reinforced Gandhi’s feeling of solidarity with African Americans.

6 James D. Hunt, Gandhi in London, revised edition (New Delhi: Promilla & Co., 1993), pages 135 and
139. Mr. Phelps had written an article in Springfield Daily American (24 August 1909) on the Indian
struggle in the Transvaal.
7 She concluded her report by describing Gandhi as a fanatic; this suffragette could not overcome her
prejudice against Indians who were also voteless.
8 E. S. Reddy, pages 146-60.
9 Ibid. pages 201-11.
10 “From Slave to College President,” in Indian Opinion, 10 September 1903; CWMG, Volume 3, pages
437-40.
11 I believe Gandhi wrote this article though it is not reproduced in the Collected Works of Mahatma
Gandhi (hereinafter referred to as CWMG). John L. Dube, an admirer of Dr. Washington, set up an
industrial school in Inanda, near the Phoenix Settlement. Mr. Dube, whom Gandhi knew, later became the
first President of South African Native National Congress (later renamed African National Congress).
12 Indian Opinion, 2 July 1910; CWMG, Volume 10, pages 284-85.
13 Indian Opinion published on 28 August 1913 extracts from two interviews by Dr. Du Bois to British
newspapers.
 After the Non-cooperation Movement, Gandhi began to have extensive correspondence with
Americans and hundreds of Americans visited him in India. He told Ms. Katherine Mayo who
interviewed him in 1926:

“I have almost daily visits from Americans, not in idle curiosity… but from real
interest to know my ideas.”14

American newspapers, however, relied on British sources for news about India. The cost of
press telegrammes from India to the United States was exorbitant, while journalists from the
Commonwealth countries paid only a penny a word. British Information Services began to carry
on a vicious campaign of defamation against Gandhi in America and exerted much influence on
the media. They helped Katherine Mayo to write a sensational book about India to suggest that
self-government to India would be a menace.

The mass of Americans were unaware of the real Gandhi for many years. As pointed out by
Andrew J. Rotter:

“No single book about India written for adult Americans had more influence than
Katherine Mayo’s Mother India. Statistics tell part of the story: By the mid-1950s the
book had gone through twenty-seven American editions and sold well over a quarter of a
million copies in the United States alone. When Harold Isaacs asked 181 prominent
Americans their impressions of India in 1954 and 1955, forty-six of them mentioned
Mayo’s book as a source of their views, and many more offered opinions about the
country that could hardly have come from another source.”15

During the Salt Satyagraha and the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930-31, several
American correspondents came to India. The graphic reports of brutal violence by the police
against peaceful volunteers, by Webb Miller from Dharasana and Negley Farson from Bombay,
were widely distributed in the United States and other countries, and countered the effect of
Mother India to some extent. Gandhi became known as the leader of a non-violent mass struggle
for freedom.

Time magazine published a picture of Gandhi on its cover page on 31 March 1930 with the
caption “Saint Gandhi.” It chose him as “man of the year” for 1930 and had another cover page
with his picture on 5 January 1931.

More and more Americans sought to meet Gandhi and interview him. Gandhi welcomed them,
and patiently answered questions on India’s struggle for freedom, and on many other subjects
such as his advocacy of spinning and weaving and other village industries, his efforts to eradicate
untouchability among the Hindus, and his views on industrialisation, education, missionary
enterprise and proselytisation, and the universal relevance of non-violence.

14 Interview to Katherine Mayo. CWMG, Volume 30, page 121.

15 Andrew J. Rotter, Comrades at Odds: The United States and India 1947-1964 (Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press, 2000), page 1. Mr. Rotter cited Harold Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds: American
Images of China and India (New York: John Day, 1958), pages 269-71.
 9

Gandhi welcomed interviews by American correspondents in order to ensure that American

opinion understood the Indian struggle. He developed friendship with some correspondents,
especially William Shirer and Louis Fischer, and gave them extensive interviews.

The interviews in this collection are but a small fraction of the interviews by Americans. But
they are perhaps an adequate reflection of the interaction between Gandhi and Americans, his
view of the merits and demerits of the United States and of his thinking at various times and on
various subjects.

The Interviewers

The interviewers consist mainly of journalists, Christian missionaries, pacifists and African
Americans.

Until the Salt Satyagraha, as indicated earlier, very few American correspondents interviewed
Gandhi. The first New York Times interview was by Harold Callender in London in 1931.

There was an inflow of American correspondents in 1942 after American troops landed in
India, mainly for flying supplies from India to China. They were anxious to meet Gandhi as
Americans were concerned that Gandhi’s demand that Britain “quit India” might destabilise the
country and affect the war effort.

Christian missionaries were another large group of interviewers. Gandhi maintained good
relations with many missionaries though he strongly opposed their mass conversions of poor and
uneducated Indians. Several of the missionaries – like Fred Fisher, Eli Stanley Jones, R.R.
Keithahn and Jay Holmes Smith – became admirers and friends of Gandhi.

Another group of interviewers were pacifists. Many of them were associated with
Fellowship of Reconciliation which was established in 1915 by clergymen opposed to
militarism and war. It contributed greatly to social movements in the United States for
peace, human rights and racial equality. Gandhi was a significant influence on the
Fellowship and many of the non-violent direct actions initiated or promoted by the
Fellowship followed the example of movements led by him.

Gandhi had a special feeling for African Americans because of their common suffering under
racist rule. The bond between Indians and African Americans developed further as African-
American leaders like Marcus Garvey and Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois supported the struggle for
freedom in India. Gandhi’s associates – Sarojini Naidu,16 C.F. Andrews17 and Miraben18 – met
African-American leaders on their visits to the United States and promoted contacts with Gandhi.

16 Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949), poet and President of the Indian National Congress in 1925, she was a
leader of the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930. During her visit to the United States, she met several
African-American leaders and addressed a meeting at Howard University.
17 C.F. Andrews (1871-1940) went to India in 1904 as a missionary and soon identified himself with the
aspirations of the Indian people. He resigned from his Mission in 1914. He developed close friendship with
the poet Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi and became their interpreter to the West. He was
 African-American leaders visited Gandhi in 1936-37 to discuss non-violent action and by
1940 such action against racial discrimination developed in the United States with the founding
of Congress of Racial Equality with the assistance of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Some Persons not in this Compilation

Interviews with many Americans who held significant discussions with Gandhi have not been
recorded.

Richard B. Gregg, for instance, stayed in Gandhi’s ashram for seven months and held many
discussions with Gandhi. His writings were highly praised by Gandhi. His book, Power of
Nonviolence was like a textbook for the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
wrote the foreword to the second edition in 1959.19

The Reverend Boyd Tucker, a Methodist missionary in Calcutta who later taught in
Santiniketan, the school founded by poet Rabindranath Tagore, had frequent exchanges of views
with Gandhi. Ms. Nilla Cram Cook (Nila Nagini) worked with students in the movement against
untouchability in Bangalore. She was advised by Gandhi and stayed in his ashram for some time.

The interactions of Gregg, Tucker, Cook and many others will be found in their
correspondence with Gandhi. 20 The interviews and the correspondence are complimentary.

Mrs. Eslanda Goode Robeson (1895-1965), anthropologist and an activist in movements for
civil rights and peace, had an interview with Gandhi in London in 1931.21 But I was unable to
find any account of her interview in the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi or in her papers at
Howard University.

Two American sculptors made busts of Gandhi when he was in London in 1931 for the Round
Table Conference – Jo Davidson and Nancy Cox-McCormack Cushman. Their impressions of
Gandhi were published22 but they did not have interviews.

commonly referred to as “Deenabandhu” (friend of the poor). During his visit to America, he met Dr.
W.E.B. Du Bois and George Washington Carver, among other African Americans.
18 Miraben (1892-1982) was the name given by Gandhi to Ms. Madeleine Slade, daughter of a British
admiral, who became a disciple of Gandhi and lived with him from 1925. She was imprisoned in the Indian
national movement in 1932 and 1942. She addressed a meeting at Howard University during her visit to the
United States.
19 Rufus M. Jones had written the introduction to the first edition published in 1934.
20 See E. S. Reddy (ed.), Mahatma Gandhi: Letters to Americans (New York and Bombay: Bharatiya
Vidya Bhavan, 1998).
21 Claire Sheridan, To the Four Winds (London: Andre Deutsch, 1937), pages 167-68. Mrs. Robeson was
the wife of Paul Robeson, the great African-American singer, fighter for peace and the rights of African
Americans and a friend of India.
22 Jo Davidson, Between Sittings: n Informal Autobiography (New York: The Dial Press, 1951), the
section on Gandhi was reproduced in Norman Cousins (ed.), Profiles of Gandhi: America Remembers a
World Leader (Delhi: Indian Book Company, 1969); “Modeling from Life the Portrait Bust of Mahatma
Gandhi: A Memoir” by Nancy Cox McCormack Cushman” in Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Volume 19,
No. 2, pages 145-61.
 11

Some others who hoped to interview him were disappointed as he was in prison and the
authorities refused to allow interviews. One of those was Ms. Jane Addams, founder of the Hull
House, who came to India in 1923; she could only visit the Ashram and meet his associates.23

Another who came in 1923 was Drew Pearson, a resourceful American correspondent. He had
a long conversation with the Governor of Bombay, Sir George Lloyd,24 but was refused
permission to see Gandhi. He wrote an article on his return to America which his editors changed
to read as an interview with Gandhi in India, and it was distributed widely.25

Gandhi’s perception of the United States

Gandhi was critical of the American economy and way of life, as they were antithetical
to his philosophy and his hopes for India. He told Harold Callender in 1931 that America
had reached the acme of mass production, but there was an unnatural accumulation of
wealth in the pockets of the few, while millions of people were unemployed and living in
misery.

He often spoke of the destruction of wheat, sugar and other agricultural productions
during the depression while they could have been supplied to other countries or fed
America’s own unemployed.

He told William H. Hall, Jr. in 1938:

“To borrow a phrase from Tolstoy, they (Americans) are ‘riding on the backs’ of
weaker peoples, financially and commercially. Their achievements are based on
considerations of so-called supply and demand (which is a veiled term for mere self-
interest) rather than of human need. Their civilisation is essentially selfish and
materialistic. Doles handed out to missionary and philanthropic projects furnish small
compensation for economic and industrial oppression…”26

And he told a group of American teachers later in the year:

“America is today exploiting the so-called weaker nations of the world along with
other Powers. It has become the richest country in the world, not a thing to be proud of

23 Jane Addams (1860-1935), a prominent pacifist and social reformer, was a founder of the Women’s
International League for Peace and Freedom which she chaired from 1919 to 1929. She shared the Nobel
Peace Prize for 1931. Tom Gilsenan, Peacemakers and Friends: Jane Addams and Gandhi, December
2001. Paper by a student at the University of Iowa. http://iowacity.patch.com/groups/tom-gilsenans-
blog/p/peacemakers--friends-jane-addams--gandhi, accessed on 15 July 2014.
24 See his interview with the Governor of Bombay in CWMG, Volume 23, pages 556-58.
25 The article was based on answers to his questions, which Devadas Gandhi obtained from Gandhi after
his release, as well as quotations from Gandhi’s earlier writings and speeches. Pearson also wrote an article
with the title “Are Gandhi and Ford on the Same Road?” in Asia, New York, December 1924.
26 References to interviews in the introduction will be found under interviews in this volume.
 when we come to think of the means by which she has become rich. Again, to protect
these riches, you need the assistance of violence. “

Above all, he was conscious of racial discrimination in the United States and the thousands
of lynchings which occurred during his lifetime.27

But he liked Americans. He told an American correspondent in 1938.

“… I am interested in the United States and in the Americans always. There is a

special bond of sympathy between us, I believe. The American can understand our desire
for independence.”28

He told Edward Holton Jones in 1931:

“You ask which country gives India the most sympathy at the present time. Perhaps
America. We have been getting some sympathy from Americans and it simply whets our
appetite for more.”

He wrote in a “letter to American friends” on 3 August 1942: “I have in America

perhaps the largest number of friends in the West – not even excepting Great Britain.”29

But he felt that Americans were not well informed about him or about India. He told
Katherine Mayo in 1926:

“…one set of people (in America) overrates the results of Non-violent Non-
cooperation and the other set not only underrates it but imputes all kinds of
motives to those who are concerned with the movement.”

He told William Hall in 1928:

“Americans seem either to exalt me to a degree wholly out of proportion to what I

deserve or else they consider me a dangerous revolutionary.”30

In 1937, he said in reply to a comment by William Benton:

“American opinion is of great importance to us and by our deeds we hope to win it…

“We cannot compete for American attention on the same terms with the
English. We do not try, our methods must be different methods… I believe that
the American is emotionally sympathetic to our cause, but he is profoundly
ignorant of the real facts and of our real problem.”

27 Interview to Preston Grover (Associated Press of America), 10 June 1942.

28 Interview to the correspondent of the North American Newspaper Alliance, 4 June 1938.
29 Harijan, 9 August 1942; CWMG, Volume 76, pages 357-59.
30 Interview to William W. Hall, 1928.
 13

He was anxious that the Americans should understand the methods adopted in the
Indian struggle for freedom as it was rather unique. He expressed this wish in several
interviews.

Many of the interviewers invited Gandhi to visit the United States.

He told William Shirer in 1931:

“I long to visit your great country. I have had the most tempting invitations to do so.
But I must deny myself that luxury until my task of achieving independence is finished. I
would like to carry my message of non-violence and love to America. But I cannot do so
until I have been able to show the American people that such a doctrine has triumphed in
India, and that it offers the whole world a new instrument for winning the rights of man
peacefully and insuring the brotherhood of all nations.”

Gandhi was then in London to attend the Round Table Conference. Bishop Fred Fisher
and many other Americans pressed him to visit the United States. On the other hand, John
Haynes Holmes, Roger Baldwin, Kirby Page, Harry Ward and Richard Gregg told him that
America was not prepared for his message and that his visit would be exploited by sensation-
mongers. He decided against the visit and left for India after the Conference. But he continued
to express his desire to visit America after Indian independence.

“I should love to visit the places where Emerson and Thoreau and Mrs. Harriet
Beecher Stowe lived. I should like to visit Pennsylvania on account of William Penn,
because I have so much in common with the Quakers.”31
"How I wish I could, but I would have nothing to give you unless I had given an ocular
demonstration here of all that I have been saying. I must make good the message here
before I bring it to you. I do not say that I am defeated, but I have still to perfect myself.
You may be sure that the moment I feel the call within me I shall not hesitate. "32
"I would like to come to your country, but I do not feel my message is ready for any
other country until it has been taken up more widely and used more effectively in my
own country."33
“I hope to live to see India united and independent. When that day comes I hope to
carry out the long-cherished wish of visiting America.”34

An Inspiration to Social Movements

31 To Edward Holton James in 1931

32 To Ms. Sue Thurman of the American Negro delegation who said in 1936: "We want you not for white
America, but for the Negroes; we have many a problem that cries for solution, and we need you badly."
33 To Professor Benjamin Mays in 1936
34 To James A. Mills in 1938
 When Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948, he was highly praised by American
leaders and media. His adherence to non-violence, and his heroic efforts to restore peace when
the partition of India led to a carnage on the sub-continent, were universally admired. But only a
limited number of Americans – especially some African-American leaders and some pacifists –
were prepared to follow his example of active non-violence, commonly called non-violent direct
action in America. They adapted Gandhi to their Christian social gospel and their traditions.
They paid little attention to his views on such subjects as spinning, fasting, vegetarianism,
brahmacharya, birth control and simple living.

The civil rights movement, led by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., made millions of
Americans aware of Gandhi. It led to wider use of non-violent resistance in the agitation against
the Vietnam War and the campaign against nuclear weapons.

The influence of Gandhi has been increasing with time. More books, articles and dissertations
about him began to be published in America. Many high school students are writing papers or
preparing projects on Gandhi.

Significantly there has been greater awareness and appreciation of Gandhi’s views beyond
satyagraha and non-violence. Movements for the protection of the environment, simple living
and animal rights derive inspiration and encouragement from Gandhi.

This collection of interviews, I hope, provides an introduction to the thought of Gandhi in all
its aspects.35

**

I have included in this collection interviews by three Indian residents of the United States –
Haridas T. Muzumdar, Swami Paramahansa Yogananda and Gobind Bihari Lal.36

I have reproduced, in several cases, not only the texts of the interviews, but the impressions of
the interviewers and their descriptions of the surroundings as they help to understand the
personality of Gandhi.

Many of the transcripts of the interviews are by Gandhi’s personal secretaries – Mahadev
Desai and Pyarelal – who were closely associated with him in all his campaigns. They were
published in Gandhi’s weeklies – Young India and Harijan – and reprinted in the Collected
Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Most of the reports by correspondents seem to reflect Gandhi’s
views accurately. Many other texts are from American missionaries in India and visitors. They
may not be accurate if they were recorded from memory, but there appears to be hardly any cases
of deliberate distortion.

35 On American interviews with Gandhi, see also Leonard A. Gordon, “Mahatma Gandhi’s Dialogues with
Americans” in Economic and Political Weekly, Bombay, 26 January 2002.
36 Indians could not obtain American citizenship until 1946.
 15

I. THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM

Gandhi was anxious to inform the world about the struggle led by him in India as he considered the mass non-
violent movement an unprecedented experiment in history. He was concerned about misinformation in America
spread by British propaganda. He welcomed an opportunity to speak to American journalists and to other Americans
seeking interviews with him.

Non-cooperation Movement

The year 1919 was a watershed in modern Indian history. That was the beginning of a mass nonviolent movement
which was to lead to the independence of the country in 1947. Gandhi, who had been dealing with local grievances
of peasants and workers, was catapulted into the leadership of the movement in 1919. Tens of thousands of people
defied the authorities in protests against repressive laws and in the non-cooperation movement launched in 1921.
Censorship by the British colonial authorities prevented news of these momentous events from reaching America.
Gandhi was hardly known in the United States until 1921. Frazier Hunt was the first correspondent of a major
American newspaper to arrive in India; he saw Gandhi in 1921.

It is essential to recall the upsurge at this time as that is essential for an understanding of several of the interviews of
Gandhi to Americans.

During the First World War, India contributed more than a million soldiers to the Allied war effort. Gandhi, who
had faith in the professed principles of the British Empire, recruited soldiers despite his adherence to non-violence.

Edwin S. Montagu37, British Secretary of State for India, proposed to the British Cabinet in 1917 that he intended to
work towards “gradual development of free institutions in India with a view to ultimate self-government.” He visited
India to consult with the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, and Indian political leaders. There was general expectation,
perhaps unwarranted, that Britain would reward India with self-government or Swaraj for its contribution to the war
effort.

But in 1918, the Government of India appointed the Sedition Committee, headed by Sir Sidney Rowlatt, a judge, to
investigate the spread of sedition in India and to advise on necessary legislation. On its recommendation, the
Government rushed two bills through the Central Legislative Council, in the face of strong opposition by the Indian
members.38 They were signed by the Viceroy on 22 March 1919 and came to be known as the Rowlatt Acts. They
were repressive laws extending wartime restrictions, authorising detention without trial of persons suspected of
sedition and providing a two-year sentence even for the possession of a leaflet advocating sedition. These Acts
provoked great resentment.

Gandhi signed a pledge on 24 February 1919 to resist the legislation and obtained signatures by many public figures.
He toured several towns and cities from 1 March to prepare for the resistance, though he had not fully recovered
from illness and his speeches had to be read by others.

On 23 March, a few days after the Rowlatt Acts came into force, he proposed, as a first step, a “hartal” (stoppage of
work) all over India on 30 March. (The date was postponed later to 6 April). Gandhi himself sold proscribed
literature in Bombay in defiance of the Acts.

37 Edwin Samuel Montagu (1879–1924) was Secretary of State for India from 1917 to 1922. He was a
member of the Liberal Party.
38 As a majority of members of the Council were appointed by the Government, the bills could be passed
with their votes.
There were small revolutionary groups in a few towns but the legislation applied to the whole country.
The response to the call was tremendous, especially in the cities throughout the country. Where police attacked
peaceful demonstrators, as in Delhi, there was rioting. Tension was high in the Punjab, and Gandhi decided to go
there to calm the situation. But he was prohibited from entering the Punjab, taken to Bombay and ordered not to
leave the Bombay Presidency.39 The arrest of Gandhi provoked people and there were riots in several places,
including Bombay and Ahmedabad.

Gandhi addressed meetings in Bombay and Ahmedabad to urge the people to be non-violent and undertook a
penitential 72-hour fast in Ahmedabad. He issued a statement on 18 April suspending the satyagraha and said he had
made a “Himalayan miscalculation” in calling for civil disobedience before people were trained.

Meanwhile, on 10 April, the arrest of Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr. Satya Pal, popular leaders of the Punjab – a
Muslim and a Hindu - led to great tension in the province. Police opened fire on a protest demonstration in Amritsar
on that day killing several protesters. The situation went out of control. Five Europeans were killed by the
protesters. Miss Marcella Sherwood, a missionary, was brutally attacked by a mob and suffered severe injuries. She
was rescued by Indians.

Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab and General Reginald Dyer,40 head of an infantry brigade
in Jullundhar, feared a revolution. Dyer was appointed military commander of Amritsar and took charge on 11
April. He prohibited public meetings and decided to teach a lesson to the people. Perhaps unaware of the ban on
meetings, about ten thousand people gathered in Jallianwala Bagh on 13 April to protest repression. General Dyer
arrived with fifty soldiers and ordered them to fire. In ten minutes, according to official figures, 379 persons were
killed and 1,137 were injured in a terrible massacre. Martial law was imposed in the whole province.

A reign of terror and humiliation was imposed on the people of Amritsar. To quote Yogesh Chhadha, a biographer
of Gandhi:

“Dyer did not rest content with firing 1,650 rounds into a defenceless crowd. He issued a series of
humiliating orders, one of which, the ‘crawling order’, required Indians to go on all fours if they wished to
pass down the lane in which Miss Sherwood, the missionary schoolteacher, had been assaulted. Any
Indians who refused to crawl were flogged. It did not matter to the general that many of the people living
there were entirely innocent and ignorant of the assault, or that some of them attempted to rescue Miss
Sherwood. Public floggings were also ordered for offences like disregarding the curfew order, refusing to
salaam British officers, and tearing down of official proclamations. An entire marriage party was rounded
up and summarily flogged. Thousands of students were ordered to go on sixteen-mile route marches in
scorching heat; six of the biggest boys in a high school were flogged simply because they were big
schoolboys.”41

After a few months, the Government appointed the Hunter Commission to investigate the disturbances. Under cross-
examination before the Commission, General Dyer said he would have opened fire with machine guns if he could
have got armoured cars into the area. “I had made up my mind.” Dyer testified, “I would do all men to death…” His
idea was to “produce a sufficient moral effect from the military point of view not only on those who were present,
but more especially throughout the Punjab.”42

But these events were not known in the rest of India until June because of censorship. Nor were they known in the
United States.43

39 The ban was lifted in October and he was allowed to visit Punjab.
40 Brigadier-General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer (1864–1927), an officer of the British Indian Army.
41 Yogesh Chadha, Rediscovering Gandhi (London: Century, 1997), page 239.
42 Ibid.
43 The only mention of the Rowlatt Acts and the massive protests in the New York Times was in a despatch of 14
April 1919 from London. It reported that there was a reference in Parliament to widespread disturbances in India
resulting from the “passive resistance” movement against the Rowlatt Acts, intended to combat seditious conspiracy.
It also reported an India Office statement that there had been disturbances in India with some casualties and that in
most places military forces were maintaining order.
 17

Meanwhile the Muslim population of India was incensed by the attempts of the Western Powers to dismember the
Ottoman Empire and transfer the Muslim Holy Places from the domain of the Sultan of Turkey who, as the Caliph,
had the responsibility to guard the Holy Places.44
It became known that the British and French governments had signed a secret agreement (Sykes-Picot Agreement)
on 19 May 1916 to divide up the Arab territories of the former Ottoman Empire, even while using Arab nationalism
against Turkey. The Allied Powers were intent on imposing conditions on Turkey harsher than those on
Germany.45

Maulana Shaukat Ali and Maulana Mahomed Ali, two brothers, led a Khilafat (Caliphate) movement to defend the
Caliphate. Gandhi supported them in order to strengthen Hindu-Muslim unity and they were delighted to have his
support.

In the midst of these developments, the Montagu-Chelmsford Report on reforms was published and its
recommendations enacted. They were disappointing as they provided for significant reforms only at the provincial
level. Even at that level, while many departments were given to elected members of the legislatures, finance,
revenue and police would be under officials appointed by the Governor who would have the power of veto on all
legislation. The report stated that there would be a review of the reforms after ten years.

Gandhi proposed on 1 August 1920 a programme of non-cooperation with the government in order to persuade it to
make amends for the Punjab wrongs and to prevail upon the British Government to satisfy the Muslims on the
Khilafat. The proposal was endorsed by the Indian National Congress which declared swaraj (self-government
within or outside the British Empire) as the objective. It asked provincial committees to prepare for civil
disobedience, including refusal to pay taxes. At its annual session in December, Congress gave Gandhi the authority
to lead the campaign. The constitution of the Congress, drafted by Gandhi, transformed it from an association of the
elite into a mass organisation.

Soon many Indians returned their British titles and medals. Lawyers gave up their practice. National schools were
set up as students and teachers left Government schools. The next stage was the boycott of foreign cloth. Huge
bonfires were made all over India.

The Government began detaining thousands of Congress workers. Altogether more than 30,000 people went to
prison.

Gandhi planned to start a no-tax movement in one district, Bardoli, and to extend it from district to district. In a
deliberately seditious article in Young India on 23 February 1922, he wrote that “the fight we commenced in 1920 is
fight to the finish, whether it lasts one month or one year or many years.”

But on 8 February 1922, the day civil disobedience was due to start in Bardoli, the police in a remote village of
Chauri Chaura in the United Provinces opened fire on a peaceful demonstration. When they exhausted their
ammunition, they went inside the police station. The mob set fire to the police station and the 23 policemen were
hacked to death and thrown in the fire as they came out.

On 13 April, it reported another statement by the India Office that there were further disturbances, and that “firing
ensued” in Amritsar when a mob defied a proclamation banning public meetings, resulting in 200 casualties. The
first reference to Gandhi in the paper was on 10 July 1921.
44 The decision of Turkey to ally with Germany in the First World War had disturbed Muslims recruited into the
Indian Army who became concerned that they might be ordered to fight against Turkish Muslims. A mutiny took
place in Singapore by the 5th Light Infantry Regiment of the Indian Army, composed entirely of Muslims. The
Mutineers were executed, but the British Government assured the Indian Muslims that the Allies would be fair to
Turkey. Peter Popham, “A History of the First World War in 100 Moments: The Mutiny that Sent a Ripple of Fear
through the Empire” in Independent, London, 23 April 2014.
45 Under the peace terms published by them in May 1920, the British and French would divide the Empire’s Arab
dominions and transfer Muslim Holy Places to the control of the Sharif of Mecca, They even carved up parts of
Turkey for foreign occupation.
Gandhi was horrified. He immediately suspended civil disobedience, as the masses had not yet become non-violent
despite his urgings. A month later, Gandhi was arrested, charged with sedition and sentenced to six years in prison.

Drew Pearson46, the American journalist, interviewed Sir George Lloyd, the Governor of Bombay47, a year and
half after Gandhi was imprisoned. Sir George told him:

“Just a thin, spindly shrimp of a fellow he was, but he swayed 319,000,000 people and held them at his
beck and call. He didn’t care for material things, and preached nothing but the ideals and morals of India…

“He gave us a scare. His programme filled our jails. You can’t go on arresting people for ever, you know -
not when there are 319,000,000 of them. And if they had taken his next step and refused to pay taxes, God
knows where we should have been! Gandhi’s was the most colossal experiment in world’s history, and it
came within an inch of succeeding. But he couldn’t control men’s passions. They became violent, and he
called off his programme. You know the rest. We jailed him.”48

One result of the events of this period was the recognition by all leaders of the Indian national movement that
Gandhi alone could organise and lead a mass movement for independence.

Frazier Hunt, September 192149

[Mr. Hunt (1885-1967), author and war correspondent, was perhaps the first journalist of a major American
newspaper to interview Gandhi. He interviewed Gandhi in Cawnpore (now Kanpur).

New York Times wrote in an obituary on 17 December 1967:

“A swashbuckling 240-pound Midwesterner who stood 6 feet 3 inches tall and whose habitual attire was a
trenchcoat and a fedora, Frazier Hunt fulfilled a romantic’s ideal of a foreign correspondent. For three
decades, from World War I through World War II, his life was one adventure after another, one exclusive
story following hard upon another from all over the world.”]

To tell about Gandhi is to tell about India. Gandhi is India, and India, restless, determined
and race conscious, is the real spirit of the awakening East.

This that follows is the plain story of Gandhi - the hero and saint of India's struggling three
hundred million, today little known to the outside world but tomorrow to be recognised as the
insurgent figure leading the great coming revolt of the East against the white man's domination.

To ninety-nine per cent of the people of America and Europe the idea of a violent repudiation
of white mastery by the black, brown and yellow men of the East is still a wild fantasy. But it is
no longer a wild fantasy to me - for I have seen Gandhi and myself felt the rising temper of Asia.

For hours I sat with this strange, shrunken little man whom three hundred million worship,
and talked with him as freely as I would with an old friend. There was no fencing or parrying.

46 Drew Pearson (1897-1969), later became prominent as a co-writer of the widely read column “The
Washington Merry-Go-Round” from the early 1930s.
47 A Conservative politician who was Governor of Bombay from 1918 to 1923.
48 Young India, 22 November 1923; CWMG, Volume 23, page 557.
49 From Frazier Hunt, The Rising Temper of the East: Sounding the Human Note in the World-wide Cry for Land
and Liberty (Indianapolis, USA: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1922), pages 1-2, 29-39.
 19

He had nothing to conceal. He had hit upon a way of breaking the British power in India and
cracking the greatest empire history has ever seen, and all without bombs or bloodshed. It was
no secret and he wanted to tell me about it…

He had eyes that were deep with pity and love, and burning bright with a great purpose. You
forgot that he was a frail little man with a funny shaved head and hollow sallow cheeks, with
most of his teeth gone, and that he wore coarse homespun clothes, and that his feet were bare. It
was his eyes that held you.

Someone brought a single chair and he insisted that I sit on it while he squatted cross-legged
on the floor beside me.50 Possibly twenty of his local disciples came in noiselessly and seated
themselves on the floor in a semicircle about us. Certainly not half of them could understand
English, but they could look at Gandhi.

"What can I tell you?" he asked in soft, perfectly spoken English.

"The story of how you are going to break British power in India," I replied.51

A ghost of a smile that seemed to hurt him trailed across his face like a moving shadow.
"During the Boer War52 I had great faith and confidence in the British and raised a stretcher-
bearer corps to help them," he began. "In 1914 I reached London two days after war was
declared and immediately organised an ambulance corps. Later I came on here and when I found
the Mohammedan leaders worried about the future of the sultan, who is the head of the Church
and the guardian of their shrines,53 I told them that Lloyd George would keep his promise, that
he would treat Turkey fairly. But they said no.

"I was insistent that we must do all we could to help England in this great hour of her need. I
pleaded for army enlistment - we raised more than a million men in India for the British Army.

"Then the war ended and I said that now we would gain our reward, we would be given at
least practical home rule and be permitted to work out our own destiny. I still had faith!"

Always it was this great faith that he came back to, time and again. Faith, he believed, would
move empires.

"But there was nothing but promises and a half-hearted reform bill. They call this bill the
Montagu-Chelmsford Bill and they hold that it fulfils their pledges. But it gives us only the

50 In his autobiography Mr. Hunt wrote that Gandhi “insisted on going to the next room and bringing me a
straight-backed chair. Then he squatted croos-legged at my feet.” Frazier Hunt, One American and His
Attempt at Education (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1938), page 216.
51 Mr. Hunt wrote in his autobiography: “I told him I wanted the whole story, from start to finish. I
explained that the European war and peace had absorbed American interest and that the great Indian revolt
was practically unknown in America. I wanted him to tell me all about himself and his strange revolution.”
Ibid.
52 The war between Britain and the Boer Republics of the Transvaal (named South African Republic) and
Orange Free State, 1899-1902. Britain sought to control the Boer Republics as gold was discovered there.
53 The Ottoman Sultan was also the Caliph. He was the guardian of the holy places of Muslims in Arabia.
cheapest imitation of self-government, of home rule. It allows certain Indian assemblies and
local administrations, but it is all circumscribed by a system of checks and balances that leaves
all the real power in the hands of the British. It is a great subterfuge - and we are sick and tired
of subterfuges.

"While this bill was being discussed and prepared the Punjab disturbances broke out. Those
were terrible days, but I was sure that the British would be just and fair so I still held faith."

At great length Gandhi explained all about these terrible days. Over all the cities of Northern
India there was in that spring of 1919 a growing feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction. About half
the population are Muslims, and already there was at work the religious ferment that was
expressing itself in the Khilafat54 questions. But more important than this religious aspect was a
pure demand for nationalism. This demand and the unrest that went with it were intensified by
the Rowlatt Bill which gave special and drastic power for the handling of all kinds and phases of
rebellious actions.

This Rowlatt Bill was a pure war-time measure kept in force after the war. It gave the
government tremendous powers over the press and gave to police and judiciary practically
autocratic authority over everything that seemed so much as flavoured with any demand for
home rule and freedom.

As a protest against this law, hartals - complete closing of all stores and shops - began to be
called by the natives toward the last of February, 1919. Meetings were held everywhere and a
tenseness against the British began to be felt. Gandhi, who attempted to visit the Punjab, was
turned back to the border, intensifying the feeling. Inflammatory speeches and seditious notices
were of almost daily occurrence.

On the morning of April 10, 1919, Doctor Satya Pal55 and Doctor Kitchlew,56 the two most
powerful local leaders in the north, were deported by motor from Amritsar. As soon as this news
spread a crowd collected in Amritsar and attempted to march to the deputy commissioner's to
protest. At Hall Gate Bridge it encountered a patrol of soldiers; stones were thrown and the
troops replied with fire, killing several. At this the crowd became a wild mob, completely out of
the hands of its leaders. It burned all European and government property in the city and killed
three English bank managers, and Miss Sherwood, a mission worker, was assaulted, the railway
station was attacked and an English guard killed.

"On the morning of April 13th, General Dyer heard that a great meeting was to be held in a
hollow square called Jallianwala Bagh," Gandhi went on. "A few minutes before five in the
evening he marched a detachment of fifty Gurkhas and Sikhs into one end of the square and
immediately opened fire on the unarmed crowd, some ten thousand people, assembled there."

Gandhi's voice trailed into a whisper of horror…

54 Caliphate
55 Dr. Satya Pal was with the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War.
56 A barrister.
 21

"Through that lane Dyer and his fifty Gurkhas and Sikhs came in," Gandhi droned. "They left
their armoured cars outside because they could not bring them in; they would have killed every
one had they had those machine-guns.

"On a little rise of ground next to the wall Dyer drew up his soldiers. He marched them in,
placed them on both sides of the entrance and immediately they opened fire. The people had no
warning, no chance.

"The speaker's stand was in the centre. There were four or five small passages, altogether,
and after the soldiers started firing and the crowd tried to escape he concentrated his firing on
these exits. There were heaps of dead and injured around each of them. He fired until he'd used
up all his ammunition - one thousand six hundred and fifty rounds - he admitted that in his
evidence. If he'd had his armoured cars inside he would have killed them all…

"But infinitely worse was the horrible, devilish crime of deliberately breaking the spirit of the
people - people who had given tremendous help to the empire during the war.

"Still I held to my faith and in December, 1919, I pleaded with our unofficial Indian National
Congress for cooperation, assuring them that when the British people knew the facts they would
sweep away Lieutenant-Governor O'Dwyer,57 General Dyer and the whole breed, and right the
Khilafat wrongs. But I saw Lloyd George turn against us and British public opinion praise to the
skies Lieutenant-Governor O'Dwyer, who was a hundred times worse than General Dyer. I think
General Dyer would have acted like a fine soldier had not the spirit of O'Dwyer poisoned him.
But General Dyer went mad, shooting innocent men until his ammunition was exhausted."

Gandhi's face was flushed as he continued: "I can't accuse the Germans of anything half as
terrible as what Dyer did. When I saw the House of Lords and many members of the House of
Commons further insult India by defending Dyer, I thought my connection with British power
must end until they repented for their crimes and asked forgiveness. They've done neither, so I
am trying my best to end British connection with India.

"At first I thought the new legislative reforms might work, but today with the scales dropped
from my eyes I look upon them as a death-trap. So now I am advocating non-violent non-
cooperation. India has a population of three hundred and fifteen million, while the number of
English officials here are not more than one hundred thousand. If we break all connection with
this one hundred thousand, in spite of machine-guns, aeroplanes and strong forts, they are
physically powerless; therefore if we non-cooperate they must automatically leave India or
satisfy us. And they can satisfy us now only by rewriting the Turkish peace terms, granting full
reparation for Punjab crimes and by giving full self-government, such that India may voluntarily
remain a party in the empire - if she chooses. It is to be non-violent non-cooperation."
...

57 Sir Michael Francis O’Dwyer (1864-1910), Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, 1912-19. He approved
General Dyer’s massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, in April 1919, calling it a “correct action.” He was
assassinated in London in 1940 by Udham Singh, a revolutionary.
 "If there is violence it will be because the government takes oppressive measures against us,"
Gandhi continued. "There is always danger in a movement of this kind, but if we had not taken
this course there would have been trouble anyhow. We shall go ahead with what we have
mapped out, but if our present non-cooperation fails, we shall next call out all government
servants; and the next phase will be to call out the soldiers. The amount of violence will depend
on what the government does rather than what we do.

"One thing is certain - India is not going to stop. We are trying to win now by non-violence;
if this fails the consequence will be too terrible to contemplate. Our people then will have lost
all faith in peaceful means.

"The movement might get out of my hands and beyond my power but even with that in view
and even facing anarchy, it will be better than the present emasculated, half-beaten condition of
India. The English have deprived us of all manliness, all self-respect, all self-reliance. They
have impoverished us in body, mind and soul. They have broken our hearts."

[Mr. Hunt wrote in his autobiography: “We talked for more than two hours: I imagine it was the first formal
interview he had ever given. When I rose from my chair and thanked him he pushed to his bare feet and
accompanied me to the door…

“I knew… that I had touched hands with one of the great men of all time.”58]

Gertrude Emerson, 10 December 192159

[Miss Gertrude Emerson - later Mrs. Gertrude Sen60 - an American journalist and writer, and editor Asia magazine,
visited India in 1921 and first met Gandhi in Lahore. Gandhi took her in his car to a large meeting at Badshahi
Mosque. She interviewed him on several occasions. This is from the report on an interview at Satyagraha Ashram at
Sabarmati on 10 December 1921. For the rest of the interview, see Chapter II, “Poverty in India and the
‘Constructive Programme.’”]

All the time I was at Sabarmati people were coming and going, making reports on the progress
of the non-cooperation movement in all parts of India. The organisation has long been an
elaborate one, reaching out to every village.61 I saw a little by what process this organisation is
carried on, although I had only my eyes to interpret for me. Gandhi's room gradually filled up
with persons waiting to interview him. I remember being struck by the variety of these people,
both as to apparent position in life and occupation...

While we were discussing his idea of the right type of education for India, suddenly he looked
up and asked me abruptly whether I would excuse him while he went to take his bath.

58 Ibid.
59 Asia, Concord, NH, United States of America, May 1922.
60 Miss Emerson married Bisho Sen, an agricultural scientist and stayed on in India.
61 This is not correct. The Congress had long been an organisation of the elite. It was only in 1921 that it
adopted a new constitution, drafted by Gandhi, to make it an organisation of the masses of people in urban
and rural areas.
 23

"Otherwise the whole of my day will be upset," he explained. He was gone about twenty minutes
and then came back, followed by his wife...

At the time when I went to see Gandhi, it seemed evident that the non-cooperation programme
was about to adopt new measures of some sort...

When I asked Gandhi what steps he now proposed to follow in his policy of non-violent non-
cooperation he made an astonishing answer:

"I expect to have peace established in India at the end of three months, but this will depend on
our ability to exhibit real strength, that is, to suffer. We will flood the jails of this country. Now
that the government has taken up repression in earnest, all we need to do is to feed the
government jails as soon as possible. Then the administration will come to a standstill, not
because of the arrest of a few thousands, but because it cannot face such an expression of deep
discontent. You see, I still give the government credit for feelings of sincere humanity."

"There are three reasons for this programme of voluntary arrests. It will bring the government
to a standstill. This is the lowest reason. A higher reason is that we need discipline in suffering.
If we weaken at facing imprisonments, the little pin-pricks in store for us, then we cannot expect
peace in three months. The struggle will be infinitely prolonged. We must remain dignified and
calm. With quiet dignity we must go into the jails. Lastly, we feel uneasy, remaining in so-called
freedom in a state we hold to be corrupt."

I asked Mr. Gandhi why it was that he himself had not been arrested, when so many
subordinate leaders of the movement were now in jail. Only that morning had come the news of
the arrest of C.R. Das, president of the National Congress.62

"My turn will come," he answered.

"After the Prince leaves?" I queried.63

"No, before then. I hope to be able to precipitate my arrest. It will come in January, I think."64

"But do you not think that, if you are arrested, there will be serious outbreaks of violence all
over India?" I asked. It was an important point. On it hung my final judgement as to Gandhi's
sincerity in his non-violent pronouncements.

"The people of India are receptive to the doctrine of non-violence," he answered quickly. "For
hundreds of years they have been trained in it. I find no difficulty in making people here listen to
that doctrine, but I should be laughed at all over Europe if there I gave expression to such an
idea. Big audiences here have listened to me with attention and with understanding. It is because

62 Chitta Ranjan Das, called Desh Bandhu (Friend of the Nation), a barrister and a leader of the Indian National
Congress. He was arrested on 10 December 1921.
63 The Prince of Wales was then visiting India.
64 Gandhi was arrested on 10 March 1922, and charged with sedition.
the people themselves know and love this ideal of non-violence that they attribute to me
extraordinary powers. They have always believed in it. It will be India's salvation."

"But we would have sent in thousands to the jails before this, if up to this time we had not
been afraid of the outbreak of violence. Now the time has come for the final test. The leaders are
going to jail, and the people too will offer themselves gladly for imprisonment."

"But if you are making a mistake? If your arrest does precipitate revolution?"

For a moment Gandhi was silent and thoughtful. "Then," he said, "everything that I have done
will have been in vain. I shall have lived my life in vain. There will be no more use for me or for
my work. I shall die in prison. I shall declare a perpetual fast."

The three months have nearly passed, but peace as predicted by Gandhi is not established in
India. Gandhi was arrested three weeks ago. We have heard of no violent demonstrations. One
report has said that everywhere the people are waiting expectantly for the locks to fall off the
doors of his prison. But to those of us who have just left India, the calm seems rather like a lull
before a storm. Between the high points of Gandhi's religious and patriotic ideals lies something
futile that is part of the man. But he himself has said:

"See me please in the nakedness of my working and in my limitation; you will then know
me... my path is destined to be through jungles and temples. The glamour produced by the saintly
politician has vanished. Let us be judged eye to eye."

Non-cooperation Movement to Civil Disobedience

Gandhi was released from prison on 5 February 1924 for health reasons.

While he was in prison, differences had developed among Congress leaders. The Swarajists favoured contesting
elections to legislatures under the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms. The “No changers” opposed any deviation from
non-cooperation.” To avoid a split in the Congress Gandhi supported a pact allowing both groups the right to follow
their convictions. The Belgaum Congress later that year, presided over by Gandhi, formally suspended civil
disobedience.

The Khilafat movement, and with it the hopes for a firm Hindu-Muslim unity, collapsed as Mustapha Kemal Ataturk
led an independence struggle in Turkey, abolished the Caliphate and set up a secular State. Riots between Hindus
and Muslims broke out in several cities and towns.

Gandhi retired from political activities for three years – representing the remaining time of his prison sentence – and
devoted himself mainly to propagating Khadi (hand-spun and hand-woven cloth) to provide employment to millions
of unemployed and underemployed persons and to the eradication of untouchability which were the main elements
of his “constructive programme.”

He set up the All India Spinners Association in 1925. He attached as much importance to the constructive
programme as to the political struggle. The programme was intended to empower the poor people and enable the
intellectuals and the well-to-do to identify with them.
 25

Gandhi became known to Americans after the non-cooperation movement. New York World sent a special
correspondent to India and there were more reports in the American press about India. Many American visitors to
India sought to meet Gandhi.

Interviews by several Americans have been published, but only one from a journalist– Upton Close – on the struggle
for freedom.65

UPTON CLOSE, 192666

[Mr. Close (1894-1960) - pseudonym of Josef Washington Hall of New York - was a journalist and radio
commentator. He wrote several books and articles on Asia. He interviewed Gandhi at Satyagraha Ashram,
Sabarmati, in 1926 and met him again in London on 20 October 1931. He reported his interview in two books: The
Revolt of Asia: the End of the White Man’s World Dominance (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1927); and Eminent
Asians: Six Great Personalities of the New East (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1929). He also wrote two
articles on Gandhi: "Leader of India's Nationalist Movement, Who Believes Religion Must Become a Vital Factor
in Politics" in The Living Age, New York, 336:277-81, June 1929, and “Gandhi: the Prophet Who Sways India: A
Picture of the Mahatma as He Works to Unite His People and to Bring into Being a Self-Governing Nation” in New
York Times, 19 January 1930. ]

“The British have protected the peace, it is true, but they have prevented the necessary struggle
whereby each of the varied elements in Indian life must find its place. They did India harm,
perhaps, stepping in to check political evolution at a time when the Moslem empire was going
into dissolution. Had there not been interference a Hindu power would have arisen and had its
considerable term of stability. There would have been more looting, perhaps, than under the
English – but at least the loot would have stayed in the country.”

**

He breaks his morning “meditation,” which we discover to be mostly intense study, to chat with
us, and the conversation is concluded during his regular afternoon hour at his symbolic spinning-
wheel, when he sees anyone…

“I am taking the field this week after two years of imprisonment and three of retirement” – the
humble leader lifts his piercing eyes from his revolving wheel and speaks. “The increases of
Swaraj, my party, throughout India, although I held aloof from campaigning, are my
endorsement by my people. I will lead them forward, now, to use the ultimate weapon, if
necessary: mass civil disobedience.” “What is that?” we ask. He replies succinctly: “Every
regulation our rulers make, save only those of moral connotation, we will find ten thousand
people to break with fasting and prayer.”

65 Drew Pearson went to India when Gandhi was in prison and was not permitted to visit him. Soon after
Gandhi’s release, he sent some questions to him and received Gandhi’s answers by wire from his son
Devadas. He elaborated the answers from Gandhi’s earlier writings and speeches and filed a report. His
editor revised it to appear as an interview cabled from India. It was published in about 50 newspapers in the
United States and many newspapers around the world. (CWMG, Volume 23, pages 195-98).
66 Upton Close, “Mahatma Gandhi” in Eminent Asians: Six Great Personalities of the New East (New
York: D. Appleton and Company, 1929); and The Revolt of Asia: the End of the White Man’s World
Dominance (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1927), pages 177-78, 226-35.
We gasp: “Can that succeed?” “In all history it has never failed,” he replies calmly. “You of the
West have been taught that it is violent power which wins. The truth is that it is passive
resistance which has always won.” We ask for an illustration. “The victory of Christian Church
over the Roman Empire. Non-resistance is invincible. As long as we do not let our fight drop to
the plane of violence, we cannot lose… We need a plurality party composed of all our creeds and
races. We are getting it, in spite of the lazy common dismissal of our programme as hopelessly
idealistic. – See, this man here with me is a high Moslem scholar, and we trust one another.
Perhaps you have gained an inkling of the remarkable breakdown of caste taking place in India.
As soon as we show unity, the British will step out – they will not resist – they are sensible
people. I might paraphrase the words of a British protagonist of the commoners’ struggle in
England: ‘If we Indians could only spit in unison, we would form a puddle big enough to drown
300,000 Englishmen!’”…

It is championship of his culture which underlies Gandhi’s uncompromising opposition to British

rule in India. “Do you always spin during your hour for interviews?” I asked. “Yes,” was the
kindly ironic reply, “by so doing I can always feel that my time is not entirely lost. Besides, with
my hands engaged so actively, is there not less danger I shall use them on someone?” I grasped
the implication of his humour – the relation between industry and non-violence in Swaraj.

“Is your attitude modifying,” I asked “along with the development of liberalism in British rule?
Are you satisfied with their programme for gradual introduction of parliamentary government?”

I was astonished at the vehemence of this saintly-mannered man’s reply. He stopped spinning,
his long pointed jaw set and his flaring, alert ears framed a very earnest face. “The British
measures are entirely beside the point. My fight is not a matter of personalities – or even races. I
have no interest in substituting the tyranny of a Babu (English-educated professional) parliament
for that of a British secretariat. Both are noxious to our culture. If the British would accept our
viewpoint, stay on our terms, I for one should be glad to keep them to govern us. But we cannot
allow them to tear down our culture. Their parliamentary scheme promises no abatement of that
tendency. Therefore I must go through with my programme, even to the strategy of Mass Civil
Disobedience.

“The ground was prepared for it several years ago through our preliminary non-cooperation
campaign. Then the riots in the Chauri Chaura tea fields occurred. Human nature couldn't hold
in any longer. But violence is against the whole spirit of my movement - would betray and
ruin it. So I had to suspend the whole programme. The British government followed up my
retreat by imprisoning me. For two years I was in jail, for three more I have kept in
retirement. Now I go out to carry the programme through to victory.

"Every injustice in history has been got rid of through mass disobedience, although
historians, obsessed with the theory that it is violent force which makes destiny, have
overlooked this greater force, save in the case of religious movements.

"For success in this method there are two requisites: the casting off of fear, and cooperation.
More powerful minorities always rule through fear. If fear is cast off, where is their power?
Overcoming fear is the key to victory, and the only way to cast out fear is through religious
 27

conviction. And, what good is national self-rule if a man have not individual self-rule? If a
man cannot rule himself it is proper that he should be ruled. That is why I have gone deeper
than political reform into spiritual reform. By religious or spiritual conviction I don't mean
blind faith in a ceremony or a cross or a Virgin Mary or a creed. I mean apprehension of the fact
that I shall always live as truly as I live now, and that I can better my condition."

"Of course, with cooperation, any method would succeed," I ventured.

"Yes. The British say, ‘show me your organisation and we will turn over affairs.’ So I cannot
find it in my heart to hate any single Englishman, or even the British government."

"Your fight is not so much against the British Raj as against disunity among your own people?"

"Yes. But there is this: the British government fosters things, half unconsciously, which are
sapping our strength. We cannot let that go on or we are lost. The land is being drained -we are
being made economically helpless. British rule promotes love of, and dependence upon,
Western civilisation."

"Adoption of Western civilisation might be the quickest way to rid yourselves of the West.
Japan decided so, and now China," I suggested.

"I have just been trying to tell you," the Mahatma replied patiently, "that Westernism is a more
dreaded tyrant than Westerners. In addition to my belief that it is a great delusion, leading its
devotees to destruction, I have the feeling that my people are not so well equipped as even
you, to survive under it.

"Government must be secondary to culture. We must have government which will permit
that our culture and way of life be paramount, that we take up our ancient handicrafts again,
spin and weave and make useful and beautiful things with our hands, and that we shall stop
the stench and smoke of modern industrialism that is creeping over our country before it
robs us of our souls as it has done in your country. The false teaching that life consists of
the multitude of possessions, or comforts, or thrills, or even achievements which a man can
attain, must not have the prestige of backing by a ruling class. Let the British tear up their
railroads and dismantle their factories, send their armies home and stop their system of
Western education in India and above all, cease draining this country economically to feed
England, then they will be welcome to stay and govern in India, for they are just judges and
efficient administrators."

"You don't expect them to meet such terms?"

"No," he replied sadly, "they will as likely remain English as we Indian. That is, until the
great awakening comes in the West."

"For you are headed for terrific catastrophe and misery." His voice became low and his
brow furrowed. "You are wonderful people, too. You do not lack the spirit of sacrifice, the
ability to forego the things of the body. Look at your North Pole adventurers - your Mount
Everest climbers. Why can you not be as willing to give up bodily luxury for the sake of
spiritual adventures? There is a wistfulness - a longing, - a spiritual hunger, among you
American people in particular today. But no practice. Why don't you practise?"

"Perhaps, Mahatma, we don't know what to practise," I suggested. His mobile lips curled
the slightest bit.

"You want to see the whole way before taking the first step. You want your spiritual
undertaking insured against loss. You want to eat your cake and have it too. You will
remain hungry…. There is no one of you but has some ideal higher than his practice - some
ideal involving sacrifice. Start to work it. Spiritual growth will come, step by step. It is not a
matter of creed. Any religion will start you off if you work it. I despise a civilisation
concerned only with the things of the body. I pity those of you who are being led into
bitterness and despair by your illusions as to what is worthwhile in life.

"You glory in speed, thinking not of the goal. You elevate process, rather than ultimate
product. You think your souls are saved because you can invent radio. Of what elevation to
man is a method of broadcasting when you have only drivel to send out? What mark of
civilisation is it to be able to produce a one hundred twenty page newspaper in one night
when most of it is either banal or actually vicious and not two columns of it are worth
preserving? What contribution to man has aeronautics made which can overbalance its use
in his self-destruction? You are children playing with razors.

"You have cut yourselves badly already. Europe's frenzy for reading prophecies of its own
destruction shows how badly you have been hurt. I have read your German professor's
Decline of the West, your French debater's Twilight of the White Races with great sadness
and warning. America still seems self-confident: next time it will be America that will
suffer and when she has cut herself as badly as Europe she will be in the same state of
mind.

"Such of you as survive will come back to Asia for another way of life. You are already
coming: Count Keyserling from Germany, Romain Rolland from France, many less eloquent
from England and America. 'If I should now allow the West in its boyishly confident
rowdyism utterly to crush out our opposing system of life and ideals through political power and
material influence, would I not be playing traitor not only to my own people but to you, very
Westerners as well?"

Here, unadulterated, is the Cultural Revolt. It is found in the same spirit elsewhere than in
India: in China, even in Japan…

"You call me a hopeless visionary," said Gandhi. "Some of you, willing to be more kind,
simply say I'm insane. You are very wise. So, doubtless, said our ancestors of the first
patriarch who rose up and suggested the elimination of cannibalism. 'The human race has
always eaten human flesh. It always will.' You say, 'the human race has always relied upon
physical force. It always will.' It is said of moral reform of every kind. The human mind
 29

can be changed, if you but have patience. Moral force can be substituted for violence. I can
wait - fifteen years, one hundred fifty, four hundred, are the same to the man of the spirit."

"But in the case of cannibalism was it not economic rather than moral arguments that
brought reform - or with slavery?" I asked.

He came near bristling for a saint. "You Westerners are always trying to separate the
political from the religious, the practical from the moral. There is no distinction. All things
affecting man's welfare are religious. What but a moral factor is an economic factor? What
is a moral factor? - Just a consensus of opinion. What difference if it come about through
economic, or religious, or humane or any other conviction?"

What we call modern influences seem consciously repelled by Gandhi's genius, but his
campaign on the subject of caste seems Western to orthodox Hindus. He concentrates against the
interdict of the "untouchables," the outcastes, which all the other castes could most easily agree
to maintain…

- The above is extracted from The Revolt of Asia

-
[Mr. Close added in Eminent Asians:]

"The idea - tight division of human activity into religious, social, and political compartments
is the prime fallacy of the modern world - and the basis of Western hypocrisy," said the
Mahatma to me as he sat on his rough stone floor at Sabarmati colony, his large eyes
covering me and his sharp chin and long nose pointing at me with a gesture definite, yet
delicate. "If religion is not needed in politics, where on earth is it wanted!" Of course he
means personal religion, not clerical institutionalism. …

In the highly exciting Fall elections of 1926, the Swaraj Party, while losing rather seriously in
the Punjab and United Provinces, swept the boards in Madras. It came out with one-third of the
membership in the Delhi National Assembly - very good in that to a considerable degree the
membership there is "protected" rather than proportional… "This is my endorsement by my
people," said Mr. Gandhi to the writer, who was at his ashram as the returns came in. "I will
lead them forward now, if necessary, to the use of the ultimate weapon: mass civil
disobedience." …

Subjection to a rule which is founded on unjust premises he calls an "immoral barter for liberty,"
which must be opposed by "rebellion without any signs of violence."

Such rebellion cannot be accomplished until all fear of death has disappeared in the rebels; until,
indeed, they have reached a state of spiritual exaltation where victory is hardly more
consequential to them than death. Any tinge of the traditional revolutionary spirit, "It's your life
or ours," means ruin to it.
“The moment of victory has come when there is no retort to the mad fury of the powerful. We
must, by our conduct, demonstrate to every Englishman that he is as safe in the remotest corner
of India as he professes to be behind his machine guns. That moment will see a transformation in
the English nature in its relation to India, and that moment will also be the moment when all the
destructive cutlery in India will begin to rust.”

"I cannot find it in my heart to hate any single Englishman," said Gandhi to the author in 1926.
But it would seem that he has been somewhat disillusioned in his faith in the white man's sense
of fair play…

"I would go to America," Gandhi said to the author, "if I could go to help Americans rather
than to be a show. Your people are very tragic to me. They will take the longest risks - exhibit
the greatest heroism in the world in material adventures. But they want their spiritual
experiments insured against loss beforehand."

"They are bewildered," I said. "Maybe they would follow the true religion if they were told what
it is."

"Definition enough for any one is this," he replied, pausing with hand holding the spinning
thread in mid- air, and laboriously bringing out the following phrases as he irregularly twirled
the wheel: "the conviction that I shall always live, as truly as I live now - and that I can better
my condition. Are the American people bewildered, or do they rather want spiritual attainment
made easy for them as they are accustomed to have material attainment?"

-The above is extracted from the book Eminent Asians

The Salt March, Civil Disobedience and Round Table Conference

In 1927 the Government announced that a Parliamentary Commission, headed by Sir John Simon,67 was appointed
to review the Montagu- Chelmsford Reforms and report on further constitutional reform for India. The Congress
denounced the appointment of a Commission without consulting Indians and without Indian members

The Commission arrived in India in February 1928. There were black flag demonstrations shouting “Simon Go
Home” wherever it went. Police attacked demonstrators with lathis68. Jawaharlal Nehru was assaulted. Lala Lajpat
Rai, another Congress leader who had been exiled in the United States for several years, died of blows by police
lathis.

The radicals in the Congress called for the declaration of complete independence as the objective of Congress.
The Congress adopted, at its annual session in 1928, a compromise proposal by Gandhi – namely, to demand

67 Sir John Simon (1873-1954), a British Liberal politician, was chairman of the Statutory Commission on
India from 1927 to 1930.
68 Heavy iron-bound bamboo sticks used by the police.
 31

dominion status and, if Britain did not accede to the demand within a year, to undertake non-cooperation for
complete independence.

Lord Irwin, the Viceroy, announced on 31 October 1929, after consultations with the new Labour Government in
Britain, that a round table conference would be held in London of representatives of British India, the Princely
States and the British Government to discuss the constitution of India. He met Gandhi, Motilal Nehru (President of
Congress) and Mahomed Ali Jinnah (leader of the Muslim League). He could not assure Gandhi that the conference
would to discuss a scheme for dominion status.

The British authorities began to stress their concern for the rights of the minorities and to use the Muslim League
and its leader to counter the national demand for independence. Gandhi and Congress were unable, despite several
efforts, to secure cooperation of the Muslim League in the quest for independence, and the Muslim League
proceeded to drift further away from the Congress.

Congress met at its annual session in Lahore in December 1929 with Jawaharlal Nehru as President. It decided not
to attend the Round Table Conference and declared complete independence as its objective. It decided to launch
civil disobedience and authorised Gandhi to draw up a programme for the movement. At midnight on 31 December,
the tricolour flag of Congress was hoisted by Nehru on the banks of the Ravi river.

Gandhi called for the observance of Independence Day on 26 January. There was such a tremendous response all
over India that he was convinced that the people were ready for civil disobedience. He declared that British rule had
become a curse, especially for the poor in India.

In a letter to the Viceroy on 2 March 1930, he listed eleven demands including a halving of land revenue,
abolition of salt tax and reduction of military expenditure and official salaries.69 He pointed out that a party of
violence – which shared his ends – was growing in India. He announced that he proposed to set in motion
unadulterated non-violence against the organised violence of the British and the force of the growing party of
violence. The movement would begin with the violation of the Salt Act as the tax on salt was the most iniquitous of
all from the poor man’s standpoint. 70

On 12 March 1930, Gandhi began a march from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi – 241 miles – with 78 chosen
volunteers to violate the Salt Law. By the time the march reached Dandi on 5 April, the group had increased from 79
to thousands. On 6 April, when Gandhi picked up salt from a creek, the Government refrained from any arrests. But
the movement spread all over the country and thousands of people defied the salt laws by boiling sea water to
produce salt. It was extended to burning of foreign cloth and picketing of shops which sold liquor or foreign cloth.
Police resorted to extreme violence. Gandhi was arrested on 5 May 1930. More than 60,000 people went to prison
during civil disobedience. The participation of thousands of women in the movement, especially in picketing liquor
shops, was unprecedented.

American correspondents arrived on the scene because of the dramatic happenings.71

A fortnight after Gandhi’s arrest, 2,500 volunteers, including Manilal Gandhi, marched to the salt depots at
Dharasana. Webb Miller of the United Press of America was present and provided a graphic description of police
violence:

“Suddenly, at a word of command, scores of native policemen rushed upon the advancing marchers and
rained blows on their heads with their steel-shod lathis. Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend
off the blows. They went down like ten-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whack of the clubs

69 He stressed the suffering of the poor and used the term “dumb millions” thrice in the letter to the
Viceroy. Young India, 12 March 1930; CWMG, Volume 48, pages 2-8.
70 The tax on salt was exorbitant, more than twenty times the cost of production and facilitated the sale of
British salt in India.
71 Webb Miller of the United Press of America, Nigel Farson of Chicago Daily News, Edgar Snow of
Saturday Evening Post and William Shirer of Chicago Tribune were among the American journalists who
arrived in India. Only Nigel Farson was able to see Gandhi before his arrest.
 on unprotected skulls. The waiting crowd of marchers groaned and sucked in their breath in sympathetic
pain at every blow. Those struck down fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing with fractured skulls or
broken shoulders…

“Group after group walked forward, sat down, and submitted to being beaten into insensibility without
raising an arm to fend off the blows… They began savagely kicking the seated men in the abdomen and
testicles. The injured men writhed and squealed in agony, which seemed to inflame the fury of the police,
and the crowd again almost broke away from their leaders. The police then began dragging the sitting men
by their arms or feet, sometimes for a hundred yards, and then throwing them into ditches. One was
dragged into the ditch where I stood; the splash of his body doused me with muddy water. Another
policeman dragged a Gandhi man to the ditch, threw him in, and belaboured him over the head with his
lathi. Hour after hour stretcher-bearers carried back a stream of inert, bleeding bodies…”

Nigel Farson, correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, filed an equally graphic eye-witness account of police
brutality against non-violent demonstrators in Bombay.

These reports were published in hundreds of newspapers in the United States and around the world. Webb
Miller’s report was inserted in the Congressional Record.

Time magazine published a picture of Gandhi on its cover page on 31 March 1930 with the caption “Saint
Gandhi.” It chose him as “man of the year” for 1930 and had another picture of Gandhi on its cover page on 5
January 1931.

Meanwhile, the first Round Table Conference, boycotted by the Congress, ended. The British Government was
anxious to secure the participation of Congress in the second Round Table Conference. Gandhi and members of the
Congress Working Committee were released from prison.

After a week of intense negotiations, a Gandhi-Irwin pact was signed on 5 March 1931. The Government agreed
to withdraw ordinances issued to repress the Congress and to release all prisoners, except those who were
prosecuted for offences involving violence. It also agreed to permit free collection or manufacture of salt by persons
near the sea coast and peaceful picketing of liquor and foreign cloth shops. Congress agreed to discontinue civil
disobedience and participate in the Round Table Conference. It authorised Gandhi to attend the Conference as its
sole representative.

Gandhi, an optimist by nature, and perhaps naïve in trusting his adversaries, hoped for progress towards
independence of India. But the events that followed were distressing.

Lord Irwin left India a month after the agreement with Gandhi and was succeeded by Lord Willingdon,72 who
resorted to repression against the Congress. Gandhi’s efforts to reach an understanding with Muslim leaders before
the Conference failed. At the Conference, it became clear that the British Government was not prepared to grant
meaningful power to Indians. Gandhi was disappointed by proposals for “separate electorates” for minorities which
would divide Indians and facilitate continued British rule. He was particularly distressed at the demand by Dr. B.R.
Ambedkar73, eminent leader of the “untouchables,” for separate electorates for the depressed classes, as that would
divide the Hindus. He announced that he would resist that with his life.

72 Lord Willingdon, a former Governor of Bombay and Madras, was Governor-General and Viceroy of
India from 1931 to 1936.
73 Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1897-1956) was one of the most highly educated Indians, though subjected to gross
discrimination as a member of the “untouchable” caste of Hindus. He obtained doctorates at Columbia University in
New York and London School of Economics and qualified as a barrister. As a leader of the depressed classes, he
fought against the caste system and for human rights for all the people.
His approach to the elimination of untouchability was different from that of Gandhi. He proposed separate
electorates and reservations for depressed classes as early as 1919, and pressed the issue at the Round Table
Conferences of 1930-31. He felt obliged to compromise in 1932 as Gandhi’s life was at stake.
 33

Soon after return to India in December 1931, Gandhi was detained. Civil disobedience continued despite drastic
regulations and police violence. The number of persons convicted for civil disobedience in the first nine months of
1932 was 61,551, even more than in the earlier phase.

On 17 August 1932, while Gandhi was in prison, the British Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, announced his
“communal award” giving separate electorates and weighted representation to Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists,
Christians, Depressed Classes (“untouchables”), Europeans and Anglo-Indians.

Gandhi undertook a “fast unto death” on 20 September 1932 in protest against separating the untouchables from
the rest of the Hindus. After frantic discussions, Hindu and untouchable leaders agreed on a new formula (Yeravda
Pact of 24 September) providing greater representation to depressed classes in legislatures, educational facilities and
public service jobs. Under this formula, electorates would be joint. There would be primaries among the
untouchables to choose four of their candidates – and the joint electorate would elect one of them. Untouchables
would get much more representation than in the MacDonald award. Britain agreed the next day to amend the award.

The fast led to a spontaneous upsurge of feeling against the oppression of the untouchables, called Harijans
(children of God) by Gandhi. Gandhi began to concentrate on educating the Hindus and assisting the Harijans, as he
considered the eradication of untouchability more important than even independence.

In November 1932, Gandhi, still a prisoner, was allowed to publish Harijan and given other facilities on the
understanding that they would be used only for work against untouchability and not for politics. He again undertook
a 21-day fast on 8 May 1933 for the “purification of self and associates” for Harijan work. It was apparently
provoked by his discovery that an American woman, Nilla Cram Cook (Nila Nagini), who joined the movement
against untouchability in Bangalore, was not “pure” according to his standards. (She was promiscuous and got into
debt.) The government released Gandhi a few hours after he began his fast.

After recovering, he sought a meeting with the Viceroy but the latter refused to see him. On 1 August 1933, he
began a tour of Gujarat to teach civil resistance to peasants. He was promptly arrested and ordered to remain in
Poona. He defied and was sentenced to one year. As a convict he was not allowed to do Harijan work in jail. He
began a fast unto death, got very ill and was released. In September 1933, he moved to Vinoba Bhave’s ashram in
Wardha. He went on a “Harijan tour” of India for ten months from 7 November 1933 to exhort Hindus to eliminate
untouchability and to raise funds for the uplift of Harijans.

Civil disobedience had declined and Congress formally ended it in 1934.

Dr. Haridas T. Muzumdar, 12 March 193074

[Dr. Muzumdar, an Indian writer in America, visited India during the Lahore Congress in 1929, and stayed at the
Sabarmati Ashram during January-March 1930. He accompanied Gandhi on the Salt March to Dandi in 1930. He
was also with Gandhi in London during the Round Table Conference in 1931. He was editor of India Today and
Tomorrow, New York, and author of Gandhi the Apostle (1923); Gandhi versus the Empire (1932); Gandhi
Triumphant (1939), Mahatma Gandhi: Peaceful Revolutionary (1952), Mahatma Gandhi: A Prophetic Voice (1963)
and The Grammar of Sociology: Man in Society (1966). The interview took place in Aslali during the March.]

After independence of India in 1947, he was appointed the first Law Minister, at the suggestion of Gandhi, and
became chairman of the committee which drafted the Indian constitution. He was posthumously awarded India’s
highest national award, Bharat Ratna, in 1990.

74 The Bombay Chronicle, 18 March 1930; CWMG, Volume 43, page 61.
I should not say I am very tired; to be sure, I am tired, but it is ordinary fatigue. I myself am
amazed that I should have been able to walk so far at a stretch. You know I have had no practice
for some time in long-distance walking...

I asked him what he would like to say in regard to the parallel between the great march of 3,000
men, women and children he had organised in South Africa and the present march to the sea-
coast.75

Well, the technique is the same even though the organisation is different. Soul-force is the
weapon common to both. In South Africa, however, there were 3,000 persons, here we are only
79. Again in South Africa we were in the midst of a hostile environment, social as well as
political, and we had to carry our own foodstuffs with us; here we are in the midst of a hospitable
environment and do not have to carry our food. The march in South Africa was attended by
greater hardships than the present one.

The Reverend Dr. George Sherwood Eddy, December 192976

[Dr Eddy and Kirby Page, two churchmen from the United States, arrived in India in October 1929. They spent ten
days with Gandhi: three days in his Ashram and seven days during the Christmas week at the Lahore session of the
Indian National Congress. Before meeting Gandhi, they met the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, and carried a message from
him to Gandhi. After the interview, they conveyed Gandhi’s reply to Lord Erwin.

Dr. Eddy (1871-1963), a YMCA official for many years, a Christian Socialist and author of about 40 books -
including India Awakening (1911) and The Challenge of the East (1931) - had worked in India for fifteen years from
1896, and frequently visited India since then. A prominent pacifist between the world wars, he moved to the "just
war" position during the Second World War in view of Fascist atrocities and aggression. He returned to pacifist
absolutism after the war. 77

He wrote in The Challenge of the East:

“In spite of admiration for the British I came to have a growing sympathy for the Indian Nationalist drive
for self-government. The protests and the reforms of the Nationalists were logical. Take their spinning-
wheel campaign. The cotton plant was native to India, and until the eighteenth century India had supplied
Europe with its finest cotton goods. Then Britain allowed Lancaster to kill India's profitable cottage
industry by imposing a 75 per cent tax on Indian cotton goods imported into Britain. After the
development of English factories, it was cheaper for the Indians themselves to buy goods manufactured in
England. Gandhi introduced the spinning wheel to teach the people to make their own homespun clothing
again, to save millions of dollars in foreign trade, and to build backbone for a self-governing people in an
effort to correct the moral "national deterioration." In the same way each of Gandhi's reforms was
grounded in a passionate moral issue, with far greater justification than the American colonies' relatively
trifling protest against the Stamp Act or the tax on tea.

“I had many close and personal contacts with the Indian leaders. At the close of 1929 I spent a memorable
hour with the poet Tagore in his home. I was entertained in the palatial residence of Pandit Jawaharlal
Nehru and then spent ten days with Gandhi at his ashram at Sabarmati. Also I attended the Lahore meeting

75 In October-November 1913, Gandhi led more than two thousand Indian strikers from the coal mining
area near Newcastle to the Transvaal.
76 Sherwood Eddy, The Challenge of the East (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1931), pages 27-29, 32-35..
77 For further biographical information, see Sherwood Eddy, Eighty Adventurous Years: An Autobiography (New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1955).
 35

of the National Congress. After interviewing some fifty Indian leaders I found none willing to continue
under the existing relationship to Great Britain. Evidence to this fact was the 30,000 Indian political
prisoners, whose number finally rose to 100,000. With Kirby Page I lunched with the Viceroy, Lord Irwin
(the present Lord Halifax). When he heard that we were on our way to visit Gandhi he asked us if we
would take a message to him and obtain a reply. The English and the Indians were then rapidly drifting
apart and both feared violence, so that the Viceroy was eager to come to an understanding with the Indian
leaders.”]

During our interview with Lord Irwin,78 while Kirby Page and I were lunching with him, we
mentioned our coming visit with Mr. Gandhi in his home. The Viceroy asked if we would take a
message to Mr. Gandhi for him and let him have Gandhi's reply. Recognising that the two
peoples were drifting apart, he was apparently losing no opportunity to come to an understanding
with Indian leaders. In his study Lord Irwin read his carefully prepared statement which we took
down in writing and later read to Mr. Gandhi.

After listening to the Viceroy's message, Gandhi gave us his reply which was in substance as
follows:

"To be told that India is an equal, as a beloved child in the home which has not yet reached the
age of responsibility and of its political majority is not enough. We are offered Dominion Status
‘in the fullness of time,’ but this is an ominous phrase which leaves our future and our fate solely
to Britain's imperialistic decision, which we have found far from disinterested in the past. Our
position is clear and unmistakable. It is stated in our resolution of last year at the Calcutta
Congress. Unless our demand for Dominion Status is accepted ‘on or before December 31st,
1929,’ that is, before the close of the coming Lahore meeting, the National Congress, after vainly
pleading for Dominion Status for forty years, will be compelled to declare for complete
independence and to ‘organise a campaign of nonviolent non-cooperation.’ And it will
undoubtedly vote for complete independence."

After thinking over Mr. Gandhi's reply, we said to him the next day: "Mr. Gandhi, your reply
seems to us in one way very terrible. There is a chance of agreement in the proposed Round
Table Conference. You have in Lord Irwin the most trusted Viceroy of our generation. In
Ramsay MacDonald,79 from India's point of view, you have the best Prime Minister; in
Wedgewood Benn80 the best Secretary of State since Mr. Montagu81. You have the first official
offer of ultimate Dominion Status, and in the Round Table Conference the first opportunity of
obtaining it by agreement. Why then, without even attending the Conference, do you launch a
campaign which you and no man living can keep nonviolent, however peaceful your intentions?"

He was sitting on the floor at his spinning wheel with the light of the afternoon sun falling
upon him. He looked up and said: "The answer is incredibly simple. For years I have been

78 Lord Irwin (1881-1959), later the Viscount of Halifax, was Viceroy of India from 1926 to 1931.
79 Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937) was leader of the British Labour Party and Prime Minister of the
Labour Party Governments in the United Kingdom in 1924 and 1929-31. He was Prime Minister of a
National Government from 1931 to 1935.
80 William Wedgwood Benn (1877-1960) of the Labour Party was Secretary of State for India from 1928
to 1931.
81 Edwin Samuel Montagu (1879-1924), a Liberal politician, served as Under-Secretary of State for India
from 1910 to 1914 and as Secretary of State for India from 1917 to 1922.
dealing with the British. I do not think they will grant us a Constitution based on Dominion
Status at the coming Round Table Conference. They will not and indeed they cannot in the
present political situation in Great Britain. If I am wrong, if Ramsay MacDonald would ask Lord
Irwin to tell me privately, if they do not want to say it publicly, ‘We seriously intend to grant
India the Constitution of a self-governing Dominion and we intend to begin to make the transfer
of power to an autonomous India from the coming Round Table Conference, though that transfer
will inevitably involve a period of some years. We really intend to do this and are willing to
stake the political life of the Labour Government upon its fulfilment.’ If Mr. MacDonald would
give this assurance through the Viceroy, we would not only attend the Conference, but I
personally would face our National Congress single-handed, and we would guarantee to meet the
British half way and do everything to cooperate with them wholeheartedly.82 But you will find
they will make no such guarantee. And if they do not, we are already on record as being
compelled to fall back upon the Calcutta resolution for complete independence."

We delivered this message to Lord Irwin, to Ramsay MacDonald and Wedgwood Benn long
before the Lahore Congress, with Mr. Gandhi's clear statement that if they received no assurance
from the government, they would have to declare for independence and launch the non-
cooperation campaign, but it was evident that no such guarantee could be given.

The Reverend Kirby Page, December 192983

[Mr. Page (1890-1957) travelled with Dr. Sherwood Eddy (see above) to India. Two accounts by him of the
meetings with Gandhi are given below.

Mr. Page was a prominent pacifist and exponent of the social gospel, as well as a prolific speaker and writer. He
worked for the YMCA, and served as private secretary to Dr. John R. Mott for some time and later as personal
secretary to Dr. Eddy. He was a member of Fellowship of Reconciliation, and from 1926 to 1934, editor of World
Tomorrow, a Christian pacifist monthly published in New York. He wrote more than 40 books and numerous
articles.

In 1925, Gandhi received from an American friend a pamphlet by Mr. Page, War: Its Causes, Consequences and
Cure (New York, 1923). He reproduced it in 21 instalments in Young India between 26 November 1925 and 6 May
1926.

After his visit to Gandhi, Mr. Page published his impressions in 1930 in a booklet entitled Is Mahatma Gandhi the
Greatest Man of the Age? A biographical interpretation and an analysis of the political situation in India. He wrote
later in his autobiography: "Long since that question mark has been erased from my mind."84

82 According to the Reverend Kirby Page, Gandhi said:

“This assurance should be in writing but could be kept entirely private and not be passed on to any
others besides the small group of Indian leaders to whom it is communicated by the Viceroy.”
Kirby Page, "With Gandhi at Sabarmati" in World Tomorrow, New York, 13: 63-66, February
1930.
83 From: Kirby Page, "With Gandhi at Sabarmati" in World Tomorrow, New York, 13: 63-66, February 1930. Also:
Harold E. Fey (ed.), Kirby Page, Social Evangelist: The autobiography of a 20 th Century Prophet for Peace (Nyack,
New York: Fellowship Press, 1975).
84 For biographical information on Mr. Page, see: Harold E. Fey (ed.), Kirby Page, Social Evangelist: The
Autobiography of a 20th Century Prophet of Peace (Nyack, New York: Fellowship Press, 1975) and Charles
Chatfield and Charles DeBenedetti (eds.), Kirby Page and the Social Gospel: an Anthology (New York and London:
 37

About his meeting with Gandhi, Page wrote:

“Among the exalted privileges of my life, I count the days we spent with Mahatma Gandhi at Sabarmati.
We arrived at the ashram on his weekly day of silence and talked with his friends until the hour of evening
worship, when we sat in a circle on the sand. Then we had an hour's conversation with Mr. Gandhi. At
dawn we joined the circle of worship, at mealtime we sat on the floor near him and, during our stay of three
days, were privileged to talk with him on three unhurried occasions. Later we attended the Indian National
Congress at Lahore, over which the Mahatma presided, and joined a small group which gathered around
him on the sawdust in a nearby tent for worship at sundown. During our stay in India, Gandhi was the
subject of numerous conversations with Indian, British, and American friends. Sherwood and Maud, Alma
and I were in agreement, as we talked with him and listened to him at the hour of worship, that we were in
the presence of one of the great souls of the ages…

“In our close contacts with him, we were surprised to find that he was not a solemn person but was full of
sparkle and laughter. One of my prized photos is a snapshot of the Mahatma walking along a road, kicking
up the dust, surrounded by hilarious children…”]

Mr. and Mrs. Eddy and my wife and I spent three memorable days with Mahatmaji. We had
three long interviews in addition to many fleeting contacts with him during our stay, in spite of
the fact that he had been away on tour for three months and was to leave again within a week...

Mr. Gandhi and other Indian leaders with whom we have talked freely admit that under self-
government there will undoubtedly be a much greater degree of inefficiency and corruption.
They foresee a period of chaos and possible bloodshed. But they are prepared to face the worst
conditions that can be predicted rather than to prolong the present status which they regard as
humiliating, demoralising and intolerable. They, therefore, dismiss as irrelevant the question as
to whether or not India is fit for self-government. They say if necessary they would prefer to go
to hell as citizens of a free nation rather than to dwell in paradise under British rule. To be
"eaten up by the hordes from Northwest and Central Asia," says Mahatma Gandhi, would be a
position infinitely superior to one of ever-growing emasculation... a sudden overwhelming
swoop from Central Asia... would be a humane deliverance from the living and ignominous
death which we are going through at the present moment."

Negley Farson (Chicago Daily News), 193085

[Negley Farson, correspondent of Chicago Daily News, went to India in 1930 during the Civil Disobedience
Campaign and stayed there for five months. He met Gandhi when he was being arrested in 1930. He was stationed
in London from 1931 to 1935. He was President of Association of American Correspondents in London which
hosted a lunch for Gandhi in 1931.]

The day after I landed in Bombay and got myself oriented, I headed straight for Gandhi.

Garland Publishing, Inc., 1976).

85 Negley Farson, “Indian Hate Lyric” in Eugene Lyons (ed.), We Cover the World, by Sixteen Foreign
Correspondents. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1937), pages 135-38, 150-51.
I found him sitting under a mango tree, up in Karadi, in Baroda State” … with no weapon except
his own agile mind, he was defying the might of the British Empire. He was defying it with the
principle that no matter what an Englishman did to an Indian, the Indian must not hit back.
"But you are sending naked men against steel!" I said.

"They seem to be doing very well," said the Mahatma.

The students of his ashram squatted on their hunkers around us in a semi-circle. … During the
whole of the two hours and forty minutes that 1 talked with him, I was conscious that Gandhi
was directing his replies at the students more than he was to me. He was giving them a
demonstration how to put the case of the Civil Disobedience movement to a white man.

During all of this time a conviction was forming in my mind: Gandhi wanted the English to beat
the Indians!

Things he said made that clear…

"Then how,” I asked, “can you call this a passive resistance movement? Only a small minority of
the Indians, as you admit yourself, will allow themselves to be beaten without hitting back. The
rest will resist. And if they do that they will come up against British policemen armed with
lathis, soldiers with bayonets and worse – many of them will get killed. My point is that you
haven’t got a big enough majority in the movement who believe in non-resistance, or passive
resistance, to call your movement that.”

The students of the ashram stopped their spinning and looked from myself to Mahatma Gandhi. I
saw many of them afterwards beaten to a pulp by British police sergeants. And these particular
Gandhiwallahs did not hit back. The way they stood up to those lathi blows on Bombay Maidan
was one of the bravest things I have ever seen. They blanched a little now as they held their
breaths, waiting for Gandhi's reply.

But it did not come.

Gandhi did what I had noticed he had done several times when I thought I had put a particularly
pertinent question to him during that interview - he broke the thread of cotton he was spinning on
his takli. He took time to repair it. When he spoke again it was on an entirely different subject.86

86 Mr. Farson wrote:

“Later I was to have that other great and good man in India confirm my suspicion of Gandhi's
mental dexterity. In Simla, I was invited to luncheon in the Viceregal Lodge. After a painfully
formal meal (it was like dining with the King), Lord Irwin took me up to his private study. I asked
him what he thought of Mahatma Gandhi.

“Irwin smiled and looked down into the Himalayas. ‘The first time I saw Gandhi,’ he said, ‘I was
tremendously impressed by his holiness. The second time I was tremendously impressed by his
legal astuteness. The third time I was sure of it.’

"’Of which, Your Excellency?’

 39

The American newspapers were, for the most part, incredibly fair-minded over the whole Gandhi
business. They printed everything that we at the spot wrote, and their editorials were
distinguished for well-balanced reasoning. Katherine Mayo's Mother India… had done a lot to
corrupt opinion in the United States. It helped the British tremendously just at the moment when
help was needed most. But the stories we had to send back continuously of the (apparently)
brutal and needless beatings of defenseless Indians by British policemen soon caused the whole
world (including England) to hold up its hands in dismay. They rubbed out Mother India as
easily as you clean a child's slate….

[Farson and a colleague, Ashmead-Bartlett of London Daily Telegraph managed to find that the
government intended to arrest Gandhi on the train near Borivli. They arrived at the scene when
Gandhi was arrested and taken down a train between stations and driven away to prison.]

Gandhi was splendid on that scene. He recognised Ashmead and me and came over to shake
hands with us. It was cold, and he clutched his white sheet close to his fragile body. I heard
Ashmead saying:

"Have you anything to say, Mr. Gandhi?"

And Gandhi replied, "Shall I say it now--or shall I wait?"

"Better say it now," said Bartlett sardonically, "because in about two hours you'll be in Poona
prison."

Gandhi looked around. He smiled. And I think we all loved the little man as he stood there so
courageously before us. I shall always have a soft spot in my heart for him for the way he acted
that day. He spoke to me and Ashmead:

"Tell the people of America and England to watch what is being done here this morning. Is this
liberty?" etc.

A British medical colonel in mufti gently touched Gandhi's arm. The brown Buick, with its
absurd bridal veil, had been backed up to our sides. Its door was open, with the Colonel holding
it: "Are you ready, Mr. Gandhi?"

"Ready," said Gandhi. He shook our hands, stepped into the car. In an instant its driver had
jumped it into high and was streaming down the dusty road…

“Irwin laughed: ‘You've seen Gandhi. It's for you to say.’”

William L. Shirer (Chicago Tribune), 22 February 193187

[Mr. Shirer (1904-93) came to India first in 1930 to cover the salt satyagraha, but could not see Gandhi as he was in
prison. He arrived again in 1931 when Gandhi was holding talks with the Viceroy, Lord Irwin. He was the only
American correspondent in India at that time. He interviewed Gandhi in Delhi at the residence of Dr. M.A. Ansari.
He developed a close relationship with Gandhi who trusted him as a correspondent. In later years, Mr. Shirer
became prominent as a correspondent in Nazi Germany, as a pioneer in broadcast journalism and as a historian. He
was fired from his job in broadcasting and blacklisted as “too liberal” and devoted himself to writing books. He
wrote more than twelve books, including The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich which was a best seller and won a
National Book award in 1961. ]

As our talk began I tried to take in not only what Gandhi was saying but how he looked. I had seen many
photographs of him but I was nevertheless somewhat surprised at his actual appearance. His face at first glance did
not convey at all the stature of the man, his obvious greatness… His gray eyes lit up and sharpened when they
peered at you through his steel-rimmed spectacles and then they softened when he lapsed, as he frequently did, into
a mood of almost puckish humor. I was almost taken back by the gaiety in them. This was a man inwardly secure,
who, despite the burdens he carried, the hardships he had endured, could chuckle at man's foibles, including his
own.

He seemed terribly frail, all skin and bones, though I knew that this appearance was deceptive, for he kept to a
frugal but carefully planned diet that kept him fit, and for exercise he walked four or five miles each morning at a
pace so brisk, as I would learn later when he invited me to accompany him, that I, at twenty-seven and in fair shape
from skiing and hiking in the Alps below Vienna, could scarcely keep up…

As he began to talk, his voice seemed high-pitched, but his words were spoken slowly and deliberately and with
emphasis when he seemed intent on stressing a point, and gradually, as he warmed up, the tone lowered. His
slightly accented English flowed rhythmically, like a poet's at times, and always, except for an occasional homespun
cliché, it was concise, homely, forceful.

For so towering a figure, his humble manner at first almost disconcerted me…

But here was the most gentle and unassuming of men, speaking softly and kindly, without egotism, without the
slightest pretense of trying to impress his rather awed listener.

How could so humble a man, I wondered, spinning away with his nimble fingers on a crude wheel as he talked,
have begun almost single-handedly to rock the foundations of the British Empire, aroused a third of a billion people
to rebellion against foreign rule, and taught them the technique of a new revolutionary method - non-violent civil
disobedience - against which Western guns and Eastern lathis were proving of not much worth. That was what I had
come to India to find out. So I simply said: "How have you done it?"

"By love and truth," he smiled. "In the long run no force can prevail against them."

"I understand," I said. "But could you be more specific?"

Gandhi, of necessity, had put certain restrictions on this first interview. He had informed me at

87 William L. Shirer, Gandhi: a Memoir (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), pp. 27-39. The book was
also published by Rupa & Co., Calcutta, in 1993. Bombay Chronicle, 28 March 1931; CWMG, Volume
45, pages 331-33.
 41

the very beginning that he and the Viceroy had agreed not to say anything publicly which might
prejudice their present negotiations.

"Ask me any questions you like except about that," he had said, "and I'll answer them if I can.
After my talks with Lord Irwin are finished, regardless of how they come out, we can have
further talks and delve more deeply into our problems, if you like."

"I would like it very much," I said.

There was one thing he wanted to add, he remarked, to what he had said about love and truth
being the main elements of his non-violent movement.

"I know it is difficult for you from the West to understand. But I was quite serious. You cannot
comprehend what we are trying to do and the way we are trying to do it unless you realise that
we are fighting with soul-force."

"With what?” I asked.

"Soul-force," he said emphatically and then paused to see if it would sink in. I had begun to see
that he was a man of infinite patience. "We call it Satyagraha," he continued. "Whatever results
we have so far attained in our struggle for Swaraj..."

"Swaraj?" I interrupted. "Meaning complete independence?"

"That is right. The Congress laid down that goal at Lahore December before last. We will take
nothing less. As I was saying, we intend to get it by Satyagraha."

My face must have betrayed my disbelief, for Gandhi immediately added: "Believe me,
Satyagraha is a very practical weapon."

I realised, and I thought Gandhi saw, that I was too ignorant to pursue the subject further for the
moment.

"We will go into it further at another time," he said. "Is there anything else on your mind today?"

"A great deal," I said. "Supposing that your negotiations with the Viceroy are successful and you
reach an agreement. Do you still have faith in British promises?"

"I had faith in them - until 1919," he said. "But the Amritsar Massacre and the other atrocities in
the Punjab changed my heart. And nothing has happened since to make me regain my faith.
Certainly nothing in the last ten months. But my faith in my own people has increased,
especially in the past ten months. Consider the part played by women and children in the present
movement. The world has never seen such a magnificent spectacle before, especially the
awakening amongst children."

"Have you read the unofficial report I made on behalf of the Congress on the lawless repression
and the atrocities. committed by the government in the Punjab?" Gandhi asked.

I said I had read it - the year before.

"It gives you an idea," he said, "of the atrocities perpetrated on the people of the Punjab. It
shows you to what length the British government is capable of going, and what inhumanities and
barbarities it is capable of perpetrating in order to maintain its power."

I had been surprised, I said, at the role Indian women had played in the civil disobedience
movement, considering their subordinate relation to men in Hindu and especially in Moslem
society, where millions of Mohammedan women were still kept in purdah. The previous year I
had seen them by the thousands squatting on the pavement at the side of their men, braving the
lathi sticks, getting hurt and getting jailed.

"I'm glad you've seen the part played by our women in our movement," Gandhi beamed. "The
world has never seen such a magnificent spectacle. They were as brave as our men. You have no
idea how what they did and suffered increased my faith in our people. The awakening of our
women has helped mightily to awaken India. We cannot achieve freedom without them."

"How do you account for the children?" I asked.

"It can only be the work of God," he smiled. "Certainly God is with us in this struggle!"

He spun away and talked on. He still stands, he said, for his eleven points which last year formed
the minimum national demand, upon the granting of which by the Viceroy he offered to refrain
from launching civil disobedience. They included the total prohibition of alcoholic drinks, the
abolition of the salt tax, the reduction of land revenue and military expenditure by 50 per cent.,
the discharge of political prisoners and a prohibitive tariff on foreign cloth.

GANDHI: I still stand by them as the vital needs of India, and any constitution will be judged by
its capacity to satisfy these demands. The situation, however, is changed and the method
whereby I hope to attain them is accordingly subject to change.

QUESTION: If you obtain swaraj would you consider your labours finished and retire, or would
you take an active part in the reconstruction of India by the Indians?
 43

GANDHI: I should like to take an active part in the reconstruction of my country provided I
retain my health and vigour and my people’s confidence in me and my methods. That, indeed,
would be a labour of love.

"Some twenty years ago, Mr. Gandhi," I said, "you wrote a book, Indian Home Rule, which I
believe stunned India - it certainly stunned the rest of the world - with its onslaught on modern
Western civilisation. You called it ‘satanic’ and you said Hindus called it a dark age. And, as I
recall, you said your idea of an ideal state would be one without factories, railways, armies or
navies and with as few hospitals, doctors and lawyers as possible. Now, in the third decade of
the twentieth century, have you changed your mind about these things?"

Gandhi sat patiently through the long question, a smile growing on his face.

"Have I changed my mind?" Gandhi said, almost with a laugh. "Not a bit! My ideas about the
evils of modern Western civilisation still stand. If I republished my book tomorrow I would
scarcely change a word, except for a few changes in the setting."

When I asked him if he really believed that most of India's many ills would be cured by self-
government he became unrealistically optimistic. They would indeed, he said. "But naturally not
without trouble and difficulty," he added.

"But the great social and economic problems," I asked, "such as the relations of capital and
labor, landlord and tenant, your own communal problems between Hindus and Moslems and
those of the depressed classes, especially the millions of Untouchables - do you think self-
government can necessarily solve them?"

"Yes, I do," he said quietly. "All these problems will be fairly easy to settle when we are our
own masters. I know there will be difficulties, but I have faith in our ultimate capacity to solve
them - and not by following your Western models but by evolving along the lines of non-
violence and truth, on which our movement is based and which must constitute the bedrock of
our future constitution. "

Gandhi went on to assert, with that quiet confidence I was beginning to see was an important
part of his being, that the "inequalities and injustices" of the capitalist system, of which he said
he was fully aware, would be solved "quickly and successfully." The problems of education too,
he added.

QUESTION: And your languages? What about English under the nationalist government?

GANDHI: English would still be retained as a cultural language. It would be as useful to us as

French to Europe. Hindustani would become the national language used in courts and
universities. Native vernaculars, many of which possess rich literatures, and are spoken by
2,00,00,000 to 4,00,00,000 are to be encouraged.

"It is not true," he said, "as some Englishmen have asserted, that I would abolish our schools. I
am as anxious as anyone to maintain our great culture by education. But in our schools today
we learn only what our masters want us to learn. We do not get the training we most need. When
we are free people, standing on our own feet, we shall see to that. But perhaps we can discuss
that further. I have given considerable thought to it."

"I am rather busy with these talks with the Viceroy," Gandhi said. "But if you like, I shall find
time to continue our talks."

William L. Shirer (Chicago Tribune), 5-21 March 193188

[These interviews took place after the Gandhi-Irwin agreement.]

After the Gandhi-Irwin agreement of 5 March 1931, Gandhi called in a few Indian and
American correspondents for a long talk before his evening prayer meeting.

"I am a man of peace, after all," he began, "and now we have peace. But it is only peace that
comes with a truce. And the continuation of that truce depends upon the granting of self-
government."

"I do not find that in the agreement you have just signed," I blurted out.

Gandhi merely beamed…

"I must confess," he said, "that what seems to have been yielded by the English at the first
Round Table Conference in London is not half enough. If the Congress succeeds in making its
position acceptable at the next conference, then I claim that the fruit of it will be complete
independence for India."

[This was rather astounding, I thought. The provision of the pact that he had just signed,
called for Gandhi (on behalf of the Congress) to participate in a Round Table Conference which
in advance accepted enough "safeguards" to preclude India from having any semblance of
independence.]

88 William L. Shirer, Gandhi: a Memoir (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), pages 57-74, 102-03.
The book was published in India with the title Gandhi (Calcutta: Rupa &Co., 1993).
 45

"The goal of the Congress," Gandhi went on, "remains complete independence. It is India's
birthright, as it is of any nation worthy of the name. India cannot be satisfied with anything
less."

I asked him about the “safeguards in the interests of India" to which he had agreed in the
pact.

"Safeguards in the interests of India," he said, "may be purely illusory and constitute so many
ropes tying the country hand and foot, and strangling her by the neck."

"That's what some of your closest aides in the Congress think," I said.

"But safeguards could also be helpful to a young country which has been deprived of the
experience of governing itself," he answered.

"Let me try to make our position clear," he said, after he had bitten at an orange and had
another swallow of milk. "Congress does not consider India a sickly child requiring outside
help and props. The implication in the government's inviting the Congress to join the Round
Table Conference is that the Congress will not be deterred from any consideration, save that of
incapacity, from pressing for the fullest freedom."

"In view of what you told me a few days ago," I asked, "about your inability to trust the
British since the days of the Amritsar Massacre, may I ask if you now trust them to carry out
scrupulously the terms of the truce you have just signed?"

I called his attention to a rather ominous sentence with which the government of India's
communiqué on the truce had ended. In the event of Congress failing to give full effect to the
obligations of this settlement, Government will take such action as may become necessary for
the protection of the public and individuals and the due observance of law and order. Nothing
was said in the communiqué about the consequences of the government failing to live up to the
pact, and indeed his signature was hardly dry on the document before Gandhi would reproach
the government for one breach after another. However, Gandhi's answer was to throw out a new
olive branch to his English tormentors.

"If India," he said, "is to come into her own through conference and consultation, the good
will and active help of Englishmen is necessary. Only, they must dare to give the Indians the
freedom to err and sin. For it passes human comprehension how human beings, be they ever so
experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right."
…
 The next day, March 6, I had a long conversation with Gandhi. I came prepared in my mind
with a number of definite questions.

At the coming conference in London, he would, he said, insist on "complete independence -

with but the shadow of safeguards the British were talking about."

"I am willing," he explained, "to reconcile complete independence with remaining in the
British Empire, provided it is as an equal partner, with the right to secede from the Empire if and
when India wishes."

"My idea of Puma Swaraj, complete independence, does not exclude association with the
Empire to the mutual advantage of both parties. But the right to secede is certainly there.
Complete independence may mean separation, but if we remain a part of the Commonwealth,
instead of Downing Street being the centre of India, Delhi would become the centre. I admit
that the popular imagination cannot conceive of the British rising to the height to grant· this.
The British are said to love liberty for themselves and for others. But they have a faculty for
self-delusion that no other nation has."

I pressed Gandhi to define the safeguards which he would accept at the coming conference.
"You agree to some safeguards - that's in the agreement you signed."

"Certainly. But not the present ones."

"What safeguards would you accept?"

"Minority safeguards, for one thing," Gandhi said. "We must safeguard the rights of
minorities. That is a legitimate safeguard. I would accept also a safeguard in the matter of
finance. As much of the debt as falls to our lot would have to be secured, and to that extent I
would be bound to entertain safeguards for the country's credit and its consequent expansion."

"Would you repudiate the national debt?" I asked Gandhi.

"I would not repudiate one single farthing that can be legitimately credited to us. The
Congress never sought to repudiate a single rupee of the national debt. What it has insisted on is
the justice of the obligations that might be imposed on the incoming government."

And he went into some detail to explain that he opposed shouldering those parts of the debt
that had been incurred in fighting Britain's wars in which India was not involved, or in keeping
up an excessive British military establishment in India merely to keep the Indians down. This
 47

led to another question.

"What about the Army?" I asked. "The safeguard that leaves India's so-called defence solely
in the hands of the British."

"As far as the Army is concerned," Gandhi said, "I cannot think of any safeguard except that
we should guarantee the pay and the fulfillment of any other conditions in respect to British
officers and soldiers whose services may be necessary to India."

I then asked Gandhi if he could clear up the dispute that already was breaking out between
the government and the Congress about the calling off of the boycott of British goods. The truce
agreement stated that the boycott of British goods as a political weapon would be discontinued. But
Jawaharlal Nehru, as president of the Congress, had issued a statement immediately saying the
boycott of foreign goods would continue as before. This had brought charges of bad faith from
the government.

"I don't see why there is so much misunderstanding of the boycott," Gandhi said, a smile
breaking over his face. "The boycott will not be relaxed, as it is not a political weapon. It is
indispensable for our national existence."

There was a great deal of concern, not only in India but abroad, I said, about a much more
important problem: the inability of the Hindus and the Moslems to settle their differences as a
prelude to joining together to seek independence for India.

"Do you really expect," I asked, "to settle the Hindu-Moslem quarrel before the next Round
Table Conference, which you are pledged to attend? I know you've been working on it for years,
sometimes with success, but a final settlement has always eluded you. Do you really expect to
achieve one now?"

"I hope to," he responded. "And if we don't settle it, there's not much use of holding another
Round Table Conference." He paused a moment, and then looked me straight in the eye. "I think
you've seen yourself since you came out to India that there's no enmity between the masses of
Hindus and Moslems. For the most part they live peacefully side by side--all over India.

"The problem is not the enmity between the masses, but between their Hindu and Moslem
leaders. They are the ones who stir up the trouble. And by doing so they play right into the hands
of the British. However, I've not given up. In the next weeks and months before the conference I
shall spend most of my time and energies on this problem. It has to be solved."

Gandhi reiterated to me time and again in our talks and walks that spring and summer and
 fall of 1931: "You will see, my dear Mr. Shirer!" he would say. "We shall gain our freedom - in
my lifetime!"

"Well, the British still have the guns," I would retort.

"Yes, but we have something more important than guns. We have truth and justice - and
time-on our side." And then more seriously: "You cannot hold down much longer three hundred
and fifty million people who are determined to be free. You will see!"

. "Just remember this, my friend," he concluded. "Just remember what I've harped on so often,
even though you don't believe me: I shall see India free! Before I die!"

[Gandhi invited Mr. Shirer to join him for a morning walk at five in the morning.]

The first walk with Gandhi took place in Delhi a couple of weeks later, on 21 March. In the
interval I accompanied him to a tumultuous homecoming in Ahmedabad and, at his request, on a
jaunt through a countryside of tiny villages so far off the beaten track that he said few foreigners
and indeed few Indians who lived in the great cities had ever seen them.

"You will never get to know the real India," he had remarked one day, "until you get out of
Delhi, Bombay and the other cities and see how the overwhelming mass of Indians, half
starved and in rags, pass their lives in their wretched huts in half a million villages, toiling
from dawn to dark in the nearby sun-parched fields to wrest a little food from a worn-out
soil."

The decision of the Conservative Party in England the previous week not to participate in any
further talks on India obviously had stiffened his attitude. For the first time he confided to me
that unless the Tories changed their position, he might not go to London for a second Round
Table Conference.

During our early-morning four-mile walk in Delhi on 21 March, he seemed in a more sombre
mood than usual. He thought the British government was tricking him over "safeguards," which
obviously were meant to preserve British rule in India indefinitely. Two or three days before in
speeches in Parliament, Wedgwood Benn, Secretary of State for India, and Lord Chancellor
Sankey, who would preside over the coming Round Table Conference, had reiterated that the
Labour government would insist on safeguards in the new constitution for a "self-governing"
India that gave the Viceroy control of the Army, foreign affairs, finance and minorities.

"If the British government's word on these safeguards is final," Gandhi said, "and we are not
free to open the whole question as to what reservations are really needed to protect India during
the transition period, then I think it is futile to attend a further conference. "
 49

In fact, Gandhi said, he had told the Viceroy as much in a private communication he had sent
him the day before.

"The truce agreement," Gandhi continued, "stipulated that we would discuss only safeguards
in India's interests. Now the British appear to me to be on the point of breaking these terms of
the truce.”

The British, Gandhi said, did not seem to realise how late the hour was.

"It is only a question of months," he went on, "when either the power must pass into the hands
of this nation, or it must, God forbid, re-embark, if another course is not open, on the well-
trodden course of suffering. I realise, of course, that we must solve our internal problems first,
notably the Hindu-Moslem question. But I am hopeful of reaching some measure of accord
before tomorrow night when I depart for Karachi and the annual convention of the Congress."

As it turned out, Gandhi was overly optimistic about reaching an understanding with the
Moslems, but it did not seem so that day.

[Shirer saw Gandhi again when he went to Simla to meet the Viceroy, Lord Willingdon, in
May 1931.89]

When asked whether he would attend the Round Table Conference, Gandhi replied, “I have
not yet made up my mind about going to London.” There were several obstacles, he said. For
one thing, the government was not observing the terms of the Delhi Pact. It was still holding
several hundred men and women in jail. He had just spent three hours, he said, with the Home
Minister, and presented him with a long list of government violations of the truce. But the most
important obstacle, he said, was purely Indian: the Indians themselves had not yet reached an
agreement on the Hindu-Muslim problem.

“I don’t want to go to London,” he explained, “unless I have the united voice of India behind
me. That means Moslems and Hindus must settle their differences and back me unitedly.”

“But is there time for that?” I asked.

“I am hopeful,” he smiled, “I’m hopeful that within a fortnight the communal problem may
be in a fair way toward settlement.”

Shirer asked if Gandhi planned to visit America after the London conference, as some

89 Shirer, Gandhi : a Memoir, pages 148-49 (Indian edition, page 125).

American papers had reported.

“I long to visit your great country,” he said. “I have had the most tempting invitations to do
so. But I must deny myself that luxury until my task of achieving independence is finished. I
would like to carry my message of non-violence and love to America. But I cannot do so until I
have been able to show the American people that such a doctrine has triumphed in India, and
that it offers the whole world a new instrument for winning the rights of man peacefully and
insuring the brotherhood of all nations.”

James A. Mills (Associated Press of America), 21 March 193190

"Come walk with me at 4 o'clock in the morning and I will answer all your questions," Mahatma
Gandhi said when asked for an interview. And, with several hundred admirers behind him, the
Nationalist leader, setting a rapid pace despite his frail physique and more than 62 years,
discussed the affairs of his country as he walked five miles among the crumbling monuments and
scarred forts of New Delhi's forgotten empire.

MILLS: Would you favour Geneva for the second round-table conference?

GANDHI: Geneva would be desirable if the British delegation were sitting as an impartial judge
of India’s future status, but it is not so sitting. The British are in a sense our opponents. Therefore
procedure must be by direct negotiation. In such negotiations, atmosphere, surroundings and
local influences play a vital part. I am sure England would never agree to Geneva. If I had my
way, I would hold two conferences, the first part in India, the second in England. That would
make for fairness all round.

MILLS: Do you think war will ever come to an end?

GANDHI: War will never be exterminated by any agency until men and nations become more
spiritual and adopt the principle of brotherhood and concord rather than antagonism, competition
and superiority of brute force. You in the West do not recognise the power of spiritual things, but
some day you will and then you will be free from war, crimes of violence and things that go with
these evils. The West is too materialistic, selfish and narrowly nationalistic. What we want is an
international mind embracing the welfare and spiritual advancement of all mankind.

MILLS: How would you cure the evils of war and armaments?

GANDHI: By non-violence, which will eventually ‘weapon’ all nations. I say ‘eventually’ with
deliberation, because we shall have wars and armaments for a very long time. It has been 2,000
years since Christ delivered the Sermon on the Mount and the world has adopted only a fragment
of the imperishable and lofty precepts therein enunciated for the conduct of man toward man.

90 New York Times, 23 March 1931; Edward Holton James, I Tell Everything: The Brown Man’s Burden
(A Book on India) (Geneva: Imprimerie Kundig, c. 1932), pages 180, 190, 199-201.
 51

MILLS: You have heard, Mahatma, of the crimes of violence, divorce, and violation of the
liquor laws now prevailing in the United States. Can you suggest any remedy for these evils?

GANDHI: I would cure them all by self-purification, non-violence and love.

MILLS: When you go to London, will you take Mirabai with you?

GANDHI: Why not? She is a most useful assistant.

MILLS: How long do you expect to live?

GANDHI: Through eternity. (Mr. Gandhi laughed).

MILLS: Do you believe in immortality?

GANDHI: Yes. Reincarnation and transmigration of souls are fundamentals of the Hindu
religion.

MILLS: If all men adopted your simple mode of living, fasting and exercising, do you think they
would live to be 100 years old?

GANDHI: Yes, (he answered with a wink). But that can be determined better after I die.

MILLS: Which government most nearly approaches your idea of an ideal one?

GANDHI: None. I would consider an ideal form of government one in which a man reached his
full stature in every phase of life and where his interests, just because he is a man, are paramount
to all others.

MILLS: Will socialism accomplish that?

GANDHI: Not socialism as it is practised politically today.

MILLS: When India shall have secured self-government, would you favour the retention in India
of American and other foreign missionaries?

GANDHI: If instead of confining themselves purely to humanitarian work and material service
to the poor, they limit their activities as at present to proselytising by means of medical aid,
education and such, then I would certainly ask them to withdraw. Every nation's religion is as
good as any other. Certainly India's religions are adequate for her people and we need no
converting spiritually.91

91 Referring to this paragraph, Gandhi wrote in Young India (23 April 1931) that he was misquoted and that he
could have said:

"If instead of confining themselves purely to humanitarian work such as education, medical services to the
MILLS: Mr. Gandhi, there are now in Delhi two American aviators who are on a round-the-
world tour in their airplane.92 Would you entertain an invitation from them to take a turn in their
airplane?

GANDHI: If I must soar into the heavens, I prefer to do it through the natural process of
reincarnation and transmigration of soul.

Edward Holton James, 193193

[Mr. James, born in 1873, a lawyer from Concord, Massachusetts, was a supporter of Indian freedom and published
a pamphlet, Gandhi or Caesar, in 1929. Another pamphlet by him, Gandhi the Internationalist, was published by
Citizens’ Gandhi Committee, Boston, in 1930. He toured all over India from October 1930, during the Civil
Disobedience Movement, and left for Geneva after the Gandhi-Irwin pact of March 1931. He met Gandhi a few
times after his release from prison in January 1931. He first met Gandhi at a prayer meeting in the home of Motilal
Nehru. At that meeting he came to know Ellen Horup of Denmark and Caroline (Bokken) Lasson, a singer, actress
and writer from Norway, both friends of India. They thought of establishing an international commission to
investigate police brutality during the civil disobedience movement.94 He was deputed to speak to Gandhi about
this proposal. Gandhi was favourable but the matter was dropped after the Gandhi-Irwin pact of 4 March. Holton
also had a brief talk with Gandhi on another occasion when he went along with James A. Mills of the Associated
Press of America who interviewed Gandhi on 21 March 1931. The following are excerpts from Mr. Holton’s book.]

The way to interview Gandhi is to talk about the things he wants to talk about… I asked:
“Mahatma, what American writers have had the greatest influence on you?”

poor and the like, they would use these activities of theirs for the purpose of proselytising, I would certainly
like them to withdraw. Every nation considers its own faith to be as good as that of any other. Certainly the
great faiths held by the people of India are adequate for her people. India stands in no need of conversion from
one faith to another."

He explained:

"Let me now amplify the bald statement. I hold that proselytising under the cloak of humanitarian work is,
to say the least, unhealthy. It is most certainly resented by the people here. Religion after all is a deeply
personal matter, it touches the heart. Why should I change my religion because a doctor who professes
Christianity as his religion has cured me of some disease or why should the doctor expect or suggest such a
change whilst I am under his influence? Is not medical relief its own reward and satisfaction? Or why should
I whilst I am in a missionary educational institution have Christian teaching thrust upon me? In my opinion
these practices are not uplifting and give rise to suspicion if not secret hostility. The methods of conversion
must be like Caesar's wife above suspicion ...

“I am, then, not against conversion. But I am against the modern methods of it.”

92 John P. Pratt and Ross Hadley, American aviators, had arrived in Delhi on that day on a round-the-
world flight.
93 Edward Holton James, I Tell Everything: The Brown Man’s Burden (A Book on India) (Geneva:
Imprimerie Kundig, c. 1932).
94 Gandhi had called for an official investigation when he was released from prison.
 53

“Thoreau and Emerson, but of the two Thoreau had the great influence. His extreme simplicity
affected me deeply. Especially his little essay on ‘civil disobedience’ gave me great support. I
obtained the phrase ‘civil disobedience’ from that essay…

“I had conceived of civil disobedience long before I became acquainted with Thoreau’s essay.
We call it in our language satyagraha. Thoreau emphasised satyagraha and I was delighted. I
should love to visit the places where Emerson and Thoreau and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe
lived. I should like to visit Pennsylvania on account of William Penn, because I have so much in
common with the Quakers. You ask which country gives India the most sympathy at the present
time. Perhaps America. We have been getting some sympathy from Americans and it simply
whets our appetite for more.”95
…

An American journalist arrived with his wife.

JOURNALIST: Mr. Gandhi, I have just one question which I would like to ask you. Would you
consider making a visit to the United States for one million dollars?

GANDHI: No, not for a hundred million. But I would go for nothing.96
…

Later, I asked Gandhi in Ahmedabad, two miles from the ashram (he was prevented from going
to the ashram by a vow),97 how he knew when to start non-cooperation and when to stop it. He
replied: “You non-cooperate when it is necessary and just. I must always be ready to make
peace. When I saw that there was an opening, I entered.”98
…

Mr. Holton met Gandhi in Delhi and asked him about the proposal for an international
investigation of police atrocities. Gandhi replied:

“I feel most strongly like pressing for an inquiry into police excesses. Some satisfaction is
absolutely necessary. I would consider a committee of foreigners very desirable. That supposes a
real courage on the part of American journalists and others. They should be people of status. The
proof of the pudding is in the eating. I want to point out to you the danger that any foreigners
undertaking such an investigation would be running – the probability of their passports being
cancelled and of their being expelled from the country. If the way is not blocked, I shall be
delighted. I shall give you every assistance if I am free. If the government can look upon such an
enterprise with toleration it will be a great gain. Such a committee at the present moment would
be like a lighthouse. You must not lose sight of the fact that this committee must be absolutely
impartial. The committee should be an ascetic affair, refusing to accept favours from one side or
the other. I have seen so often what subtle, insidious dangers lurk in that direction. I cannot

95 Ibid. p.180
96 Ibid. p. 290
97 Gandhi had taken a vow, when he embarked on civil disobedience in 1930, not to return to the ashram
until India’s freedom was achieved. He disbanded the ashram in 1933 and transferred it to Harijan Sevak
Sangh. It became known as Harijan Ashram.
98 Ibid. pages 191-92
interfere to create this committee. If I were to do so, the government would rightly interfere. It
should not be undertaken lightheartedly.”99

William L. Shirer (Chicago Tribune), 11 September 1931100

[This interview took place in Marseilles where Gandhi arrived on the way to the Second Round Table Conference in
London. Mr. Shirer, who covered Gandhi’s visit to Britain for the Round Table Conference, wrote:

“As the ship swung backward into the dock at dawn Gandhi could be seen standing alone on the aft upper
deck gazing at the great port and obviously surprised at the cheering of two or .three thousand French below on
the pier and at the din of factory whistles blowing a note of welcome. In the early-morning chill he had thrown a
rough homespun shawl over his skinny shoulders. He looked much fitter than when I last saw him in India a
couple of months before. Later, he said the sea voyage had greatly improved his health.

“Pleasantly surprised as he was at the impromptu reception accorded by the French as the boat was being
docked, he was obviously startled by that given him by several hundred European and American reporters and
photographers who closed in on him in the ship's lounge, pushing and shoving and shouting…

“Finding it impossible to hear the questions or to make himself heard above the din of the clamoring
photographers and reporters, Gandhi finally retreated to his second-class cabin. There I eventually found
him…He greeted me warmly.

“He seemed excited about touching down in Europe for the first time in seventeen years and he was as radiant
as ever.”101 ]

"Since you have been good enough to report my words truthfully from India," he said, and
then for a second flashing his infectious 'smile, "even though they have often confused you, my
dear Mr. Shirer, I will tell you."

What he now said almost startled me, for his stand had hardened since our talks in India. It
left little chance, I thought, as I scribbled the words down, for his reaching any understanding,
much less any agreement, with the British government in London.

He would ask the British for three things, he said.

FIRST - complete independence for India. Dominion status is not sufficient.

SECOND - The status of India within the British Empire to be only on a coequal basis. '

99 Ibid. pages 196-97. Ellen Horup established the Friends of India Society in Denmark in 1930 and
founded the International Committee for India in Geneva in 1933.
100 William L. Shirer, Gandhi: a Memoir (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), pages 157-61.
101 Ibid. page 157
 55

THIRD - Safeguards during the transitional stage, if the first two conditions are accepted.

I asked him to explain his position a little further.

"My idea of independence," Gandhi replied, "does not exclude an alliance or partnership with
the British. It does exclude, absolutely, Dominion status. Two years ago I personally would
have accepted Dominion status. Now I believe it is impossible for India. "

"Why?" I asked.

"Because Dominion status, as I understand it, implies a family of nations made up of the same
people," Gandhi explained. "Now, we are not of the same family as the English. Our race,
culture and religion preclude that. We will take on a partnership with the British, but not
Dominion status."

"But do you think you have a ghost of a chance of putting such demands across with the
British in London?" I asked.

"Frankly not," Gandhi said. "Looking at the external side of things, there is not much chance
for them to be ready to grant what I ask.

"But my position is clear," he added soberly. "I am against Dominion status, mind you. I am
not going to London to ask for that. I hope to be able to explain my position to the British
statesmen, if they are accessible. That is all. Then, if there is any basis of accord - I mean, on
independence - the details can be filled in."

"You cannot be very optimistic," I said, "in view of what you have just said."

"You know me well enough," he smiled, "to know that I am always optimistic." He grinned
through his two teeth and his eyes lit up mischievously. "I admit," he went on, "I do not see
land in sight yet. But neither did Columbus, so it is said, until the last moment.”

We turned to other topics. I asked Gandhi about press reports saying he hoped to make a
barnstorming tour of England, making speeches everywhere in an effort to gain backing from
the people.

"I don't intend even to make a speech at the Round Table Conference," he said.

"I will try," he said, "to present my position to the cotton-mill workers of Lancashire, hundreds
of thousands of whom are out of work due largely to our Indian boycott." He would tell them, he
hinted, that if their government gave India its independence the boycott would end and their
factories might start humming again.

Gandhi remarked, in answer to a question of mine, that, contrary to reports, he was not going to
America. “I would like to,” he said, “but I don’t fell it’s proper at this time. I am not ready for it,
and perhaps your country is not ready for me.”

Civil Disobedience to “Quit India” Movement

On 28 October 1934, Gandhi resigned from Congress because of his recognition that the Congress had become
dominated by him and was losing its democratic character. Most intellectuals in the Congress accepted non-violence
as merely a policy while it was a creed with him, showed little interest in spinning and weaving and even regarded
his approach to untouchability as distracting from of the struggle for independence. They showed loyalty and
devotion to him, but these differences were placing a strain on them and were a hindrance to the natural growth of
Congress.102 Despite his resignation, Congress leaders continued to consult him and seek his advice on important
decisions.

In 1936, Gandhi set up an ashram in Segaon (later renamed Sevagram), a tiny village five miles on a dirt road
from Wardha which was given to him by Jamnalal Bajaj - to focus on service to the rural population, the
development of village industries and sanitation.

Meanwhile, the British Government drafted its own proposals for a constitution of India and enacted them in the
Government of India Act, 1935. The Act provided for some Indian members of the Viceroy’s Executive Council.
But defence, external affairs and finance were under officials appointed by the Viceroy. The Viceroy was given
powers to override the members of the Council and even rule without the Council.

In the provinces, all portfolios were given to elected Ministers. But Governors could veto decisions affecting their
“statutory responsibilities” such as preservation of peace and protection of legitimate interests of minorities. They
were also authorised to take over control of the government in case of a political breakdown.

The Act envisaged a Federation, including the princely states, but that remained a dead letter as neither the
princes nor the political parties were in favour. The other provisions of the Act concerning the central and provincial
governments came into force in 1937 and provincial elections were held under the Act.

Congress rejected the Government of India Act, but decided to contest the elections in order to reach the masses
of the people with its programme. It obtained an absolute majority in six of the eleven provinces and was the largest
single party in three others. It formed governments in nine provinces after the Viceroy gave an assurance that the
Governors would not interfere with the day-to-day administration of the provinces outside their range of their
responsibilities. While Congress was able to implement some of its programmes with the limited resources available
to provincial governments, a serious breach developed between the Congress and the Muslim League led by M.A.
Jinnah.

Gandhi was, however, optimistic. He told Gobind Behari Lal in March 1939: “India is not far from political
independence…”

But a few hours after Britain declared war against Nazi Germany on 3 September, the Viceroy announced,
without consulting Indian leaders, that India was at war with Germany. Congress condemned the decision and
Congress provincial ministries resigned later that month. Much of Indian opinion considered the war as a war
between imperialist powers. 103

102 Gandhi explained his reasons for resignation from the Congress in two long statements to the press on
17 September and 30 October 1934. CWMG, Volume 59, pages 3-12 and 263-67.
103 The All India Congress Committee had declared in May 1939 that Congress would oppose
“all attempts to impose a war without the consent of the Indian people.”
 57

But, under the influence of Gandhi, Congress leaders followed a “non-embarrassment” policy. In talks with the
Viceroy, they offered to support the war effort if Britain gave an assurance of independence after the war and
meaningful power to a national government during the war. But the Viceroy could only offer the setting up of a
body after the war to devise “the framework of a new constitution.” The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill,
was against any concessions to Congress.

On 15 September 1940, Congress handed over leadership to Gandhi. He directed individual satyagraha from
October 1940, to preserve the spirit of the nationalists who resented wartime deprivations. Volunteers chosen by
him recited a two-sentence slogan against support to the war effort by men or money, as a test of freedom of
expression; 15,000 volunteers were sentenced to imprisonment by the end of 1941.

In December 1941, Japan attached Pearl Harbour and the United States entered the war. Japan occupied
Singapore on 15 February 1942 and Rangoon on 7 March. War came to the borders of India and American armed
forces were deployed in India to transport supplies to China. On 11 March, Churchill announced that Sir Stafford
Cripps would carry a proposal from the War Cabinet to India.

The Cripps proposal seemingly responded to Congress demands. India would be granted full dominion status after
the war with the right of secession. A Constituent Assembly would be established. A national government of
representatives of leading political parties would be set up, but defence would remain in British hands. On the other
hand, the proposal could lead to the balkanisation of India, as it provided that provinces and princely states could
secede from India.

Gandhi described the offer as “a post-dated cheque on a failing bank” and returned to Sevagram. Congress leaders
continued negotiations, but the talks broke down. Cripps rejected a Congress demand that the Viceroy should accept
the decisions of his Council. The Muslim League, which had decided in 1940 to call for a Muslim state (Pakistan),
also rejected the proposal as it did not provide for the secession of the “Muslim nation.”

Rajagopalachari, a Congress leader, proposed acceptance of Pakistan by Congress. His proposal was heavily
defeated at the end of April and Congress rejected any proposals to disintegrate India.

Ms. Paula Lecler, 1936104

[Paula Lecler was one of the few women war correspondents. She wrote for the Associated Press of America and
various newspapers. She covered the Abyssinian war and the Second World War. She saw Gandhi with Y.S. Chen, a
member of the Cotton Industry Commission of China.]

In reply to several questions Gandhi said:

On the political programme you should go and visit Pandit Nehru who, though he is busier
than I, might give you a useful half hour. I am no authority on politics, and having retired from
the Congress for two years now, I am a kind of a back number.105

But may it not be that you have retired to give the other people a chance, and in the
conviction that after they have had their chance they are bound to come back to you?

104 Mahadev Desai's "Weekly Letter" in Harijan, 8 August 1936 and Paula Lecler's report in The Bombay
Chronicle, 7 March 1937; CWMG, Volume 63, page 204-08.
105 Gandhi tendered his resignation from the Congress on 28 October 1934. He gave his reasons in two
long statements to the press on 17 September and 30 October. He explained that he would continue to take
interest in the organisation but would not be interested in the details of the working of the Congress.
(CWMG, Volume 59, pages 3-12, 263-67).
 That is not my way. I am a votary of truth. I meant it cent per cent when I retired from the
Congress and the so-called politics of the country. My mind and body are buried in Segaon.
What the future has in store for me God alone knows.

Your body is here, but your spirit travels over the whole world.

Yes, but not my political spirit. What I am doing today, i.e., living in a village, I might have
done in the beginning of my career. Instead I am doing it in the evening of my life.106

The American lady wanted ... him to ... give a message to the distracted world as to how best
to get out of the trouble and chaos.

I am off talking. I can give you no message. You can see what I am doing if you will stay in
this village. How to help the world out of chaos is a vast question which cannot be answered at a
moment's notice. But if there is an answer it is this: “By waiting on God.”

I want to transmit to America a picture of the faith and light you have.

I could not give it by word of mouth. I am not in a talking mood.

But you have your faith?

Oh yes, I have.

Then could you not put it in a few words?

How can I impart it in words?

Then you can just say a few words of prayer, i.e., what is your innermost desire. You can just
pray audibly.

No, I cannot possibly do so. Is it not enough for you to know that I am trying to live a simple
village life as a simple villager? When I succeed in it I shall have achieved my ambition.

And what happens to your children, the people of India?

They are in the villages. I live with them. They will live with me.

Are you happy?

Ah! I can answer that question. I am perfectly happy.

106 Paula Lecler here quotes Gandhi having said: "You may be sure I am living now just the way I wish to live.
What I might have done at the beginning, had I more light, I am doing now in the evening of my life, at the end of
my career, building from the bottom up. Study my way of living here, study my surroundings, if you wish to know
what I am. Village improvement is the only foundation on which conditions in India can be permanently
ameliorated."
 59

More happy than you were outside the village?

I cannot say, for my happiness is not dependent on external circumstances…

I want to correct the impression that has got abroad in America that Mr. Gandhi is sulking...
But what is the truth about the supposed antagonism between you and Nehru?

You must see my disclaimer.107

I have seen it.

I have said that it was an absolute travesty, an absolute falsehood.

What is your feeling about Nehru?

My feeling about Nehru is nothing but that of love and admiration. We are not estranged
from each other. I hear from him nearly twice a week.108 There are things on which I do not
talk the same way. There are obvious differences in outlook, but in spite of them our affection
has not diminished. And these differences are not new. He has never kept from me whatever he
has felt from time to time. Even what he said in Lucknow was not new.109 It was a summary of
views he had stated in different places on different occasions.

But you don't see the truth entirely his way?

I don't. But it is one thing to say that I do not sympathise with some of his views and quite
another to say that he had ruined my life-work! It is a lie. There is no other name for it.110 I
have never had even the suspicion that Jawaharlal's policy has ruined any part of my work.

Because the truth you stand for is still there?

That is a truism. I am not talking from that higher philosophical point of view. I am just
talking in mundane terms. I want to say that he has taken no such steps as would ruin my
programme or my work. If he had said: "You have blundered all along. You must retrace your
steps. You have taken the country back a century, as some have certainly said, he, because he is
he, would embarrass me. But he has said nothing of the kind. Also, it is not wholly true to say

107 See "Are We Rivals?," CWMG, Volume 63, pages 164-65.

108 Paula Lecler quotes here: "Jawaharlal Nehru and I are friends. It is true our beliefs may differ in some ways.
But to say there is enmity between us, that is a lie. Even when he is travelling around the country on speaking tours,
as he has been doing, I hear from him at least twice each week. There is no rivalry in work like ours."

109 The reference is apparently to the Presidential address of Jawaharlal Nehru at the Congress session in
Lucknow in March 1936 in which he affirmed his belief in socialism.
110 Paula Lecler reports here: "They quoted me: My life-work is ruined... not even the firmness and repression of
the British Government have harmed my work as much as the policy outlined by Nehru. But much as I dislike to
use so strong a word, it is an absolute lie. I never said anything like that nor do I think it."
that I do not sympathise with his programme. What is he doing today with which I cannot
sympathise? His enunciation of scientific socialism does not jar on me. I have been living the
life since 1906 that he would have all India to live. To say that he favours Russian communism
is a travesty of truth.111 He says it is good for Russia, but he does not give an unequivocal
certificate to it even about Russia. As for India, he has said plainly that the methods to be
adopted in India would have to answer India's needs. He does not say that there must be class
war, though he thinks it may be inevitable;112 and only recently he declared emphatically that
there should be no confiscation without compensation. There is nothing in all this which I
oppose. Nevertheless there are differences of method; but to say that they make us opponents or
rivals is a caricature.113

There is nothing he believes, nothing in his programme today about which I can say, as I
certainly would if I felt that way: I oppose this tooth and nail. I would not present the same thing
in the same way. Certain methods I adopted Jawaharlal would not adopt.

Are you fond of him?

Yes, as I am fond of you. But that is not saying anything much.

Do you approve of him for India?

Yes.

William B. Benton, July 1937114

[Mr. Benton, an American journalist and advertising executive. He founded Benton & Bowles, an advertising
company with Chester Bowles. He toured the Orient before taking up his duties as Vice President of the University
of Chicago, in which capacity he served from 1937 to 1945. From 1943, he was publisher of Encyclopaedia
Britannica. ]

Motioning to a varnished box about half the size of an orange crate six feet in front of him,
Gandhi said:

You'd better sit over there.

I ask him some questions about Indian politics, about the victorious Congress party's
policies.115

111 Paula Lecler reports: "To say he favours communism on the Russian model is doing a grave injustice to
Jawaharlal."

112 Paula Lecler adds here: "I believe he thinks a class war may be inevitable, but he is doing his best to avert one."

113 The paragraph that follows is from Paula Lecler's report reproduced in The Bombay Chronicle.
114 The New York Times. 25 July 1937; The Hindustan Times, 13 September 1937; CWMG, Volume 66, pages 127-
29.
 61

GANDHI: This isn't the time for such questions. I have work to do here, I can't take myself
from it to answer them. You should ask these questions of the political leaders. Of course, I
wouldn't say that I don't know anything about politics. But I have no time for such questions
now.

Many feel that any form of cooperation is a mistake. Others disagree, feeling that perhaps our
objectives can best be achieved by giving ground now and then. Both groups are sincere.

We have just won a great victory and this brings us a big responsibility. We had literally no
opposition. This is what counts. This result didn't surprise me, but it is a fine thing for others to
see. It shows the world our strength.

We talk then about American public opinion, its attitude toward India.

GANDHI: American opinion is of great importance to us and by our deeds we hope to win it.

Gandhi agreed that British foreign policy is often influenced by American opinion. He is
aware that England tries in many devious ways to mould it.

GANDHI: We cannot compete for American attention on the same terms with the English.
We do not try, our methods must be different methods. We make no conscious effort to
influence American opinion. I believe that the American is emotionally sympathetic to our
cause, but he is profoundly ignorant of the real facts and of our real problem. When the time is
right the American will learn the truth by what we do.

It's a prevalent idea in America, that India requires England for defence. Without the
English, would there be civil and religious disturbances? As the Congress party is successful in
driving the English out of power in India, will India fall a prey to someone else? Or, for that
matter, how will Congress deal with the native Princes right here at home?

GANDHI: These are gross superstitions. They have been propagated for years. Stories and
statements of such dangers are hopelessly exaggerated. I know that many English people
sincerely believe them; there you have the power of such ideas oft repeated.

As to the native States, they'll fall in line when India comes into her own.

A subject close to Gandhi's heart, one of which he will talk freely, is his great movement to
improve the lot of the Indian villager or farmer... Experiments are constantly being made,
designed to develop new ways to improve the villager's lot. The Mahatma told me:

Progress is slow, but you must remember that our work is new. We started with nothing but
faith. Only faith. Today knowledge is added.

115 In the elections to provincial legislatures in February 1937, Congress won a majority in five of the
eleven provinces and a majority, with its allies, in three others.
 He breaks into his well-known toothless smile.

GANDHI: You might add a third ingredient - give us part of the money you make when you
sell your story.

The Mahatma is famed for his humour. This was the first glimpse I’d had of it. “You think if faith
plus knowledge are potent,” I reply, “faith plus knowledge plus capital are more so.”

GANDHI: Yes. Yes.

He cackles and rocks in a full laugh.

Have you ever seen an American movie or heard American jazz? These are our two most
famous exports.

GANDHI: No, no, I haven't.

He laughs again.

GANDHI: There's a good story for you. Do what you can with it. I've never been to a moving
picture.

Hasn't one ever been brought to you, I query. He laughs again.

No, I have never seen one.

As I leave Gandhi... I produce a sheet of paper made in Wardha which I had purchased for
one anna. I ask the Mahatma if he will sign it.

No. He smiles shyly and turns his head. Then he sees my paper and giggles cheerfully.

No, even that does not tempt me.

North American Newspaper Alliance, May 1938116

[The interview took place in a seaside Bungalow near Bombay after Gandhi returned from “an exhausting but
triumphal tour of the tumultous Northwest Frontier Province…” Gandhi stayed in Juhu 11 to 21 June 1938. He was
kept informed by Subhas Chandra Bose, the Congress President, about his discussions with M.A. Jinnah, President
of the Muslim League. After discussion with Congress leaders, Gandhi met Jinnah on 20 May.]

Bombay, India, June 4.- "I foresee the independence of India in another two or three years,"
Mohandas K. Gandhi told this reporter in an exclusive interview from his bed in a seaside

116 New York Times, 5 June 1938.

 63

bungalow near Bombay, where the leader of the Indian masses directed the momentous
conferences aimed at effecting Hindu and Moslem unity in India.

"Political affairs," Mr. Gandhi continued, "have changed in India during this last year. Many
discordant factors have disappeared and the whole outlook for India's cause is now much more
encouraging. Some of our colleagues say that Dominion Status will be achieved in five years.
But that is too long. I feel that independence will come before then."

When asked regarding the effects of the more conciliatory policy now evidenced by the British
Government toward members of the All India Congress, Mr. Gandhi nodded his head
emphatically.

"Yes," he said, "the whole outlook is much brighter now. The attitude of the British
Government is hopeful and encouraging. It is more lenient now, and more understanding than it
has ever been before. Much is being accomplished as the result.

"Right now we are very hopeful," the 69-year-old Hindu said, "that the two great religious
forces in India, the Hindus and the Moslems will at last settle their differences amicably and
come to a sound working agreement for political cooperation. With Hindus and Moslems uniting
their efforts and working together for the good of India, we will be a great step nearer our goal.
Such unity will mean that we have passed one of the most significant milestones in the cause of
Indian independence."…

"Unfortunately," the advocate of passive resistance said, "in our present efforts to smooth out
political knots and kinks we have not been able to make much progress this past year in bettering
the conditions of India's millions of miserable farmers. But we have not lost sight of them for a
moment. Their plight is always before us. Benefits, not only to the farmers, but to all Indians,
will come more rapidly, though, with political dissension and animosity wiped out."

"You must not say I am ill," Mr. Gandhi cautioned me. "So many newspapers have had me ill
and dying these past few months. Actually, I am better now than I have been for a long time. I
have even gained in weight. But during the intense heat I take the precaution of not overdoing it
physically, and for that reason I stay on my cot during the greater part of the day. I am seeing no
visitors except the Congress Ministers.

"But I am interested in the United States and in Americans always," he added. "There is a
special bond of sympathy between us, I believe. The Americans can understand our desire for
independence."

Gobind Bihari Lal, 16 March 1939117

117 Bombay Chronicle, 19 May 1939; CWMG, Volume 69, pages 62-63.
[Mr. Lal (1889-1982), Science Editor of Hearst newspapers in the United States, attended the annual session of the
Indian National Congress in Tripuri, Central Provinces, as representative of International News Service. He was
received by Gandhi in Tripuri.]

Gandhiji talked to me in Hindustani, the national language of India. He said:

“You have not forgotten our language? Not even after a quarter century spent in the United
States? That is gratifying indeed.”

In reply to my first question... Gandhiji tensely retorted:

“India is not far from political independence, pure and simple.”

Mahatma Gandhi said not a word of anger against the British Government. He emphasised the
fact that now the real problem of India’s freedom and advancement was one of self-
organisation... He pointed out:

“The outsiders may not realise the fact that the majority of the provinces of British India (as
distinct from the parts ruled by the Princes) are now administered by the nationalists, by
Ministers of the Congress Party. That roughly shows that the nationalist movement is already in
the seats of political power in this country.”

The great question now was of the Government of India as a whole. When the Central or Federal
Government came into the hands of the Indians, India would become like Ireland—virtually an
independent country. But according to Mahatma Gandhi, and the Nationalists, the scheme of
Federation evolved by the British Government in 1935 was not the one to give self-government
to India. He said:

“The present Federation scheme cannot be accepted without damaging the cause of India’s
independence. The Viceroy will try to have the scheme accepted. The Nationalists, many of the
Princes, religious fanatics and others will oppose it - for diverse reasons. It is a very tense
situation. The Indian atmosphere is in fact heavy with impending storms.”

LAL: What will Nationalist India do if war comes?

GANDHI: I cannot answer in advance. But this is certain that a free India will join hands with
other real democracies, and will always help in promoting the cause of democracy and
humanism throughout the world.

I was curious to know how under his guidance, employing a new technique of non-militant
rebellion, he has integrated millions of Indians in a fervent struggle for “self-rule.” He
explained:

“Real self-rule is emancipation from India’s own traditional inequalities as well as from those
imposed from outside.”
 65

Frederick T. Birchall (New York Times), before 23 March 1939118

[The interview took place in the Birla mansion in New Delhi.]

Asked what advice he would give the Congress regarding its attitude should the Paramount
Power become involved in a European war, Gandhi pleaded that that was too difficult to answer
at that time.

He demurred also to a question whether he wished India to take her independence within the
British Commonwealth of Nations or outside it. Gandhi replied:

“That again is difficult. I cannot exactly tell where I myself stand on that. Both are difficult
questions.”

BIRCHALL: But won’t you try to go to the root of the situation?

GANDHI: Wise journalists never go to the root.

When asked if he was content with the result of the Tripuri Congress, which voted down the Left
Wingers and committed the future course of the Congress to his guidance, the Mahatma was still
smilingly evasive:

“Contentment is bliss. That is one of your proverbs, isn’t it?”

BIRCHALL: Then let me ask “Is India making progress to your liking?”

GANDHI: (Thoughtfully) Yes, it is. I get frightened sometimes; but there is progress at the
bottom and that progress is sound. The greatest difficulty is Hindu-Muslim differences. That is a
serious obstacle. There I cannot say I see visible progress, but the trouble is bound to solve itself.
The mass mind is sound if only because it is unselfish. The political grievances of both the
communities are identical, so are the economic grievances.

During further conversation, the correspondent asked Mahatma Gandhi if in the present unrest
he had got some message which he might carry across the world, moving men’s hearts towards
peace. His eyes gleamed at the word “peace” and he bent his head in thought before answering.

GANDHI: I don’t see at the moment an atmosphere which would carry my voice to all nations.
Perhaps I am far in advance of the times.

BIRCHALL: Might it not be said with equal truth that the times are falling behind you?

118 New York Times, 22 March 1939. This interview was reported by Reuter as “an Associated Press message from
New Delhi.” It was also sent by wireless to New York Times. Hindustan Times, 24 March 1939; CWMG, Volume
69, pages 76-77.
GANDHI: If you like. I am thinking over your suggestion. Should I again allow myself to
become the laughing-stock, as has sometimes been the case? Should I? (Evidently he was
thinking loud). But why not? Laughter is wholesome. Perhaps it may be a good thing. So take
this as coming from me:

“I see from today’s papers that the British Prime Minister is conferring with Democratic
Powers as to how they should meet the latest threatening developments.119 How I wish
he was conferring by proposing to them that all should resort to simultaneous
disarmament. I am as certain of it as I am sitting here, that this heroic act would open
Herr Hitler’s eyes and disarm him.”

BIRCHALL: Would not that be a miracle?

GANDHI: Perhaps; but it would save the world from the butchery that seems to be impending.

“Isn’t that enough for one morning?” Mr. Gandhi asked when pressed to say more.

“And now, “he said at last, “you have what you wanted.” He held out his hand in a farewell.

Archibald T. Steele (New York Times), after 17 May 1939120

[Mr. Steele was a correspondent at various times for New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Chicago Daily
News, and United Press of America. He was in the 1930s in China. He was the author of books on China, Tibet and
Japan. This interview took place in Rajkot.]

STEELE: What is your idea of independence?

GANDHI: By independence I mean complete withdrawal of British power from India. It does
not exclude partnership between two nations enjoying equal independent status and terminable
by either at will. It need not be different from Dominion Status. But perhaps Dominion Status
won’t be a happy term to use for a continent like India which is ethnologically and politically
different from other Dominions like South Africa. Canada, Australia etc. But perhaps this term is
as elastic as the English Constitution. And if Dominion Status could be so defined as to cover a
case like India and if India could come to an honourable agreement with England, I would not
quarrel about words. If British statesmen feel it convenient to use the word Dominion Status
about India rather than any other, in order to describe that honourable agreement, I will not
quarrel.

119 Britain, France and Italy signed the Munich agreement with Hitler’s Germany on 30 September 1938,
hoping to appease him by allowing Germany to annex Sudetanland, a part of Czechoslovakia. But Germany
continued its aggressions and occupied most of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. New York Times reported
on 21 March that the British Government was working toward a coalition against further fascist aggression,
and proposed a joint declaration and warning by several powers.
120 Pyarelal’s report in Harijan, 24 June 1939; CWMG, Volume 69, pages 278-80.
 67

STEELE: But there are elements in the Congress like Subhas Bose121 and his group who want
absolute independence outside the British Empire.

GANDHI: It is only a question of terminology. I won’t admit any difference between Subhas
Babu and myself on this point though we may use different language. Supposing such free and
equal partnership as I have postulated were feasible, Subhas Babu won’t say ‘No’ to it. But today
if such a proposition were put to him, he will probably say, as he well may, it is ruled out for
him. For he would say the British are not likely to yield so easily as some might think. If he talks
to me like that, I won’t combat him but would say that I prefer to use the language that I use as
being more suited to my temperament and my faith in the essential identity of human nature.

Gandhiji’s interviewer next wanted to know if there were any negotiations going on between him
and the authorities in connection with the ‘Federation.’

GANDHI: None whatsoever. All suggestions to this effect that one sees in the Press are mere
figments of imagination. The present Viceroy122 is not made that way. He does not believe in
doing things secretly. He puts all his cards on the table and likes taking the public into his
confidence. At any rate that is my impression. I think he does believe that no cause is damaged
by open negotiation.

But I feel certain that the ‘Federation’ won’t come whilst it is not acceptable to the Congress or
the Mussalmans or the Princes. I am inclined to think that the British statesmen won’t impose
Federation upon an unwilling and dissatisfied India, but will try to placate all parties. That, at
any rate, is my hope.

It would be first-class tragedy if it is imposed upon India. The federal structure cannot be
brought into being in the midst of sullenness and opposition. If the ‘Federation’ is not wanted by
any of the parties, it would be the height of impudence to force it.

STEELE: What is the alternative?

GANDHI: The alternative may be to offer something that would be acceptable to all or either of
the three parties.

STEELE: But you do not believe with Subhas Bose that the best alternative would be to issue an
ultimatum?

GANDHI: That is the fundamental difference between Subhas Babu and myself. Not that the
ultimatum is in itself wrong, but it has to be backed by an effective sanction and there are today
no non-violent sanctions. If all the parties come to an honourable understanding, an effective
sanction could be easily forged.

121 Subhas Chandra Bose (1897- ), a radical nationalist, was President of the Indian National Congress in
1938.
122 Lord Linlithgow (1887-1952), Viceroy of India, 1936-43.`
Referring next to the communal situation, Mr. Steele asked whether, in Gandhiji’s opinion, the
Hindu-Muslim situation was getting worse.

GANDHI: Apparently yes, perhaps. But I have every hope that ultimately we are bound to come
together. The interests that are common to us and that bind us together are so tremendous that the
leaders of both the sections must come to terms. Force of circumstances will compel them to do
so. That we appear to be farthest apart from one another today is a natural outcome of the
awakening that has taken place. It has emphasised the points of difference and accentuated
prejudices, mutual suspicions and jealousies. Fresh demands that are coming into being every
day with the new leadership have further made confusion worse confounded. But I hope out of
chaos order is going to emerge.

STEELE: Are not the differences between the Muslim League and the Congress unbridgeable?

GANDHI: The differences are insubstantial.

STEELE: You think the time is not ripe for an ultimatum; what then should the next move be?

GANDHI: To put our own house in order. Immediately we have done that and brought the
various elements together, we should be ready.

STEELE: What help do you expect from the U.S.A.?

GANDHI: I expect a lot of help from the U.S.A. by way of friendly criticism, if it must be
criticism. What I find today is that it is either excessive praise of Indian effort or hopelessly
unenlightened criticism. Your Press has made very little effort to enlighten American opinion on
the right lines.

STEELE: Does your renunciation of the Award123 imply an abandonment of effort?

GANDHI: By no means. On the contrary, having eased myself of the burden of error, I feel as
light as a bird and freer to continue my effort to solve the problem of the Indian States.

United Press of America, 16 March 1940124

[This interview took place in Ramgarh during the session of the Indian National Congress. “Mr. Gandhi, wearing
only a loin cloth and sandals and carrying a small stick under his arm, was taking his morning constitutional.”]

123 In December 1938, during the agitation for reform in the princely state of Rajkot, which resulted in the
imprisonment of many leaders of the people, a settlement was reached between the prince and Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel, a leader of the Congress. But three weeks later the prince renounced the agreement and
the struggle resumed. Gandhi went to Rajkot and undertook a fast on 3 March 1939. The Viceroy, Lord
Linlithgow, referred the dispute over the settlement to Sir Maurice Gwyer, the Chief Justice of India.
Gandhi then ended his fast. Gwyer’s award fully supported Patel. But the Dewan managed to block
implementation of the award. Gandhi considered that he had made an error in depending on the Viceroy.
124 New York Times, 17 March 1940
 69

QUESTION: Must Britain face serious trouble in India while at war in Europe?

GANDHI: How can I claim statutory independence today when Great Britain’s own fate hangs
in the balance? What I want is an unequivocal declaration of policy and immediate action in so
far as practical. The legal transfer of power must perhaps await the conclusion of the war.
Meantime, we must be treated as a free nation.

Civil disobedience will start when I am sure as far as it is humanly possible that non-violence
will be strictly observed. There is really no difference in the views of the Congress leaders or
between Subhas Bose and myself. We all want independence and want it as quickly as possible.
As far as the question of complete independence is concerned, there is no room for compromise.
It is true, however, that should it become a question of common cause between Britain and India
then there would be room for compromise regarding many of the practical differences which are
bound to arise.

I should like to have this distinction between legal and moral positions understood, as it is
important.

Mr. Gandhi also reaffirmed his belief in prohibition and in handicrafts as necessary to the
happiness of the Indian people, despite Mr. Bose’s recent criticism that these are Mr. Gandhi’s
“personal” hobbies.

New York Times, before 22 April 1940125

QUESTION: I have heard it said on behalf of Britain, “We cannot say what the new world is
going to be at the end of the war; the Indian problem cannot be isolated from world problems. . .
Dominion Status under existing circumstances is the highest we can offer India.” You yourself
have said, “Of what value is freedom to India if Britain and France fail?” Can you throw some
light on these points?

A. The legal status of India, whether it is Dominion Status or something else, can only come
after the war. It is not a question at present to decide whether India should be satisfied with
Dominion Status for the time being. The only question is, what is the British policy? Does Great
Britain still hold the view that it is her sole right to determine the status of India or whether it is
the sole right of India to make that determination? If that question had not been raised, there
would have been no discussion such as we are facing today. The question having been raised -
and it was India’s right to raise it - I was bound to throw in my weight, such as it is, with the
Congress. Nevertheless I can still repeat the question I put to myself immediately after the first
interview with the Viceroy126: “Of what value is freedom to India if Britain and France fail?” If
these powers fail, the history of Europe and the history of the world will be written in a manner
no one can foresee. Therefore my question has its own independent value. The relevant point,

125 Report by Rajkumari Amrit Kaur in Harijan, 27 April 1940; CWMG, Volume 72, pages 10-12.
126 On 4 September 1939
however, is that by doing justice to India Britain might ensure victory of the Allies because their
cause will then be acclaimed as righteous by the enlightened opinion of the world.

QUESTION: Have you any views about world federation (Streit’s scheme of 15 white
democracies with India excluded at present127) or about a federation of Europe with the
British Commonwealth and again excluding India? Would you advise India to enter
such a larger federation so as to prevent a domination of the coloured races by the
white?

GANDHI: Of course I would welcome a world federation of all the nations of the world. A
federation of the Western nations only will be an unholy combination and a menace to humanity.
In my opinion a federation excluding India is now an impossibility. India has already passed the
stage when she could be safely neglected.

QUESTION: You have seen in your lifetime more devastation by war than there has been at any
time in the world’s history. And yet do you still believe in non-violence as the basis of new
civilisation? Are you satisfied that your own countrymen accept it without reservation? You
continue to harp on your conditions being fulfilled before starting civil disobedience. Do you still
hold to them?

GANDHI: You are right in pointing out that there is unheard-of devastation going on in the
world. But that is the real moment for testing my faith in non-violence. Surprising as it may
appear to my critics, my faith in non-violence remains absolutely undimmed. Of course non-
violence may not come in my lifetime in the measure I would like to see it come, but that is
different matter. It cannot shake my faith, and that is why I have become unbending so far as the
fulfilment of my conditions prior to the starting of civil disobedience is concerned; because, at
the risk of being the laughing-stock of the whole world, I adhere to my belief that there is an
unbreakable connection between the spinning-wheel and non-violence so far as India is
concerned. Just as there are signs by which you can recognise violence with the naked eye, so is
the spinning-wheel to me a decisive sign of non-violence. But nothing can deter me from
working away in hope. I have no other method for solving the many baffling problems that face
India.

QUESTION: You want a declaration that henceforth India shall govern herself according to her
own will. You also say, “It is possible for the best Englishmen and the best Indians to meet
together and never to separate till they have evolved a formula acceptable to both.”128 The
British say, “We are vitally interested in defence, our commercial interests, and the Indian
States.” Are you willing to allow your best Englishmen and your best Indians to enter into a
treaty in regard to these matters “in a spirit of friendly accommodation”?129

127 The reference is to a scheme propounded by C.K. Strreit. Clarence Streit (Clarence Kirshman) (1896-
1986), Union Now: a Proposal for a Federal Union of the Democracies of the North Atlantic (London: J.
Cape, 1939 and New York: Harper, 1940).
128 CWMG, Volume 71, page 409
129 The words within quotes are from the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1922.
 71

GANDHI: If the best Englishmen and the best Indians meet together with a fixed determination
not to separate until they have reached an agreement, the way will have been opened for the
summoning of the Constituent Assembly of my conception. Of course this composite board will
have to be of one mind as to the goal. If that is put in the melting-pot, there will be nothing but
interminable wrangling. Therefore self-determination must be the common cause with this
composite board.

QUESTION: Supposing India does become free in your lifetime, what will you devote the rest of
your years to?

GANDHI: If India becomes free in my lifetime and I have still energy left in me, of course I
would take my due share, though outside the official world, in building up the nation on a strictly
non-violent basis.

Francis G. Hickman, 17 September 1940130

[Mr. Hickman, an American journalist, attended the meeting of the All India Congress Committee in Bombay and
interviewed Gandhi during the session.]

HICKMAN: What is India's contribution towards making the world safe from Hitlerism?

GANDHI: If the Congress succeeds in its non-violent effort, Hitlerism and all such "isms"
will go as a matter of course.

HICKMAN: Don't you think India should do something to make facts better known in
America and thus promote the interchange of goods and ideas? What do you think should be
done in this connection?

GANDHI: First let us take up goods. America has had her bit, irrespective of Indian
conditions and India's wishes. So far as ideas are concerned, my unhappy experience is that anti-
Indian propaganda carried on in America has held undisputed sway, so much so that even the
visit of an outstanding personality like [Rabindranath] Tagore produced little impression on the
American mind.

HICKMAN: But why does not India endeavour to make herself better known in America?

GANDHI: If America really wanted to know what Indian opinion is at a given time, there is
ample literature which is growing from day to day to which they have access. If you have in
mind an Indian agency which should do propagandist work on behalf of India, again our bitter
experience has been that imperialist propaganda that is carried on with much ability and
perseverance and at a lavish expenditure is such that we can never overtake it, and the work of
any such agency has up to now proved fruitless.

130 Report by Mahadev Desai in Harijan, 29 September 1940; CWMG, Volume 73, pages 27-30.
 HICKMAN: Why not have Indian people use Indian hand-spun cloth and keep her mills busy
for the export of manufactured cloth and yarn? Don't you think that this would help the cotton-
grower?

GANDHI: I would not mind such a thing but it must be in order to supply the felt needs of the
country which received our cloth. I have no idea of exploiting other countries for the benefit of
India. We are suffering from the poisonous disease of exploitation ourselves, and I would not
like my country to be guilty of any such thing. If Japan, say, as a free country wanted India's
help, and said we could produce certain goods cheaper, and we might export them to Japan, we
would gladly do so. But under my scheme of things all dumping of goods by one country on
another, supported by her army and her navy, has to cease.

HICKMAN: Apart from export of merchandise what has India to give America, and in turn
what does India expect from America?

GANDHI: I must correct your question for you. India sends no merchandise to America; she
sends only raw material, and that is a matter for serious consideration for every nationalist. For
we cannot suffer our country remaining an exporter of raw produce, for it means (as it has
meant) extinction of handicrafts and art itself. I would expect America to treat India not as
though India was a country for American exploitation but as if India was a free country, although
unarmed, and deserving, therefore, the same treatment that America would wish at the hands of
India.

HICKMAN: You are repeating, Sir, the message of Jesus.

GANDHI: I agree. We are poor in technical skill, but as soon as you accept and consent to
follow Jesus's teaching, I would not have to complain of all the skill being monopolised by
America. You will then say, "Here is a sister country poor in technical skill, let us offer our
skilled assistance not for exploitation, not for a terrific price, but for its benefit, and so for
nothing." And here let me say a word about your missionaries. You send them here for nothing,
but that also is part of imperialist exploitation. For they would like to make us like you, better
buyers of your goods, and unable to do without your cars and luxuries. So the Christianity that
you send us is adulterated. If you established your schools, colleges and hospitals without the
object of adding to the number of the so-called Christian population, your philanthropy would be
untainted.

As regards technical skill, I cannot afford to do what the Tatas131 are doing. They can afford
to bring an American expert manager at 20,000 rupees a month. But whilst they represent the
spirit of adventure, they do not represent poor India. India has seven lakhs [700,000] of villages
which take in 90 percent of her population. America has to think of these. America ought, if she
will be of real help, to exercise her resourcefulness in this direction. And for that purpose
America will have to cease to be the premier exporting country that she is. My views on national
planning differ from the prevailing ones. I do not want it along industrial lines. I want to prevent
our villages from catching the infection of industrialisation. American exploitation has added
neither to the moral height of the exploited countries nor of the exploiting country. On the

131 Indian industrialists

 73

contrary it has impeded their march towards spiritual progress, and deadened America's real
spirit of philanthropy. A phenomenon like the one that America witnessed cannot happen in
India. I mean the destruction of tons of sugar and other agricultural products. You might have
supplied other countries the sugar and the wheat or fed America's own unemployed.

HICKMAN: But you could not have taken our pigs!

GANDHI: I know. But all do not think like me. Pandit Nehru wants industrialisation because
he thinks that, if it is socialised, it would be free from the evils of capitalism. My own view is
that evils are inherent in industrialism, and no amount of socialisation can eradicate them.

HICKMAN: We have seen what Germany has done to Belgium and to the other countries.
You would still say “non-violence”? And yet you ask the Congress to fight because it is in
danger of extinction. England also is in such danger and therefore fights.

GANDHI: Don't you see the obvious difference? England would have to out-Hitler Hitler in
defeating him. We do not want to use any of the weapons used by those who would crush us. I
would say to an aggressor: "You may destroy my churches, my hearths and my homes,
everything but my soul. I won't come to your country to destroy your churches, hearths and
homes. I will not defend my country with your weapons. I will simply refuse to cooperate with
you, refuse to owe any allegiance to you, in a word I will say 'No' to you." He may take
possession of India, but if I have my way, he will not impress a single Indian in his service.

Then you must see another distinction. If we were fighting Government with Government's
weapons, it would be the best chance for us to surprise the enemy and make their difficulty our
opportunity. But we have been for over a year laying the utmost stress on non-embarrassment. It
ought not to be turned against us. But we shall not use Britain's weapons, and that is how we
shall help Britain against her will. I can understand the Government's desire to suppress the non-
violent spirit of the nation.

HICKMAN: But you again speak like Christ on earth, and they cannot understand that
language.

GANDHI: I must persist at the peril of my life. In my opinion non-violence is not an

individual virtue, but a course of spiritual and political conduct both for the individual and the
community.

“Quit India” Movement

After the failure of the Cripps Mission, Gandhi was convinced that the British Government, headed by Winston
Churchill, was not prepared to loosen its hold on India.

India had suffered greatly during the war because of the callousness of the alien administration, as was to be
demonstrated next year in the death of three million Indians in the Bengal fame. When the British withdrew from
Singapore, the authorities took care of the British soldiers but Indians were left with no help. Many of the Indian
soldiers joined the Indian National Army, led by Subhas Chandra Bose, a former President of the Indian National
Congress. Many people in India, especially the youth, were listening to Japanese broadcasts and were influenced by
them.

Expecting a Japanese invasion of India, Britain began a scorched earth policy. Gandhi was seriously concerned
that if the British forces were retreat further, this policy would cause enormous suffering for the Indian people. He
said:

“Areas are being vacated and turned into military camps, people being thrown on their own resources.
Hundreds, if not thousands, on their way from Burma perished without food and drink, and the wretched
discrimination stared even these miserable people in the faces. One route for the whites, another for the
blacks. Provision of food and shelter for the whites, none for the blacks! And discrimination even on their
arrival in India! India is being ground down to dust and humiliated, even before the Japanese advent, not
for India’s defence – and no one knows for whose defence. And so one fine morning I came to the decision
to make this honest demand: ‘For Heaven’s sake leave India alone…’”132

His demand, however, provoked criticisms from friends. British propaganda insinuated that Gandhi expected a
defeat of the Allies and was pro-Japanese. Gandhi clarified in several statements and interviews that his call was
only for British power to leave India. The British and American troops could stay on Indian soil under an agreement
with the national government.

A number of American correspondents sought interviews with Gandhi as American opinion was concerned that
the “quit India” demand would destabilise India and endanger the position of the American forces which were
stationed in India to help Britain and China. Gandhi gave interviews to many journalists, including lengthy
interviews over several days to Louis Fischer, and held press conferences to explain his decision and suggest that
freedom for India would only help the Allies. On the whole, the correspondents reported his views faithfully but that
had little impact on British or American policy.

Gandhi wrote to President Roosevelt on 1 July:

“I have… nothing but good wishes for your country and Great Britain. You will therefore accept my word
that my present proposal, that the British should unreservedly and without reference to the wishes of the
people of India immediately withdraw their rule, is prompted by the friendliest intention. I would like to
turn into goodwill the ill will which, whatever may be said to the contrary, exists in India towards Great
Britain and thus enable the millions of India to play their part in the present war…

“In order to make my proposal foolproof I have suggested that, if the Allies think it necessary, they may
keep their troops, at their own expense in India, not for keeping internal order but for preventing Japanese
aggression and defending China. So far as India is concerned, we must become free even as America and
Great Britain are. The Allied troops will remain in India during the war under treaty with the free Indian
Government that may be formed by the people of India without any outside interference, direct or indirect.

“It is on behalf of this proposal that I write this to enlist your active sympathy.”133

On 14 July 1942, the Congress Working Committee decided to call for the withdrawal of British rule in India..
Gandhi told the press that civil disobedience would not commence for one or two weeks after the All India Congress

132 Gandhi’s interview to W.W. Chaplin (International News Service) and Jack Belden (Life and Time), 6 June
1942

133 E. S. Reddy, Mahatma Gandhi: Letters to Americans (Bombay and New York: Bharatiya Vidya
Bhavan, 1998), pages 40-42. President Roosevelt signed a reply dated 1 August to Gandhi. Enclosed with it
was an address delivered by Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, asserting that those who did not lend
unconditional support to the Allies were unworthy of liberty. The letter was held up in the State
Department and did not reach Gandhi who was detained on 9 August.
 75

Committee (A.I.C.C.) confirmed the Working Committee’s resolution. Even then he did not propose to implement
the full programme at once, as he wanted to guard against a sudden outburst of anarchy or a state of things which
may invite Japanese aggression.134

On 7-8 August, the A.I.C.C. met in Bombay, adopted the “quit India” resolution and requested Gandhi to lead a
mass movement for independence. Gandhi stressed that the movement would be non-violent and that it would not be
launched until he appealed to the Viceroy. But, on 9 August, the Government arrested Gandhi, the members of the
Congress Working Committee and many other leaders. Congress was banned the next day. British intensified
propaganda against Gandhi and the Congress accusing them of plotting violence and of sympathy with Japan. The
severe repression infuriated the people. Many Congressmen abandoned non-violence and resorted to sabotage. Over
a hundred thousand Indians were arrested and many hundreds were killed.

Gandhi wrote to the Government from prison disproving its accusations in detail. He went on a fast in February
1943 for three weeks. The confinement in prison was particularly painful for Gandhi this time. Mahadev Desai, his
personal secretary and loyal colleague, died of a heart attack a week after they were imprisoned. His wife, Kasturba,
passed away in 1944 after long illness. His own health deteriorated. The government was concerned that he may die
soon and released him on 6 May 1944.

W.W. Chaplin (International News Service) and Jack Belden (Life and Time), 6
June 1942135

[Mr. Chaplin alternated as a correspondent of the International News Service and Associated Press of
America. He was later elected President of the Overseas Press Club of America for two terms. Mr. Bellden
(1910-1989) was war correspondent and author of China Shakes the World (1949) and other books.
Mahadev Desai introduced the interview as follows:

“… So one hot afternoon two American journalists came – Mr. Chaplin of the International News
Service, America, and Mr. Belldon representing Life and Time. The latter is fresh from China and
Burma. Both had heard rumours in New Delhi that Gandhi might soon be arrested, and they
naturally did not want to be forestalled. So they came post-haste, without even waiting for a reply
giving them an appointment.

“It was no joke jogging along in a rickety tonga through the treeless road that runs between
Wardha and Sevagram.”]

Gandhi immediately put them in a good humour. “You came in an air-conditioned

coach?” “No,” they said, “but we had armed ourselves with some ice.”

Mr. Chaplin said he was a great friend of the late Jim Mills and that revived our
memories of that genial American who, Gandhi said, after the manner of American
journalists, often embellished truth to make it look nicer. Mr. Chaplin demurred to the
generalisation, and said they were quite careful about truth. Gandhi did not mean to
suggest that they deliberately mixed untruth with truth; they loved to give truth an
attractive, if imaginative, background, as, for instance, Jim Mills described Gandhi
sharing his goat’s milk with a tame cat, when there was no cat in the picture…

134 Interview to three correspondents, July 1942, below.

135 Report by Mahadev Desai in Harijan, 14 June 1942; CWMG, Volume 71, pages 192-97.
Gandhi had just emerged from an intensive talk with another American when these
friends came, and so he said greeting them, “one American has been vivisecting me. I am
now at your disposal.”

They had read all kinds of things about Gandhi’s latest move – his own words wrenched
from their context, and words written about him. “It is your worst side that is known in
New Delhi, and not your best,” another journalist has said to Gandhi, and they were
therefore anxious to straighten out wrong notions if they had any. Why non-violent non-
cooperation, rather than honest straightforward resistance against the Japanese? Far
from preventing the Japanese, non-violent non-cooperation, they feared, might prove an
invitation to them, and would not that be flying from the frying pan into the fire?

Gandhi put a counter question in reply:

“Supposing England retires from India for strategic purposes, and apart from my
proposal, - as they had to do in Burma – what would happen? What would India do?”

“That is exactly what we have come to learn from you. We would certainly like to know
that.”

“Well, therein comes my non-violence. For we have no weapons, Mind you, we have
assumed that the Commander-in-Chief of the united American and British Armies has
decided that India is no good as a base, and that they should withdraw to some other base
and concentrate the allied forces there. We can’t help it. We have then to depend on what
strength we have. We have no army, no military resources, no military skill either, worth
the name, and non-violence is the only thing we can fall back upon. Now in theory I can
prove to you that our non-violent resistance can be wholly successful. We need not kill a
single Japanese, we simply give them no quarter.”

“But that non-violence can’t prevent an invasion?”

“In non-violent technique, of course, there can be nothing like preventing an invasion.
They will land, but they will land on an inhospitable shore. They may be ruthless and
wipe out all the 400 millions. That would be complete victory. I know you will laugh at
it, saying ‘all this is superhuman, if not absurd.’ I would say you are right, we may not be
able to stand that terror and we may have to go through a course of subjection worse than
our present state. But we are discussing the theory.”

“But if the British don’t withdraw?”

“I do not want them to withdraw under Indian pressure, not driven by force of
circumstances. I want them to withdraw in their own interest, for their own good name.”

“But what happens to your movement, if you are arrested, as we had heard you might be?
Or if Mr. Nehru is arrested? Would not the movement go to pieces?”
 77

“No, not if we have worked among the people. Our arrests would work up the movement,
they would stir every one in India to do his little bit.”

“Supposing Britain decides to fight to the last man in India, would not your non-violent
non-cooperation help the Japanese?” asked Mr. Chaplin reverting to the first question he
had asked.

“If you mean non-cooperation with the British, you would be right. We have not come to
that stage. I do not want to help the Japanese – not even for freeing India. India during the
past fifty or more years of her struggle for freedom has learnt the lesson of patriotism and
not bowing to any foreign power. But when the British are offering violent battle, our
non-violent battle – our non-violent activity – would be neutralised. Those who believe in
armed resistance and in helping the British militarily are and will be helping them. Mr.
Amery says he is getting all the men and money they need, and he is right. For the
Congress – a poor organisation representing the millions of the poor of India – has not
been able to collect in years what they have collected in a day by way of what I would
say ‘so-called’ voluntary subscription.136 This Congress can only render non-violent
assistance. But let me tell you, if you do not know it, that the British do not want it, they
don’t set any store by it. But whether they do it or not, violent and non-violent resistance
cannot go together. So India’s non-violence can at best take the form of silence – not
obstructing the British forces, certainly not helping the Japanese.”

“But not helping the British?”

“Don’t you see non-violence cannot give any other aid?”

“But the railways, I hope, you won’t stop; the services, too, will be, I hope, allowed to
function?”

“They will be allowed to function, as they are being allowed today.”

“Aren’t you then helping the British by leaving the services and the railways alone?”
asked Mr. Belldon.

“We are indeed. That is our non-embarrassment policy.”

“But what about the presence of American troops here? Every American feels that we
should help India to win her freedom.”

“It’s a bad job.”

“Because it is said we are here really to help Britain and not India?”

“I say it is a bad job, because it is an imposition on India. If it is not at India’s request or

with India’s consent that they are here. It is enough irritation that we were not consulted

136 The reference is to collections by officials for the National War Fund.
before being dragged into this war – I am not sure that the Viceroy even consulted his
Executive Council. That is our original complaint. To have brought the American forces
is, in my opinion, to have made the stranglehold on us all the tighter.

“You do not know what is happening in India – it is naturally not your business to go into
those things. But let me give you some facts. Thousands of villagers are being summarily
asked to vacate their homes and go elsewhere, for the site of their homesteads is needed
by the military. Now I ask, where are they to go? Thousands of poor labourers in a
certain place, I have heard today, have been asked to evacuate. Paltry compensations are
offered them, and they are not even given sufficient notice. This kind of thing will not
happen in an independent country. The Sappers and Miners there would first build homes
for these people, transport would be provided for them, they would be given at least six
months’ maintenance allowance before they would be uprooted from their surroundings.
Are these things to happen, even before the Japanese have come here? There is no other
way, but saying to them, ‘you must go,’ and if British rule ends, that moral act will save
America and Britain. If they chose to remain here, they should remain as friends, not as
proprietors of India. The American and British soldiers may remain here, if at all, by
virtue of a compact with Free India.”

“Don’t you think Indian people and leaders have some duty to help accelerate the
process?”

“You mean by dotting India with rebellions everywhere? No, my invitation to the British
to withdraw is not an idle one. It has to be made good by the sacrifice of the invitors.
Public opinion has got to act, and it can act only non-violently.”

“Is the possibility of strikes precluded?” wondered Mr. Belldon.

“No”, said Gandhi, “strikes can be and have been non-violent. If railways are worked
only to strengthen the British hold on India, they need not be assisted. But before I decide
to take any energetic measures I must endeavour to show the reasonableness of my
demand. The moment it is complied with, India instead of being sullen becomes an ally.
Remember I am more interested than the British in keeping the Japanese out. For
Britain’s defeat in Indian waters may mean only the loss of India, but if Japan wins India
loses everything.”

“If you regard the American troops as an imposition, would you regard the American
Technical Mission also in the same light?” was the next question.

“A tree is judged by its fruit”, said Gandhi succinctly. “I have met Dr. Grady, 137 we have
had cordial talks. I have no prejudice against Americans. I have hundreds, if not
thousands of friends, in America. The Technical Mission may have nothing but good will
for India. But my point is that all the things that are happening are not happening at the
invitation or wish of India. Therefore they are all suspect. We cannot look upon them

137 Henry F. Grady went to India in 1941 as the head of the American Technical Mission. It prepared an
economic plan to increase war production.
 79

with philosophic calmness, for the simple reason that we cannot close our eyes, as I have
said, to the things that are daily happening in front of our eyes. Areas are being vacated
and turned into military camps, people being thrown on their own resources. Hundreds, if
not thousands, on their way from Burma perished without food and drink, and the
wretched discrimination stared even these miserable people in the faces. One route for the
whites, another for the blacks. Provision of food and shelter for the whites, none for the
blacks! And discrimination even on their arrival in India! India is being ground down to
dust and humiliated, even before the Japanese advent, not for India’s defence – and no
one knows for whose defence. And so one fine morning I came to the decision to make
this honest demand: ‘For Heaven’s sake leave India alone. Let us breathe the air of
freedom. It may choke us, suffocate us, as it did the slaves on their emancipation. But I
want the present sham to end.’”

“But it is the British troops you have in mind, not the American?”

“It does not make for me the slightest difference, the whole policy is one and indivisible.”

“Is there any hope of Britain listening?”

“I will not die without that hope. And if there is a long lease of life for me, I may even
see it fulfilled. For there is nothing unpractical in the proposal, no insuperable difficulties
about it. Let me add that if Britain is not willing to do so wholeheartedly Britain does not
deserve to win.”

Gandhi had over and over again said that an orderly withdrawal would result in a sullen
India becoming a friend and ally. These American friends now explored the implications
of that possible friendship: “Would a Free India declare war against Japan?”

“Free India need not do so. It simply becomes the ally of the Allied Powers, simply out of
gratefulness for the payment of a debt, however overdue. Human nature thanks the debtor
when he discharges the debt.”

“How then would this alliance fit in with India’s non-violence?”

“It is a good question. The whole of India is not non-violent. If the whole of India had
been non-violent, there would have been no need for my appeal to Britain, nor would
there be any fear of a Japanese invasion. But my non-violence is represented possibly by
a hopeless minority, or perhaps by India’s dumb millions who are temperamentally non-
violent. But there too the question may be asked: ‘What have they done?’ They have
done nothing, I agree; but they may act when the supreme test comes, and they may not. I
have no non-violence of millions to present to Britain, and what we have has been
discounted by the British as non-violence of the weak. And so all I have done is to make
this appeal on the strength of bare inherent justice, so that it might find an echo in the
British heart. It is made from a moral plane, and even as they do not hesitate to act
desperately in the physical field and take grave risks, let them for once act desperately on
the moral field and declare that India is independent today, irrespective of India’s
demand.”

“But what does a free India mean, if, as Mr. Jinnah said, Muslims will not accept Hindu
rule?”

“I have not asked the British to hand over India to the Congress or to the Hindus. Let
them entrust India to God or in modern parlance to anarchy. Then all the parties will,
when real responsibility faces them, come to a reasonable agreement. I shall expect non-
violence to arise out of that chaos.”

“But whom are the British to say – ‘India is free’?” asked the friends with a certain
degree of exasperation.

“To the world”, said Gandhi without a moment’s hesitation. “Automatically the Indian
army is disbanded from that moment, and they decide to pack up as soon as they can. Or
they may declare they would pack up only after the war is over, but that they would
expect no help from India, impose no taxes, raise no recruits – beyond what help India
chooses to give voluntarily. British rule will cease from that moment, no matter what
happens to India afterwards. Today it is all a hypocrisy, unreality. I want the war to end.
The new order will come only when that falsity ends.”

“It is an unwarranted claim Britain and America are making”, said Gandhi concluding the
talk, “the claim of saving democracy and freedom. It is a wrong thing to make that claim,
when there is this terrible tragedy of holding a whole nation in bondage.”

QUESTION: "What can America do to have your demand implemented?"

GANDHI: "If my demand is admitted to be just beyond cavil, America can insist on the
implementing of the Indian demand as a condition of her financing Britain and supplying
her with her matchless skill in making war machines. He who pays the piper has the right
to call the tune. Since America has become the predominant partner in the allied cause
she is partner also in Britain’s guilt. The Allies have no right to call their cause to be
morally superior to the Nazi cause so long as they hold in custody the fairest part and one
of the most ancient nations of the earth."

Jack Belden, June 1942138

[This is a condensed version of the previous interview published by Time.]

I found Gandhi flat on his back on a white mattress laid on a clean-swept floor made of cow
dung.

138 Jack Belden, "The Mind of Gandhi" in Time, Chicago, 29 June 1942.
 81

Over his head waved a punkah, drawn by a white-clad woman disciple. About his body was a
simple cotton loincloth, the thread of which was spun by his own hands. In one hand he held a
rag, which he constantly dipped into a bowl of water by his side and wiped over his shiny bald
head. About him followers and secretaries knelt cross-legged. Gandhi looked old as wisdom,
skeleton-thin, sharp, birdlike: now all his teeth are gone. He seemed in remarkable spirits.

"So you've come to vivisect me. All right. I'm at your disposal."

I said that Indian papers were hinting that he and other Congress leaders might be arrested.
He waved his hand airily. "That wouldn't matter. I'd still be in their midst. Our arrests would
stir everyone in India to do his little bit. Even the stones would arise. Stones can be non-violent,
you know," he said with a twinkle.

Gandhi insisted that a method of non-violence [against Japan] could not only be effective but
was the only course open to him. Said he: "We have no army, no military resources, no military
skill, and non-violence is the only thing we can rely on. Of course we can't prevent invasion: the
Japanese will land, but they will land on an inhospitable shore. We do not need to kill a single
Japanese: we simply give them no quarter. We may be unable to withstand their terror and may
have to go through a course of subjection worse than the present state, but we will carry on."

Gandhi added: "I do not want to help the Japanese, even in order to free India. India, during
the past 50 years' struggle for freedom, has learned not to bow to any foreign power. The
moment my demands are complied with, India, instead of being sullen, becomes an ally.
Remember. I am more interested than the British in keeping the Japanese out. For Britain,
defeat in Indian waters may mean only the loss of India, but if Japan wins, India loses
everything."

A free India, said Gandhi, would not necessarily declare war against Japan, but it "becomes
an ally of the Allied powers simply out of gratefulness in payment of debt, however overdue.
Human nature thanks a debtor when he discharges a debt. All I have done is make this appeal
[for independence] on bare and inherent justice and hope to find an echo in the British heart.
Britons play desperately on the physical field. Let them play desperately on the moral field and
declare that India's independence is fair, irrespective of India's demands."

Gandhi brushed aside the objection that a free India would mean nothing if India's Moslems
did not accept Hindu rule. "I have not asked the British to hand over India to Congress or to the
Hindus. Let them entrust India to God or in modern parlance to anarchy. Then all parties will
fight one another like dogs, or will, when real responsibility comes, reach a reasonable
agreement. But I expect non-violence to arise out of that agreement."

I asked: "What do you think of American troops' presence in India?"

Said Gandhi: "It is a bad job because it is an imposition on India. It is not at India's request
or consent that they are here. It is enough irritation that we were not consulted before being
dragged into war - that is our original complaint - but to have brought American forces here is to
tighten the stranglehold on us. I am not prejudiced against Americans and my thousands of
friends in America, but it is my point that all these things are not happening at the invitation of
India.

"We can't look upon them with philosophic calm and can't close our eyes to things daily
happening in front of us. India is being ground to dust and humiliated, even before the Japanese
advent, not for India's defence and no one knows for whose defence. And so, on one fine
morning, I came to the decision to make this honest demand:

"'For heaven's sake, leave India alone. Let us breathe the air of freedom. It may choke us,
suffocate us as it did the slave under emancipation, but I want the present sham to end.'

"There is no other way but saying to them: 'You must go,' and if British rule ends that moral
act will save Britain and America. If they choose to remain here, they should do so as friends,
not proprietors of India. American and British soldiers may remain here, if at all, by virtue of a
compact with free India."

Louis Fischer, 4-9 June 1942

[Louis Fischer, a socialist, was a journalist in Moscow for many years. He was disillusioned with the Soviet Union.
He came to India in 1942, shortly before the Indian National Congress approved Gandhi’s proposal for a “Quit
India” movement. With a recommendation from Jawaharlal Nehru, he went to Sevagram and stayed in the ashram
from 4 to 10 June. Gandhi developed confidence in him and gave him a series of interviews so that the American
Government and public would be fully informed of his views on the movement. Mr. Fischer published his
interviews in a book entitled A Week with Gandhi139. He became an admirer of Gandhi and published a biography
of Gandhi (1960) and other books on Gandhi.

Extracts from A Week with Gandhi were published as Appendix V to Volume 76 of CWMG. The following is a
condensed version of the account in CWMG.]

June 4, 1942

LOUIS FISCHER: I feel that the Cripps mission was a turning point in Indian history. The
country is probably now beginning to grasp the significance of Cripps’s failure, and from that
understanding big things might flow.

GANDHI: When Cripps arrived, he sent me a telegram asking me to come and see him in New
Delhi. I did not wish to go, but I went because I thought it would do some good. I had heard
rumours about the contents of the British Government’s offer he brought to India, but I had not
seen the offer. He gave it to me, and after a brief study, I said to him, “Why did you come if this
is what you have to offer? If this is your entire proposal to India, I would advise you to take the
next plane home.” Cripps replied, “I will consider that.”

FISCHER: What is your criticism of the Cripps offer? Didn’t it promise you dominion status
with the right to secede from the British Commonwealth?

139 Louis Fischer, A Week with Gandhi (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pierce, c1942).
 83

GANDHI: C. F. Andrews always used to assert that dominion status is not for India. We have
not the same relation to Britain as the dominions which are white and settled, for the most part,
by emigrants from Britain or their descendants. We do not wish any status conferred on us. If a
status is conferred on us, it means we are not free. As to secession, there are big flaws. One of
the chief flaws is the provision in the Cripps proposal regarding the Princes. The British maintain
that they must protect the Princes under treaties which they forced on the Princes for Britain’s
advantage… The second flaw is the recognition of Pakistan. The differences between Hindus and
Muslims have been accentuated by British rule. Now they have been given their maximum scope
by the Cripps offer…

The division of Bengal, as carried out by Curzon, was a necessary reform. It was a good
measure. But it had the effect of dividing the province according to religion. Cripps introduced
this same principle in his offer; that is the second big flaw. There can be no unity in India,
therefore, as long as the British are here.

FISCHER: Well, you did not like the outlines of the post-war settlement proposed by Cripps. But
was there nothing desirable in the interim or immediate provisions? Did you not think that,
irrespective of the plan for the future, there might be some value in the immediate arrangements
which would give your people experience in government and earn you the right to demand
freedom after the war?

GANDHI: Roughly, this was the spirit in which I approached it. But when I saw the text of the
Cripps offer, I was certain that there was no room for co-operation. The main issue was defence.
In war time, defence is the chief task of government. I have no desire to interfere with the actual
conduct of the war. I am incompetent to do so. But Roosevelt has no special training in strategy
or, if he has it is partial…

The point is that in war time there must be civilian control of the military, even though the
civilians are not as well trained in strategy as the military. If the British in Burma wish to destroy
the golden pagoda because it is a beacon to Japanese airplanes, then I say you cannot destroy it,
because when you destroy it, you destroy something in the Burmese soul. When the British come
and say, we must remove these peasants to build an aerodrome here, and the peasants must go
today, I say, ‘Why did you not think of that yesterday and give the poor people time to go, and
why don’t you find places for them to go to?’

FISCHER: If these are the matters which you wish Indians to control, I am sure General Wavell
would have regarded them as interference in the prosecution of the war.

GANDHI: The British offered us war-time tasks like the running of canteens and the printing of
stationery, which are of minor significance. Though I am no strategist, there are things we could
have done which would have been more conducive to success in the war The British have fared
so badly in the Far East that they could do with help from us.

FISCHER: Apparently, then, you placed chief stress on defence. He agreed. Did Nehru and other
Congress leaders take the same view?
GANDHI: I hope so, I hope Nehru takes the same view, and that the Maulana Sahib takes the
same view.

FISCHER: In other words, you found nothing good in the Cripps proposals?

GANDHI: I am glad you put this direct and definite question to me. No I found nothing good at
all in them…

FISCHER: I think there is a vast popular ferment going on in England. I flew to England last
summer and stayed nine weeks. The mass of the people are resolved not to be ruled after the war
by the sort of people who ruled them before the war and brought on this war. Cripps could
become the expression and embodiment of this popular protest. His rise to office is therefore an
encouraging phenomenon.

GANDHI: Yes, and a discouraging one too, for I wonder whether Cripps has the qualities of a
great statesman. It is very discouraging to us that the man who was a friend of Jawaharlal’s and
had been interested in India should have made himself the bearer of this mission.

Lord Sankey once told me to take care of myself, and I said him, ‘Do you think I would have
reached this green old age if I hadn’t taken care of myself?’ This is one of my faults.

FISCHER: I thought you were perfect.

GANDHI: No, I am very imperfect. Before you are gone you will have discovered a hundred of
my faults, and if you don’t I will help you to see them. Now, I have given you an hour.

FISCHER: You helped recruit soldiers for the British Army in the First World War. When this
war started, you said you wished to do nothing to embarrass the British Government. Now,
obviously, your attitude has changed. What has happened?

GANDHI: In the First World War I had just returned from South Africa. I hadn’t yet found my
feet. I wasn’t sure of my ground. This did not imply any lack of faith in non-violence. But it had
to develop according to circumstances, and I was not sufficiently sure of my ground. There were
many experiences between the two wars. Nevertheless, I announced after some talks with the
Viceroy in September 1939, that the Congress movement would not obstruct this war. I am not
the Congress. In fact, I am not in the Congress. I am neither a member nor an officer of the Party.
Congress is more anti-British and anti-war than I am, and I have had to curb its desires to
interfere with the war effort. Now I have reached certain conclusions. I do not wish to humiliate
the British. But the British must go. I do not say that the British are worse than the Japanese.

FISCHER: Quite the contrary.

GANDHI: I would not say quite the contrary. But I do not wish to exchange one master for
another. England will benefit morally if she withdraws voluntarily and in good order.

June 5, 1942
 85

FISCHER: When I hear a suggestion about some arrangement for the future I try to imagine how
it would look if it were actually adopted. I am sure you have done the same in connection with
your proposal that the British withdraw. Then how do you see that withdrawal, step by step?

GANDHI: First, there are the Princes who have their own armies. They might make trouble. I am
not sure that there will be order when the British go. There could be chaos. I have said, “Let the
British go in an orderly fashion and leave India to God.” You may not like such unrealistic
language. Then call it anarchy. That is the worst that can happen. But we will seek to prevent it.
There may not be anarchy.

FISCHER: Could not the Indians immediately organise a government?

GANDHI: Yes, There are three elements in the political situation here: the Princes, the Muslims
and Congress. They could all form a provisional government.

FISCHER: In what proportion would power and the posts be divided?

GANDHI: I do not know. Congress being the most powerful unit might claim the largest share.
But that could be determined amicably.

FISCHER: It seems to me that the British cannot possibly withdraw altogether. That would mean
making a present of India to Japan and England would never consent to that, nor would the
United States approve. If you demand that the British pack up and go bag and baggage, you are
simply asking the impossible; you are barking up a tree. You do not mean, do you, that they must
also withdraw their armies?

GANDHI: You are right. No, Britain and America, and other countries too, can keep their armies
here and use Indian territory as a base for military operations. I do not wish Japan to win the war.
I do not want the Axis to win. But I am sure that Britain cannot win unless the Indian people
become free. Britain is weaker and Britain is morally indefensible while she rules India. I do not
wish to humiliate England.

FISCHER: But if India is to be used as a military base by the United Nations, many other things
are involved. Armies do not exist in a vacuum. For instance, the United Nations would need
good organisation on the railroads.

GANDHI: Oh, they could operate the railroads. They would also need order in the ports where
they received their supplies. They could to have riots in Bombay and Calcutta. These matters
would require co-operation and common effort.

FISCHER: Could the terms of this collaboration be set forth in a treaty of alliance?

GANDHI: Yes, we could have a written agreement with England.

FISCHER: Or with Britain, America and the others? Why have you never said this? I must
confess that when I heard of your proposed civil disobedience movement I was prejudiced
against it. I believed that it would impede the prosecution of the war. I think the war has to be
fought and won. I see complete darkness for the world if the Axis win. I think we have a chance
for a better world if we win.

GANDHI: There I cannot quite agree. Britain often cloaks herself in a cloth of hypocrisy,
promising what she later doesn’t deliver. But I accept the proposition that there is a better chance
if the democracies win.

FISCHER: It depends on the kind of peace we make.

GANDHI: It depends on what you do during the war.

FISCHER: I would like to tell you that American statesmen have great sympathy for the cause of
Indian freedom. The United State Government tried to dissuade Churchill from making the
speech in which he declared that the Atlantic Charter did not apply to India. Important men in
Washington are working on the idea of a Pacific Charter, but they tell me that they have not got
very far because the first principle of such a charter would be the end of imperialism, and how
can we announce that while Britain holds India?

GANDHI: I am not interested in future promises. I am not interested in independence after the
war. I want independence now. That will help England win the war.

FISCHER: Why 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 base for Allied military operations.

GANDHI: No one has asked me. I have written about my proposed civil disobedience movement
in order to prepare the public for it. If you put me some direct questions in writing about this
matter, I will answer them in Harijan. Only make the questions brief.140

FISCHER: If you knew anything about my writing you would know that I always try to be brief,
direct, and squeeze out the water.

GANDHI: Jawaharlal told me about you before you came. He said you were honest and had no
axe to grind. You don’t have several irons in the fire. He said you were a solid man. I can see
that by looking at you.

FISCHER: Yes, solid, at least physically.

GANDHI: I have talked freely and frankly to you. I think you are a sahib loke…

FISCHER: I come from a very poor family.141 I know what it means to be hungry. I have
always sympathised with the downtrodden and the poor. Many Americans feel the greatest

140 The questions and answers were published in Harijan on 14 June 1942, and are reproduced at the end
of this interview.
 87

friendship for India. I think it very unfortunate, therefore, that you have recently uttered some
unfriendly words at the expense of America.

GANDHI: It was necessary. I wanted to shock. I think many Americans have a soft corner in
their hearts for me, and I wished to tell them that if they continue to worship Mammon they will
not make a better world. There is a danger that the democracies will defeat the Axis and become
just as bad as Japan and Germany.

FISCHER: Of course there is a danger. But many people said that England would go Fascist if it
went to war. Yet in fact England is more democratic now than she was before the war.

GANDHI: No. We see in India that this is not so.

FISCHER: At least in England.

GANDHI: It cannot be true in England and not in the Empire. I cannot depend on your future
goodness. 1 have laboured for many decades for Indian national freedom. We cannot wait any
longer. But I believe that there is goodwill for us. England is sitting on an unexploded mine in
India and it may explode any day. The hatred and resentment against Britain are so strong here
that Britain can get no help for her war effort. Indians enlist in the British Army because they
want to eat, but they have no feeling in their hearts which would make them wish to help
England.

FISCHER: If you permit me to summarise the suggestions you have made today about a
settlement in India, you have reversed the Cripps offer. Cripps offered you something and kept
the rest for England. You are offering England something and keep the rest for India.

GANDHI: That is very true. I have turned Cripps around…

June 6, 1942

I asked him what was the theory behind his weekly day of silence.

GANDHI: What do you mean by theory?

FISCHER: I mean the principle, the motivation.

GANDHI: It happened when I was being torn to pieces. I was working very hard, travelling in
hot trains incessantly, speaking at many meetings, and being approached in trains and elsewhere
by thousands of people who asked questions, made pleas, and wished to pray with me. I wanted
to rest for one day a week. So I instituted the day of silence. Later of course I clothed it with all
kinds of virtues and gave it a spiritual cloak. But the motivation was really nothing more than
that I wanted to have a day off. Silence is very relaxing. It is not relaxing in itself. But when you
can talk and don’t, it gives you great relief—and there is time for thought.

141 Louis Fischer was the son of a fish peddler in Philadelphia who had emigrated from the Ukraine to
escape anti-Jewish pogroms.
I asked Gandhi about Rajaji’s programme.142

GANDHI: I don’t know what his proposals are. I think it unfortunate that he should argue
against me and that I should argue with him, so I have given order that, as far as we are
concerned, the discussion should be suspended. But the fact is that I do not know what Rajaji
proposes.

FISCHER: Isn’t the essence of his scheme that the Hindus and Muslims collaborate and in
common work perhaps discover the technique of peaceful co-operation?

GANDHI: Yes. But that is impossible. As long as the third power, England, is here, our
communal differences will continue to plague us. Far back, Lord Minto, then Viceroy, declared
that the British had to keep Muslims and Hindus apart in order to facilitate the domination of
India… This has been the principle of British rule over since.

FISCHER: I have been told that when Congress ministries were in office in the provinces, during
1937, 1938 and 1939, they discriminated against Muslims.

GANDHI: The British governors of those provinces have officially testified that is not so.

FISCHER: But isn’t it a fact that in the United Provinces, Congress and the Muslims entered into
an electoral pact because Congress was not sure of winning, that, then, Congress won a sweeping
victory and refused to form a coalition with the Muslims?

GANDHI: No. There were four Muslim ministers in the United Provinces Government formed
by Congress. There were no representatives of the Muslim League, but there were Muslims. No.
We have always tried to collaborate with Muslims. It is said that the Maulana is a puppet in our
hands. Actually, he is the dictator of Congress. He is its president. But the Cripps proposals have
divided Hindus from Muslims more than ever. Thanks to the British Government, the divergence
between the two communities has been widened.

FISCHER: It was sad that Congress leaders and Muslim Leaguers came to New Delhi to talk to
Cripps, and talked to Cripps but did not talk to one another.

GANDHI: It was not only sad, it was disgraceful. But it was the fault of the Muslim League.
Shortly after this war broke out, we were summoned to meet the Viceroy at New Delhi. Rajendra
Prasad and I went to speak for Congress, and Mr. Jinnah for the Muslim League. I asked Jinnah
to confer with us in advance and face the British Government unitedly. We agreed to meet in
New Delhi, but when I suggested that we both demand independence for India he said, ‘I do not
want independence.’ We could not agree. I urged that we at least make the appearance of unity

142 C. Rajagopalachari, a leader of the Congress and an associate of Gandhi for a long time, felt that
Gandhi’s demand that Britain leave India forthwith was unrealistic and would lead to chaos, leaving India
at the mercy of Japan. He proposed at the session of the All India Congress Committee in May 1942 that
the Congress accept the demand of the Muslim League for the separation of some areas with Muslim
majority in return for the League’s cooperation in setting up a national government. His proposal received
little support and he resigned from the Congress in July.
 89

by going to the Viceroy together; I said he could go in my car or I would go in his. He consented
to have me go in his car. But we spoke to the Viceroy in different tones and expressed different
views.

In actual life, it is impossible to separate us into two nations. We are not two nations. Every
Muslim will have a Hindu name if he goes back far enough in his family history. Every Muslim
is merely a Hindu who has accepted Islam. That does not create nationality. If some influential
Christian divine converted us all to Christianity, we should not become one nation if we really
were two nations, and in the same manner the two religions of India do not make two
nationalities. Europe is Christian, but Germany and England, so much alike in culture and
language, are grimly at one another’s throats. We in India have a common culture. In the north,
Hindi and Urdu are understood by both Hindus and Muslims. In Madras, Hindus and Muslims
speak Tamil, and in Bengal they both speak Bengali and neither Hindi nor Urdu. When
communal riots take place, they are always provoked by incidents over cows and by religious
processions. That means that it is our superstitions that create the trouble and not our separate
nationalities.

FISCHER: Caroe143 and Jenkins144 told me that there were no communal differences in the
villages, and I heard from others too that the relations between the two religious communities are
peaceful in the villages. If that is so, that is very important because India is ninety per cent
village.

GANDHI: It is so, and that of course proves that the people are not divided. It proves that the
politicians divide us.

FISCHER: The Muslim bartender in my hotel in New Delhi said to me— although he is a
member of the Muslim League and an advocate of Pakistan that the communal troubles always
started where Muslims were a minority and never where the Hindus were a minority.

GANDHI: Fischer, you have been here only for a short time. You cannot study everything. But if
you make any investigations and find that we are wrong or guilty, please say so in a loud voice…

5 June afternoon

FISCHER: But how real are the fears of the Muslim leaders? Perhaps they understand better than
the Muslim masses that the Hindus desire to dominate. Can you say quite objectively that the
Hindus have not tried to gain the upper hand?

GANDHI: Here and there, individuals may entertain regrettable ideas. But I can say that the
Congress movement and the Hindus in general have no desire to control. The provinces must
enjoy broad autonomy. I myself am opposed to violence or domination and do not believe in

143 Olaf Kirkpatrick Caroe, Secretary, External Affairs Department, who worked for many years as a British
official in the Punjab.
144 Sir Evan Jenkins, Secretary, Department of Supplies
powerful governments which oppress their citizens or other States. So how could I wish for
domination? This charge is a cry originated by leaders to obtain a better hold on their people.

FISCHER: Very highly placed Britishers had told me that Congress was in the hands of big
business and that Gandhi was supported by the Bombay mill-owners who gave him as much
money as he wanted. What truth is there in these assertions?

GANDHI: Unfortunately, they are true. Congress hasn’t enough money to conduct its work. We
thought in the beginning to collect four annas from each member per year and operate on that.
But it hasn’t worked.

FISCHER: What proportion of the Congress budget is covered by rich Indians?

GANDHI: Practically all of it. In this ashram, for instance, we could live much more poorly than
we do and spend less money. But we do not, and the money comes from our rich friends.

FISCHER: Doesn’t the fact that Congress gets its money from the moneyed interests affect
Congress politics? Doesn’t it create a kind of moral obligation?

GANDHI: It creates a silent debt. But actually we are very little influenced by the thinking of the
rich. They are sometimes afraid of our demand for full independence.

FISCHER: The other day I noticed in The Hindustan Times an item to the effect that Mr. Birla
had again raised wages in his textile mills to meet the higher cost of living and, the paper
continued to say, no other mill-owner had done so much. The Hindustan Times is a Congress
paper.

GANDHI: No, it is completely owned by Birla. I know, because my youngest son is the editor.
The facts are true, but it has nothing to do with Congress. You are right, however, that the
dependence of Congress on rich sponsors is unfortunate. I use the word ‘unfortunate.’ It does not
pervert our policy.

FISCHER: Isn’t one of the results that there is a concentration on nationalism almost to the
exclusion of social and economic problems?

GANDHI: No. Congress has from time to time, especially under the influence of Pandit Nehru,
adopted advanced social programmes and schemes for economic planning. I will have those
collected for you.

FISCHER: But is it not a fact that all these social changes are projected to a time when
independence will have been achieved?

GANDHI: No. When Congress was in office in the provinces (1937-39) the Congress ministries
introduced many reforms which have since been cancelled by the British administration. We
introduced reforms in the villages, in the schools, and in other fields.
 91

FISCHER: I have been told, and I read in the Simon report that one of the great curses of India is
the village money-lender to whom the peasant is often in debt from birth to death. In European
countries, private philanthropy and governments have in similar circumstances created land
banks to oust the usurious money-lender. Why could not some of your rich friends start a land
bank on a purely business basis except that, instead of getting forty to seventy per cent interest
per year, they would get two or three per cent? Their money would be secure, they would earn a
small profit, and they would be helping their country.

GANDHI: Impossible. It could not be done without Government legislation.

FISCHER: Why?

GANDHI: Because the peasants wouldn’t repay the loans.

FISCHER: But surely the peasant would realise that it was better to repay money which he
borrowed at three per cent than to mortgage his life away to the money-lender?

GANDHI: Money lending is an ancient institutions and it is deeply rooted in the village. What
you advocate cannot be done before we are free.

FISCHER: What would happen in a free India? What is your programme for the improvement of
the lot of the peasantry?

GANDHI: The peasants would take the land. We would not have to tell them to take it. They
would take it.

FISCHER: Would the landlords be compensated?

GANDHI: No. That would be fiscally impossible. You see, our gratitude to our millionaire
friends does not prevent us from saying such things. The village would become a self-governing
unit living its own life.

FISCHER: But there would of course be a national government.

GANDHI: No.

FISCHER: But surely you need a national administration to direct the railroads, the telegraphs,
and so on.

GANDHI: I would not shed a tear if there were no railroads in India.

FISCHER: But that would bring suffering to the peasant. He needs city goods, and he must sell
his produce in other parts of the country and abroad. The village needs electricity and irrigation.
No single village could build a hydro-electric power station or an irrigation system like the
Sukkur barrage in Sind.
GANDHI: And that has been a big disappointment. It has put the whole Province in debt.

FISCHER: I know, but it has brought much new land under cultivation, and it is a boon to the
people.

GANDHI: I realise that despite my views there will be a central government administration.
However, I do not believe in the accepted Western form of democracy with its universal voting
for parliamentary representatives.

FISCHER: What would you have India do?

GANDHI: There are seven hundred thousand villages in India. Each would be organised
according to the will of its citizens, all of them voting. Then there would be seven hundred
thousand votes and not four hundred million. Each village, in other words, would have one vote.
The villages would elect their district administrations, and the district administrations would
elect the provincial administrations, and these in turn would elect a president who would be the
national chief executive.

FISCHER: That is very much like the Soviet system.

GANDHI: I did not know that. I don’t mind.

FISCHER: Now, Mr. Gandhi, I would like to ask you a second question about Congress.
Congress has been accused of being an authoritarian organisation. There is a new book out by
two British authors, Shuster and Wint, called India and Democracy, which makes the charge that
when the Congress provincial ministries resigned in 1939 they did so not of their own volition
but on the orders of the district [sic] dictators of Congress.

GANDHI: This is nonsense. Do you think all questions are decided in the House of Commons or
are decisions taken in party caucuses and in the clubs of London? Congress officers are elected
by the members of Congress, and ministers who are members of Congress abide by the
principles of Congress. Sir Samuel Hoare has told me a few things about the workings of
democracy in Britain.

FISCHER: He seems to be your favourite British statesman.

This provided much laughter.

GANDHI: At least, I always know where he stands. Parliamentary democracy is not immune to
corruption, as you who remember Tammany Hall and the Mayor of Chicago145 should know. I
do not think a free India will function like the other countries of the world. We have our own
forms to contribute.

145 Tammany Hall, the site of the Democratic Party’s political machine in New York City, and the Mayor
of Chicago had been notorious for graft and corruption.
 93

I said, I would like to talk to him for a few moments about Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian
leader who had escaped to Axis territory. I told Gandhi that I was rather shocked when I heard
that he had sent a telegram of condolence to Bose’s mother on the receipt of the report, since
proved false, that Bose had died in an airplane accident.

GANDHI: Do you mean because I had responded to news that proved to be false?

FISCHER: No, but that you regretted the passing of a man who went to Fascist Germany and
identified himself with it.

GANDHI: I did it because I regard Bose as a patriot of patriots. He may be misguided. I think he
is misguided. I have often opposed Bose. Twice I kept him from becoming president of
Congress. Finally he did become president, although my views often differed from his. But
suppose he had gone to Russia or to America to ask aid for India. Would that have made it
better?

FISCHER: Yes, of course. It does make a difference to whom you go.

GANDHI: I do not want help from anybody to make India free. I want India to save herself.

FISCHER: Throughout history, nations and individuals have helped foreign countries. Lafayette
went from France to assist America in winning independence from Britain. Thousands of
Americans and other foreigners died in Spain to save the Spanish Republic.

GANDHI: Individuals, yes. But America is the ally of England which enslaves us. And I am not
yet certain that the democracies will make a better world when they defeat the Fascists. They
may become very much like the Fascists themselves.

FISCHER: This is where, as I told you the other day, we must agree to differ. I find the
concentration of Indians on problems of their freedom to the exclusion of social problems a
disappointment and a shortcoming. Bose is a young man with a propensity for dramatic action,
and were he to succumb in Germany to the lure of Fascism and return to India and make India
free but Fascist, I think you would be worse off than under British rule.

GANDHI: There are powerful elements of Fascism in British rule, and in India these are the
elements which we see and feel every day. If the British wish to document their right to win the
war and make the world better, they must purify themselves by surrendering power in India.
Your President talks about the Four Freedoms. Do they include the freedom to be free? We are
asked to fight for democracy in Germany, Italy and Japan. How can we when we haven’t got it
ourselves?

7 June 1942

Gandhi inquired about Roosevelt’s health and then asked me to describe Mrs. Roosevelt to
him… I tried to explain the progress in social legislation, trade union organisation, and social
thinking which had taken place under the New Deal…
GANDHI: What about the Negroes?

I talked about the Negro situation in the North and South. I said I did not, of course, wish to
defend the treatment meted out to Negroes, but it seemed to me that it was not so cruel as
untouchability in India.

GANDHI: As you know, I have fought untouchability for many years. We have many
untouchables here in the ashram. Most of the work in the ashram is done by the untouchables,
and any Hindu who comes to Sevagram must accept food from untouchables and remain in their
proximity.

I asked whether the discrimination against untouchables had been somewhat alleviated.

GANDHI: Oh, yes, but it is still very bad.

FISCHER: Very thoughtful and otherwise progressive people, for instance Varadachariar146,
have tried to justify it in conversation with me; it seems to arise from the belief in the
transmigration of the soul which apparently is part of the Hindu religion. Do you believe in the
transmigration of the soul?

GANDHI: Of course. I cannot admit that the soul dies with the body. When a man’s house is
blown away, he builds himself another. When his body is taken away, his soul finds another. Nor
do I accept the view that when the body is laid in the ground the soul remains suspended
somewhere waiting for judgment day when it will be brought to the bar and confronted with its
crimes. No, it immediately finds itself a new home.

FISCHER: This is obviously another form of man’s eternal striving for immortality. Does it not
all arise from the weak mortal’s fear of death? Tolstoy was irreligious until his old age, when he
started dreading the end.

GANDHI: I have no fear of death. I would regard it with relief and satisfaction. But it is
impossible for me to think that that is the end. I have no proof. People have tried to demonstrate
that the soul of a dead man finds a new home. I do not think this is capable of proof. But I
believe it.

FISCHER: I think we all seek immortality, only some believe they live in their children or their
works and some believe they live in transmuted form in animals, or otherwise. Some men live
longer because their works last longer, but I believe that faith in one’s immortality, if it is distinct
from one’s acts, is really fear of death and an attempt to find comfort in an illusion.

Gandhi thereupon reiterated his view with much passion and in fine flowing English prose; he
always spoke a rich, fluent English with a British university accent.

146 A member of the Supreme Court of India who was a high-caste Brahmin
 95

I said students had told me that the new generation in India was less inclined to make a
distinction between high-caste Hindus and untouchables, or between Hindus and Muslims, and
that they were not much interested in religion.

GANDHI: The first is correct. But Hinduism is not a religion. The students do not perform
religious ceremonies. But Hinduism is life. It is a way of life. Many who do not practise formal
religion are nearer to this way of life than some who do.

He added that untouchability pained him deeply and he hoped that India’s freedom would hasten
the solution of the problem of untouchability. This brought him back to his favourite subject. He
spoke of “the challenge, for it is a challenge, which I have flung to the British to go. They will be
purified if they go and better equipped for the task of making a new world. Otherwise all their
professions are a cloak of hypocrisy.”

FISCHER: Don’t you think that in view of the diversities of India you will need here a federation
which will satisfy the Princes and the Muslims?

GANDHI: I am in no position to say which system would suit us better. First, the British must
go. It is a matter of pure speculation what we will do later. The moment the British withdraw, the
question of religious minorities disappears. If the British withdraw and there is chaos, I cannot
say what form will ultimately rise out of the chaos. If I were asked what I would prefer, I would
say federation and not centralisation. There is bound to be a federal system of some sort. But you
must be satisfied with my answer that I am not disturbed by the problem of whether we are to
have a federation or not. Perhaps your cast-iron mind mocks at this. Perhaps you think that with
millions unarmed and accustomed to foreign rule for centuries, we will not succeed in the civil
disobedience movement which I have decided to launch.

FISCHER: No. I do not think that. I believe that history is moving fast and that before long you
will be an independent country like China. The struggle you began years ago cannot end in any
other way.

GANDHI: I do not want to be independent like China. China is helpless even now and in spite of
Chiang Kai-shek. Notwithstanding China’s heroism and her readiness to risk all in this war,
China is not yet completely free. China should be able to say to America and England, “We will
fight our battle of independence single-handed, without your aid.” That I would call
independence.

I asked him how he got on in his long interview with Chiang147.

GANDHI: Very well.

FISCHER: Only you did not understand him, and he did not understand you.

GANDHI: I found him inscrutable. Maybe it was the matter of language. We spoke through
Madame Chiang. But I do not think it was only that.

147 Gandhi met Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang in Calcutta on 18 February 1942.
FISCHER: Of course China is not completely free, but freedom does not come in a day. Through
this war, if we win it, China will become free. We may be approaching the Asiatic century. India
and China may shape a great deal of history in the coming decades. I see no sign, however, that
the British realise this. They will not go as you ask. If they could not save themselves by their
arms in Singapore and Malaya, they will not save themselves by their brains in India.

GANDHI: I would like you to understand that I am not criticising China. Only I wanted to
emphasise that I do not wish to imitate China. I do not want India to be in the same predicament
as China. That is why I am saying I do not want British and American soldiers here. I do not
want Japanese or German soldiers here. The Japanese broadcast every day that they do not intend
to keep India—they only propose to help us win our freedom. I do not welcome their sympathy
or help. I know they are not philanthropists I want for India a respite from all foreign
domination. I have become impatient. I cannot wait any longer. Our condition is worse than
China’s or Persia’s. I may not be able to convince Congress. Men who have held office in
Congress may not rise to the occasion. I will go ahead nevertheless and address myself directly
to the people. But whatever happens, we are unbendable. We may be able to evolve a new order
which will astonish the whole world. I would ask you to cast off your prejudices and enter into
this new idea of mine of a civil disobedience campaign and try to find flaws in it if there are any.
You will then be able to help our cause and, to put it on a higher plane, you will be able to do
justice to yourself as a writer. The literature that is being produced on India is piffling and of no
consequence. There is nothing original in most of it. It is all cast-iron. I ask you to struggle out of
that groove. I would like you to penetrate through my language to what I am attempting to
express. That is difficult, I know; you came here with all the glamour, brilliance, culture and
armed strength of American and British civilisation. I would understand your refusing to grasp
anything that does not fit into your groove or that is not desirable for that groove. But if your
mind cannot rise above that beaten track, then your days in Sevagram will have been wasted.

FISCHER: Yes, but will you help me to see the new order you speak of? I am not so sure of my
own new order as to reject yours out of hand. I think India has much to contribute, but how do
you see future developments?

GANDHI: You see the centre of power now is in New Delhi, or in Calcutta and Bombay, in the
big cities. I would have it distributed among the seven hundred thousand villages of India. That
will mean that there is no power. In other words, I want the seven hundred thousand dollars now
invested in the Imperial Bank of England withdrawn and distributed among the seven hundred
thousand villages. Then each village will have its one dollar which cannot be lost.

The seven hundred thousand dollars invested in the Imperial Bank of India could be swept away
by a bomb from a Japanese plane, whereas if they were distributed among the seven hundred
thousand shareholders, nobody could deprive them of their assets. There will then be voluntary
co-operation between these seven hundred thousand units, voluntary co-operation—not co-
operation induced by Nazi methods. Voluntary co-operation will produce real freedom and a new
order vastly superior to the new order in Soviet Russia. Some say there is ruthlessness in Russia
but that it is exercised for the lowest and the poorest and is good for that reason. For me it has
very little good in it. Some day this ruthlessness will create an anarchy worse than we have ever
 97

seen. I am sure we will escape that anarchy here. I admit that the future society of India is largely
beyond my grasp. But a system like the one I have outlined to you did exist though it
undoubtedly had its weakness, else it would not have succumbed before the Moguls and the
British. I would like to think that parts of it have survived, and that the roots have survived
despite the ravages of British rule. Those roots and the stock are waiting to sprout if a few drops
of rain fall in the form of a transfer of British power to Indians. What the plant will be like I do
not know. But it will be infinitely superior to anything we have now. Unfortunately, the requisite
mood of non-violence does not now exist here, but I refuse to believe that all the strenuous work
of the last twenty-five years to evolve a new order has been in vain. The Congress Party will
have an effective influence in shaping the new order, and the Muslim League will also have an
effective influence.

FISCHER: I would like you to pursue this idea of the symbolic seven hundred thousand dollars.
What will the villages do with the dollar that has come back to them from the Imperial Bank of
England?

GANDHI: One thing will happen. Today the shareholders get no return. Intermediaries take it
away. If the peasants are masters of their dollars they will use them as they think best.

FISCHER: A peasant buries his money in the ground.

GANDHI: They will not bury their dollars in the ground because they will have to live. They
will go back to the bank, their own bank and utilise it under their direction for purposes they
think best. They may then build windmills or produce electricity or whatever they like. A central
government will evolve, but it will act according to the wishes of the people and will be
broadbased on their will.

FISCHER: The State, I imagine, will then build more industries and develop the country
industrially.

GANDHI: You must visualise a central government without the British Army. If it holds
together without that army, this will be the new order. That is a goal worth working for. It is not
an unearthly goal. It is practicable.

FISCHER: I agree. Ten years ago I might not have agreed, but after my experiences in Russia
and elsewhere I feel that the greatest danger the world faces is the emergence of the all-powerful
State which makes individual freedom impossible. Apparently, capitalist economics have made it
necessary for the State to intervene more and more in economic affairs. That gives the State
more power. The next generation’s real problem will be to-devise checks and balances on such a
State. One question is: Can we safeguard personal liberty in a country where the government is
all powerful? Another question is: Will nations co-operate inside an international organisation, or
will we reject internationalism and have some more wars?

GANDHI: My question would be: how to prevent the rise of these gigantic States. That is why I
do not want the Allied powers to assume the roles of Fascist States. It is therefore that I ask them
to declare that what India says is good. Let them take this jump and give India her freedom, and,
if necessary, remain in India on India’s terms for the duration. Let us see if we can get a free co-
operation among peoples.

FISCHER: I am absolutely certain that you ought to have your independence. I think it would be
good for you and good for all of us. Certainly the British have not shown any startling ability to
defend their empire or to win its sympathy.

GANDHI: You must say that to America.

FISCHER: I will say it, but not in those terms. We are now financing all of Britain’s purchases
of munitions. We are making sixty thousand planes this year, but a hundred and forty thousand in
1943. As far as America’s role in India is concerned, the crisis here has matured a bit too early. If
we were making one hundred and forty thousand planes per year now and had two million men
at the front, our views on India would receive more attention in London. The British do not
understand today what is happening in India. With American help they may understand
tomorrow.

GANDHI: Therefore it is that I come to brass tacks and say that the British will understand not
while we are reasoning with them and showing them the great justice and feasibility of our
proposal, but when we begin to act. That is British history. They are impressed by action, and it
is action that we must take now. For the moment, however, I must popularise the idea of an
Indian national government now and demonstrate that there is nothing chimerical or visionary
about it. It is based on non-violence although I do not need the idea of non-violence to prove the
validity or justice of my aim. The same aim might have evolved even if I were violently inclined.
Even if I were violently inclined I might have said, “Go and do not use India as your military
base.” But today I say, “If you must use India as a base lest someone else appropriate it, use it,
and stay here on honourable terms and do no harm.” I would go further and add that if the central
government which India evolves is military-minded the British may have its help.

FISCHER: If the British, under pressure, were to accept your offer, how would you launch your
republic of seven hundred thousand villages?

GANDHI: I cannot give you a concrete plan. I cannot work it out today. It is all theoretical. It
has to come out as a plan drafted by a body of representatives and not out of the brain of one
whom many label a dreamer…

June 8, 1942

I started by saying that we had not even mentioned India’s biggest problem, the problem most
difficult of solution.

GANDHI: What’s that?

FISCHER: India’s population is increasing by five million each year. British official statistics
show that the population of India increased from three hundred and thirty-eight million in 1931
 99

to three hundred and eighty-eight million in 1941. Fifty million more mouths to feed and bodies
to clothe and shelter. Fifty million more in ten years. How are you going to deal with that?

GANDHI: One of the answers might be birth control. But I am opposed to birth control.

FISCHER: I am not, but in a backward country like India birth control could not be very
effective anyway.

GANDHI: Then perhaps we need some good epidemics.

FISCHER: Or a good civil war. But, Soviet Russia had famines, epidemics, and a civil war and
yet her population grew very rapidly, and the Bolsheviks, in 1928, took certain economic
measures.

GANDHI: You want to force me into an admission that we would need rapid industrialisation. I
will not be forced into such an admission. Our first problem is to get rid of British rule. Then we
will be free, without restraints from the outside, to do what India requires. The British have seen
fit to allow us to have some factories and also to prohibit other factories. No! For me the
paramount problem is the ending of British domination.

FISCHER: Well, how do you actually see your impending civil disobedience movement? What
shape will it take?

GANDHI: In the villages, the peasants will stop paying taxes. They will make salt despite
official prohibition. This seems a small matter; the salt tax yields only a paltry sum to the British
Government. But refusal to pay it will give the peasants the courage to think that they are
capable of independent action. Their next step will be to seize the land.

FISCHER: With violence?

GANDHI: There may be violence, but then again the landlords may co-operate.

FISCHER: You are an optimist.

GANDHI: They might co-operate by fleeing.

Nehru, who had been sitting by my side, said, “They might vote for confiscation with their legs
just as you say in your Men and Politics148 that, as Lenin put it, the Russian soldier voted for
peace with his legs in 1917 - he ran away from the trenches. So also the Indian landowners might
vote for the confiscation of their land by running away from the village.”

FISCHER: Or, they might organise violent resistance.

GANDHI: There may be fifteen days of chaos, but I think we could soon bring that under
control.

148 Louis Fischer, Men and Politics: an Autobiography (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1941).
FISCHER: You feel then that it must be confiscation without compensation?

GANDHI: Of course. It would be financially impossible for anybody to compensate the

landlords.

FISCHER: That accounts for the villages. But that is not all of India.

GANDHI: No. Workingmen in the cities would leave their factories. The railroads would stop
running.

FISCHER: General strike. I know that you have in the past had a large following among the
peasants, but your city working-class support is not so big.

GANDHI: No, not so big. But this time the workingmen will act too, because, as I sense the
mood of the country, everybody wants freedom, Hindus, Muslims, untouchables, Sikhs, workers,
peasants, industrialists, Indian Civil Servants and even the Princes. The Princes know that a new
wind is blowing. Things cannot go on as they have been. We cannot support a war which may
perpetuate British domination. How can we fight for democracy in Japan, Germany and Italy
when India is not democratic? I want to save China. I want no harm to come to China. But to
collaborate we must be free. Slaves do not fight for freedom.

FISCHER: Do you think that the Muslims will follow you in your civil disobedience movement?

GANDHI: Not perhaps in the beginning. But they will come in when they see that the movement
is succeeding.

FISCHER: Might not the Muslims be used to interfere with or stop the movement?

GANDHI: Undoubtedly, their leaders might try or the Government might try, but the Muslim
millions do not oppose independence and they could not, therefore, oppose our measures to bring
about that independence. The Muslim masses sympathise with the one overall goal of Congress:
freedom for India. That is the solid rock on which Hindu-Muslim unity can be built.

9 June 1942

FISCHER: I have found you so objective about your work and the world that I want to ask you
to be objective about yourself. This isn’t a personal question but a political question: how do you
account for your influence over so many people?

GANDHI: I can see the spirit in which you ask this. I think my influence is due to the fact that I
pursue the truth. That is my goal.

FISCHER: I do not underestimate the power of truth. But this explanation seems to me
inadequate. Leaders like Hitler have achieved power by telling lies. That doesn’t mean that you
cannot become influential by telling the truth. But truth in itself has not always availed others in
 101

this country or elsewhere. Why is it that you, without any of the paraphernalia of power, without
a government or police behind you, without ceremonies or even tightly-knit organisation - for I
understand that Congress is in no sense a disciplined, tightly co-ordinated body - how is it that
you have been able to sway so many millions and get them to sacrifice their comforts and time
and even their lives?

GANDHI: Truth is not merely a matter of words. It is really a matter of living the truth. It is true,
I have not much equipment. My education is not great. I do not read much.

FISCHER: Isn’t it that when you advocate independence you strike a chord in many Indians? A
musician does something to the members of his audience. You play a note which Indians are
waiting to hear. I have noticed that people applaud most the arias they have heard often and
liked. A lecture audience applauds views it agrees with. Is it that you say and do what your
people want you to say and do?

GANDHI: Yes, maybe that is it. I was a loyalist in respect to the British, and then I became a
rebel. I was a loyalist until 1896.

FISCHER: Weren’t you also a loyalist between 1914 and 1918?

GANDHI: Yes, in a way, but not really. By 1918, I had already said that British rule in India is
an alien rule and must end.

I will tell you how it happened that I decided to urge the departure of the British. It was in 1916.
I was in Lucknow working for Congress. A peasant came up to me looking like any other
peasant of India, poor and emaciated. He said, “My name is Rajkumar Shukla. I am from
Champaran, and I want you to come to my district.” He described the misery of his fellow
agriculturists and prayed me to let him take me to Champaran, which was hundreds of miles
from Lucknow. He begged so insistently and persuasively that I promised. But he wanted me to
fix the date. I could not do that. For weeks and weeks Rajkumar Shukla followed me wherever I
went over the face of India. He stayed wherever I stayed. At length, early in 1917, I had to be in
Calcutta.

Rajkumar followed me and ultimately persuaded me to take the train with him from Calcutta to
Champaran. Champaran is a district where indigo is planted. I decided that I would talk to
thousands of peasants but, in order to get the other side of the question, I would also interview
the British Commissioner of the area. When I called on the Commissioner he bullied me and
advised me to leave immediately, I did not accept his advice and proceeded on the back of an
elephant to one of the villages.

A police messenger overtook us and served notice on me to leave Champaran. I allowed the
police to escort me back to the house where I was staying and then I decided to offer civil
resistance. I would not leave district. Huge crowds gathered around the house. I co-operated with
the police in regulating the crowds. A kind of friendly relationship sprang up between me and the
police. That day in Champaran became a red-letter day in my life. I was put on trial. The
Government attorney pleaded with the magistrate to postpone the case but I asked him to go on
with it. I wanted to announce publicly that I had disobeyed the order to leave Champaran. I told
him that I had come to collect information about local conditions and that I therefore had to
disobey the British law because I was acting in obedience with a higher law, with the voice of
my conscience. This was my first act of civil disobedience against the British. My desire was to
establish the principle that no Englishman had the right to tell me to leave any part of my country
where I had gone for a peaceful pursuit. The Government begged me repeatedly to drop my plea
of guilty. Finally the magistrate closed the case. Civil disobedience had won. It became the
method by which India could be made free.

FISCHER: This is perhaps another clue to your position in India.

GANDHI: What I did was a very ordinary thing. I declared that the British could not order me
around in my own country.

FISCHER: It was ordinary, but you were the first to do it…

Afternoon

FISCHER: In case your impending civil disobedience movement develops a violent phase, as it
has sometimes in past years, would you call it off? You have done that before.

GANDHI: In my present mood it would be incorrect to say that no circumstances might arise in
which I would call off the movement. In the past, however, I have been too cautious. That was
necessary for my own training and for the training of my collaborators. But I would not behave
as I have in the past.

FISCHER: Since I am going away soon from your village, I want to be quite sure that I
understand your ideas correctly. Would there be any chance of a compromise between what you
want and what the British authorities are ready to offer? Might some kind of a modified Cripps
proposal be acceptable to you?

GANDHI: No. Nothing along the lines of the Cripps offer. I want their complete and irrevocable
withdrawal. I am essentially a man of compromise because I am never sure that I am right. But
now it is the unbending future [sic] in me that is uppermost. There is no halfway house between
withdrawal and non-withdrawal. It is, of course, no complete physical withdrawal that I ask. I
shall insist, however, on the transfer of political power from the British to the Indian people.

FISCHER: What about the time factor? When you launch your civil disobedience movement,
and if the British yield, will it be a matter of the immediate transfer of political power?

GANDHI: The British would not have to do that in two days or in two weeks. But it must be
irrevocable and complete political withdrawal.

FISCHER: Suppose the British say they will withdraw completely after the war?
 103

GANDHI: No. In that case my proposal loses much of its value. I want them to go now so I can
help China and Russia. Today I am unable to pull my full weight in favour of them. It is my
philanthropy that has made me present this proposal. For the time being, India disappears from
my gaze. I never wanted independence for India’s sake alone. I never wished to play the role of
frog-in-the-well.

FISCHER: You have not felt this way before, Mr. Gandhi.

GANDHI: The whole idea keeps blossoming out within me. The original idea of asking the
British to go burst upon me suddenly. It was the Cripps fiasco that inspired the idea. Hardly had
he gone when it seized hold of me.

FISCHER: Exactly when did the idea occur to you?

GANDHI: Soon after Cripps’s departure. I wrote a letter to Horace Alexander in reply to his
letter to me.149 Thereafter the idea possessed me. Then began the propaganda. Later I framed a
resolution. My first feeling was, we need an answer to Cripps’s failure. What a diabolical thing if
the Cripps mission were without any redeeming feature. Suppose I ask them to go. This idea
arose from the crushed hope that had been pretty high in our minds. We had heard good things
about Cripps from Jawaharlal and others. Yet the whole mission fell flat. How, I asked myself,
am I to remedy this situation? The presence of the British blocks our way. It was during my
Monday day of silence that the idea was born in me. From that silence arose so many thoughts
that the silence possessed me and the thoughts possessed me too and I knew I had to act for
Russia and China and India. My heart goes out to China. I cannot forget my five hours with
Chiang Kai-shek and his attractive partner. Even for China’s sake alone I must do this. I am
burdening my thoughts with the world’s sorrow.

FISCHER: Why will it not wait until after the war?

GANDHI: Because I want to act now and be useful while the war is here.

FISCHER: Have you any organisation with which to carry on this struggle?

GANDHI: The organisation is the Congress Party. But if it fails me, I have my own
organisation, myself. I am a man possessed by an idea. If such a man cannot get an
organisation, he becomes an organisation.

FISCHER: Have you sufficient confidence in the present mood of the country? Will it follow
you? This civil disobedience movement may involve heavy sacrifices for the people. Has
anybody opposed your idea?

149 Gandhi wrote in a letter to Horace Alexander, a British friend, on 22 April 1942, after the failure of the Cripps
mission:
“My firm opinion is that the British should leave India now in an orderly manner and not run the risk that
they did in Singapore and Malaya and Burma. That act would mean courage of a high order, confession of
human limitations and right-doing by India. Britain cannot defend India, much less herself on Indian soil
with any strength. The best thing she can do is to leave India to her fate. I feel somehow that India will not
do badly then.” CWMG, Volume 76, pages 60-61.
GANDHI: I had a letter today from Rajagopalachari. He is the only one opposed. I know his
views. But how does he expect the Muslim League to work with him when he wishes to work
with the Muslim League in order to destroy Pakistan?

FISCHER: Do you think Jinnah is set on Pakistan? Perhaps it is a bargaining counter with him
which he will give up if Hindu-Muslim co-operation can be achieved.

GANDHI: As I have told you before, he will only give it up when the British are gone and when
there is therefore nobody with whom to bargain.

FISCHER: So you intend to tell the British in advance when you will launch your movement?

GANDHI: Yes.

FISCHER: You had better not tell them too far in advance.

GANDHI: Is that a tip from you?

FISCHER: No.

GANDHI: They will know in good time.

FISCHER: If you look at this in its historic perspective, you are doing a novel and remarkable
thing - you are ordaining the end of an empire.

GANDHI: Even a child can do that. I will appeal to the people’s instincts. I may arouse them.

FISCHER: Let us try to see the possible reaction throughout the world. Your very friends, China
and Russia, may appeal to you not to launch this civil disobedience movement.

GANDHI: Let them appeal to me. I may be dissuaded. But if I can get appeals to them in time, I
may convert them. If you have access to men in authority here, tell them this. You are a fine
listener. No humbug about you. Discuss this with them and let them show me if there are any
flaws in my proposal.

FISCHER: Have I your authority to say this to the Viceroy?

GANDHI: Yes, you have my permission. Let him talk to me; I may be converted. I am a
reasonable man. I would not like to take any step that would harm China.

FISCHER: Or America?

GANDHI: If America were hurt, it would hurt everybody.

FISCHER: Would you wish President Roosevelt to be informed about your attitude?
 105

GANDHI: Yes. I do not wish to appeal to anybody. But I would want Mr. Roosevelt to know my
plans, my views, and my readiness to compromise. Tell your President I wish to be dissuaded.

FISCHER: Do you expect drastic action when you launch the movement?

GANDHI: Yes. I expect it any day. I am ready. I know I may be arrested. I am ready.

**

Gandhi wrote for Harijan on 6 June, during the interview with Mr. Fischer, that as the
discussion was desultory, he had asked Mr. Fisher to frame his questions which he would answer
through Harijan. The following are the questions and answers150:

Q. You ask the British Government to withdraw immediately from India. Would Indians
thereupon form a national government, and what groups or parties would participate in such an
Indian Government?

A. My proposal is one-sided, i.e., for the British Government to act upon, wholly irrespective of
what Indians would do or would not do. I have even assumed temporary chaos on their
withdrawal. But if the withdrawal takes place in an orderly manner, it is likely that on their
withdrawal a provisional government will be set up by and from among the present leaders. But
another thing may also happen. All those who have no thought of the nation but only of
themselves may make a bid for power and get together the turbulent forces with which they
would seek to gain control somewhere and somehow. I should hope that with the complete, final
and honest withdrawal of the British power, the wise leaders will realise their responsibility,
forget their differences for the moment and set up a provisional government out of the material
left by the British power. As there would be no power regulating the admission or rejection of
parties or persons to or from the council board, restraint alone will be the guide. If that happens
probably the Congress, the League and the States’ representatives will be allowed to function
and they will come to a loose understanding on the formation of a provisional national
Government. All this is necessarily guesswork and nothing more.

Q. Would that Indian national government permit the United Nations to use Indian territory as a
base of military operations against Japan and other Axis powers?

A. Assuming that the national government is formed and if it answers my expectations, its first
act would be to enter into a treaty with the United Nations for defensive operations against
aggressive powers, it being common cause that India will have nothing to do with any of the
Fascist powers and India would be morally bound to help the United Nations.

Q. What further assistance would this Indian national government be ready to render the United
Nations in the course of the present war against the Fascist aggressors?

150 They were published in Harijan on 14 June 1942. CWMG, Volume 76, pages 186-88.
A. If I have any hand in guiding the imagined national Government, there would be no further
assistance save the toleration of the United Nations on the Indian soil under well-defined
conditions. Naturally there will be no prohibition against any Indian giving his own personal
help by way of being a recruit or giving financial aid. It should be understood that the Indian
army has been disbanded with the withdrawal of British power. Again if I have any say in the
councils of the national government, all its power, prestige and resources would be used towards
bringing about world peace. But of course after the formation of the national government my
voice may be a voice in the wilderness and nationalist India may go war-mad.

Q. Do you believe this collaboration between India and the Allied powers might or should be
formulated in a treaty of alliance or an agreement for mutual aid?

A. I think the question is altogether premature and in any case it will not much matter whether
the relations are regulated by treaty or agreement. I do not even see any difference.

Let me sum up my attitude. One thing and only one thing for me is solid and certain. This
unnatural prostration of a great nation - it is neither ‘nations’ nor ‘peoples’ - must cease if the
victory of the Allies is to be ensured. They lack the moral basis. I see no difference between the
Fascist or Nazi powers and the Allies. All are exploiters, all resort to ruthlessness to the extent
required to compass their end.

America and Britain are very great nations, but their greatness will count as dust before the bar
of dumb humanity, whether African or Asiatic. They and they alone have the power to undo the
wrong. They have no right to talk of human liberty and all else unless they have washed their
hands clean of the pollution. That necessary wash will be their surest insurance of success, for
they will have the good wishes - unexpressed but no less certain - of millions of dumb Asiatics
and Africans. Then, but not till then, will they be fighting for a new order. This is the reality. All
else is speculation. I have allowed myself, however, to indulge in it as a test of my bona fides
and for the sake of explaining in a concrete manner what I mean by my proposal.

**
Louis Fischer carried with him a letter dated 1 July 1942 to President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the
United States. Asking for active sympathy to his proposal for immediate freedom for India, he suggested
that, if the Allies think it necessary, they may keep their troops in India during the war for preventing
Japanese aggression and defending China.

President Roosevelt sent a reply dated 1 August expressing the hope that “our common interest
in democracy and righteousness will enable your countrymen and mine to make common cause
against a common enemy.” He enclosed with it the text of an address delivered on 23 July with
his approval by the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, suggesting that those who did not lend
unconditional support to the Allies were unworthy of liberty. The letter was delayed in the State
Department and did not reach Gandhi who was detained on 9 August 1942.151

151 M. S. Venkataramani and B.K. Shrivatsava, Quit India: The American Response to the 1942 Struggle (New
Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1979), page 224.
 107

Preston Grover (Associated Press of America), 10 June 1942152

[Preston Grover came from Delhi to Wardha for the interview.]

GROVER: There has been a great deal of questioning in America and India to as to the nature of
your activities during the balance of the War. I should like to know what it will be like.

GANDHI: But can you tell me when the War will end?

GROVER: There is a good deal of speculation that you are planning some new movement. What
is the nature of it?

GANDHI: It depends on the response made by the Government and the people. I am trying to
find out public opinion here and also the reaction on the world outside.

GROVER: When you speak of the response, you mean response to your new proposal?

GANDHI: Oh yes, I mean response to the proposal that the British Government in India should
end today. Are you startled?

GROVER: I am not. You have been asking for it and working for it.

GANDHI: That’s right. I have been working for it for years. But now it has taken definite shape
and I say that the British power in India should go today for the world peace, for China, for
Russia and for the Allied cause. I shall explain to you how it advances the Allied cause.
Complete independence frees India’s energies, frees her to make her contribution to the world
crisis. Today the Allies are carrying the burden of a huge corpse - a huge nation lying prostrate at
the feet of Britain, I would even say at the feet of the Allies. For America is the predominant
partner, financing the war, giving her mechanical ability and her resources which are
inexhaustible. America is thus a partner in the guilt.

GROVER: Do you see a situation when after full independence is granted American and
Allied troops can operate from India?

GANDHI: I do. It will be only then that you will see real cooperation. Otherwise all the effort
you put up may fail. Just now Britain is having India’s resources because India is her possession.
Tomorrow whatever the help, it will be real help from a free India.

GROVER: You think India in control interferes with Allied action to meet Japan’s aggression?

GANDHI: It does.

GROVER: When I mentioned Allied troops operating I wanted to know whether you
contemplated complete shifting of the present troops from India?

152 Report by Mahadev Desai in Harijan, 21 June 1942; CWMG, Volume 76, pages 207-12.
GANDHI: Not necessarily.

GROVER: It is on this that there is a lot of misconception.

GANDHI: You have to study all I am writing. I have discussed the whole question in the current
issue of Harijan. I do not want them to go, on condition that India becomes entirely free. I
cannot then insist on their withdrawal, because I want to resist with all my might the charge of
inviting Japan to India.

GROVER: But suppose your proposal is rejected, what will be your next move?

GANDHI: It will be a move which will be felt by the whole world. It may not interfere with the
movement of British troops, but it is sure to engage British attention. It would be wrong of them
to reject my proposal and say India should remain a slave in order that Britain may win or be
able to defend China. I cannot accept that degrading position. India free and independent will
play a prominent part in defending China. Today I do not think she is rendering any real help to
China. We have followed the non-embarrassment policy so far. We will follow it even now. But
we cannot allow the British Government to exploit it in order to strengthen the stranglehold on
India. And today it amounts to that. The way, for instance, in which thousands are being asked to
vacate their homes with nowhere to go to, no land to cultivate, no resources to fall back upon, is
the reward of our non-embarrassment. This should be impossible in any free country. I cannot
tolerate India submitting to this kind of treatment. It means greater degradation and servility, and
when a whole nation accepts servility it means good-bye for ever to freedom.

GROVER: All you want is the civil grip relaxed. You won’t then hinder military activity?

GANDHI: I do not know. I want unadulterated independence. If the military activity serves but
to strengthen the stranglehold, I must resist that too. I am no philanthropist to go on helping at
the expense of my freedom. And what I want you to see is that a corpse cannot give any help to a
living body. The Allies have no moral cause for which they are fighting, so long as they are
carrying this double sin on their shoulders, the sin of India’s subjection and the subjection of the
Negroes and African races.

Mr. Grover tried to draw a picture of a free India after an Allied victory. Why not wait for the
boons of victory? Gandhiji mentioned as the boons of the last World War the Rowlatt Act and
martial law and Amritsar. Mr. Grover mentioned more economic and industrial prosperity—by
no means due to the grace of the Government, but by the force of circumstances, and economic
prosperity was a step further forward to swaraj. Gandhiji said the few industrial gains were
wrung out of unwilling hands, he set no store by such gains after this war, those gains may be
further shackles, and it was a doubtful proposition whether there would be any gains—when one
had in mind the industrial policy that was being followed during the war. Mr. Grover did not
seriously press the point.

GROVER: You don’t expect any assistance from America in persuading Britain to relinquish her
hold on India.
 109

GANDHI: I do indeed.

GROVER: With any possibility of success?

GANDHI: There is every possibility, I should think. I have every right to expect America to
throw her full weight on the side of justice, if she is convinced of the justice of the Indian cause.

GROVER: You don’t think the American Government is committed to the British remaining in
India?

GANDHI: I hope not. But British diplomacy is so clever that America, even though it may not
be committed, and in spite of the desire of President Roosevelt and the people to help India, it
may not succeed. British propaganda is so well organised in America against the Indian cause
that the few friends India has there have no chance of being effectively heard. And the political
system is so rigid that public opinion does not affect the administration.

GROVER: It may, slowly.

GANDHI: Slowly? I have waited long, and I can wait no longer. It is a terrible tragedy that 40
crores of people should have no say in this war. If we have the freedom to play our part we can
arrest the march of Japan and save China.

Mr. Grover, having made himself sure that Gandhiji did not insist on the literal withdrawal of
either the British or the troops, now placing himself in the position of the Allies, began to
calculate the gains of the bargain. Gandhiji of course does not want independence as a reward
of any services, but as a right and in discharge of a debt long overdue.

GROVER: What specific things would be done by India to save China, if India is declared
independent?

GANDHI: Great things, I can say at once, though I may not be able to specify them today. For I
do not know what government we shall have. We have various political organisations here which
I expect would be able to work out a proper national solution. Just now they are not solid parties,
they are often acted upon by the British power, they look up to it and its frown or favour means
much to them. The whole atmosphere is corrupt and rotten. Who can foresee the possibilities of a
corpse coming to life? At present India is a dead weight to the Allies.

GROVER: By dead weight you mean a menace to Britain and to American interests here?

GANDHI: I do. It is a menace in that you never know what sullen India will do at a given
moment.

GROVER: No, but I want to make myself sure that if genuine pressure was brought to bear on
Britain by America, there would be solid support from yourself?
GANDHI: Myself? I do not count—with the weight of 73 years on my shoulders. But you get the
co-operation—whatever it can give willingly—of a free and mighty nation. My co-operation is
of course there. I exercise what influence I can by my writings from week to week. But India’s is
an infinitely greater influence. Today because of widespread discontent there is not that active
hostility to Japanese advance. The moment we are free, we are transformed into a nation prizing
its liberty and defending it with all its might and therefore helping the Allied cause.

GROVER: May I concretely ask—will the difference be the difference that there is between
what Burma did and what, say, Russia is doing?

GANDHI: You might put it that way. They might have given Burma independence after
separating it from India. But they did nothing of the kind. They stuck to the same old policy of
exploiting her. There was little co-operation from Burmans; on the contrary there was hostility or
inertia. They fought neither for their own cause nor for the Allied cause. Now take a possible
contingency. If the Japanese compel the Allies to retire from India to a safer base, I cannot say
today that the whole of India will be up in arms against the Japanese. I have a fear that they may
degrade themselves as some Burmans did. I want India to oppose Japan to a man. If India was
free she would do it, it would be a new experience to her, in twenty-four hours her mind would
be changed. All parties would then act as one man. If this live independence is declared today I
have no doubt India becomes a powerful ally.

Mr. Grover raised the question of communal disunion as a handicap, and himself added that
before the American Independence there was not much unity in the States.

GANDHI: I can only say that as soon as the vicious influence of the third party is withdrawn, the
parties will be face to face with reality and close up ranks. Ten to one my conviction is that the
communal quarrels will disappear as soon as the British power that keeps us apart disappears.

GROVER: Would not Dominion Status declared today do equally well?

GANDHI: No good. We will have no half measures, no tinkering with independence. It is not
independence that they will give to this party or that party, but to an indefinable India. It was
wrong, I say, to possess India. The wrong should be righted by leaving India to herself.

GROVER: May I finally ask you about your attitude to Rajaji’s move?

GANDHI: I have declared that I will not discuss Rajaji in public. It is ugly to be talking at
valued colleagues. My differences with him stand, but there are some things which are too sacred
to be discussed in public.

But Mr. Grover had not so much in mind the Pakistan controversy as C.R.’s153 crusade for the
formation of a national government. Mr. Grover had the discernment to make it clear that C. R.
“could not be motivated by British Government. His position happens to harmonise with them.”

153 C. Rajagopalachari
 111

GANDHI: You are right. It is fear of the Japanese that makes him tolerate the British rule. He
would postpone the question of freedom until after the war. On the contrary I say that if the war
is to be decisively won, India must be freed to play her part today. I find no flaw in my position.
I have arrived at it after considerable debating within myself; I am doing nothing in hurry or
anger. There is not the slightest room in me for accommodating the Japanese. No, I am sure that
India’s independence is not only essential for India, but for China and the Allied cause.

GROVER: What are the exact steps by which you will save China?

GANDHI: The whole of India’s mind would be turned away from Japan. Today it is not. C. R.
knows it, and it worries him as it should worry any sane patriot. It worried me no less, but it
drives me to a contrary conclusion. India lying at the feet of Great Britain may mean China lying
at the feet of Japan. I cannot help using this language. I feel it. You may think it startling and big.
But why should it be startling? Think of 400 million people hungering for freedom. They want to
be left alone. They are not savages. They have an ancient culture, ancient civilisation, such
variety and richness of languages. Britain should be ashamed of holding these people as slaves.
You may say: ‘You deserve it!’ If you do, I will simply say it is not right for any nation to hold
another in bondage.

GROVER: I agree.

GANDHI: I say even if a nation should want to be in bondage it should be derogatory to one’s
dignity to keep it in bondage. But you have your own difficulties. You have yet to abolish
slavery!

GROVER: In United States, you mean?

GANDHI: Yes, your racial discrimination, your lynch law and so on. But you don’t want me to
remind you of these things.

Edgar Snow (Saturday Evening Post), 14 July 1942154

[Edgar Snow (1905-1972), American journalist and writer, had been in India during the civil disobedience
movement. He arrived in India again in 1942, shortly after the Cripps Mission left, as war correspondent of Saturday
Evening Post. He met Gandhi in Sevagram on 14 July 1942, the day when the Wardha resolution of the Congress
Working Committee calling for struggle for independence under Gandhi's leadership was published. Mr. Snow had
been in China for several years and his book Red Star over China (1937) about the Chinese Communist Party was
well known. He was of the left, and not sympathetic to Gandhi’s plans for a “Quit India” movement during the war.]

Sevagram was a cross between a third-rate dude ranch and a refugee camp, a colony of mud
huts with thatched roofs set in a cactus-sprinkled countryside. A dirt path led through the cluster
to a hut that looked like the rest, except that it was surrounded with a fence of sticks and there
was a charkha, or spinning-wheel, adorning the wall in crude bas-relief. A cow wandered by
morosely (cows in India are rude and insolent as camels) and scrawny chickens strutted about the

154 Edgar Snow, Glory and Bondage (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1945), pages 45-46.
yard. Inside, squatting barefoot on the matted floor, sat the toothless seventy-four-year-old
Messiah whom all India was waiting to hear speak the word of command...

And now, as he spoke to us... his words were so incongruous you could hardly take in their
meaning. He sat there leaning against a big white pillow, his brown body naked except for a few
yards of cheesecloth round his middle (and how we envied him in that withering heat) and over
his big, gold-rimmed glasses he peered down at us now kindly, now a bit petulant. He was going
to lead a mass movement, he explained, on the broadest scale. It would be the biggest of his life,
his "last struggle.” But it would be non-violent, in so far as could make it so.

"And do you really expect the British to withdraw in answer to your threat?" I asked.

"Of course," he said, “if the British wish to withdraw that would be a feather in their caps. But
I want to stress this point. There is room left in the proposal for negotiations." He wagged his
bald pate determinedly. "Either they recognise the independence of India or they do not. After
that many things could happen. Once independence is recognised the British would have altered
the face of the whole landscape."

But he did not, he emphasised, mean any statement on paper; he wanted a physical withdrawal
now. "Next it would be a question of who would take over India, God or anarchy." In one breath
he said that Free India would make common cause with the Allies. In the next he said, "If I can
possibly turn India toward non-violence then I would do so. If I could succeed in making
400,000,000 people fight with non-violence it would be a great gain."

What a stubborn and honourable old saint he was! Not even now would he personally endorse
that part of the resolution promising to fight Japan. Yet if he had influence enough to bring
Congress into line behind him here, was there not every possibility that he would later be able to
bring a Free Indian government round to withdrawal from the war? But he denied to me that he
would ever use soul-force against his "own" government to get it to obey his will. Absently
pulling on his big toe and looking down at us in his child-like, innocent way, the old man
touched off his heavy artillery.

"This time it isn't a question of (giving the British) one more chance," he said. "It is open
rebellion!"

And that was that. Gandhi certainly intended his remark to be taken literally, as he later
repeated it several times.

Archibald T. Steele (Chicago Daily News), 15 July 1942155

[Three press correspondents stayed after a meeting of the Working Committee of the Indian National
Congress in order to have a leisurely interview with Gandhi for a full clarification of certain questions.
They had already been present at the general press interview the day before, but thought their countries

155 Mahadev Desai in Harijan, 26 July 1942; CWMG, Volume 76, pages 298-303.
 113

would be specially interested in certain questions, and tried to represent the mind of the average man in
their respective countries. Mr. Steele represented the Chicago Daily News, Mr. Stuart Emeny the News
Chronicle of Britain, and Mr. Richard Jen the Central News Agency of China.]

In reply to a question by Mr. Emeny, Gandhi said: “… my influence great as it may

appear to outsiders, is strictly limited. I may have considerable influence to conduct a
campaign for redress of popular grievances because people are ready and need a helper.
But I have no influence to direct people’s energy in a channel in which they have no
interest.”

“Then, what part of the people, you think, will believe in your movement?” put in Mr.
Steele.

“I wish I could tell you definitely. It is all problematical. I simply trade on the absolute
purity of the cause and the equal purity of the means which are non-violent .”

“Are you not apprehensive,” added Mr. Steele, “that the Working Committee’s
resolution will antagonise American opinion?”

“Of course it may. But I have never embarked upon any campaign in the belief that I
would have world sympathy at my back. On the contrary, the odds, almost in every case,
have been against me. And in the very first Satyagraha struggle which started in South
Africa, every outward element was hostile to me. I had started then – though I had no
experience of the working of Satyagraha that I have now – that a handful though we were
in the midst of millions who had no sympathy for us, we had to rely upon our own inner
strength and the absolute justice of our cause. And that sustained us through the long-
drawn-out agony lasting eight years. I do not know why I should lose the sympathy of the
American people, or the British people, for that matter. And why should they fight shy of
a just demand for absolute freedom?”

“Speaking as an American,” said Mr. Steele, “I can say that the reaction of many
Americans would be that a movement for freedom may be unwise at this moment for it
would lead to complications in India which may be prejudicial to the efficient
prosecution of the war.”

“This belief is born of ignorance,” replied Gandhi. “What possible internal complication
can take place if the British Government declare to-day that India is absolutely
independent? It would be in my opinion the least risk the Allies could take on behalf of
the war effort. I am open to conviction. If anybody could convince me that in the midst of
war, the British Government cannot declare India free without jeopardising the war
effort, I should like to hear the argument. I have not as yet heard any cogent one.”

“If you were convinced, would you call off the campaign?”

“Of course. My complaint is that all these good critics talk at me, swear at me, but never
condescend to talk to me.”
Gandhi said in response to a question by Mr. Jen: “… Just imagine, that instead of a few Indians, or even a
million or so, all 400,000,000 Indians were non-violent, would Japan make any headway in India, unless
they were intent upon exterminating all the four hundred million ?”

"If India were made of four hundred million Gandhis –" interrupted Mr. Steele.

“Here,” said Gandhi, “we come to brass tacks. That means India is not sufficiently non-
violent. If we had been, there would have been no parties and there would be no Japanese
attack. I know non-violence is limited in both numbers and quality, but deficient as it is in
both these respects, it has made a great impression and infused life into the people which
was absent before. The awakening that showed itself on April 6, 1919, was a matter of
surprise to every Indian. I cannot today account for the response we then had from every
nook and corner of the country where no public worker had ever been. We had not then
gone among the masses, we did not know we could go and speak to them.”…

“Can you give me an idea who would take the lead in forming a Provisional Government
– you, Congress, or the Muslim League?”

“The Muslim League certainly can; the Congress can. If everything went right, it would
be a combined leadership. No one party would take the lead.”…

“You have said there is no more room for negotiation. Does it mean that you would
ignore any conciliatory gesture if it was made?” was the final question put on behalf of
all the three.

“So far as we are concerned, we have closed our hearts. As we have said in our
resolution all hopes have been dashed to pieces. The burden is shifted. But it is open to
America, to Britain, to China and even to Russia to plead for India which is pining for
freedom. And if an acceptable proposal is made, it would certainly be open to the
Congress or any other party to entertain and accept it. It would be churlish on our part if
we said ‘we don’t want to talk to anybody and we will by our own strong hearts expel the
British.’ Then the Congress Committee won’t be meeting; there would be no resolutions;
and I should not be seeing press representatives.”

Towards Independence, 1944-1947

In July 1944, Gandhi told the press that he did not intend to revive civil disobedience. He called for a national
government chosen by elected members of the Central Legislature with full control over civil administration. Allied
forces could stay in India and the Viceroy would retain control over the war effort. Britain rejected the proposal.

Gandhi then held talks with Jinnah in September for an agreement between the Congress and the Muslim League,
but the talks failed.
 115

On 14 June 1945, the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, announced the release of the members of the Congress Working
Committee and invited Indian leaders for talks in Simla about the formation of a new Viceroy’s Executive Council.
Gandhi went to Simla at the invitation of the Viceroy but did not take part in the negotiations as he was not a
member of the Congress.

Lord Wavell proposed the appointment of an equal number of caste Hindus and Muslims, and a few others from
minorities, to the Executive Council. Jinnah insisted that the Muslim League alone should fill the Muslim seats and
that the Congress represented only the Hindus. The Congress could not accept this demand. The talks broke down.

The Labour Party won the elections in Britain in July 1945 and, on its instructions, Wavell called for central and
provincial elections at the end of the year. The results of the elections reflected the polarisation in India. The Muslim
League won a majority of Muslim seats and Congress won most of the non-Muslim seats. Congress formed
ministries in eight provinces, including the Northwest Frontier Province with a Muslim majority.

On 15 March 1946, Prime Minister Attlee announced in Parliament that Britain had decided to leave India and
that a Cabinet Mission of three members would arrive in India to discuss the transfer of power. The Mission
negotiated mainly with the Congress and the Muslim League for three months from April to June 1946. It sought to
obtain an agreement between them on an interim national government and a constituent assembly, and on the
Muslim League demand for the partition of India. As the parties could not agree, Mission presented a “State Paper”
on 16 May in the hope that it could be accepted by both parties. It envisaged a Union of India dealing only with
foreign affairs, defence and communications, provinces (and princely states) with residuary powers, and the possible
grouping of provinces to deal with certain common subjects. But the proposal was interpreted in different ways by
the Congress and the Muslim League, and the latter withdrew its acceptance soon after the Mission left India. Jinnah
had declared on 5 June that “Muslim India will not rest content until we have established full, complete and
sovereign Pakistan.”

The Muslim League announced “Direct Action” - starting with “Direct Action Day” on 16 August – to achieve
Pakistan. It resulted in much violence, especially in Calcutta where hundreds were killed in riots between Muslims
and Hindus which lasted for several days. Suhrawardy, the Chief Minister of Bengal, was alleged to have
encouraged Muslim rioters.

On 24 August, Lord Wavell announced an interim government, with seven of the twelve members nominated by
the Congress, while leaving it open for the Muslim League to join. The government, with Jawaharlal Nehru as Vice-
Chairman, was sworn in on 2 September, but efforts to persuade the Muslim League continued. The League agreed
on 16 October to join the government and it was reconstituted with the inclusion of five members nominated by the
League. There was no harmony in the Cabinet, as the League members joined only to continue the fight for
Pakistan. The Constituent Assembly, proposed by the Cabinet Mission, began its meetings on 9 December 1946, but
the Muslim League refused to participate in it.

Meanwhile, Hindu-Muslim riots spread wider. Muslims began attacking Hindus in Noakhali district in eastern
Bengal. About a thousand Hindus were killed and many women abducted. Gandhi decided to go to Noakhali.
Muslims were killed in Bihar. Gandhi told the people in Bihar that he would fast unto death if the violence did not
stop. As Rajendra Prasad and other Congress leaders were attempting to end the violence in Bihar, Gandhi went to
Noakhali in early November and walked from village to village trying to secure peace. When the situation in
Noakhali improved, he went to Bihar where about 7,000 Muslims had been killed since November. Tens of
thousands of Muslims had left for Bengal or refugee camps. The Congress provincial government was ineffective.
Gandhi stayed in Bihar for almost three months and relieved the situation.

In Punjab too there was enormous violence when a coalition government was overthrown. More than one
thousand people were killed. Governor’s rule was promulgated and the military enforced a measure of peace.

Meanwhile, on 20 February 1947, Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced that Britain would leave India by
June 1948, handing over to the central government or in some areas to the provinces or in some other way. Lord
Louis Mountbatten was appointed the new Viceroy, replacing Lord Wavell.
 On 3 June 1947 Lord Mountbatten unveiled a plan for the partition of India, with independence for Pakistan and
India on 15 August. Leaders of the Congress accepted partition, after the sad experience of working with the Muslim
League in the interim government, to secure independence for most of the country. Gandhi was concerned that
partition would lead to more violence, but his proposal to retain a united India (with Jinnah as Prime Minister) did
not secure the support of the Congress Working Committee.

Gandhi went to Calcutta before the transfer of power and was able to bring about calm in the city. He went on a
fast which persuaded leaders of different communities to pledge themselves to peace.

He was in Calcutta when India became independent. He had written to Asaf Ali, a leader of the Congress:

“Freedom has come but it leaves me cold… I have come to the conclusion that our way was non-violent
only superficially; our hearts were violent. It was enough to displace the foreign power. But the violence
nursed within has broken out in a way least expected. Heaven knows where it will lead us.”156

Walter Stuart Nelson asked Gandhi why this enormous violence took place in India which he had led in a non-
violent movement.

“He (Gandhi) confessed that it had become clear to him that what he had mistaken for satyagraha was not
satyagraha but passive resistance - a weapon of the weak. Indians harboured ill will and anger against their
erstwhile rulers, while they pretended to resist them non-violently…

“Now that the British were voluntarily quitting India, apparent non-violence had gone to pieces in a
moment. The attitude of violence which we had secretly harboured, in spite of the restraint imposed by the
Indian National Congress, now recoiled upon us and made us fly at each other's throats when the question
of the distribution of power came up.”157

Robert Coniston (Collier’s), before 25 April 1945158

[Collier’s was a popular weekly magazine published in New York.]

CONISTON: Why do you feel so sceptical about the possibility of a lasting peace emerging from
the defeat of the Axis Powers?

GANDHI: The reason is patent. Violence is bound sooner or later to exhaust itself but peace
cannot issue out of such exhaustion. I am uttering God’s truth when I say that unless there is a
return to sanity, violent people will be swept off the face of the earth . . . Those who have their
hands dyed deep in blood cannot build a non-violent order for the world.

CONISTON: While the representatives of the big powers who would be meeting at San
Francisco159 were what they were, the people at large, after the experience of the horrors of war,
would force the hands of their respective Governments.

156 Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi – The Last Phase, Volume II, page 332; CWMG, Volume 88, page 338.
157 Interview to Walter Stuart Nelson, August 1947
158 Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi — The Last Phase, Volume I, Book I, pages 113-16; CWMG, Volume 79, pages
421-24.
159 United Nations Conference on International Organisation, held in San Francisco from 25 April to 26
June 1945. The Conference adopted the Charter of the United Nations and opened it for signature. The
 117

GANDHI: I know the European mind well enough to know that when it has to choose between
abstract justice and self-interest, it will plump for the latter. The man in the street even in
America does not think much for himself. He will put faith in what Roosevelt says. Roosevelt
gives him market, credit and all that. Similarly Churchill can say to the English working class
that he has kept the Empire intact and preserved for them the foreign markets. The people will,
as they do, follow him.

CONISTON: So, you don’t think that the average man in Europe or America cares much for the
high ideals for which the war is professed to be fought?

GANDHI: I am afraid, I do not. If you hold the contrary view, I shall honour you for your belief
but I cannot share it.

CONISTON: Then, you don’t think the Big Five or the Big Three can guarantee peace?

GANDHI: I am positive. If they are so arrogant as to think that they can have lasting peace while
the exploitation of the coloured and the so-called backward races goes on, they are living in a
fool’s paradise.

CONISTON You think they will fall out among themselves before long?

GANDHI: There you are stealing my language. The quarrel with Russia has already started. It is
only a question when the other two - England and America - will start quarreling with each other.
Maybe, pure self-interest will dictate a wiser course and those who will be meeting at San
Francisco will say: “Let us not fall out over a fallen carcass.”

The man in the street will gain nothing by it. Freedom of India along non-violent lines, on the
other hand, will mean the biggest thing for the exploited races of the earth. I am, therefore, trying
to concentrate on it. If India acts on the square when her turn comes, it will not dictate terms at
the Peace Conference but peace and freedom will descend upon it, not as a terrifying torrent, but
as “gentle rain from heaven.” Liberty won non-violently will belong to the least. That is why I
swear by non-violence. Only when the least can say, “I have got my liberty” have I got mine.

The conversation then turned on the issue of the treatment of the aggressor nations after the war.

GANDHI: As a non-violent man, I do not believe in the punishment of individuals, much less
can I stomach the punishment of a whole nation.

CONISTON: What about the war criminals?

GANDHI: What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity and,
therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered, and conducted wars, war criminals?

United Nations came into being on 24 October when the Charter was ratified by the requisite number of
States.
War criminals are not confined to the Axis Powers alone. Roosevelt and Churchill are no less
war criminals than Hitler and Mussolini.

Hitler was “Great Britain’s sin.” Hitler is only an answer to British imperialism, and this I say in
spite of the fact that I hate Hitlerism and its anti-Semitism. England, America and Russia have all
of them got their hands dyed more or less red—not merely Germany and Japan. The Japanese
have only proved themselves to be apt pupils of the West. They have learnt at the feet of the
West and beaten it at its own game.

CONISTON: What would you see accomplished at San Francisco?

GANDHI: Parity among all nations - the strongest and the weakest - the strong should be the
servants of the weak not their masters or exploiters.

CONISTON: Is not this too idealistic?

GANDHI: Maybe. But you asked me what I would like to see accomplished. It is my belief that
human nature is ever working upward. I can, therefore, never take a pessimistic view of the
future of human nature. If the Big Five say, “We shall hold on to what we have”, the result will
be a terrible catastrophe and then Heaven help the world and the Big Five. There will be another
and bloodier war and another San Francisco.

CONISTON: Would the results of the second San Francisco be any better than that of the first?

GANDHI: I hope so. They will be saner then. They will have gained their balance somewhat
after their third experience.

CONISTON: Would you not go to the West to teach them the art of peace?

GANDHI: In the Second World War some British pacifists, including Dick Sheppard and Maude
Royden160 had written to me asking me to point the way. My reply in substance was: Even if
one of you can become true in the right sense of the word, that one man will be able to inculcate
non-violence among the European folk. I cannot today save Europe, however much I may like to.
I know Europe and America. If I go there I shall be like a stranger. Probably I shall be lionised
but that is all. I shall not be able to present to them the science of peace in language they can
understand. But they will understand if I can make good my non-violence in India. I shall then
speak through India. I, therefore, declined to accept the invitations from America and Europe.
My answer would be the same today.

CONISTON: If you were at San Francisco, what would you be advocating there?

GANDHI: If I knew I would tell you but I am made differently. When I face a situation, the
solution comes to me. I am not a man who sits down and thinks out problems syllogistically. I

160 Hugh Richard Lawrie “Dick” Sheppard (1880-1937) and Ms. Agnes Maude Royden (1876-1956) were
British pacifists. Dick Shephard was Dean of Canterbury and established the Peace Pledge Union in 1936.
Maude Royden was Vice-President of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
 119

am a man of action. I react to a situation intuitively. Logic comes afterwards, it does not precede
the event. The moment I am at the Peace Conference, I know the right word will come. But not
beforehand. This much, however, I can say that whatever I say there will be in terms of peace,
not war.

CONISTON: What kind of world organisation would promote an enduring peace or preserve it?

GANDHI: Only an organisation based predominantly on truth and non-violence.

CONISTON: With the present imperfect condition of the world and human nature, what means
would in your opinion promote peace?

GANDHI: Nearest approach to the condition laid down in my answer to the previous question.

CONISTON: Would you have a world government?

GANDHI: Yes. I claim to be a practical idealist. I believe in compromise so long as it does not
involve the sacrifice of principles. I may not get a world government that I want just now but if it
is a government that would just touch my ideal, I would accept it as a compromise. Therefore,
although I am not enamoured of a world federation, I shall be prepared to accept it if it is built on
an essentially non-violent basis.

CONISTON: If the nations of the world were to consider world government as a means for
preserving peace and promoting the welfare of all peoples, would you advocate the abandonment
of India’s aspiration for independence in order to join in the general plan?

GANDHI: If you will carefully go through the much abused Congress resolution of August
1942, you will discover that independence is necessary for India becoming an efficient partner in
any scheme for the preservation of lasting peace in the world.

Preston Grover (Associated Press of America), 29 June 1945161

[The interview took place in Simla. Gandhi had arrived in Simla where the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, was meeting with
Indian leaders to discuss new proposals on the future constitution of India, known as the “Wavell Plan.” Gandhi did
not attend the meetings but stayed on in Simla at the Viceroy’s request.]

In reply to my questions, Gandhi said be was feeling well and that the 7,000-foot altitude of
Simla had not affected him so far, although he was watchful that he did not overstrain his heart.

Answering an initial request that he should give a report on the negotiations as they stood at the
moment, Mahatma Gandhi said:

161 The Hindu, Madras, 1 July 1945; CWMG, Volume 80, pages 382-84.
“I wish I could, but I am here only as an adviser. I have, for many years, been advising the
Congress. But now, I have constituted myself as an adviser both to the Congress and to the
Viceroy, too, and through him of the British people. You see, that makes my position
exceptionally delicate. The only information I have is what my colleagues bring when they come
to me. Frankly speaking, I do not know in what position the conference exactly is today. It has
never been my habit to cry out of curiosity.”

It was suggested that the Congress representatives should keep him advised almost hourly, to
which he replied:

“They do, and they do not. Unless the Viceroy wants my advice, I would know nothing as to
what is happening at that end. But, if things go on smoothly, he does not need my advice. On our
side too, while they do come to me, it need not be from day to day or hour to hour. While,
therefore, I cannot tell you what exactly the situation in the conference is, I can only share with
you my hope and prayer that things will come right both for India and Great Britain. I say for
both, because I do not know that, even if a settlement is pulled through, it will be on right lines.

“But I give you a tip. I was not joking when I made a statement162 some time back in answer to
Sir Feroz Khan Noon at San Francisco, that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is my heir. He has got
ability, knowledge and close touch with the public here and can interpret India’s mind. I have
already, as I wrote to Lord Linlithgow163, taken him as my guide in international affairs. He can
interpret India’s mind to the outside world as no one else can.

“This much I can say, that Congress can never become sectional organisation. Not that there are
not communal-minded people in it, but the Congress can never work communally. Therefore,
normally speaking, the parity principle should be distasteful to everybody.”

Turning to the composition of the current conference, Gandhi declared it was “political in its
complexion” and not communal. This was in direct contradiction to the Muslim League
argument that the whole conference was chosen on communal basis.

“If they wanted various groups to be represented communally, they should have invited the
Hindu Mahasabha and not the Congress, which has always been, and is now, a purely political
body trying to think and act in terms of the whole nation. It cannot belie its entire history at this
critical moment.”

Asked if an acceptance of invitation to work for an interim government was in the belief that it
was a step towards independence, Gandhiji replied:

“The acceptance of the invitation was a recognition of the fact that it was a step towards
independence. But this was subject to explanation and clarification of what was in the Viceroy’s
mind. It was like sitting on the top of a volcano which might erupt. I took that risk.”

162 CWMG, Volume 80, pages 64-66.

163 Letter of 14 August 1942 from prison, CWMG, Volume 76, pages 406-10.
 121

Toward the end of the interview, it was suggested that Mr. Jinnah, President of the Muslim
League, was reported to be somewhat resentful that Gandhi had withdrawn from the conference.

“If Mr. Jinnah wants me there, he can take me there. We shall both go arm in arm. He can help
me up the hill and save strain on my heart. Such a gesture on Mr. Jinnah’s part would mean that
he wants a settlement even in the teeth of the differences and obstacles that face the conference.
You can tell him that I am quite willing to be taken to the conference by him.”

I suggested that not only Mr. Jinnah, but Lord Wavell, most of India and all observers at the
conference looked upon Gandhi as head of the Congress regardless of the technicality that he
was not a member, and that no settlement would be reached without his consent. Gandhi replied:

“That is both right and wrong. That impression has been created because generally my advice is
accepted. But technically and substantially it is wrong. The conference is legally representative
and, therefore, I can have no place in it.”

To my insistence that his was the controlling voice in the Congress, Gandhi replied:

“Not even that. They can shunt me out at any time, brush aside my advice. If I tried to override
them, I might succeed for once. But the moment I try to cling to power, I fall, never to rise again.
That is not in my temperament.”

Frank E. Bolden (National Negro Press Association), June or July 1945164

[Mr. Bolden was war correspondent of National Negro Press Association (NNPA), a news agency of African-
American papers. He had worked for many years at Pittsburgh Courier, a leading African-American weekly. When
he passed away at the age of 90, Christina Rouvalis wrote in an obituary in Post-Gazette on 29 August 2003:

“ … in India, Gandhi invited the young black reporter to his house in the countryside. Mr. Bolden
expected a three-hour interview, but Gandhi told him to make himself at home. He ended up staying 15
days.
“Gandhi opened up, according to Mr. Bolden, after the Pittsburgh newspaperman sat cross-legged in his
house, ate without silverware and otherwise embraced his customs. During one of their daily chats after
prayer, Gandhi told him, ‘We are going to have racial conflict for generations. Do you know why? God in
his infinite wisdom made the white man a smaller race numerically but with a majority complex, which he
will try to inflict on the world.’]

SIMLA, India (Via Air Mail, Delayed) - I took off my shoes and socks, left them outside of
the door on the porch of the residence of Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, here at Simla,165 and in my
bare feet, was ushered into the presence of Mahatma [M.] K. Gandhi (the title "Mahatma"

164 Frank E. Bolden, "Meet the Great Soul" in The Afro-American, Baltimore, 18 August 1945.
165 Gandhi was in Simla, at the invitation of the Viceroy, from 24 June to 16 July 1945. He stayed at the
residence of Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. He did not participate in the discussions by the Viceroy with the
Congress, Muslim League and others on the setting up of an interim government in India but was kept
informed by the Congress delegation.
meaning "Great Soul"), the 78-year-old spearhead of India's long-sought quest for independence,
who time and again has made almost fatal thrusts through the rugged armour of stout British
imperialism.

He glanced upwards at my entrance. As he did so, I put the palms of my hands, with fingertips
touching each other, at the level of my mouth, smiled and bowed my head slightly in token of
greeting. Indians usually do not shake hands. When I entered the room, Mr. Pyarelal, Gandhi's
secretary, was busily engaged in the process of opening and reading the "Great Soul's" mail.
Gandhi himself was seated on a pallet on the floor on one side of the room, his legs bent under
him and crossed in scissors-fashion, and was busily spinning away on a primitive "charkha"
(spinning wheel).

Thanks to Gandhi's propaganda and personal example, hundreds of thousands of Indian

peasants have taken up home spinning in order to develop village industry, and provide clothes
for the almost naked millions.

Legs, Thin and Bare

His thin, brown, well-muscled legs were bare up to the plain cheesecloth loincloth which he
wore loosely draped around his waist and shoulders. His knees are pronounced bulges and his
bones wide and strong.

His little bronzed face, with its short, stubbled, black and white - but chiefly white -
moustache in the small lower extension of the big, bulging head with large ears extending
abruptly away from it. The lower lip is sensitive and expressive.

His eyes are soft, and his deep-furrowed, reflective brow exhibits the proclivity of an
intellectual. His skin is smooth and clean, its healthy copper-coloured complexion being
accentuated by the generous applications of expensive almond oil with which he anoints his
body.

His looks belie his age. On one side of him, sitting on the floor, was a brass bowl filled with
water and containing several sets of artificial teeth. On the other, was a dish filled with some of
the largest and most luscious looking mangoes that I'd seen in all of India.

He motioned me to a seat on either a chair or the sofa. I declined this Occidental custom, and
squatted on the floor opposite him and crossed my legs in the same fashion as he had done.

Talk for 2 hours

I explained my mission to him as a representative of the combined coloured press of America,

after first thanking him for his courtesy, and began my interview immediately as my allotted time
was supposed to be short, in view of the fact that he was expecting some of the conference
leaders to call. It turned out that we were in conference for over two hours.
 123

"Why, in your opinion, did the Cripps' mission fail" I asked. "Didn't they promise India
dominion status?"

"We have not the same relation to Britain as the dominions which are white and settled, for the
most part by emigrants from Britain or their descendants," he replied. "We did not and do not
wish any status conferred on us. If a status is so conferred, it means that we are not free.

"As to secession, there are many flaws, the chief one being the proposal regarding the princes.
The British maintain that they must protect the princes under treaties which they forced on the
princes for Britain's advantage. Some of them had more power before the British came.

The Second Flaw

"The second flaw was the recognition of Pakistan. The differences between Hindus and
Moslems have been accentuated by British rule. They would have been given maximum scope
under the Cripps plan. Dividing us on purely a religious basis and keeping us on such is to
Britain's advantage.

"There can be no unity in India as long as the British are here."166

In explaining why he had emphasised the merits of his non-violence campaign at the
beginning of this present war, Gandhi said:

"We were not permitted to throw our full potential into the war effort because the British had a
fear of arming the majority of the Indian people. Such tasks as the printing of government
publications and stationery and the running of canteens were given us - these being of minor
significance. The British could have stood far more help than this from us.

"Non-violence is the best way of fighting the enemy within the city's gates, especially when
you are too weak physically and economically to exert physical force or violence."

"If the British would withdraw, as you've suggested, do you think that the various Indian
factions would be able to agree on any unified type of government" I interposed.

Can Solve Own Problems

"I believe that a provisional government could be formed. In the beginning there might be
strife over the matter of the balance of power. The Congress being the most powerful unit might
claim the largest share.

"But if there should be chaos, God will work it out. All countries that have gained their
independence have at some time or the other gone through a period of violence either externally
or internally.

166 In an article in Pittsburgh Courier on 7 February 1948, after the assassination of Gandhi, he quoted
Gandhi as having said: “The British must go if India is to have unity. India would have the independence in
three years (Censors deleted the latter statement from my despatches).”
 "I doubt whether India would be bathed in blood. The Moslems, the princes, and the Congress
would eventually arrive at a solution, if freed of outside influences.

"May I add," he offered, "that throughout history nations have helped other nations in their
quests for independence. France helped America against England, and the Americans and other
foreigners sacrificed themselves in an effort to save the Spanish Republic."

"And another thing," he said, "America is the ally of England which enslaves us. I am not yet
certain that the democracies will make a better world when they finally defeat all of the enemy
Fascists. They may not be much better, but if they intend to adhere strictly to the San Francisco
Charter of Freedom proposals,167 then the future looks brighter.

Mum on Wavell's Plan

"What do you think of the Wavell Plan now under discussion here."

"I am not a delegate to this conference, only an adviser. Therefore, I have little to say about
the plan at this moment. Although it still doesn't grant India her full independence, it can be
construed as a step towards the goal.

"Just how long it would take before the ultimate would be reached, I cannot say. However, the
plan is worthy of consideration and discussion by all of the parties concerned. Whether it will be
acceptable in its entirety is something I cannot predict."

Gandhi inquired about the gains of coloured people in America and was extremely interested
in my reply. All during our discourse, I noticed the great Mahatma's face registering first sorrow,
then disgust, then agreement; followed by humour, and ending with pleasure.

"We Shall Win"

"We shall win," he solemnly said, as I prepared to make my departure. "It will soon be time
for my evening prayers," Gandhi reminded. "If you care to, you may join with us as an
observer."

I accepted with thanks and retired to the outside, there to wait and fall in line with the
procession of hundreds of followers who were congregated outside the gates, all in waiting for
the appearance of the "Great Soul."

Leaning upon the shoulders of two little sprightly Indian maidens of about 13 years of age
(which is an honour that many little Indian girls energetically compete for wherever Gandhi
goes), the frail-appearing yet agile and religiously enthusiastic leader of India's teeming masses
led the waiting procession at a brisk pace to the open prayer spot among the trees, some two
thousand paces from the house.

167 Charter of the United Nations

 125

The general Indian feeling about Gandhi is that he has devoted his life to his people. He lives
like them and shares their primitive hardships and poverty. He has no money and no property.

He wants only one thing - a free India. And since so many Indians desire the same thing,
Gandhi has become the symbol of a nation's yearning.

I believe that Gandhi's yearning for independence takes precedence in him over everything
else, even over his belief in non-violence. He at least works on friendliest terms with men like
Nehru, Azad, and Rajagopalachari, who he knows are by no means pacifists, but he could not
and does not work with the enemies of Indian freedom.

This is the man, Gandhi, and the sum and substance of his creed and personality.

Louis Fischer, 26 June 1946168

[Mr. Fischer (1896-1970), a Socialist and an American journalist, had been in Moscow for several years and was
disillusioned with Communism. He met Gandhi in New Delhi.]

Gandhi asked about the rumours of war with Russia. I said there was a good deal of talk
about war but perhaps it was only talk. "You should turn your attention to the West," I added.
He replied:

“I? I have not convinced India. There is violence all around us. I am a spent bullet.”

Since the end of the Second World War, I suggested, many Europeans and Americans were
conscious of a spiritual emptiness. He might fill a corner of it.

“But I am an Asiatic. A mere Asiatic.”

He laughed, then after a pause:

“Jesus was an Asiatic.”

Louis Fischer, 17 July 1946169

[Louis Fischer met Gandhi in Panchgani twice on the 17th and then again on the 18th. The report here reproduced
covers the two interviews on the 17th. The interview on the 18th is reproduced separately as the next item. For

168 From: Louis Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi, page 454; CWMG, Volume 84, page 377. Mr. Fischer had
interviewed Gandhi earlier in Sevagram from 4 to 9 June 1942.

169 Extracted from Pyarelal's After Four Years and Harijan, 4 August 1946; CWMG, Volume 85, pages 7-11.
extracts from Fischer's report of the interviews, please see CWMG, Volume 85, Appendix I. Pyarelal wrote in his
introduction to this interview:

“Louis Fischer, whose quest for lost causes turned him into a veritable Wandering Jew, sought out Gandhiji
at Panchgani during the week. … He regards the Indian problem as being central to world peace. In 1942,
in the course of a famous interview, he helped Gandhiji to discover and remedy a vital gap in the Quit India
proposal. Now that India is once more at the cross-roads, he has again found his occupation here.

“He had seen Gandhiji at Poona before the A.I.C.C. meeting. But it did not give him full satisfaction.
‘Somehow I could not come to grips with the main problem as I could in 1942,’ he remarked afterwards.
He had his revenge this time during a series of three interviews that he had with Gandhiji on two successive
days.”]

FISCHER: I would go into the Constituent Assembly and use it for a different purpose - as a
battle-field - and declare it to be a sovereign body. What do you say to this?170

GANDHI: It is no use declaring somebody else's creation a sovereign body. After all, it is a
British creation. A body does not become a sovereign body by merely asserting it. To become
sovereign, you have to behave in a sovereign way. Three tailors of Tooley Street171 in
Johannesburg172 declared that they were a sovereign body. It ended in nothing. It was just a
farce.

I do not consider the proposed Constituent Assembly to be non-revolutionary. I have said, and
I mean it cent per cent, that the proposed Constituent Assembly is an effective substitute for civil
disobedience of the constructive type. Whilst I have the greatest admiration for the self-denial
and spirit of sacrifice of our Socialist friends, I have never concealed the sharp difference
between their method and mine. They frankly believe in violence and all that is in its bosom. I
believe in non-violence through and through.

FISCHER: You are a socialist and so are they.

GANDHI: I am, they are not. I was a socialist before many of them were born. I carried
conviction to a rabid socialist in Johannesburg, but that is neither here nor there. My claim will
live when their socialism is dead.

FISCHER: What do you mean by your socialism?

GANDHI: My socialism means "even unto this last." I do not want to rise on the ashes of the
blind, the deaf and the dumb. In their socialism, probably these have no place. Their one aim is
material progress. For instance, America aims at having a car for every citizen. I do not. I want
freedom for full expression of my personality. I must be free to build a staircase to Sirius173 if I

170 Following the report of the British Cabinet mission which visited India from March to June 1946, a
Constituent Assembly was elected and held its first meeting in December.
171 Three tailors of Tooley Street, London, were said to have presented a petition to Parliament describing
themselves as "We, the people of England.” The phrase is used to describe a group claiming to represent
many more people than it does.
172 London, not Johannesburg.
173 Brightest star in the night sky.
 127

want to. That does not mean that I want to do any such thing. Under the other socialism, there is
no individual freedom. You own nothing, not even your body.

FISCHER: Yes, but there are variations. My socialism in its modified form means that the
State does not own everything. It does in Russia. There you certainly do not own your body
even. You may be arrested at any time, though you may have committed no crime. They may
send you wherever they like.

Does not, under your socialism, the State own your children and educate them in any way it
likes?

GANDHI: All States do that. America does it.

FISCHER: Then America is not very different from Russia.

GANDHI: But socialism is dictatorship or else arm-chair philosophy. I call myself a

communist also.

FISCHER: O, don't. It is terrible for you to call yourself a communist. I want what you want,
what Jaiprakash and the socialists want: a free world. But the communists don't. They want a
system which enslaves the body and the mind.

GANDHI: Would you say that of Marx?

FISCHER: The communists have corrupted the Marxist teaching to suit their purpose.

GANDHI: So do the socialists. My communism is not very different from socialism. It is a

harmonious blending of the two. Communism, as I have understood it, is a natural corollary of
socialism.

FISCHER: Yes, you are right. There was a time when the two could not be distinguished. But
today socialists are very different from communists.

GANDHI: You mean to say, you do not want communism of Stalin's type.

FISCHER: But the Indian communists want communism of the Stalin type in India and want
to use your name for that purpose.

GANDHI: They won't succeed.

FISCHER: So you will not yourself go into the Constituent Assembly, but will support it?

GANDHI: Yes, but it is wrong to say we are going into the Constituent Assembly to seize
power. Though it is not a sovereign body, it is as near it as possible.
 FISCHER: Pandit Jawaharlal said that if the British tried to impose a treaty in terms of the
State Paper of 16 May174, he will tear it up.175

GANDHI: Yes, an imposed treaty from outside.

FISCHER: And he said, Congress will not go into groupings.

GANDHI: Yes, I have said the same thing - unless the Federal Court or some other court
gives a different decision. As I see it, much can come out of the Constituent Assembly, if the
British will play the game.

FISCHER: You say and I believe they will. But supposing they do not, won't you then offer
your form of protest?

GANDHI: Not until the conditions are favourable. But it is wrong to speculate about the
future, still more so to anticipate failure. If we take care of the present, the future will take care
of itself.

[They then passed on to the question of Hindu-Muslim unity. Gandhi startled his visitor by
proffering the remark that the Hindu-Muslim question, in the final analysis, was an offshoot of
the untouchability question.]

GANDHI: When Hinduism is perfectly reformed and purged of the last trace of
untouchability, there will be no communal problem left.

FISCHER: I have heard that though the Congress Harijans have won at the elections against
non-Congress Harijans, they were able to do so only with the Hindu votes!

GANDHI: What was the joint election for, if not to enable the caste Hindus to make a
selection from successful candidates at the primary elections? No failed candidate at the primary
elections can offer himself as a candidate at the joint elections. Moreover, it is not correct to say,
as has been claimed, that in the majority of cases, the Congress Harijans won against the non-
Congress candidates with the caste Hindus' votes. In Madras the non-Congress Harijans were
defeated almost to a man in the primary elections, wherever they contested them. In the majority
of cases the Congress Harijans were returned unopposed.

FISCHER: Some of them want separate electorates.

GANDHI: Yes. But we have resisted it. By separate electorates they put themselves outside
the pale of Hinduism and perpetuate the bar sinister.

174 The State Paper presented by the Cabinet Mission to the Congress and Muslim League on 16 May
1946.
175 At a Press Conference in Bombay on 10 July 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru had said: "... If the British Government
presumes to tell us that they are going to hold anything in India... because they do not agree either in regard to the
minorities or in regard to the treaty we shall not accept that position. It will become a casus belli... we shall tear up
any treaty they try to impose."
 129

FISCHER: That is true. But, anyhow, they might say that Hindus have put them outside the
pale.

GANDHI: But today the Hindus are penitent.

FISCHER: Are they adequately penitent?

GANDHI: I am sorry to say not yet. If they were, there would be no untouchability and no
communal problem as I have already said.

FISCHER: Is there less social contact between the Hindus and Muslims?

GANDHI: No, rather the contrary. But politically there is a bar, thanks to Lord Minto.

FISCHER: Your young men are too Indo-centric.

GANDHI: That is only partly true. I won't say we have become international, but we have
taken up forlorn causes, e.g., the cause of the exploited nations, because we are ourselves the
chief exploited nation.

FISCHER: The growing anti-white feeling here is bad. In the Taj Mahal Hotel they have put
up a notice "South Africans not admitted." I do not like it. Your non-violence should make you
more generous.

GANDHI: That won't be non-violence. Today the white man rules in India. So, if the Taj
Mahal has the gumption to put up that notice, it is a feather in its cap.

FISCHER: That is what any nationalist will say. You must say something better.

GANDHI: Then I will be a nationalist for once. They have no right to be here if they do not
deal with Indians on terms of equality.

FISCHER: No right - yes. But you must give them more than their right. You must invite
them.

GANDHI: Yes, when I am the Viceroy.

FISCHER: You mean the President of the Indian Republic.

GANDHI: No. I will be quite content to be the Viceroy, a constitutional Viceroy, for the time
being. The first thing I will do will be to vacate the Viceregal Lodge and give it to the Harijans. I
will then invite the South African white visitors to my hut and say to them: "You have ground
my people to powder. But we won't copy you. We will give you more than you deserve. We
won't lynch you as you do in South Africa," and thus shame them into doing the right.

FISCHER: There is so much anti-white feeling today.

 GANDHI: Of course, I am opposed to that. It can do no good to anybody.

FISCHER: The world is so divided. And there might be another war and that may be between
the coloured and the white races.

GANDHI: Europe seems to be heading for another war. It is not sufficiently exhausted.

FISCHER: Europe is terribly exhausted. But with the atom bomb human beings don't matter
so much. A few scientists are enough. The next war will be carried on by pressing a few buttons.
That is why colour war is so dangerous.

GANDHI: Anything is better than cowardice. It is violence double distilled.

[And to illustrate his remark Gandhi narrated the story of a Negro clergyman with a
Herculean frame in South Africa saying "pardon me brother", when insulted by a white man, and
sneaking into a coloured man's compartment.]

That is not non-violence. It is a travesty of Jesus' teaching. It would have been more manly to
retaliate.

FISCHER: You are not afraid of what happens to you but what it may mean to others. It takes
a great deal of irresponsibility to give vent to your feelings and slap the white man under the
circumstances described by you. In India the situation is different. The white men are not so
numerous here.

GANDHI: You are mistaken. Why, one Englishmen is killed and a whole village is razed to
the ground as a reprisal. What vindictiveness!

Louis Fischer, 18 July 1946176

FISCHER: If the Working Committee had reacted to your "groping in the dark" or as you
have called it your instinct about the long-term proposals [of the Cabinet Mission] they would
have rejected them?

GANDHI: Yes, but I did not let them.

FISCHER: You mean you did not insist?

GANDHI: More than that. I prevented them from following my instinct unless they also felt
likewise. It is no use conjecturing what would have happened. The fact however remains that Dr.
Rajendra Prasad asked me: "Does your instinct go so far that you would prevent us from
accepting the long-term proposals, whether we understand you or not?" I said, "No. Follow your

176 Harijan, 4 August 1946; CWMG, Volume 85, pages 16-18.

 131

reason since my own reason does not support my instinct. My instinct rebels against my reason. I
have placed my misgivings before you as I want to be faithful to you. I myself have not followed
my instinct unless my reason backed it."

FISCHER: But you have said that you follow your instinct when it speaks to you on
occasions as, for instance, you did before certain fasts that you undertook.

GANDHI: Yes, but even in these cases, before the fast began, my reason was able to back my
instinct. My reason failed my instinct on the long-term proposals.

FISCHER: Then, why did you inject your `instinct' into the political situation?

GANDHI: Because I was loyal to my friends. I wanted to retain my faith in the bona fides of
the Cabinet Mission. So I told the Cabinet Mission also about my misgivings. I said to myself,
"Supposing they meant ill, they would feel ashamed."

FISCHER: You are strongly constitutionalist now. Is it for fear of the alternative - violence?

GANDHI: No. If India is destined to go through a blood-bath, it will do so. The thing I would
fear is my own cowardice or dishonesty. I have neither. So I say, we must go in and work it out.
If they are dishonest, they will be found out. The loss will not be ours but theirs.

FISCHER: I think you are afraid of the spirit of violence. It is widespread. I wonder whether
it has not captured the mood of the youth and you are aware of it and you fear that mood.

GANDHI: It has not captured the imagination of the country. I admit that it has captured the
imagination of a section of the youth.

FISCHER: It is a mood that has got to be combated.

GANDHI: Yes. I am doing it in my own way. It is my implicit faith that it is a survival which
will kill itself in time. It cannot live. It is so contrary to the spirit of India. But what is the use of
talking? I believe in an inscrutable Providence which presides over our destinies - call it God or
by any other name you like. All I contend is that it is not the fear of violence that makes me
advise the country to go to the Constituent Assembly. It is repugnant in a non-violent attitude not
to accept an honourable substitute for civil revolt.

George E. Jones (New York Times), 21 September, 1946177

New Delhi, India, Sept. 21 - Mohandas K. Gandhi intends to continue his political activities for
many years to come in what he believes to be the interests of his countrymen. He will, in effect,

177 New York Times, 22 September 1946

maintain a watchful eye on the national Government178 and vigorously promote the
incorporation of his social and economic aims in the political structure of an independent India.

Such is the impression that this correspondent gained today in a talk with Mr. Gandhi…

Mr. Gandhi said he could never retire from the political scene as long as he carried on his
programme for India along social and economic lines. He said, once more, that India's leaders
must not forget their responsibility to serve the people…

Mr. Gandhi cannot be quoted exactly by this correspondent since we conversed during his
daily walk in the early morning and I was unable to take full notes. We paced rapidly up and
down the narrow lane outside his quarters in the New Delhi "Untouchable" colony. His remarks
as reported here, however, were corroborated by Mr. Gandhi after he had read them…

I asked Mr. Gandhi if he still hoped to live to the age of 125 years, as he once said. "Yes," he
replied, for the purpose of continuing his service to his people.

Did he foresee, he was asked, the time when he could forsake political activity and devote his
entire time to spiritual teachings and to his social and economic programme? Mr. Gandhi replied
that his service to India necessarily required the use of politics to carry out his social and
economic aims, in the past and in the future. He said that the purpose of his political activity did
not change, though foreign rule might depart from India.

He was asked whether the Indian nationalists, who succeed to power, might forget their
responsibility to the people and to the goals for which they had fought under his leadership.

Mr. Gandhi said he did not expect such a possibility and he hoped those persons would
remember that they took office not for power but for service to the people. For this reason, he
said, he had stated recently that the new Ministers must "wear a crown of thorns."

Somewhat disapprovingly he added that Americans seemed to have evolved a civilisation

minus thorns. A few minutes earlier he had questioned the American pursuit of pleasure,
observing that it was said one in every six Americans owned an automobile.

Mr. Gandhi would not discuss specific political issues and his remarks were confined to the
foregoing generalities. They do not add remarkably to his already published views, but they seem
to indicate clearly that Mr. Gandhi, despite his age and India's achievement of virtual self-
government, does not intend to retire from the political scene for a long time to come.

Preston Grover (Associated Press of America), 21 October 1946179

178 An interim National Government, with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as the Vice-Chairman, took office on
2 September 1946.
179 Harijan, 3 November 1946; CWMG, Volume 86, pages 8-11.
 133

[The following is the text, as published by the Associated Press of America, of an interview which Gandhi
gave to Mr. Preston Grover on 21 October 1946 at the Sweeper’s Colony, New Delhi. It was reprinted in
Harijan.]

Mahatma Gandhi declared in an interview today that the Muslim League Ministry in
Bengal should be able to control the outbreak of disorders in East Bengal in which a good
few thousands have been driven from their homes and an undetermined number killed or
kidnapped.

“Control will depend on the Ministry,” he said, referring to the Bengal Ministry of which
the Muslim Leaguer H. S. Suhrawardy is head. “If the Muslim League wanted to control
it, I should think that it could.” He recalled that the Muslim League “has the
overwhelming percentage of Muslim voters on their side.”

He described the Bengal outbreak as “heartbreaking.” His comments on the outbreak of

robbing, burning and looting in East Bengal were made in his small room in the
Untouchable Colony where he has lived most of the time since the arrival of the British
Cabinet Mission in March. He sat on a thin mat with a small sloping desk before him and
I sat on the floor while he talked of many things including America, the New
Government in India, South Africa and his own health.

He announced again his intention of visiting the troubled areas in Bengal after his
meeting on 23 October with Pandit Nehru and the Working Committee where they will
discuss problems created by the entry of the Muslim Group into the Central Ministry.180

“The fact that I go there will satisfy the soul and may be of some use,” he said.

“Will the Muslims listen to you?’ he was asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t go with any expectation, but I have the right to expect it.
A man who goes to do his duty only expects to be given strength by God to do his duty.”

To a question as to when this type of disturbances would end in India he replied:

“You may be certain that they will end. If the British influence were withdrawn they
would end much quicker. While the British influence is here, both parties, I am sorry to
confess, look to the British power for assistance.”

Turning to the affairs of the Interim Government, Mahatma Gandhi regretted the
statement of Raja Ghaznafar Ali Khan,181 Muslim League selection for the Central
Government. To Raja Ghaznafar Ali Khan’s statement that the League was going into the
Interim Government to fight for Pakistan, Mr. Gandhi said:

180 The Muslim League entered the interim government on 16 October 1946.
181 Raja Ghaznafar Ali Khan (1895-1963) was a Muslim League member of the interim government. He
made the statement while addressing a students’ meeting in Lahore on 19 October.
“That is an extraordinary and inconsistent attitude. The Interim Government is for the
interim period only and may not last long. While it is in office it is there to deal with the
problems that face the country – starvation, nakedness, disease, bad communications,
corruption, illiteracy. Any one of these problems would be enough to tax the best minds
of India. On these there is no question of Hindu or Muslim. Both are naked. Both are
starving. Both wished to drive out the demon of illiteracy and un-Indian education.

“There is not much time to elapse between this Government and that to be set up by the
Constituent Assembly. The time will be shortened if both apply their will to the
completion of the work on the Constituent Assembly.

“The Constituent Assembly is based on the State Paper.182 That Paper has put in cold
storage the idea of Pakistan. It has recommended the device of “grouping” which the
Congress interprets in one way, the League in another and the Cabinet Mission in a third
way. No law-giver can give an authoritative interpretation of his own law. If then there is
a dispute as to its interpretation, a duly constituted court of law must decide it.”

“But if the Muslim League do not accept the court interpretation?”

“They cannot impose theirs on others. If they do, they put themselves in the wrong box.
The alternative is to come to blows. We are all savages and come to blows often when we
don’t agree. Yet we are all gentlemen. This is so whether in America or Europe.”

Asked for his reaction to the decision of the Madras Ministry which has decided against
any expansion of the cotton mills industry in the Province in order to promote the
Gandhian plan for home spinning and weaving, the Mahatma said:

“I think it is the finest thing going. If you want to follow this logically, then you must
follow it through.”

Asked whether it would then be logical to "follow through" to the extent that mills
presently in the Province would be stopped, he replied that if in time, through the
progressive programme, the mills came to have no customers, then they would quit –
“unless they chose to sell outside India.”

He assailed the Natal sugar mills industry as responsible for bringing indentured Indians
there to work and thus creating the segregation problem.183

To a question as to what would become of Englishmen in the service of the Government

of India, Gandhi said:

“I think that India has use for every one of them who is loyal to India and to Indian
traditions and conditions and who will be above temptation and corruption. I don’t want

182 The State Paper of 16 May 1946, presented by the British Cabinet mission to Congress and the Muslim
League, provided for the grouping of provinces and the setting up of a Constituent Assembly.
183 The reference is to the import of Indian indentured labour to Natal from 1860 to 1911.
 135

to say that they should be disloyal to England. That is not the point. They should not be
disloyal to India. These things should not conflict, but it has happened in history. Most
have come here to serve the country of their birth by exploiting India. That is hypocrisy.
It is dishonest. There is no room for dishonesty in any service or outside it.”

Asked if he had any message for America, he said:

“Dislodge the money God called Mammon from the throne and find a corner for poor
God. I think America has a very big future but in spite of what is said to the contrary, it
has a dismal future if it swears by Mammon. Mammon has never been known to be a
friend of any of us to the last. He is always a false friend.”

Mahatma Gandhi, who has passed 77 years of age, said that he was “shaken” in his belief that he
would live to be 125 years, as he had so often said.

“I am shaken in that belief, although not because it is illegitimate. But there are well defined
limits to the fulfilment of that wish. If you do not fulfil those limits, then you may not attain the
wish. For the time being, I feel dislodged. I have not attained the necessary equanimity. I don’t
want to live 125 years or even one year on nostrums, medicines and that kind of thing. I want to
live a life of service in my present way.

“That is possible provided you have equableness under every circumstance. Nothing should
irritate you. I am not able to say today that nothing irritates me or has irritated me.”

He said he had thought calmly of living until 125 “until a few days ago”, when he had a “rude
shock.” It was on the occasion of his birthday by the Hindu calendar, which came this year ten
days ahead of October 2, the day of his birthday by the ordinary calendar. Rajendra Prasad, the
Food Member in the Cabinet, had come to preside at a flag-raising in connection with the
birthday, and on that occasion, he was told, “monkey-nuts, raisins, etc., were to be served to the
Harijan children and volunteers in the camp.”

“I flared up, madly,” the Mahatma said. “I lost my balance. You can use any adverb or adjective
you like to describe it.”

He said he considered it an insult to the Food Minister to give food needlessly in his presence to
children and others “who were not in need.”

“It was then I discovered my failure. This loss of self-control has cost some years of my life—
which it will be possible to regain if I regain my equanimity—or gain it. That is the humbler way
to say it.”

His anger flared up, he said, because “every morsel of food has to be husbanded. If we do it,
there will be no shortage.

“India is the last country in the world that should be short of food if our rulers know their
business—and there is no black marketing.”
Associated Press of America, 6 November 1946184

[The interview took place on board the steamboat Kiwi during Gandhi’s journey to Chandpur.]

JOURNALIST: In view of recent Indian history—1942 unrest, I. N. A. movement and unrest, R.

I. N. mutiny, Calcutta-Bombay disturbances, movements in Indian States such as Kashmir and
recent communal riots—can it be said that your creed of non-violence has failed, in so far as
non-violence has not taken roots in Indian life?

GANDHI: This is a dangerous generalisation. All you mention can certainly be called himsa but
that can never mean that the creed of non-violence has failed. At best it may be said that I have
not yet found the technique required for the conversion of the mass mind. But I claim that the
millions of the 700,000 villages of India have not participated in the violence alluded to by you.
Whether non-violence has taken roots in Indian life is still an open question which can only be
answered after my death.

JOURNALIST: What should one do in his day-to-day life—that is, what is the minimum
programme - so that one can acquire non-violence of the brave?

GANDHI: The minimum that is required of a person wishing to cultivate the ahimsa of the brave
is first to clear his thought of cowardice and in the light of the clearance regulate his conduct in
every activity, great or small. Thus the votary must refuse to be cowed down by his superior,
without being angry. He must, however, be ready to sacrifice his post, however remunerative it
may be. Whilst sacrificing his all, if the votary has no sense of irritation against his employer he
has ahimsa of the brave in him. Assume that a fellow passenger threatens my son with assault
and I reason with the would-be-assailant who then turns upon me. If then I take his blow with
grace and dignity, without harbouring any ill-will against him, I exhibit the ahimsa of the brave.
Such instances are of everyday occurrence and can be easily multiplied. If I succeed in curbing
my temper every time and though able to give blow for blow I refrain, I shall develop the ahimsa
of the brave which will never fail me and which will compel recognition from the most
confirmed adversaries.

After Partition and Independence of India, 1947-1948

Bengal and Bihar were relatively calm by September as a result of the efforts by Gandhi. But there was ghastly
carnage in the Punjab with tens of thousands of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims killed. Hundreds of thousands people
moved across the new frontier between India and Pakistan as refugees.185

184 Report by Pyarelal in Harijan, 17 November 1946; CWMG, Volume 86, pages 87-88.
185 Eventually the number of people killed rose to nearly two million and the number of displaced persons
to more than ten million.
 137

Gandhi decided to go to the Punjab. But by the time he arrived in Delhi by train, the situation in Delhi had
deteriorated. Muslims had been forced to flee from several areas of the city, and hundreds had been killed.
Thousands of Hindu and Sikh refugees from the Punjab arrived in the city; they were bitter and angry.

Gandhi decided to stay on in Delhi as he was convinced that if peace was not established in the capital, the whole
of India would be on fire.

His patient labours, and exhortations at prayer meetings, brought a measure of peace, but there was still much
fear. He decided to go on a fast from 12 January 1948 until he was satisfied that “there is a reunion of hearts of all
communities.”186

On 18 January, a delegation representing all communities called on Gandhi and signed a declaration which said in
part:

“We take the pledge that we shall protect the life, property and faith of the Muslims and that the
incidents which have taken place in Delhi will not happen again…

“Muslims will be able to move about in Subzimandi, Karol Bagh, Paharganj and other localities just as
they could in the past… The mosques which… now are in the possession of Hindus and Sikhs will be
returned.

“We shall not object to the return to Delhi of the Muslims who have migrated from here if they choose to
come back and Muslims shall be able to carry on their business as before.”187

Gandhi acceded to their requests and broke the fast.

He planned to visit Pakistan soon and was assured of a welcome, as the people of Pakistan greatly appreciated his
efforts in support of the Muslims in India. But on 30 January 1948, he was assassinated at his prayer meeting by a
Hindu fanatic to the dismay of both India and Pakistan. A young American diplomat who attended the prayer
meeting caught the assassin and handed him over to the police.188

William Stuart Nelson, August 1947189

[Dr. Nelson was professor of theology and dean at Howard University, Washington, DC. He took leave and, in
November 1946, with his wife, Blanche Wright Nelson, joined the Friends Service Unit of British and American
Quakers which was working in India since the Bengal famine of 1943 providing humanitarian assistance. He went
with three other members of the Quaker team to see Gandhi at Srirampur, Noakhali district, Bengal, on 3 December
1946 to find out how Quakers may help the Indian people in Noakhali, scene of recent Hindu-Muslim riots. Dr.
Nelson called on Gandhi again in Calcutta in August 1947 before leaving for his university in America. He wrote
later:

“Perhaps the most significant of my own meetings with Gandhi was in August 1947. India had just won its
independence, and there were painful discussions about the results of partition. There was more than
discussion in Calcutta where Hindu-Muslim tensions had broken into large-scale fighting and killing.
Responding to the tragedy, Gandhi went to Calcutta to mediate and to attempt to bring peace. I was living

186 Harijan, 18 January 1948; CWMG, Volume 90, page 409.

187 Harijan, 25 January 1948; CWMG, Volume 90, page 444n.
188 Vincent Sheean, Lead Kindly Light, page 205.
189 Harijan, 31 August 1947; CWMG, Volume 89, pages 62-63. Nirmal Kumar Bose, My Days with
Gandhi (Calcutta: Nishana, 1953), pages 92 and 270-71; Atlanta Daily World, 30 January 1947.
 in Calcutta at the time and had the opportunity to meet with him occasionally during this traumatic period.
The following is a report on one meeting , the last before returning to America.190]

Professor Nelson asked Gandhi why it was that Indians who had more or less successfully gained
independence through peaceful means, were now unable to check the tide of civil war through
the same means?

Gandhi replied that it was indeed a searching question which he must answer. He confessed that
it had become clear to him that what he had mistaken for satyagraha was not satyagraha but
passive resistance - a weapon of the weak. Indians harboured ill will and anger against their
erstwhile rulers, while they pretended to resist them non-violently. Their resistance was,
therefore, inspired by violence and not by regard for the man in the British, whom they should
convert through satyagraha.

Now that the British were voluntarily quitting India, apparent non-violence had gone to pieces in
a moment. The attitude of violence which we had secretly harboured, in spite of the restraint
imposed by the Indian National Congress, now recoiled upon us and made us fly at each other's
throats when the question of the distribution of power came up. If India could now discover a
way of sublimating the force of violence which had taken a communal turn, and turning it into
constructive, peaceful ways, whereby differences of interests could be liquidated, it would be a
great day indeed.

Gandhi then proceeded to say that it was indeed true that many English friends had warned him
that the so-called non-violent non-cooperation of India was not really non-violent. It was the
passivity of the weak and not the non-violence of the stout in heart who would never surrender
their sense of human unity and brotherhood even in the midst of conflict of interests, who would
even try to convert and not coerce their adversary. Gandhi proceeded to say that this was indeed
true. He had all along laboured under an illusion. But he was never sorry for it. He realised that if
his vision were not covered by that illusion, India would never have reached the point which it
had today.

India was now free, and the reality was now clearly revealed to him. Now that the burden of
subjection had been lifted, all the forces of good had to be marshalled in one great effort to build
a country which forsook the accustomed method of violence in order to settle human conflicts
whether it was between two States or between two sections of the same people. He had yet the
faith that India would rise to the occasion and prove to the world that the birth of two new States
would be, not a menace, but a blessing to the rest of mankind. It was the duty of Free India to
perfect the instrument of non-violence for dissolving collective conflicts, if its freedom was
going to be really worthwhile.191

190 William Stuart Nelson, “Gandhian Values and the American Civil Rights Movement” in Paul F. Power
(ed.) The Meanings of Gandhi (University Press of Hawaii, an East-West Center Book, 1971), p. 156.
191 In a lecture at Calcutta University in 1949, Dr. Nelson said:

"Some months ago when I talked with Mahatma Gandhi concerning the relief programme of the Society of
Friends in India, I was interested in his references to the early days of the Salvation Army in England when the
relationships with men were established by serving their need for food and clothing and housing. It was recognised,
said Mahatma Gandhi, that to the hungry, God is food; to the naked, God is clothing; to the homeless, God is
 139

According to Atlanta Daily World, Dr. Nelson’s report to the Friends Service Committee office
in Philadelphia quoted Gandhi as follows:

“To a hungry man, God is food; to a naked man, God is clothing; to a man without shelter, God
is a home…

“When men are without food or clothing or shelter, they are not amenable to an appeal to the
spirit until these needs are satisfied at least to a degree.”

Gandhi warned the Quakers that “our approach must be through giving relief… offering advice
would fall flat.”

[After the interview the team attended the prayer meeting. Gandhi requested them to sing a
hymn. Instead, Dr. Nelson read the hymn of Isaac Watt beginning “O God our help in ages
past.” At the conclusion Gandhi explained the meaning of the hymn in Hindustani and based his
evening remarks on it. Dr. Nelson wrote:

“What had been anticipated as a visit in search of counsel on practical matters of relief and
reconciliation developed into a spiritual experience of great significance to all of us. The
atmosphere of our interview was repeated at the prayer meeting, marked as it was in setting, in
congregation and in procedure by the profound simplicity so characteristic of Gandhi himself.”]

Ronald Stead (Christian Science Monitor), before 2 November 1947192

[Ronald Stead discussed with Mahatma Gandhi the crucial issue of how best to combat India’s internecine violence.
In a single brief sentence Gandhiji defined his long range objective, “to replace communal hatred by communal
brotherhood.”

Stead reported that Mahatma Gandhi made it clear that he was reluctant to discuss the recent troubled past. He has
criticised the misbehaviour of Muslims and non-Muslims alike. In this connection he observed with a little smile:]

“I used to be represented as an enemy of the Muslims. Now, because I castigate the Hindus for
misdemeanours which they, like the Muslims, have been guilty of, I am being represented in
some quarters as an enemy of the Hindus. The fact is, I am an enemy only of wrongdoing.”

Mahatma Gandhi described the situation in Calcutta as satisfactory but said that Delhi was
decidedly otherwise. That was why his original plans193 were altered. He asked:

“How can I go on to the Punjab, when so much remains to be done here?”

shelter. The intimate kinship between the physical and the spiritual is inherent in the nature of our world." William
Stuart Nelson, Bases of World Understanding: An Inquiry into the Means of Resolving Racial, Religious, Class and
National Misapprehensions and Conflicts (Calcutta: Calcutta University Lectures, 1949).

192 Hindustan Times, 2 November 1947; CWMG, Volume 89, pages 456-57.
193 The original plan was to go to the Punjab.
Mahatma Gandhi’s long range plans for supplanting communal animosity by communal
tolerance are the same as those he is executing now. That is to say, he is going to address the
maximum number of persons in public now. Evening prayer meetings furnish regular
opportunities for doing this. He is going to hold counsel with as many responsible leaders as
seek to discuss matters with him. He is going to visit refugee concentrations and address himself
to reassuring the minorities, urging them not to migrate and seeking to foster among the majority
the tolerance that will justify such persuasion.

Edgar Snow (Saturday Evening Post), January 1948194

[Mr. Snow had interviewed Gandhi on 14 July 1942. He again interviewed Gandhi a few days before his
assassination in January 1948. The following is from an article he wrote after the assassination.]

...I don't pretend to have understood Gandhi or to have moved upon the stage where I could
take in the metaphysics of his philosophy or his personal dialogues with God. I am an agnostic
and pragmatist, an ex-Catholic turned Taoist, a Hegelian fallen among materialists, and one who
chastised the Mahatma for denying the righteous battle in 1942 and for leading his "open
rebellion" against our allies, the British. For years I had felt out of sympathy with him. Yet
even in this dull clod, the avatar had finally struck a spark before he died, when in my last visit, I
became conscious of my size in the mirror of him, and I saw him as a giant.

I understood that day where all his power and light came from because I went to him in a
chastened mood. Though it was obviously his quality, and had been there all the time, it came to
me as an inner discovery, and because I had never before been ready to accept it as the fresh
spring of his might...

...A few days before he was killed, he told me that he had lately become aware that "our fight
for independence was not entirely one without war."

"I was fooling myself to believe that all our actions for independence were non-violent," he
said. "But God blinded my vision, and if I really believed that we were acting non-violently at
the time, perhaps God wanted to use me for his purpose. Now I think that in reality it was
nothing more than the passive resistance of the weak."

He had become acutely conscious of this distinction as a result of the post-independence

conflict between the religious communities, which clearly taught him that many had never
understood or followed him in spirit.

"But I think I have made a small contribution to the world," he told me in that low but
curiously steady voice. "I have demonstrated that ahimsa (non-violence) and Satyagraha [soul

194 From Edgar Snow, "The Message of Gandhi" in Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia, 27 March 1948.
 141

force or non-violent non-cooperation in its political meaning] are more than ethical principles.
They can achieve practical results."…

Gandhi was a puritan, but he was not a bigot. Thus, when I asked whether it was from Hindu,
Muslim, Christian or other scriptures that he had first got his inspiration, he replied that the
lesson was to be found in every great teaching, not just religious. The identity of truth with all
other virtues had first struck him on reading the Vedas, but for him all truth was religion.

"There is no greater religion than truth," he quoted from Hindu scriptures.

One thing he could not abide was lying, and he knew a lie when he saw one, whether in the
party press or from the pulpit of the church, and whether it was from an enemy or propaganda for
a cause in which he believed.

"For me, means and ends are practically identical," he said. "We cannot attain right ends by
way of falsehoods."...

Like Marx, Gandhi hated the state and wished to eliminate it, and he told me he considered
himself "a philosophical anarchist." But he was a practical socialist in that he never opposed the
state as a necessary instrument in achieving social democracy, though democracy as he
understood it is certainly not to be confused with the kind of police state ruled by the Kremlin...

It is a harsh thing now to impute to anyone the faintest responsibility for neglecting to curb
organisations which Gandhi deplored, and which finally killed him. But it was Gandhi himself
who, when I questioned him about his own attitude toward the government, told me that many of
its policies did not have his approval, and volunteered, "It used to be said that Vallabhbhai Patel
was my yes-man, but that is now a joke. I have no more influence on him."...

Margaret Bourke-White, January 1948195

[Margaret Bourke-White (1904-71) was one of the first photo-journalists. She was well-known as a photographer for
Life magazine. She took the last picture of Gandhi, a few hours before he was assassinated.]

Photography demands a high degree of participation, but never have I participated to such an
extent as I did when photographing various episodes in the life of Gandhi.

I shall always remember the day we met. I went to see him at his camp, or ashram, in Poona
where he was living in the midst of a colony of untouchables....

195 From Margaret Bourke-White, Portrait of Myself (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963). Extract reprinted in
Norman Cousins (ed.), Profiles of Gandhi: America Remembers a World Leader (Delhi: Indian Book Company,
1969), pages 85-92.
 This was the first of many occasions on which I photographed the Mahatma. Gandhi, who
loved a little joke, had his own nickname for me. Whenever I appeared on the scene with camera
and flashbulbs, he would say, "There's the Torturer again." But it was said with affection...

I went back home with my pictures and my impressions, and as usual after one of these big
trips, I started writing a book...

I just did not know enough to write a book about India, and I arranged to send myself back.

Just before my departure, religious violence in India and Pakistan again broke into the news…
The terrible chain of events stirred Gandhi, in Delhi, to action of his own non-violent kind. He
chose a weapon which was peculiarly Asian, and had brought him spectacular success in the
past. He announced at the prayer meeting that he would undertake a fast directed against the
savageries of religious warfare.

This would be the sixteenth fast of Gandhi's life. He was now seventy-eight. This fast could
be his last...

Next morning, there was a little ceremony for which Gandhi's closest followers gathered. I
was within arm's length of the Mahatma while he took his last mouthful of boiled beans, his last
sip of goat's milk, and placed on the cot in front of him his famous dollar watch. The hands
pointed to 11. The fast had formally begun. Some of his women followers began to cry.

Many people came to prayers that night in the garden, and waited in uneasy silence for
Gandhi to speak. He began talking very simply about the reasons for the fast - how all people
deserved equal protection and equal freedom of religious worship, and emphasised that there
must be no retaliation against acts of violence. "How long will you fast?" I asked Gandhi.
"Until I am satisfied that people of all religions in India mix like brothers and move without fear;
otherwise, my fast can never end."...

I believe that everyone who went to prayers that night had a feeling that greatness hovered
over the frail little figure talking so earnestly in the deepening twilight. "I am not alone," were
his closing words. "Because although there is darkness on the way, God is with me."

During the tense days that followed, the Mahatma became too weak to go to prayers in the
garden. The people were clamouring for a sight of Gandhi, and one day they were allowed to
line up by twos and file through the garden at the back of Birla House, where Gandhi was
staying. The doors of the porch were open. Gandhi's cot had been set between them, and on it
lay the little old man, asleep.

I find it hard to describe my feelings at seeing this frail little figure lying there, with the silent,
reverent people filing by. It would be impossible to imagine such a thing in America...

On the sixth day of the fast, early in the morning, I went to Birla House and learned from
Gandhi's happy followers that the Mahatma had received what they called a "spate" of telegrams.
At exactly eleven o'clock Gandhi broke his fast. It was a moving experience to be there and see
 143

the people laughing and crying for joy. Gandhi lay smiling on his mattress on the floor,
clutching some peace telegrams in his long, bony hands. I jumped up to a high desk and got my
camera into action...

On January 29, I had reached my last day in India, and on this final day I had arranged a
special treat for myself - an interview with Gandhi…

I found Gandhi seated on a cot in the garden, with his spinning wheel in front of him. He put
on a big straw hat when I arrived, to keep the sun out of his eyes. It was a hat someone had
brought him from Korea, and he tied it at a gay angle under his chin. I told Gandhi that this was
my last day, and explained that I was writing a book on India, and wanted to have a talk with him
before I went home.

"How long have you been working on this book?"

"It's almost two years now."

"Two years is too long for an American to work on a book," said Gandhi, laughing. He began
to spin, as he always did during interviews.

My first question seemed a rather silly one at the time; later, it seemed almost prophetic.
"Gandhi," I said, "you have always stated that you would live to be a hundred and twenty-five
years old. What gives you that hope?"

His answer was startling. "I have lost the hope."

I asked him why. "Because of the terrible happenings in the world. I can no longer live in
darkness and madness. I cannot continue..." He paused, and I waited. Thoughtfully, he picked
up a strand of cotton, gave it a twist and ran it into the spinning wheel. "But if I am needed," he
went on in his careful English, "rather, I should say, if I am commanded, then I shall live to be a
hundred and twenty-five years old."...

I turned to the topic which I had most wanted to discuss with Gandhi. I began speaking of the
weight with which our new and terrible nuclear knowledge hangs over us, and of our increasing
fear of a war which would destroy the world. Holding in our hands the key to the ultimate in
violence, we might draw some guidance, I hoped, from the apostle of non-violence.

As we began to speak of these things, I became aware of a change in my attitude toward

Gandhi. No longer was this merely an odd little man in a loin cloth, with his quaint ideas about
bullock-cart culture and his vague social palliatives - certain of which I rejected. I felt in the
presence of a new and greater Gandhi. My deepening appreciation of Gandhi began when I saw
the power and courage with which he led the way in the midst of chaos.

I asked Gandhi whether he believed America should stop manufacturing the atom bomb.
Unhesitatingly, he replied, "Certainly America should stop." Of course, when I had this talk
with Gandhi, the atom bomb was not yet obsolete, nor had the hysteria of nuclear testing swept
around the world. Gandhi went on to stress the importance of choosing righteous paths, whether
for a nation or for a single man; for bad means could never bring about good ends. He spoke
thoughtfully, haltingly, always with the most profound sincerity. As we sat there in the thin
winter sunlight, he spinning, and I jotting down his words, neither of us could know that this was
to be one of the last - perhaps his very last - messages to the world.

Since that momentous day, many people have asked me whether one knew when in Gandhi's
presence that this was an extraordinary man. The answer is yes. One knew. And never had I
felt it more strongly than on this day, when the inconsistencies that had troubled me dropped
away, and Gandhi began to probe at that dreadful problem which had overwhelmed us all.

I asked Gandhi how he would meet the atom bomb. Would he meet it with non-violence?
"Ah," he said, "How shall I answer that? I would meet it by prayerful action."

I asked what form that action would take.

"I will not go underground. I will not go into shelters. I will go out and face the pilot so he
will see I have not the face of evil against him."

He turned back to his spinning, and I was tempted to ask, "The pilot would see all that at his
altitude?" But Gandhi sensed my silent question.

"I know the pilot will not see our faces from his great height, but that longing in our hearts
that he should not come to harm would reach up to him, and his eyes would be opened. Of those
thousands who were done to death in Hiroshima, if they had died with that prayerful action - died
openly with that prayer in their hearts - then the war would not have ended as disgracefully as it
has. It is a question now whether the victors are really victors or victims... of our own lust... and
omission." He was speaking very slowly, and his words had become toneless and low. "The
world is not at peace." His voice had sunk almost to a whisper. "It is still more dreadful than
before."

I rose to leave, and folded my hands together in the gesture of farewell which Hindus use.
But Gandhi held out his hand to me and shook hands cordially in Western fashion. We said
good-bye, and I started off. Then something made me turn back. His manner had been so
friendly. I stopped and looked over my shoulder, and said, "Goodbye, and good luck." Only a
few hours later, on his way to evening prayers, this man who believed that even the atom bomb
should be met with non-violence was struck down by revolver bullets.

II. THE “CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAMME”

 145

Gandhi was greatly concerned about the enormous poverty in India, caused by British rule, and had given thought to
alleviating the situation even while he was in South Africa. He was aware of the writings of Dadabhai Naoroji and
Romesh Chandra Dutt on the causes of poverty.

India, one of the richest countries before British occupation, had become one of the poorest countries of the
world. One of the main causes was the destruction of the Indian textile industry to make India dependent on import
of British textiles. The East India Company even cut the thumbs of weavers to prevent them from winding silk and
preparing muslins which were famous and in great demand all over Europe.196 The greed of the East India
Company caused unemployment to millions of spinners and weavers. It deprived the peasants of an alternate source
of income and forced them to remain idle for several months a year. Other village industries were also destroyed by
imports. Even William Bentinck, Governor-General of India from 1828 to 1835, reported that “the misery hardly
finds parallel in the history of commerce. The bones of the cotton-weavers are bleaching the plains of India.”197

Gandhi was convinced that the revival of spinning and weaving, as well as other village industries, was crucial to
combat poverty. He continued to propagate this view after his return to India. When he became a leader of the
Indian National Congress, he proposed a provision in the Constitution of the Congress that members should spin and
wear only Khadi (hand-spun and hand-woven cloth).

In propagating Khadi, he argued that it would end the exploitation of the Indian villages by the industrialists in the
cities in India and Britain. It would end dependence on Britain and ensure self-reliance. It was part of the process of
decentralisation of production and distribution of the necessities of life. If production of Khadi was taken up by all,
that would create a bond between the rich and the poor.

Equally important for the building of independence in all its aspects was the removal of the curse of
untouchability in the Hindu society. Promotion of Khadi and the removal of untouchability became the core of the
“constructive programme,” advocated by Gandhi to empower the people of India.198

The constructive programme included other measures such as Hindu-Muslim unity, prohibition, promotion of
village industries, sanitation, basic education suited to the needs of India and adult education. Gandhi stressed that
these projects should not be postponed until independence. They were part of the edifice of independence and were
to him at least as important as the political struggle for freedom.

The constructive programme, he pointed out, would provide year-round activity for Congressmen, even when
civil disobedience is suspended and help involve millions of people in the quest for true independence. If the
programme was implemented by all the people, it would build up the nation and bring complete independence of
which the end of foreign domination was only a part.

On his proposal, Congress set up the All India Spinners Association in 1925, and the All India Village Industries
Association in 1934.

Many of the intellectuals in India, and even some leaders of the Congress, did not agree with all elements of the
programme, and some considered it a diversion from the struggle for independence. Gandhi left the Congress for
several years to concentrate on the programme rather than political activities.

196 See, for instance, William Bolts, Considerations of India Affairs, particularly respecting the present
state of Bengal and its Dependencies. Second Edition (London: J. Alman and others, 1772), pages 194-95.
http://books.google.com.qa/books?id=98lNAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Considerations+on+In
dia+Affairs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_oDOUty_IcOR7AbGwIDABg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Consideratio
ns%20on%20India%20Affairs&f=false, accessed on 1 July 2014.
197 Nick Robins, “Loot: in Search of the East India Company,” http://www.opendemocracy.net/theme_7-
corporations/article_904.jsp, accessed on 30 June 2014.

198 See Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place, revised and
enlarged edition (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1945). https://www.gandhiheritageportal.org/mahatma-gandhi-
books/constructive-programme-its-meaning-and-place#page/1/mode/2up, accessed on 12 July 2014.
Gertrude Emerson, 10 December 1921199

[The following is the first part of an interview at Satyagraha Ashram at Sabarmati on 10 December 1921.]

I drove for about an hour and a half and then I came to a cluster of isolated houses, some of
them yet unfinished, scattered in haphazard fashion on both sides of the road. This, my driver
told me, was the Satyagraha Ashram. It was a bare spot with no beauty except that of the dusty
fields and wide horizon and sandy river. I saw no one about; so I followed a path that led through
a garden of papaya trees and magenta flower beds to the covered veranda of one of the houses.
The place looked rather neglected, clean enough, but evidently not occupying the attention of
those who lived there. In a swinging settee sat Gandhi's son. He arose and, after disappearing for
a moment into a room on the left, returned to say that his father was waiting to see me.

The Mahatma was sitting on a mattress on the floor, in front of a low table covered with books
and papers. He took off his steel-rimmed spectacles and without getting up smiled pleasantly and
invited me to sit on a square stool. I preferred the floor, however, and sat down on the piece of
faded red cloth that did service as a carpet. A small spinning wheel and some carded cotton were
near the table. Otherwise the room was bare of furniture...

It is one of the fundamental points of his propaganda that India must become self-sustaining if
she is to be self-governing. Agriculture is therefore to be supplemented by the creation of a
spinning and weaving industry on a vast scale... But why advocate a return to the handicraft
stage? Why must everybody possess a charkha, or spinning wheel, and produce his own hand-
spun, hand-woven clothing? Mr. Gandhi gives two answers.

"I am not opposing the establishment of mills in India, but I am doing nothing to encourage
it," he said to me. "Flooding India with mills will not solve the problem of the poverty of
millions. Thirty million people at least live on only one meal a day, consisting of a chapati
containing no fat and a pinch of salt. Our vast agricultural population is idle four months in the
year. These are the people who suffer. Formerly we had a great spinning and weaving industry,
but it was deliberately killed. It must be built up again."...

He was elaborating his conception of the joy and beauty to be found in cottage industry and
the happiness of village life worked out on this principle. "I always hear divine voices telling me
in my ears that such life was a matter of fact once in India, but even if such an India be the idle
dream of poet, it does not matter. Is it not necessary to create such an India now?... I cannot bear
the heart-rending cry of the poor."...

Ms. Katherine Mayo, 17 March 1926200

199 Asia, Concord, NH, United States of America, May 1922.

200 CWMG, Volume 30, pages 119-24.
 147

[Miss Mayo (1867-1940), an American writer, subsequently published Mother India (1927), a sensational book
designed to create contempt for India and justify the continuation of British rule. Gandhi, in a review, called it
"Drain Inspector's Report."201]

My message to America is simply the hum of this wheel. Letters and newspaper cuttings I
get from America show that one set of people overrates the results of Non-violent Non-
cooperation and the other set not only underrates it but imputes all kinds of motives to those who
are concerned with the movement. Don't exaggerate one way or the other. If therefore some
earnest Americans will study the movement impartially and patiently then it is likely that the
United States may know something of the movement which I do consider to be unique although I
am the author of it. What I mean is that our movement is summed up in the spinning-wheel with
all its implication. It is to me a substitute for gun-powder. For, it brings the message of self-
reliance and hope to the millions of India. And when they are really awakened they would not
need to lift their little finger in order to regain their freedom. The message of the spinning-wheel
is, really, to replace the spirit of exploitation by the spirit of service. The dominant note in the
West is the note of exploitation. I have no desire that my country should copy the spirit of that
note.

[As to the effects of multiplication of means of travel and transportation:]

All that is coming to smother us, not to deliver us. I can only say I hope that we shall be
spared that affliction. But it may be we shall have to drink the bitter cup. If we do not learn by
the experience of the West, we may have to drink it. But I am leaving no stone unturned to avoid
that catastrophe. The powers of the West, however much they have fought amongst themselves,
have agreed on this: "Let us exploit the other nations - Asia and Africa." They are keeping up to
that agreement with extraordinary accuracy. Suppose we reciprocate. Suppose we learn all the
tricks of our Western teachers - What will happen? A mightier copy of what happened in August
1914. It will come if Europe and America continue to say: "We shall be top dogs and you others
shall be bottom dogs" and we do not learn the message of non-violence and understand that we
have but to cease to buy from you what we do not need. Therefore in spite of all evidence to the
contrary, I do my best not to cooperate with that spirit of exploitation. I decline to copy even
though I am but one in three hundred millions. At least I shall die with the satisfaction of
knowing I die in doing what my conscience directs.

We can be exploited only with our own consent, whether forced or willing, conscious or
unconscious, and only if we buy all sorts of attractive things that Europe and America produce.
Mainly clothing. This we can avoid because we have not yet quite lost the cunning of our hands.
The task of so providing for our needs will prove no burden but can be met just as we eat and
drink - a little at a time in the course of each day, during spare hours. There are many things
today for which I am dependent on the West. When I am sure that I take only what is better done
there and what is beneficent to me, it will be an honourable, free and mutually advantageous
bargain. But what is now done is a bargain destructive to both sides. For exploitation is as bad
for one as for the other...

201 Young India, 15 September 1927; CWMG, Volume 34, pages 539-47.
 I want this country to be spared Dyerism202. That is, I do not want my country, when it has
the power, to resort to frightfulness in order to impose her custom on others. Very often we have
to learn by hard experience, but if I believe that every one of us had to go in a vicious circle and
do just what every other has done, I should know that no progress is possible and should preach
the doctrine of suicide. But we hope, and train our children in the hope, that they will avoid the
mistakes of their fathers. Indeed I see signs, very faint, but unmistakable, of a better day in the
West. A tremendous movement is going on in the West today to retrace steps. There is much
progress in the thought world, although little is as yet translated into action. But what the
thinkers are thinking today, tomorrow will be action.

I have almost daily visits from Americans, not in idle curiosity, not in the spirit of "Let us see
this animal in the Indian Zoo," but from real interest to know my ideas. Those who see the
poverty of India and feel grieved should probe under the surface and find its real cause. It is not
as if it were slowly decreasing. It is growing, in spite of hospitals, schools, metalled roads and
railways. In spite of all these you find the people are being ground down as between two
millstones. They live in enforced idleness. A century ago every cottage was able to replenish its
resources by means of the spinning-wheel. Now every farmer, scratching the earth only a few
inches deep with the wooden plough, works in the season of cultivation. But he cannot do much
work in the other seasons of the year. What are he, his children and his women then to do? The
women sat at the wheel in the old days and sang something not obscene - not trash - but a song
to the Maker of us all. The children imbibed it and so this custom was handed down and the
children had it, although they were without polish or literary education. But now it has all but
died away. The mother is groaning under poverty, her spirit is darkened. She has no milk. As
soon as the child is weaned, she has only gruel to give it, that ruins the intestines.

What am I to ask these millions to do? To migrate from their farms? To kill off their babies?
Or shall I give them what occupation I can, to relieve their lot?

I take to them the gospel of hope - the spinning-wheel - saying, "I do this thing myself, side
by side with you, and I give you coppers for your yarn. I take your yarn that you have spun in
your own place, in your own time, at your own sweet will." She [the mother] listens with a little
bit of hope in her eyes. At the end of five weeks during which she has had help and cooperation
regularly, I find light in her eyes. "Now," she says, "I shall be able to get milk for my baby."
Then if she can have this work regularly she re-establishes a happy home. Multiply that scene by
three hundred millions and you have a fair picture of what I am hoping for.

The testimony of the English historian (official) Sir William Hunter,203 first showed that the
poverty of the masses is growing rather than decreasing. The villages I have visited show it. The
East India Company records show it. In those days we were exporters not exploiters. We
delivered our goods faithfully. We had no gun-boats to send for punishing those who would not
buy our goods. We sent out the most wonderful fabrics the world has produced. We exported
diamonds, gold, spices. We had our fair share of iron ore. We had indigenous and unfadable

202 Reference to Brig. Gen. Reginald Dyer who ordered the shooting in Amritsar of hundreds of peaceful
demonstrators who were protesting against the arrest of two leaders of the national movement.
203 Sir William Wilson Hunter (1840-1900) was a member of the Indian Civil Service, a historian and
author of many books, including Economic History of India.
 149

dyes. All that is now gone. Not to speak of Dacca muslin, which was mistaken for dew. I can't
produce it today, but I hope to.

The East India Company came to buy, and remained to sell. It compelled us to cut off our
thumbs. They stood over us and made us behave against our will till thousands of us cut off our
thumbs. This is no figment of my imagination but can be verified from the records of the East
India Company. Do I lay the blame on Britain? Certainly I do! By means the foulest imaginable
our trade was captured and then killed by them in order to make a market for their own goods.
Practically at the point of the bayonet they forced us to work. For suppose I am tired of work -
tired as we were tired till we cut off our thumbs to avoid being driven farther - is not that the
pressure of the bayonet? This is the history of how our skill was lost.

You say that the spinning wheel, a few generations ago a household tool in the West, has
there also disappeared. But they of the West who spun and spin no more were free men and gave
it up by choice. They had a substitute for the spinning-wheel. Here we have no substitute even
now for the millions. If an Indian farmer wants to set up a soap factory or a basket factory, can
he do it? Where can he sell his produce? But I am trying to induce the people to understand the
secret of the wheel. Compulsion that comes from within is different from that which is
superimposed upon you. I would teach my people to resist that outer compulsion, to the point of
death.

There is difficulty in now reviving the art of spinning because the people have lost their
liking for it. It is difficult to teach the habit of work to a people who have lost all hope and who
have done no work for years and years. And our rich men think that they can redress all the
wrong they have done in amassing their riches by throwing a handful of rice in the faces of the
poor. Whereby they only spoil them so that if I go afterwards with cotton in one hand and
coppers in the other I suffer in consequence. And I can bring no force to bear, I have no power of
government at my back to compel them. So my task goes slowly. I have to plod. Yet thousands
spin today who did not spin last year. My success when it comes will lead to the development of
other home industries and in the meantime the central difficulty will be solved because the vast
mass of our troubles proceeds from enforced idleness.

Untouchability can be cured by those who understand being true to themselves. You saw the
squabble that arose in the Hindu Mahasabha. But untouchability is going in spite of all
opposition, and going fast. It has degraded Indian humanity. The "untouchables" are treated as if
less than beasts. Their very shadow defiles, in the name of God. I am as strong, or stronger, in
denouncing untouchability as I am in denouncing British methods imposed on India.
Untouchability for me is more insufferable than British rule. If Hinduism hugs untouchability,
then Hinduism is dead and gone, in spite of the lofty message of the Upanishads and the Gita -
as pure as crystal. But what is the teaching worth if their practice denies it.

MAYO: Would not the young men be doing better service to the country if, instead of
fighting for political advantage, they effaced themselves, went to the villages, and gave their
lives to the people?
 GANDHI: Surely. But that is a counsel of perfection. All the teaching that we have received
in the universities has made us clerks or platform orators. I never heard the word spinning-wheel
in all my school days. I never had any teacher, Indian or English, who taught me to go to the
villages. All their teaching was to aspire to government positions. To them the I.C.S.204 was
almost a heaven-born thing, and the height of worldly ambition was to become a member of
Council.205 Even today I am told I must go to the Council, to tell the Government the needs of
the people and debate them on the floor of the House. No one says "Go to the villages." That
movement has come in spite of the contrary teaching in schools. Our young people have become
dis-Indianised. They are unaccustomed to the life of the villages. There you have to live in
unsanitary conditions. If you won't take the spade and shovel in your own hands, you will die a
miserable death from dirt and infection. I have lost some of my own workers because of malaria
although they knew the laws of health. The movement towards the villages has come but it is
slow.

My desire is to destroy the present system of government but not to drive away the British
people. I do not mean to say that the British meant to do me harm. But self-deception is the most
horrible crime of which human nature is capable. And the bayonet of the old days yet remains in
some shape. I have rechristened it Dyerism. And I would like to see the Briton utterly gone
except as he remains as India's employee, in India's pay. For this he might as well be a
Frenchman, a German, or a Chinaman. The Briton has admirable qualities - because he is a
human being. I would say the same of an Arab or a Negro from South Africa.

"Am I not afraid, once the British have gone, of internecine strife? Of the hordes of
Afghanistan?" Yes, but these are possibilities that I would welcome. We are fighting today, but
fighting in our hearts. The daggers are simply concealed. When the Wars of the Roses206 were
going on, if the European Powers had intervened to impose peace, where would Britain be
today?

ARTHUR J. TODD. .•. ,.

Arthur J. Todd, in or before 1927207

[Mr. Todd met Gandhi on a January morning in Sabarmati Ashram. The following is from a lecture he delivered
on his return to the United States.]

"Mr. Gandhi, what is India's chief problem?" I began.

"Poverty," he replied without hesitation, for his command of English is clear, precise, and
gracious.

204 Indian Civil Service

205 Viceroy's Executive Council
206 A series of wars from 1455 to 1485 between the Houses of Lancaster and York for the throne in England. They
were named Wars of Roses as the badges of two parties contained roses – the white rose of York and the red rose of
Lancaster.
207 From: Arthur J. Todd, Three Wise Men of the East and Other Lectures (Minneapolis: The University of
Minnesota Press, 1927), pages 6-11.
 151

"Why?"

"Because in a predominantly agricultural country the farmers are idle from six to eight months in
the year, and because of foreign domination, which makes for subtle loss of self-respect."

"Is it not really a problem of overpopulation?" I inquired.

"Not at all. India could support twice as many with present methods of cultivation, if ..."

"But is it not a problem of education?" I persisted.

"Not at all, though illiteracy is increasing, due to decay of the village schools, the result of a
deliberate government policy."

"But is it not sickness, also?" I asked, remembering the standard analysis of poverty in my own
country, which makes sickness and unemployment the two chief causes of poverty.

"No," said Mr. Gandhi. Then he hesitated and admitted that education would improve both
income and sanitation and therefore health, and therefore would at least indirectly remedy poverty.

"Granting that poverty is the chief problem, what is the remedy?" I inquired again. "Birth-control?"

Mr. Gandhi laughed gently… "No," he said, "for you can't get people to change their ways,
particularly the uneducated masses, and they are the people who need to practise it. The purpose
of reducing the population can be better accomplished," he argued, "through postponing
marriages at least to the age of twenty for girls, preferably thirty, and the same or later for boys." …
He has, he said, no difficulty in persuading the men to wait until the age of thirty, but great
difficulty with the girls.

"Why?"

"Because of custom, and the fear of young women that if they do not marry early, they will not
find a husband at all."

My wife then inquired if he did not think it was because women feared that child bearing would
be more difficult and dangerous at the age of thirty than at twenty.

“Not at all,” said Gandhi. And that was that.

After this by-play we returned to the quest. "The real remedy, then?"

"The real remedy is the charka, the spinning wheel." Mr. Gandhi is still loyal to his formula and
is courageous enough to practise it himself, for I saw two spinning wheels in the courtyard of his
house. "No alternative," he explains, "has ever been successfully proposed. The spinning wheel
is easy to build, requires little instruction, is not tiring, is remunerative and universally in demand.
Of all India's imports the vast bulk, 60 crores (220 million dollars) per year, is cotton cloth; so
cloth independence would keep this money at home, provide work for carpenters, etc., and teach
thrift and industry through the adding of two rupees per year (74 cents) to the average labourer's
income."

So far so good. "But," I asked, though without any cruel intent, "are many people spinning?"

He answered sadly, "Not enough."

"Why?"

"Because we cannot reach them. Our funds are too small."

"But suppose all the people would spin. What would you do with the yarn?"

That apparently had not been thought out in detail, but he said in general that the brokers of
cloth independence would attend to weaving and marketing the cloth. He said nothing about
growing the cotton, but one of his dissenting followers told me that is understood as part of the
scheme. To date the campaign has succeeded in developing only a comparatively small
consumption of homespun cotton cloth - one per cent of the total consumed.

Finding that Mr. Gandhi had nothing to add to his published pronouncements on the charka, I
shifted my inquiry to the field of health. I told him I had just been reading his little book on
health. He explained modestly that the book has had little influence yet. I remembered his
statement that man's captivity or freedom is dependent on the state of his mind, since illness
is the result not only of our actions but also of our thoughts; that more people die for fear of
disease than from the diseases themselves; that medicine has been responsible for more mischief
to mankind than any other evil; and that there is absolutely no necessity for sick people to seek
the aid of doctors. So I asked him directly if he believed in spiritual healing.

"Yes, undoubtedly," he replied, "but not in the way of American Christian Scientists."

Was he familiar with them? Oh yes, twenty years ago in South Africa he had known several but
had read little or none of their proffered literature. He had not looked much into this or other
western methods of spiritual healing, for he felt that reducing spirit to method was like using
a sovereign in place of a penny to pay a penny bill. Use God to cure a headache! Sacrilege!
Debasing the spiritual idea! You overeat, then use spiritual means to cure your sick stomach
in order to stuff again. "But this," he observed, "is characteristic of American religion. Some
few Americans have spiritual yearnings, but mostly it is for material things."

… I continued: "You mean by this that the American heaven is just improved America?"

"Exactly," said the Mahatma, smiling.

"What, then, can America do to help India?"

"Many Americans have asked me the same question. You can study India critically, get the
facts, and avoid two extremes, either rejection of everything Indian as worthless, or exalting
personalities and" - he did not use the word, but implied it - "worshipping them as you have
done with me. I do not want to be followed by crowds," he continued, "rather I should like
them to carry out my ideas. I am nothing. I can work no miracles. If I fast or follow the
ascetic life, it is because it is a law of my being." This he said as he slowly ate his frugal
luncheon of goat's milk and raisins out of a brass bowl, then followed that deliberately with a
 153

little plate of orange slices arranged artistically… Not desiring to tax his strength unnecessarily
we did not prolong the interview but made ready to go.

After taking gracious leave of us, he settled back quietly, and we departed under the guidance
of his secretary…

Aimée Semple McPherson, 1935208

[Ms. McPherson (1890-1944) – “Sister Aimée” - was the most popular evangelical preacher in the United States
from the early 1920s to 1944 when she passed away. She was one of the first to use the radio for religious preaching
and her International Church of the Foursquare Gospel included hundreds of churches. Despite several scandals, she
retained the following of millions of Americans and was known as a friend of the poor.

In 1935, she undertook a world tour to gather evidence to convince the American youth of the superiority of
Christian faith. She travelled around India as a guest of missionaries – to Calcutta, Benares, Rae Bareli, Lucknow,
Mussoorie, Agra, Bombay and Madras. In Bombay she received a telegram from Gandhi inviting her to visit him in
Wardha. She met Gandhi in the office of the All India Village Industries Association in an orchard belonging to
Jamnalal Bajaj.

She began her account of the interview with a comment on Gandhi: “Was India poverty-ridden? He identified
himself with its pauperdom. Was India humbled? He vested himself with its humility. Was India striving to rise
from its serfdom? His thin but stalwart shoulder was placed beneath the load. Was India's naked back bared to fierce
suns and rains? Then he was naked also. Small wonder they called him the ‘Soul of India’!”]

"Welcome!" he said, in a cultured voice, as he brought his brown palms together and raised
them to his forehead with the customary salaam of the land. Then he stretched forth his hand
and clasped mine with a hearty, typically American handshake.

"Be seated, please."

Wildly I looked about for a chair. There was none. Imitating my host, I crossed my feet and
essayed a courtly descent… and landed with a somewhat apparent thump. ..

The agitator who for years has stirred the British "teapot" into a tempest with his efforts to set
the nation of India "free," and to emancipate her from starvation and unemployment, spoke in
modulated, unaffected tones: "How do you find our land?" …

"The country itself it beautiful!" I answered. "But I am shocked by the squalor, illiteracy, and
morbid sadness of its people - especially those in the rural sections."

"Ah, yes! The rural sections and the villages!" he half exclaimed, half sighed, as he sat with his

208 Aimée Semple McPherson, I View the World (London: Robert Hale and Company, 1937), pages 178-
82. The American edition was published earlier with the title Give Me My Own God (New York: H.C.
Kinsey & Company, 1936).
eyes fixed upon the blank wall. One felt that he was looking past that barrier and into the heart
of the miserable masses who moaned as they struggled in the miry slough of despond.
Upon his face and within his eyes there was, for a moment, written all the sorrow, all the
sadness, all the longing, and all the weariness of a nation groping for the light. His entire
countenance was softened in yearning for them.

"Can their condition not be bettered?" I asked. He withdrew his gaze from the
whitewashed plaster, fixed it steadily upon me, and spoke in a level tone with
frequent pauses: "Not materially until Swaraj is attained:'

"Swaraj?" I puzzled.

"Yes. Home rule for India."

"Meanwhile, you are accomplishing some definite results?"

"Within the last few decades," he continued, as though he had not heard my question,
"our villages have fallen prey to the very methods of production which have brought
about your own depression. Many industries, at one time our basis of wealth, have died
out. Even such occupations as cater to the every-day needs of the populace - clothing,
shelter, food - have perished. Imports from abroad now supply the most primary needs.
Thus we find in our land of today an eccentric maladjustment of commerce."

"And you propose…" I prompted.

His eyes glowed, the weariness left his face. He was seeing the happy India of a future
day, and verbally painting in the strokes that would perfect that picture…

"If the economic conditions of the people are to be ameliorated," he explained, "ways and
means must be found to increase the number of occupations. Available talents must be
profitably engaged. Hence, the purpose of this newly-formed Association. We hope to
stem the current of exodus from the village to the city, and reverse it. Thus we will provide
occupations for both."

"Your programme is similar to Senator Johnson's 'back to the soil' plan in America," I
commented.209

209 A back to the land movement was initiated during the Great Depression by Ralph Borsodi (1886-1977)
who conducted experiments on simple and self-reliant living in rural surroundings. He left New York City
in 1934 and set up the School for Living in Suffern, New York State. He was reported to have inspired tens
of thousands of people to leave urban life and try homesteading.
 155

"Exactly!" he exclaimed; and though I knew he was a man conversant with world news, I
was for a moment astonished to realise that he knew as much of Senator Johnson's plan as I
did.

"Your salvation and ours, also, depends upon such a plan. As we gather momentum, we
aim to touch men in every walk of life. Wherever there is a blacksmith's anvil, a potter's
wheel, or a carpenter's bench, they will form our working capital. The producer and the
purchaser shall thus come to the aid of each other."

"But with such a massed population, where can you find a hand hold?"

"We are beginning with such household requirements as the food of the villager," he said.
"Malnutrition is the first hurdle to be taken. Disease and want now sap the vitality of the
nation. It is, therefore, necessary to infuse life-giving elements into the diet. At present,
they are too poverty-ridden to afford the absolute necessities for the maintenance of life."

'But they have an abundance of rice," I rejoined.

"White rice, yes; but when a person lives on that alone, with but some pickle to make it
palatable, the little nutrient which it contains has been depleted by unnecessary
bleaching and husking. Until the national menu is well balanced, and includes vegetables,
milk, and fruit, there is small gain in taking away the morsel which they have. Neither is
there anything to be gained by providing them money, which will but set up more highly
taxed and non-productive Occidental fashions. We hope to renew the hum of the spinning
wheel, thus replacing the imported textiles that flood the country."…

As he talked, I watched with fascination the slender cotton thread that he evolved.
The mechanism employed was the most simple and rudimentary - one which the
poorest could easily afford. . ..... 1,.

"May I test the strength of the thread?" I requested. .

Ralph Templin and Paul Keene, missionaries who were recalled from India because of their support to the
Indian freedom movement, lived at the School for Living after return to America. Keene was introduced to
organic farming there and founded the Walnut Acres organic farm.

Borsodi wrote to Gandhi on 14 April 1931 that he had followed “with special interest the gallant struggle
you have been making against some of the follies of industrialism.” He sent his book This Ugly
Civilisation, in which he made several references to Gandhi.

Senator Johnson apparently supported this movement.

He extended the spindle toward me. The thin, white strand felt delicate and unstable to the
touch.

“It is weak, when tested singly,” he smiled; “but when woven into cloth, it is of the stoutest
possible nature.” …

"Would you care to inspect our schools, shops, and experimental stations?" he asked.

"I should be delighted."

"Exploitation is discouraged and unlimited accumulation of wealth is restrained," he

explained. "Therefore, you may find our organisations somewhat tame in comparison
to the high-pressured, highly-financed ones of your land."

In the sun-baked garden behind the house, I was introduced to Mrs. Gandhi and Miss
Slade…

Gandhi presented her a sari, woven in Wardha, from thread he had spun.

“I am sending my secretary with you,” he said as we left his headquarters for a tour of the
countryside. “He will show you about. I am sorry I cannot accompany you, but my duties take
me now upon a tour of the near-by villages.”

She concluded the chapter of her book, with the title “Give me my own God”, with scepticism
about Gandhi’s programme and asserting the superiority of Christianity.

“I remembered an incident related by E. Stanley Jones wherein, upon one occasion, Mr.
Gandhi had asked him to sing for him that grand old hymn: "When I Survey the Wondrous
Cross." And I wondered if he was a strict Hindu, or whether he leaned toward Christianity
and was fearful to indicate the fact, lest his Hindu constituency shy off in fear.

At least, it is a strange commentary that the moving spirit of the benighted continent seeking
for better things has longed to hear the songs of the Cross of Christ. Is that
the secret of his power? … I recalled his answer, when I inquired what missionaries could
do for the land:

"They can help, if they will but realise that the Hindu also has a belief for which he will
live and for which, if necessary, he will die."
 157

Many questions swarmed my mind; for India is a land of questions…

I believe that there is no doubt of his (Gandhi’s) sincerity. Whether or not his theory of
recovery for his nation is correct, I would not presume to say. However, I do believe that if
his course is followed, it will require generations of work to accomplish the goal.

The sad thing about such a plan is that there is seldom a great leader who can follow in
the footsteps of a preceding one. The greater part of a mighty character's work is lost at
his death, because the world forgets so soon, and a vision is so easily lost or distorted…210

An American, 1937211

[The interview took place in Segaon. Reporting the interview in his "weekly letter", Mahadev Desai wrote:

"A youthful American was full of questions about the poverty of India, the meaning and reach of the village
industries revival programme, and the implications of the British rule in India. To one accustomed to quick results,
the village reconstruction programme is bound to look a tame affair. But Gandhi does not hesitate to tell all such
people as he does our own people, that the programme is a Herculean task and takes a Herculean resolve to achieve
it."]

GANDHI: It involved intensive education, not in the three Rs, but in changed ways of
thinking and changed ways of life. To bring about that change in the people's mentality is a
Herculean task. But it is such because the way is the non-violent way, the way of persuasion.
This method is any day slower than the method of compulsion, but it is also surer and more
stable.

AMERICAN: But would it in any way help if the British were to retire? Would you have
been better if the British had retired 150 years ago?

GANDHI: I have no doubt. We should begin anew and without at least the political
handicap. You talk of the pax Britannica. I do not deny that they have introduced education of a
sort, have built schools and colleges, and built an unrivalled railway system. But our difficulty is
this, that whereas elsewhere all these things have made the countries prosperous, they have
brought about an opposite result here. Not only the wealth of the land but even our intelligence
has been drained away. The very life-hope is gone. I will not say that a miracle would happen
the moment the British retire. Only we shall begin our history anew. India will then have her

210. According to a recent biography of Ms. McPherson, Aimée claimed to be “deeply impressed by the
fine and indomitable spirit” burning deep within his (Gandhi’s) eyes. They discussed also the social
activism of her Angelus Temple in the United States. Aimée admired the simple lifestyle of Gandhi and his
followers, which she contrasted with the materialism of Western missionaries working in India. Matthew
Avery Smith, Aimée Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Cambridge, MA,
USA: Harvard University Press, 2009), page 233.
211 Harijan, 3 July 1937; CWMG, Volume 65, pages 358-59.
destiny in her own hands. And mind you we do not want the British to go, if they will stay as
friends and voluntary co-operators.

AMERICAN: But why, if they don't want this rule, do they tolerate it? Why is a united will
lacking?

GANDHI: There are numerous causes which I cannot go into now. All have their share in it,
but the root cause is perhaps indefinable. The will is actively absent today, though indefinitely it
is there.

AMERICAN: Have the Government reserved to themselves power to overrule the people's
will because they think that India is incapable of self-government?

GANDHI: I do not think so, nor do I suspect that even the British think so. If they did so,
they would not have drawn up this Constitution212. No, it is an honest effort to make Provinces
autonomous. Otherwise why should they arm an electorate of 30 millions with the power to
vote? The honest effort is, however, vitiated by the fact that simultaneous effort is being made to
maintain the British connection practically by force. And this they do for exploiting India.

Dr. John de Boer, February 1938213

[Dr. John de Boer, head of an educational institution in South India, visited Gandhi at Segaon before the latter's
departure for Haripura Congress on 8 February.]

Dr. de Boer said that Gandhi's educational scheme had appealed to him most strongly
because at the back of it was non-violence. His difficulty was why non-violence figured so little
on the syllabus.214

212 The Government of India Act of 1935 provided for an increase of the electorate from seven to 35 million and a
large measure of autonomy to the provinces with elected legislatures and ministries, but it vested enormous Powers
in the Viceroy and the Governors to safeguard the British supremacy. The Act also separated Burma and Aden from
India. Sind was separated from the Bombay Province. Bihar and Orissa were made separate provinces. Elections
under the new constitution were held in 1937.

213 Mahadev Desai's "Notes" in Harijan, 12 February 1938; CWMG, Volume 66, pages 353-56.

214 An All India National Education Conference was held at Wardha on 22-23 October 1937, under the
chairmanship of Gandhi. The discussions were based on the views of Gandhi concerning primary education
involving manual work and crafts, instruction in mother tongue and greater attention to Indian culture than to
literacy. Gandhi had written in an article in Harijan on 31 July 1937: “By education, I mean an all-round drawing
out of the best in child and man – body, mind and spirit… Literacy itself is not education, I would, therefore, begin
the child’s education by teaching it a useful handicraft and enabling it to produce from the moment it begins its
training. Thus every school can be made self-supporting, the condition being that the state takes over the
manufacture of these schools.” (CWMG, Volume 65, page 450).

A committee of educators, with Dr. Zakir Husain as chairman, was appointed to formulate the scheme of basic
education. The report of the committee, including a curriculum, was known as the Wardha Scheme of Education.
 159

GANDHI: The reason why it has appealed to you is quite all right. But the whole syllabus
cannot centre round non-violence. It is enough to remember that it emerges from a non-violent
brain. But it does not presuppose the acceptance of non-violence by those who accept it. Thus,
for instance, all the members of the Committee do not accept non-violence as a creed. Just as a
vegetarian need not necessarily be a believer in non-violence - he may be a vegetarian for
reasons of health - even so those who accept the scheme need not be all believers in non-
violence.

DE BOER: I know some educationists who will have nothing to do with the system because it
is based on a non-violent philosophy of life.

GANDHI: I know it. But for that matter I know some leading men who would not accept
Khadi because it is based on my philosophy of life. But how can I help it? Non-violence is
certainly in the heart of the scheme, and I can easily demonstrate it, but I know that there will be
little enthusiasm for it when I do so. But those who accept the scheme accept the fact that in a
land full of millions of hungry people you cannot teach their children by any other method, and
that if you can get the thing going the result will be a new economic order. That is quite enough
for me, as it is enough for me that Congressmen accept non-violence as a method for obtaining
independence, but not as a way of life. If the whole of India accepted non-violence as a creed and
a way of life, we should be able to establish a republic immediately.

DE BOER: I see. There is one thing now which I do not understand. I am a socialist, and
whilst as a believer in non-violence the scheme appeals to me most, I feel as a socialist that the
scheme would cut India adrift from the world, whereas we have to integrate with the whole
world, and socialism does it as nothing else does.

GANDHI: I have no difficulty. We do not want to cut adrift from the whole world. We will
have a free interchange with all nations, but the present forced interchange has to go. We do not
want to be exploited, neither do we want to exploit another nation. Through the scheme we look
forward to making all children producers, and so to change the face of the whole nation, for it
will permeate the whole of our social being. But that does not mean that we cut adrift from the
whole world. There will be nations that will want to interchange with others because they cannot
produce certain things. They will certainly depend on other nations for them, but the nations that
will provide for them should not exploit them .

DE BOER: But if you simplify your life to an extent that you need nothing from other
countries, you will isolate yourselves from them whereas I want you to be responsible for
America also.

GANDHI: It is by ceasing to exploit and to be exploited that we can be responsible for

America. For America will then follow our example and there will be no difficulty in a free
interchange between us.

DE BOER: But you want to simplify life and cut out industrialisation.
 GANDHI: If I could produce all my country's wants by means of the labour of 30,000 people
instead of 30 million I should not mind it, provided that the thirty million are not rendered idle
and unemployed. I know that socialists would introduce industrialisation to the extent of
reducing working hours to one or two in a day, but I do not want it.

DE BOER: They would have leisure.

GANDHI: Leisure to play hockey?

Creative handicrafts I am asking them to engage in. But they will produce with their hands by
working eight hours a day.

DE BOER: You do not of course look forward to a state of society when every house will
have a radio and everyone a car. That was President Hoover's formula. He wanted not one but
two radios and two cars.

GANDHI: If we had so many cars there would be very little room left for walking.

DE BOER: I agree. We have about 40,000 deaths by accidents every year and thrice as many
cases of people being maimed.

GANDHI: At any rate I am not going to live to see the day when all villages in India will
have radios.

DE BOER: Pandit Jawaharlal seems to think in terms of the economy of abundance.

GANDHI: I know. But what is abundance? Not the capacity to destroy millions of tons of
wheat as you do in America?

DE BOER: Yes, that's the nemesis of Capitalism. They do not destroy now, but they are being
paid for not producing wheat. People indulged in the pastime of throwing eggs at one another
because the prices of eggs had gone down.

GANDHI: That is what we do not want. If by abundance you mean everyone having plenty to
eat and drink and to clothe himself with, enough to keep his mind trained and educated, I should
be satisfied. But I should not like to pack more stuff in my belly than I can digest and more
things than I can ever usefully use. But neither do I want poverty, penury, misery, dirt and dust in
India.

DE BOER: But Pandit Jawaharlal says in his autobiography you worship Daridranarayana
and extra poverty for its own sake.

Gandhi said with a laugh:

I know.
 161

Andrew Freeman, New Delhi, 1946215

[Mr. Freeman, correspondent of New York Post, interviewed Gandhi in New Delhi on or after 23 October 1946. Mr.
Freeman had been attending spinning classes started by Gandhi in the Bhangi (scavengers) Colony.]

FREEMAN: Has the spinning-wheel a message for America? Can it serve as a counter weapon
to the atom bomb?

GANDHI: I do feel that it has message for the U. S. A. and the whole world. But it cannot be
until India has demonstrated to the world that it has made the spinning-wheel its own, which it
has not done today. The fault is not of the wheel. I have not the slightest doubt that the saving of
India and of the world lies in the wheel. If India becomes the slave of the machine, then, I say,
heaven save the world.

India has a far nobler mission, viz., to establish friendship and peace in the world. Peace cannot
be established through mere conferences. Peace is being broken, as we all see, even while
conferences are being held.

FREEMAN: It seems so tragic. India must lead the way and India is in turmoil. If any country
can really take up the wheel, it is India. Do you think it will?

GANDHI: It is doing so, but I confess the process is very slow. Pandit Nehru called Khadi the
“livery of our freedom.” It cannot be that so long as it is the consolation of cranks and paupers
only. There are many things that are not possible for man to accomplish. But everything is
possible for God. If there is no living power called God, the spinning-wheel has no place.

FREEMAN: Those who spin are not called cranks here.

GANDHI: No. I used that expression to anticipate what Americans would say. I allow myself to
be called by that name to protect myself. I was described by a friend as a ‘practical idealist.’

FREEMAN: As a fairly intelligent human being and an American I can only say that though
many Americans would call spinners cranks, there are not a few who are thinking hard.
Something has to be found that would save civilisation from destruction. Life must be simplified.

GANDHI: Human personality cannot be sustained in any other way. I stand by what is implied
in the phrase “Unto This Last.” That book216 marked the turning point in my life. We must do
even unto this last as we would have the world do by us. All must have equal opportunity. Given
the opportunity every human being has the same possibility for spiritual growth. That is what the
spinning-wheel symbolises.

215 Extracted from Pyarelal’s “The Spinning-wheel and the Atom Bomb” in Harijan, 17 November 1946; and
Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi – The Last Phase, Volume II, (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House), page 798.
216 John Ruskin, Unto This Last. Gandhi read the book, presented by H.S.L. Polak, on his way from
Johannesburg to Durban in 1904 and was greatly influenced by it. He purchased land near Durban and
established the Phoenix Settlement. He translated the book into Gujarati and published it.
FREEMAN: Would you like the Americans to take to the spinning-wheel?

GANDHI: Yes. But I do not know whether it will be taken up by anybody before it is well
established here. If, on the other hand, India adopts it for clothing itself, I won’t need to tell the
world. It will adopt it of itself. Today there is such an onslaught on India of Western machinery
that for India to withstand it successfully would be nothing short of a miracle. I must confess that
today everything seems to point to the contrary. Look at our internecine quarrels.

FREEMAN: But you have not given up hope?

GANDHI: I cannot, so long as I have faith in that living Power which is more with us than we
know. But let me ask you a counter-question. Has America with all its Mammon-worship
abolished unemployment, poverty, corruption, Tammany Hall?

FREEMAN: The answer is obvious.

GANDHI: Has England? Has it not still to grapple with the problems that baffle her? It is a very
curious commentary on the West that although it professes Christianity, there is no Christianity
or Christ in the West or there should have been no war. That is how I understand the message of
Jesus. There is much ignorance and superstition in India. But deep down in us is that faith in
God—the instinct for religion.

FREEMAN: All newspapermen and others have sensed that. But I must confess there are
moments when I feel it is hopeless. Look at the recent attack on Pandit Nehru in the tribal areas
from which I have just returned, and the happenings in East Bengal. You too must at times have
felt the hopelessness of it all. Would you say Islam has repudiated its teacher, as Christianity of
today has its Jesus?

GANDHI: I have said so openly. Where is Mohammed and his message which is peace? I said
recently at a public gathering that if Mohammed came to India today, he would disown many of
his so-called followers and own me as a true Muslim, as Jesus would own me as a true Christian.

FREEMAN: How can we bring men back to God or to the teaching of Jesus or that of
Mohammed?

GANDHI: I might give the answer that Jesus gave to one of his followers: “Do the will of my
Father who is in Heaven, not merely say Lord, Lord.”217 That holds true of you, me and
everybody. If we have faith in the living God, all will be well with us. I hope not to lose that faith
even to my dying day. In spite of my numerous failings and shortcomings of which I am but too
well aware, my faith in God is burning brighter every day. If it did not, I would take the same
prescription that I gave to women threatened with dishonour and with no prospect of help or
escape, viz., commit suicide.

FREEMAN: Have you thought of the charkha as a therapeutic agent?

217 St. Matthew, VII. 21

 163

GANDHI: Yes. I have read some literature on the subject sent to me by a Glasgow professor. A
retired Superintendent of a jail in Bengal too wrote to me describing the use of the spinning-
wheel for curing lunatics, particularly by virtue of the soothing effect of its rhythmic motion.

Pyarelal added in his book Mahatma Gandhi - The Last Phase:218

As occupational therapy for their psychic illness, the spinning wheel, said Gandhiji, could be
taken up by the people of the West with the greatest benefit. An American Press correspondent,
Andrew Freeman, who had been attending the spinning classes started by Gandhiji in the Bhangi
Colony at the time of the Cabinet Mission’s negotiations in 1946, once asked him: “Has the
spinning-wheel a message for America?” Can it serve as a counter-weapon to the atom bomb?”

“I do feel,” replied Gandhiji, that it has a message for… the whole world… The world is
spinning in the wrong direction. It must reverse itself and spin its own thread and yarn. It must
return to handicrafts produced at home and thereby repudiate the machine that spawned the
device by which mankind can destroy itself. Hand-spinning is the beginning of the economic
freedom, equality and peace. The saving of the entire world lies in the adoption of this little
device. Peace will not come from the big conferences. World peace has been broken even while
the conferences were going on. Peace must come from the people.” …

“I propose to interpret the Charkha to Americans as a ‘thinking machine,’” Gandhiji’s

interviewer finally remarked. “I found while I was attending my spinning class that if I was alone
with it, it made me think. If only Americans could get down to spin, they might be able to do
some thinking for which otherwise they get no time. It might make them forget the atom bomb.”

III. ENDS AND MEANS

Vincent Sheean, a veteran foreign correspondent, was disturbed after the Second World War that the materialistic
societies of the West were moving towards a collision. He could not understand why the war against fascism, which
he considered righteous, produced such results. A student of philosophy, he went to India to see how the philosophy
of India, especially of Gandhi, could help the West.

Arriving in India on 14 January 1948, during Gandhi’s last fast, he interviewed Gandhi on 27 and 28 January
1948. He told Gandhi that he wanted to make an extensive study of his system of thought and action. His questions,
based on Gandhi’s commentary on the Gita, concerned the relation between action and the fruits of action.

Vincent Sheean, 27/28 January 1948

218 Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi – The Last Phase, Volume II, pages 798-99.
[Mr. Sheean (1899-1975), a foreign correspondent from the early 1920s and author of several books, served in the
United States Air Force during the Second World War and was stationed in India for a short time. His thinking was
profoundly affected by the possible consequences of atomic fission. He was disturbed by the attitudes of
governments at the San Francisco Conference of 1945 on the organisation of the United Nations. He went to India in
January 1948 as a correspondent for Holiday magazine. Gandhi agreed, on the recommendation of Prime Minister
Nehru, to give him an interview. He interviewed Gandhi at Birla House on 27 and 28 January. He went to the prayer
meeting on 30 January, expecting to interview Gandhi again after the meeting, but Gandhi was assassinated a few
feet from where he was.]

Account by Pyarelal219

Gandhi's objection to the use of force was not that force could as well be used to support
unrighteous wars; it was fundamental.

GANDHI: I do not know what is intrinsically good. Hence I do not go by results. It is enough if
I take care of the means.

SHEEAN: For instance, as a nature-curist, he did not believe in the use of sulpha drugs.
Suppose he got typhoid. Should he abandon his belief and try to get cured by taking sulpha
drugs?

GANDHI: I do not know whether it is good for me or humanity to be cured by the use of
sulpha drugs; so I refuse to use sulpha drugs... If evil does seem sometimes to result from good,
the inference would be that the means employed were probably wrong.

Good action to produce good results must be supported by means that are pure.

SHEEAN: If those who believe in the idea of non-violence keep away from government,
government will continue to be carried on by the use of force. How is then the transformation of
the existing system of government to be brought about?

Gandhi admitted that ordinarily government was impossible without the use of force.

GANDHI: I have therefore said that a man who wants to be good and do good in all
circumstances must not hold power.

SHEEAN: Is all government to come to a standstill then?

GANDHI: No, he (the man of non-violence) can send those to the government who represent
his will. If he goes there himself, he exposes himself to the corrupting influence of power. But
my representative holds power of attorney only during my pleasure. If he falls a prey to
temptation, he can be recalled. I cannot recall myself. All this requires a high degree of
intelligence on the part of the electorate. There are about half a dozen constructive work

219 Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi-The Last Phase, Volume II (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1956), pages
677 and 763-5; CWMG, Volume 90, pages 510-12.
 165

organisations. I do not send the workers to the Parliament. I want them to keep the Parliament
under check by educating and guiding the voters.

SHEEAN: You mean to say that power always corrupts?

GANDHI: Yes.

Asked further whether this did not call for a very prolonged and high degree of discipline
which it would be too much to expect of common people, he answered, "No.” It was their inertia
that made people think so.

GANDHI: Too much is being made of the study of things that are in my view really of not
much consequence to humanity, to the neglect of things eternal. Take, for instance, the exact
distance of the sun from the earth or the question whether the earth is round. The discipline that
is necessary to discover the laws that govern life is no less important and yet we say that it is so
laborious that only a select few can attain it. For instance, we steal in so many ways - not to steal
in any shape or form needs some mental poise, contemplation. I have given my time not to
abstract studies but to the practice of things that matter.

To Sheean's question whether misuse of atomic energy might not endanger our planet itself
since the phenomenal universe is perishable, Gandhi answered that everything was possible
"including the dissolution of appearance... and the survivors, if any, will then say, `what a
wondrous spectacle.’” He very much doubted that the advent of the atomic era would basically
affect human problems.

GANDHI: They claim that one atom bomb changed the entire course of the war and brought
the end of war so much the nearer. And yet it is so far. Has it conquered the Japanese spirit? It
has not and it cannot. Has it crushed Germany as a nation? It has not and it cannot. To do that
would require resorting to Hitler's method, and to what purpose? In the end it will be Hitlerism
that will have triumphed.

The whole of the Gita was an argument in defence of a righteous war, Gandhi's visitor
argued. The last war was a "war in a righteous cause.” Yet violence was more rampant as a
result than it was ever before. Gandhi agreed so far as the result of the last war was concerned.
Even in India they had not been able to escape from its backlash.

GANDHI: See what India is doing. See what is happening in Kashmir. I cannot deny that it is
with my tacit consent. They would not lend ear to my counsel. Yet, if they were sick of it, I could
today point them a way. Again, see the exhibition that the United Nations Organisation is
making. Yet I have faith. If I live long enough... they will see the futility of it all and come round
to my way.

But he did not agree that the Gita was either in intention or in the sum total an argument in
defence of a righteous war. Though the argument of the Gita was presented in a setting of
physical warfare, the "righteous war" referred to in it was the eternal duel between right and
wrong that is going on within us. There was at least one authority that supported his
interpretation. The thesis of the Gita was neither violence nor non-violence but the gospel of
selfless action - the duty of performing right action by right means only, in a spirit of
detachment, leaving the fruits of action to the care of God.

Account by Vincent Sheean220

27 January 1948

I began by saying that I wanted to make a rather extensive study of his system of thought and
action…

"I have been reading your edition of the Gita," I said, "and my questions are based on that."

He smiled and exclaimed something ("Acha, Acha" I believe, conveying assent). I went on:

"I propose to begin with action and the fruits of action."…

"Let me get one thing clear", he said. "I have typhoid fever. Doctors are sent for and by
means of injections of sulpha drugs or something of the kind they save my life. This, however,
proves nothing. It might be that it would be more valuable to humanity for me to die."…

"Is that quite clear?" he asked, looking at me with his head up. "If it is not, I will repeat it."

This was the nearest thing to asperity - a very gentle kind of asperity - in the whole
conversation.

"No, sir," I said. "I think I understand it."…

"What I wish to ask is this: how can a righteous battle produce a catastrophic result?" I said.
"The battle is righteous in the terms of the Gita. The result is a disaster. How can this be?"

"Because of the means used," he said. "Means are not to be distinguished from the ends. If
violent means are used there will be a bad result."

"Is this true at all times and places?" I asked.

"I say so," he said with his curious lisp, and rather shyly, too, as if he had never gone quite so
far before (as indeed he had not). Then he produced a statement which was much bolder.

220 Vincent Sheean, Lead, Kindly Light (New York: Random House, 1949), pages 182-99. See
alsoVincent Sheean, “Last Days” in S. Radhakrishnan (ed.), Mahatma Gandhi: Essays and Reflections on
his Life and Work, presented to him on his Seventieth Birthday, October 2 nd, 1939 (Bombay: Jaico
Publishing House, 1956), pages 363-71.
 167

"As I read the Gita, even the first chapter, the battlefield of Kurukshetra is in the heart of
man. I must tell you that orthodox scholars have criticised my interpretation of the Gita as being
unduly influenced by the Sermon on the Mount."…

"There is one learned book in existence," he said, "which supports my interpretation of the
Gita. But even if there were no such book, and even if it could be proved that my interpretation
was wrong, I would still believe it."…

After a considerable amplification of the ideas of means and ends, action and the fruits of
action, I came to the specific case I had in mind all the time, which was our war against
Hitlerism. The instance was my own - he may have had some other instance in mind - but I had
avoided mentioning it before because I wanted to get the principles straight to begin with.

I told him that I was thinking of our war, which, in my view, had been a righteous battle.

"I knew some of the leaders on our side," I told him. He nodded his head slowly, accepting
by that both Roosevelt and Churchill as being righteous in intention. (I did not mention their
names; he knew.)

"How can such a truly righteous battle as our fight against the evil of Fascism produce the
result which now faces us?"

That was my question as my diary records it on the following day. (Even this may not be
quite accurate; the memory even from one day to the next can hardly be literal.)

With great sadness, leaning toward me and speaking almost in a whisper (so gentle was his
voice), he said that our ends may have been good but our means were bad, and that this was not
the way of truth. Then he made a few direct remarks which I remember verbatim (I can hear
them now).

"You cannot destroy a great nation like Germany," he said.

"I know it, sir," I replied. "It is madness to try."

"You cannot destroy the spirit of Japan."

"I know it, sir."

"You are heading straight into a third world war."

It was just here, I think, that I returned to my main subject. (The possibility of a third world
war was not included.)

"Those who govern us are obviously concerned with the fruits of action rather than with the
truth of action," I said. "How, then, are we to be well governed?"
 "You must give up the worship of Mammon," he said…

He proceeded to outline a theory of representative democracy in characteristic terms, using

the first person generically.

"I am ten million people," he said. "I send into government certain men to represent me.
They may be corrupted. If they are corrupted I will recall them. I cannot recall myself."…

"Have nothing to do with power," he said, again as a sort of aside from the main discussion.

"Do you mean that power corrupts?" I asked…

He leaned back on the cushion with a sigh and said: "Yes, I am afraid I do mean that power
corrupts." Then he sat up and resumed his discourse:

"I have five constructive institutions. In all of these five constructive institutions I have
constantly told the workers to have nothing to do with power. I do not send them to Parliament.
They are to educate and guide those who vote, so that they may do so well."

(The five constructive institutions to which he referred were undoubtedly the organisations he
had founded for village women, cottage industries, the All-India Spinners' Association, and the
like.)...

I then asked him, on impulse, how he could explain how quite different persons, such as
Bernard Shaw, for example, could get at the same disciplinary resolutions without religion. The
sentence was so phrased that "disciplinary resolutions" came at the end of it, and before I had
pronounced the words Mahatmaji caught me up with his sudden smile and the substitute word
"conclusions." I let that pass, although I had meant chiefly vegetarianism, abstinence from
stimulants, self-control in general, and not anything quite so large as "conclusions." I then
added: "Unless you say that Mr. Shaw is himself religious."

The Mahatma, still smiling almost playfully at the thought, said with his slow, careful
enunciation:

"I was just about to say that it would be difficult for anybody to say that Bernard Shaw had no
religion. In everything of his that I have read there has been a religious centre."

I think it was at this point that he said to me: "You would be astonished if you knew how few
books I have read." This was a sort of aside, almost in an undertone, and I answered in the same
way: "I don't see what difference the number makes if they were good ones."...

He himself spoke of the failure of the United Nations - which was one of the reasons that had
brought me to him - and I said: "I have hoped in the past year that perhaps you could be
persuaded to come to Lake Success and talk to the United Nations. Then they would be forced
to listen."
 169

He laughed; the idea seemed to him funny for a moment. He then said, more seriously:
"Perhaps, if I were spared for more years of service..." It sounded as if he did not regard this as
probable, and we dropped the subject.

I then asked him why he was certain when the "inner voice" spoke to him. Others have inner
voices and are not sure.

He answered in terms of the formless God: God is the spirit within, both law and law-giver.

"At Lausanne in Switzerland," he said (I suppose this was in 1931 when he visited Romain
Rolland on his way home from the Round Table Conference), "I said that I had hitherto thought
God was Truth, whereas now I was inclined to say that Truth was God."

He proceeded to affirm again that non-violence was the "final flower of Truth," and that as
Truth was within and above (i.e., immanent and transcendent) so by non-violence could the soul
perceive its law. Taking as an example his last fast,221 he told me that every reason was against
it, but the law which was above all reason (which spoke to him in the "inner voice") commanded
it against reason. When this happened, he obeyed, for, against that living law within, nothing
could stand.

I then asked precisely this (I remember it well): "Does the certainty precede the
renunciation?" And he replied precisely this: "No, the renunciation precedes the certainty." The
words were said with vivacity, as if I had misunderstood something vital - as indeed I apparently
had, for he immediately began to talk to me about renunciation.

"Renunciation is itself the law of life," he said. "When we speak of action undertaken without
regard for the fruits of action we mean renunciation. That is renunciation of fruits. I eat to live,
to serve, and also, if it so happens, to enjoy, but I do not eat for the sake of enjoyment."

There was a phrase here which I distinctly remember but cannot find in any of the assorted
sets of notes which were taken. He was speaking of his last fast and of its certainty both in
beginning and end: he used the phrase - glancing at me through his spectacles with a look of the
most earnest wisdom - "without committing suicide." In his slow, half-whispered utterance the
accent of abhorrence which he gave to the idea of suicide was deep and great.

"I find the sum of wisdom on this subject in the Isha Upanishad," he said, "Do you know it?"

"No, sir," I said, "but I will get an English translation tomorrow."…

"If you cannot find it let me know," he said, "and I shall find it for you. When I went to
Travancore I spoke to Christians, large numbers of Christians. I looked for authority with which
to convince them, and what I found was the Isha Upanishad. It is, you know, the shortest of the
Upanishads. Is there a copy of the Isha...?"

221 Gandhi fasted 13 to 18 January 1948 because of riots between Hindus and Muslims in Delhi and
tensions between India and Pakistan.
 He looked into the room and somebody did something. While he continued to talk about
renunciation a small book in Sanskrit was thrust into his hands. He swooped upon it with a
curiously agile movement and held it up before his spectacled eyes with an appearance of both
gratitude and reverence which cannot be conveyed in words.

"It is not in English," he said, "so it will not do. But I shall tell you what the first shloka says.
It says: The whole world is the garment of the Lord. Renounce it, then, and receive it back as the
gift of God."

He paused and seemed to consider.

"There is another line which may puzzle you. It says that thereafter you are not to covet.
You may inquire how you could covet, having renounced and received back again as God's gift.
This is added because even those who have renounced sometimes covet. I find in this shloka the
greatest truth of renunciation. There is no other way. Since I found it in Travancore I have been
using it regularly at my evening prayer meeting, as regularly as the Gita."…

There were many small asides, sometimes only of a word or two, which I have not put into the
foregoing account of the conversation because I do not know quite where they came and because
they are examples of the kind of communication to which I have referred, a very special kind
indeed. He had made some mention of the lower creation, which, as I knew, he took to be chiefly
symbolised in the cow. He leaned over and looked at me very straight through his glasses.

"You know," he said, "that I am a cow-lover?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

Now, by his question, so tentative and yet so piercing, he was actually inquiring whether I
had the usual Western attitude of derision toward the Hindu cult of the cow… The cow was not
mentioned again.

In the part of the talk concerning maya, the world as illusion, he puckered his brow at me and
said: "Things are not what they seem. That's all it means. There's a line of poetry, I remember -
`Things are not what they seem.' It's your own poetry. Is it Whittier?"

The line is actually from Longfellow's "Psalm of Life…

In another moment broken off from the main current of the talk he leaned toward me to
explain his dietary system.

"I eat only innocent food," he said gently.

And then looking straight into my face, very close, he added in the merest thread of voice, a
sort of whisper not to be forgotten: "That is, if one may impute innocence."
 171

And once when he was talking of the self, wishing to differentiate it from the body, he said:
"Not the body, of course - the body is a prison. Only a prison."…

What overwhelmed me most, of course, was the perfectly clear intimation that he, as guru,
had accepted me as chela - not completely and permanently in the Hindu sense, by which the
guru makes a sort of life compact with the student, but in so far as the immense distances
between us would permit. My sense of astonished gratitude must have escaped me at some point
or other, because I remember vividly how he leaned toward me and gave a serious warning.
"You must not consider me to be perfect," he said in a worried voice. "I have not achieved
perfection."

"Yes, sir, but your struggle has been in that direction," I said.

There was a light, faint sigh and he said: "Yes, that has been my struggle."…

28 January 1948

… I had found - or thought I had found - in the milk vow the one example of a conflict
between truth and ahimsa in Gandhi's life and thought. To eat animal food, was, he explicitly
decided long ago, himsa or violence, although it was not until 1912 that he made the vow which
extended such himsa to the drinking of milk. (The drinking of milk is permitted even to the most
rigid vegetarians in India). How could the drinking of goat's milk be reconciled, in truth, with
his other concepts of himsa and ahimsa as applied to food?

I put it to him as an example of conflict, but he would not allow the word.

"Conflict is too strong," he said. "It isn't conflict."

"It worried you."

"Yes, it worries me. I have never been reconciled to it. But it is because of the vow rather
than because of ahimsa."

Then he told me the story of the vow, describing the very scene in all its details. He and his
friend Kallenbach, the South African German, were eating rice from the same bowl and drinking
milk with it. They had often discussed the question before: Kallenbach had followed Gandhi in
all his dietary experiments and theories, and perhaps even outdone his master at times. On this
day in 1912 Kallenbach, after taking a drink of milk, said to Gandhi: "If you will give it up I will
do so too." Gandhi was moved by one of those inner necessities which governed his whole life to
take the vow then and there. The vow was not to drink the milk of the cow or the buffalo
again.222

222 Gandhi wrote in his autobiography (Chapter 107) that while in South Africa, he happened to come across some
literature from Calcutta, describing the tortures to which cows and buffaloes were subjected by their keepers. During
a discussion about milk with Hermann Kallenbach at the Tolstoy Farm in 1912, both of them pledged to abjure milk.
 It was kept. But during his first great illness… his wife found the loophole: goat's milk was
not forbidden by the vow. Gandhi did not want to drink even goat's milk, but she stood at the
foot of the bed and looked at him pleadingly.

"I see her before me now," he said, with his hand outstretched in the air as if he really did see
her. "She for whom I did it is gone, while I..."223

He was in a subdued and reminiscent mood, perhaps a little tired and perhaps a little
melancholy. He talked a good deal about his wife...

At another moment, when he was declaring that for him nothing could conflict with or
interfere with the truth, he remembered an episode of some years before, when a Frenchman had
come to stay at his ashram.

"What was the name of the Frenchman?"

Somebody among those seated on the floor around us (more numerous today) pronounced the
name of Sartre - which, of course, to me meant Jean-Paul Sartre. It was apparently another
Sartre.

You've never heard of him?" Gandhi asked. "Well, of course not. But he was very
celebrated out here. He ran a magazine; he was a friend of Asia. We afterward heard that his
life was not at all straight..."

Here the Mahatma's face contracted in a grimace of what I can only describe as woe; it gave
him suffering to contemplate the kind of error to which he was now so delicately referring.

"...we learned that he had divorced his wife. His life was not at all straight."

He recovered himself and went on: "However, he was a friend of Asia, so we took him to the
ashram and he spent a couple of weeks with us. When he went away he wrote some articles in
which he quoted me as having said that I would sacrifice even my country to the truth. I did
indeed say so, but he omitted to add that I also said that the contingency could not arise."…

On this second day Mr. Gandhi began, before I could ask a question, by setting me straight
on one point.

"When I said yesterday that means and ends were convertible and indistinguishable," he said,
"of course I did not mean temporarily. Naturally the means precede the ends in the sense of
time. They are otherwise of the same nature."…

At the very end of this conversation I wanted to return to the milk vow for one more question,
but the Mahatma said - very gently, but looking at his watch just the same - "Now, that'll do for
tomorrow, won't it?"

223 Kasturba Gandhi was in prison with Gandhi from 1942 and passed away on 22 February 1944.
 173

[Mr. Sheean went to Birla House at prayer time on 30 January for the third interview. Gandhi
was assassinated a few feet from where he was waiting.]

III. EQUALITY OF RELIGIONS

Many of the Americans who met Gandhi were Christians who regarded Christianity as superior to other religions,
and considered it their duty to covert others. As Gandhi had acknowledged his admiration for the Sermon on the
Mount, they were anxious to enquire why Gandhi did not accept Christianity.

The following interviews, however, are by more liberal and sophisticated Christians who did not try to persuade
him to become a Christian, but wished to understand his convictions. Gandhi patiently explained his position to
them. For instance he told Dr. Crane:

“For a time I struggled with the question, ‘which was the true religion out of those I know?’ But
ultimately I came to the deliberate conviction that there was no such thing as only one true religion, every
other being false. There is no religion that is absolutely perfect. All are equally imperfect or more or less
perfect, hence the conclusion that Christianity is as good and true as my own religion. But so also about
Islam or Zoroastrianism or Judaism.

“I therefore do not take as literally true the text that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. God cannot
be the exclusive father and I cannot ascribe exclusive divinity to Jesus. He is as divine as Krishna or Rama
or Mahomed or Zoroaster. Similarly I do not regard every word of the Bible as the inspired word of God
even as I do not regard every word of the Vedas or the Koran as inspired. The sum total of each of these
books is certainly inspired, but I miss that inspiration in many of the things taken individually. The Bible is
as much a book of religion with me as the Gita and the Koran.

“Therefore I am not interested in weaning you from Christianity and making you a Hindu, and I would
not relish your designs upon me, if you had any, to convert me to Christianity!”

Rufus Jones, 1 December 1926224

[Rufus Matthew Jones (1863-1948), professor of religion at Haverford College, was perhaps the best known Quaker
historian and philosopher of his time. He was Chairman of the American Friends Service Committee and one of the
founders of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an association of American pacifists. He held that spiritual life should
be combined with political action against war and for peace.

In 1926, the 40th anniversary of YMCA in China, he gave a series of lectures in China at the request of the YMCA.
He then travelled to Japan and India.

On his voyage across the Pacific, Jones reflected, on 25 June 1926, on what he hoped he would find in Asia:

“. . . There should emerge a unique type of Christianity for China, for Japan, for India, interpreted through their
highest ideals and aspirations, absorbing into itself all that is truest and best, all that is most human and divine
in their native religions, all that has been contributed by their extraordinary spiritual leaders of past ages. Christ
is not jealous of rivalry. He is concerned only for truth and life. The spirit of Christ not only leads into all truth

224 Haverford College, Haverford, PA, USA, “Rufus Jones diary account of meeting with Gandhi, 1
December 1926, Collection 1130, Box 63.” Reproduced with permission from Haverford College.
 but gathers in all that is truth in the experience of the human race.”225

In Calcutta, Delhi, Benares, and Allahabad, Jones had meetings with Indian Christians and missionaries, and
discussed Quakerism and Hinduism. But the highpoint of his trip to India, and the discussions that filled his journal,
were of his meeting with Gandhi. He wrote to Gandhi requesting a meeting, “I am not coming as a tourist or out of
curiosity. I am coming as a friend and as one who will be greatly helped by a contact with you at this crucial time
when our main business is building a real spiritual civilisation.” Gandhi responded with an open invitation: “I shall
be pleased to meet you whenever you come. However busy I may be, I know that I am by no means so much rushed
as people in America are. I have therefore always time to meet friends like you.”]

Gandhi and Rufus Jones met on 1 December 1926 at Gandhi’s ashram at Sabarmati. Jones began
his diary describing the ashram and the appearance of Gandhi.

“When the time came for the visit we went to the simple hut where the Mahatma lives and
works. A large number of native guests from the other parts of India were having an
interview to discuss the problems of their sections with their chief. They all withdrew as we
came in and we had our simple introduction…

“Gandhi was sitting on a small mattress with a pillow at his back. He does all his work sitting
on the floor this way with a little table in front of him. He wore a simple one piece cotton
cloth draped over his body but much of the body showed through and revealed his tiny, thin
physical structure in which the wonderful spirit has its habitation. His feet were in sight and
he played with his toes with his pencil, somewhat as one plays with a watch-chain as he
talks. He went on for a few minutes talking with his secretary and asked us to excuse him
while he finished some business which had to be attended to.

“It gave me a good chance to study his face and head. His hair is closely cut and is turning
iron gray. He has lost his lower front teeth and the gap is a good deal in evidence. The face is
full of light and his smile which comes often is very fine and full of charm and gentleness. In
fact his face well fits his character and his life history, the face is a faithful record of his life
and spirit. There is tremendous depth to it and it reveals spiritual power, without showing
lines of suffering and tragedy. He has consumed his smoke and translated his struggles into
quiet strength of character and inward depth. A child would instantly feel at home with him
and would run to him with perfect trust and confidence. He made us feel at ease at once
when he turned and began to welcome our visit.”

Mr. Jones then wrote down a summary of the interview with Gandhi:

“I asked him first about his friendship with John Haynes Holmes who had introduced me to
him. He said we know each other very well but we have never met. I was much surprised. I
supposed Dr. Holmes had been here and had seen him.
“I asked him whether after all his experiences of the difficulties of life and the complications
of society he still felt that the way of love and gentleness would work. Yes, he said, it works

225 David M. McFadden, “The ‘Gandhi Diary’ of Rufus Jones” in G. Simon Harak (ed.) Nonviolence for
the Third Millennium: Its Legacy and Future (Macon, Georgia, USA: Mercer University Press, 2000).
 175

better than anything else will. It has become the deepest faith of my being. It is built all
through me - and he waved his hand gracefully over his little body - and nothing now can
ever happen that will destroy my faith in that principle. Speaking of opposition and attacks he
said that he learned early in his life to carry on his work without any hate or bitterness and lie
above the spirit of hate and hardness.

“I asked how much he owed his way of life to the influence of Christ and especially to the
crucifixion. He replied very simply that so far as he was positively conscious there was very
little direct Christian influence, but that the indirect and unconscious influence might well be
an important factor. He went on then to relate his contacts with Christianity. He began with a
hostile attitude toward it, for he supposed that to be a Christian meant to drink whiskey, to
smoke a big black cigar and eat much beef. At the time he went to England he still held these
crude views of Christianity. He made friends who were Christians and slowly discovered
some of the deeper aspects of the Christian life.

“A friend gave him a Bible to read and he began at Genesis, reading straight on but much
confused about what it all meant, until he got into Leviticus where he revolted and gave up
his reading, quite disillusioned in regard to the Bible. It was only in 1893 that he came upon
the New Testament and learned to love the Sermon on the Mount and the story of the cross.
His reading of the New Testament has been frequent ever since and he reads it aloud and
interprets it every Saturday to the students of Ahmedabad University226 which is his
creation…

“I asked Gandhi if he knew much about Quakerism and he said that he knew little about it
except what he got from his intimate friend Coates who was a Quaker.227 He has apparently
read almost nothing of our Quaker books and seemed to know little of George Fox or John
Woolman228. I told him about our child feeding in Germany after the war and he was
interested in the expression of love and good will, but he asked no questions and did not
show much keenness of interest in it.

“I asked him if he had read the ‘Little Flowers of St. Francis’ and he said he had not. I
reminded him that in my first letter to him I had told the story of Brother Giles and St. Louis
and he smiled beautifully and said that he remembered the story. He said that Hindu religion
and literature was quite full of the principle of love and sacrifice and that his own faith in
love as a way of life was born out of native sources rather than foreign sources, though he
admitted the unconscious influences might have been much greater than he knew.

“He told me that a friend of mine had come to see him the day before and was still there,
someone named Harrison. He sent out for him and I found that it was Tom Harrison who was
spending two days in the brotherhood and speaking in the university. Tom says that Gandhi

226 Gujarat Vidyapith

227 Gandhi met Michael Coates, a Quaker, at a Christian prayer meeting soon after arriving in Pretoria in
1893. He gave a number of books on Christianity to Gandhi to study and persisted in trying to convert
Gandhi to Christianity. M.K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Part II, Chapter XI.
228 George Fox (1624-1691) was the founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain.
John Woolman (1720-1772) was an American Quaker and an opponent of slavery. The Journal of John
Woolman is a highly respected spiritual autobiography.
 is lovely with little children who sit around him when he reads the lessons in the morning
and evening from the Bhagavad-Gita or other sacred books (sometimes the Bible). He looks
at them and smiles and tells them in simpler language what he has read and they smile at him
and look very happy and gay.

“Gandhi’s supreme interest is the reformation of India, the building of the new India. His
ideals are all for practical ends. I felt throughout our conversation that he was profoundly
Hindu. His interests are not very keen beyond this boundary line. His religion is saturated
with Hindu colour and he clings even to the outgrown superstition of his racial religion. The
Gita is his great sacred book…

“Gandhi’s simplicity is as natural as everything else about his life. There is no pose in his
nature. He is thoroughly unspoiled and the most satisfactory thing about my visit was the
conviction I brought away that here was a man who had attracted the attention of the whole
world, a man who had controlled the thoughts of millions and influenced the destiny of an
empire and who yet was still sincere and simple and unspoiled. It is the last test of greatness
and nobility of soul. I was sorry to discover that Gandhi lacked the wider universal interests
which are obviously lacking in him. He is first, last and always Hindu. He has very little of
that universal mystical experience which is the ground and basis of a really universal
spiritual religion. He is not quite the prophet type. In that respect he seems to me a lower
type than St. Francis. In his own sphere however he is an extraordinarily great man and a
beautiful character - a lover of men and an unselfish spirit. It is fine to have seen him just
after the Taj Mahal. They are the greatest sights to see in India!

“Gandhi discussed at considerable length with me his proposed visit to China next summer
and asked me in detail about my visit, my lectures and my impressions of China. He was
specially keen to know about interpreters and the necessity of translation. I spent
considerable time telling him the general situation and the state of religion in China. He
seemed greatly interested in the prospect of a visit to China and he will go if the way opens
for his journey.229 The idea of his visit and service originated at our Taishan Retreat and I
was largely responsible for it. I believe his visit will be very effective if it occurs. The
oriental mind will understand his message and will respond to it more easily and naturally
than to a Westerner’s message.”

This visit to Gandhi had a lasting effect on the thinking of Rufus Jones. In 1928, in an address
before the Five Years Meeting of Friends, Jones recalled that he had asked Gandhi, “After all
you have suffered, after all you have been through, do you believe that love will work?” And
Gandhi answered, “I don’t believe anything else in the universe as much as I believe that…
nothing in the world can ever take that faith in love out of me.” Jones added: “We have got to
learn to love that way - Love in the concrete.”230

At that time, Christian missionaries were coming under pressure from the rise of nationalism in India, China and
other countries. The people resented control of Christians by the foreign missions and the disparaging of their
religions. Rufus Jones wrote a paper for a conference of the International Missionary Council in Jerusalem in 1928
calling on the missionaries to encourage the deepening of spiritual directions in the faiths of the people rather than

229 The visit to China did not take place.

230 Rufus M. Jones, “The Path of the Peacemakers,” The Friend, December, 1928, quoted by McFadden.
 177

trying to convert them. After the Conference John R. Mott, with the support of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., set up a
Layman’s Commission on Christian Missions consisting of leaders from several Christian denominations. The
Commission toured India, Burma, China and Japan, meeting with missionaries and local Church leaders. Rufus
Jones was requested to write the report of the Commission.

The report, Rethinking Missions, “called for greater sensitivity of missions to the culture, religion, and history of the
countries in which they served, and a shift into educational, medical, and agricultural work as the needs of the local
people dictated. All decisions over church government and finances, and development of religious dimensions of
missions should be given over as quickly as possible to local people and indigenous communities. It was, in short, a
call for disconnecting missionary work from imperialism and colonialism, and the embracing of non-Christian
religious and cultural traditions of Asia. It would take decades, but the new direction of American Protestant
missions in Asia was clearly marked, and bore the imprint of not only Rufus Jones but also of the man he had met
for only a day years before, Mohandas K. Gandhi.”231

In an article he contributed to a volume of reflections on Gandhi on his 70th birthday in 1939232,

Dr. Jones said: “He (Gandhi) has had a profound influence on my own philosophy of life and on
my actual way of life…” He wrote:

“Francis of Assisi has been one of my supreme heroes since I began the study of his life in
1905, and Gandhi always seemed to me to be more like Francis than anybody else whom I
have ever known. I was very much surprised at the time of my visit in 1926 to discover how
little acquaintance Gandhi had at that time with the ‘poor little man’ of Assisi. I sat by him
and told him a number of stories from The Little Flowers of St. Francis… Brother Giles’s
experience of reading hearts without the need of words was very much like mine, as I sat
there with a modern saint, sitting on the floor…

“Gandhi told me he owed a debt of gratitude to a Quaker, Michael Coates, who in the early
days of the former’s life in South Africa was an intimate friend and the person who
introduced him to the Sermon on the Mount and brought him into a sympathetic
understanding of Christ’s spirit and way of life and gospel of heroic love…”

Nellie Lee Holt, December 1926

[E.C. Carter, a YMCA official who had worked in India, wrote to Gandhi on 23 June 1946 that Miss Nellie Lee Holt
of Stephen's College, Columbia, Missouri, would be visiting India in December or January "with the primary object
of spending two or three weeks in sitting at your feet." She and the President of the College, Mr. Wood, believed
that "you stand out as one whose vision and ideals if transplanted to Missouri would help in the enrichment and
fulfilment of life."233 Miss Holt and her mother stayed in the ashram at Wardha for several days.234 Gandhi met
them after they had breakfast with Seth Jamnalal Bajaj, a mill owner and disciple of Gandhi.]

231 From the article by David M. McFadden.

232 S. Radhakrishnan (ed.), Mahatma Gandhi: Essays and Reflections on his Life and Work, presented to
him on his Seventieth Birthday, October 2nd, 1939 (Bombay: Jaico Publishing House, 1956), pages 124-
129.
233 Document SN 10774 at Gandhi archives at Sabarmati
234 Gandhi wrote to Miraben on 11 December 1926: “The American friends, mother and daughter, are still
here… The daughter is a teacher in an important school. They are leaving tomorrow.” CWMG, Volume 32,
page 420.
 Report in the New York Times235

"Ah, ladies, be careful what you eat here. I don't wish for you to go hungry, but I should hate
for you to have indigestion." He chuckled as a baby does when it has been tickled. "Come with
me for a walk in the meadow."

Like old friends at a reunion, Gandhi, the ashramites and their visitors walked along the road
that cut across the field…

"The sweet smell of dust, it fills my heart with joy." Mahatma Gandhi breathed deeply in
ecstasy. "But, think of it, American contractors are here wanting to take it away. They want to
macadamise our roads and connect our seven thousand villages. They hope to sell their
automobiles as fast as they can produce them. Suppose they do. Then there will be no sweet
smell of dust. And will our people be happier because distance has been eliminated?… No!" He
looked at us with sadness in his dark eyes.

"They will have a chance to become acquainted," I offered.

"Was Europe happier because she eliminated distance with her airplanes? She dropped bombs
from them. There is more to life than increasing speed.”

We were soon well into the meadow…. The tough stems of withered grass whipped our legs
and pulled threads from my silk hose. I untangled a leaf clinging to a shaggy thread.

“Nature is too sturdy for the thin threads of your vanity,” Gandhi said, teasingly. He stopped
short. He had stepped on a burr. His foot was bleeding. I offered him my handkerchief.

“No, no; it doesn’t matter. I pay no attention to pain. Perhaps, though, I had better put on my
sandals.” We all tried to help him, but he thrust us away. “I can do this. These are my new
sandals which a friend gave me. They are made of very soft leather. You see, I seldom wear
leather sandals, because I can never be sure that they have been made from the hide of a cow that
has died a natural death. These have been. It would be repulsive to me if I thought that I walked
on the skin of a beautiful animal that had been slaughtered to flatter my vanity. The East has long
held to the sanctity of all life. Jesus did not teach that, but I am sure he believed it.”…

We had been talking about the meditation hour. I asked Gandhi if meditation could be taught.

"It is a question of method," he replied. "In things of the spirit there is only one method of
teaching. And that is something the teachers of all religions have too often forgotten. They have
chosen to deal with numbers and in ideas. They can really teach only by example."

235 Nellie Lee Holt, “With Mahatma Gandhi in his Retreat” in New York Times Magazine, 11 March 1928.
An interview with Miss Holt by Mahadev Desai was published in Young India, 23 December 1926, but her
interview with Gandhi was not published in that paper and is not available in CWMG.
 179

"What is the heart of Christianity?" I asked this kindly critic.

"Uttermost sacrifice, the triumph of the spirit over the flesh. The only method that is valid in
the teaching of such a lesson is the pupils' unperceived observation of their teachers."

"But great teachers are rare. What is their first quality?"

"It is rare…'Sell all and follow me!' To my mind, the statement is literal. Teachers of
Christianity are judged, as all men are, by their faults."…

In the evening Mr. Gandhi walked leisurely with his friends.. When we returned, Mr. Gandhi
asked me to come to his room to wait for the evening meditation…

His upper room was too large for the light of one small lantern at the side of his low desk. He
sat behind it on his mattress. Papers and clippings were scattered everywhere. Under the edge of
the desk a green napkin was folded around sheets of accounting paper. He saw me looking at it
and said, "That is my safe." At the head of the mattress was another napkin folded over pieces of
khaddar. "That is my trunk," he added smiling…

"What does religion mean to you?" he asked.

"What my experience has taught me," I said.

"You may be correct. Who knows?" he rejoined. "Each man, according to his own right,
manifests the truth. Yet no one manifests the truth completely, hence no one but an egoist would
say, 'I have the truth.' No one but an egoist would so flatter or deceive himself. One religion suits
you. Another suits me. They have each arisen from the searching of persons of similar
temperaments after the truth. Neither is exactly right. But if you follow yours you will be
satisfied in so far as you are capable, and I in so far as I am capable. My child, our ultimate goals
are the same. Our paths are forever different."

Thus a sage of the East taught a young woman of the West.

The Reverend Dr. Henry Hitt Crane, 25 February 1937236

[Dr. Crane (1890-1977), a clergyman from America, had given up active service in the midst of World War I in
disgust for its violence.

The Bentley Historical Library of University of Michigan, where his papers are deposited, provides the following
biographical information about Dr. Crane:

236 Mahadev Desai's "Weekly Letter" in Harijan, 6 March 1937; CWMG, Volume 64, pages 397-402. Sermon by
Dr. Crane on “My Hour with Mahatma Gandhi” in papers of Henry Hitt Crane, with permission from Bentley
Historical Library, University of Michigan.
 “... Coming from five generations of Methodist ministers, Henry Hitt Crane early on decided to follow in
this family tradition…

“Crane's first pastorate in Gorham, Maine was interrupted by the First World War. In 1917, he took a leave
from his church to serve with the Y.M.C.A. in front line duty. His exposure here to the brutalities of war
transformed Crane into a pacifist, a position to which he would adhere for the remainder of his life…

“He was both a gifted and prolific speaker, a writer of some note, and a champion of liberal causes. In the
tradition of many nineteenth-century pastors, Crane used his pulpit to speak out on the issues of the day.
Most especially, he espoused the cause of peace, supporting those who would be conscientious objectors
during World War II and speaking out against the confrontational policies of the Cold War. He was a
committed pacifist whose views during the 1950s and 1960s brought him much public attention and
notoriety. Crane never backed down in his beliefs despite being listed as a suspected subversive by the
House Un-American Activities Committee. Crane was also involved in other liberal causes. A staunch
opponent of bigotry, Crane often spoke out against anti-Semitism and race discrimination.” 237

During a trip around the world, Dr. Crane interviewed Gandhi in Sevagram. After he returned to the United States,
he reported on the interview in a sermon “My Hour with Mahatma Gandhi.” He said:

“For two decades at least I have cherished the ambition of meeting him (Mahatma Gandhi). Like
most persons seriously interested in discovering the secrets of spiritual power, I craved the opportunity of
coming into intimate contact with this “Strange Little Brown Man’238 who, without resort to physical
means, had wielded a more potent command over a larger number of human beings than any living
person… To meet him personally, to talk with him frankly, freely, to see for myself what he was like, to
catch something at least of the contagion of his influence – such an experience, I felt, would be more
rewarding than almost anything I could think of.

“At long last my ambition was realised. I did meet the Mahatma, and had an unforgettable
interview with him.”

The report of the interview by Mahadev Desai in Harijan is reproduced here with additions from Dr. Crane’s
sermon in italics.]

After thanking Mahatma Gandhi for the privilege of the interview, I tried as simply as I could to
state the nature of my mission, which was, briefly: (1) to meet him personally, and capture, if I
could, the contagion of his spirit; (2) to clarify my confusion concerning his attitude toward
Christianity by securing an authentic statement of his position; and (3) to ask him some specific
questions to which I was eager to have his answers, provided he was willing to give them.

Without the slightest hesitation he assured me of his willingness to speak freely on any matter I
might raise.

GANDHI: I shall certainly give you my reaction to Christianity. Even when I was eighteen I
came in touch with good Christians in London. Before that I had come in touch with what I used
then to call "beef and beer-bottle Christianity," for these were regarded as the indispensable
criteria of a man becoming a Christian, with also a third thing, namely, adoption of a European
style of dress. Those Christians were parodying St. Paul's teaching - "Call thou nothing

237 From: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhlead/umich-bhl-85164?rgn=main;view=text, accessed on 29 January 2014.

238 The title of a book by Bishop Frederick B. Fisher

 181

unclean." I went to London, therefore, with that prejudice against Christianity. I came across
good Christians there who placed the Bible in my hands.

One lovely English lady gave me a Bible which I read very carefully, and have been reading ever
since, until now I feel I am fairly familiar with its teachings. You see, I have the Bible close at
hand almost always. But I have also the Koran; and here are two commentaries I have recently
acquired – for one needs commentaries on the Koran quite as much as on the Bible, I think. And
moreover, I have my Hindu books, the Vedas – here, see? I read them all, constantly.

Then I met numerous Christians in South Africa, and I have since grown to this belief that
Christianity is as good and as true a religion as my own. For a time I struggled with the question,
"which was the true religion out of those I know?" But ultimately I came to the deliberate
conviction that there was no such thing as only one true religion, every other being false. There
is no religion that is absolutely perfect. All are equally imperfect or more or less perfect, hence
the conclusion that Christianity is as good and true as my own religion. But so also about Islam
or Zoroastrianism or Judaism.

I therefore do not take as literally true the text that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God.
God cannot be the exclusive father and I cannot ascribe exclusive divinity to Jesus. He is as
divine as Krishna or Rama or Mahomed or Zoroaster. Similarly I do not regard every word of
the Bible as the inspired word of God even as I do not regard every word of the Vedas or the
Koran as inspired. The sum total of each of these books is certainly inspired, but I miss that
inspiration in many of the things taken individually. The Bible is as much a book of religion
with me as the Gita and the Koran.

Therefore I am not interested in weaning you from Christianity and making you a Hindu, and
I would not relish your designs upon me, if you had any, to convert me to Christianity! I would
also dispute your claim that Christianity is the only true religion. It is also a true religion, a
noble religion, and along with other religions it has contributed to raise the moral height of
mankind. But it has yet to make a greater contribution. After all what are 2,000 years in the life
of a religion? Just now Christianity comes to yearning mankind in a tainted form. Fancy
Bishops supporting slaughter in the name of Christianity.

DR. CRANE: But, when you say that all religions are true, what do you do when there are
conflicting counsels?

GANDHI: I have no difficulty in hitting upon the truth, because I go by certain fundamental
maxims. That which is common to all religions I take to be the first principle of judgment. Truth
is superior to everything and I reject what conflicts with it. Similarly that which is in conflict
with non-violence should be rejected. And on matters which can be reasoned out, that which
conflicts with reason must also be rejected.

DR. CRANE: In matters which can be reasoned out?

GANDHI: Yes, there are subjects where Reason cannot take us far and we have to accept
things on faith. Faith then does not contradict Reason but transcends it. Faith is a kind of sixth
sense which works in cases which are without the purview of Reason. Well then, given these
three criteria, I can have no difficulty in examining all claims made on behalf of religion. Thus
to believe that Jesus is the only begotten son of God is to me against Reason, for God can't marry
and beget children. The word "son" there can only be used in a figurative sense. In that sense
everyone who stands in the position of Jesus is a begotten son of God. If a man is spiritually
miles ahead of us we may say that he is in a special sense the son of God, though we are all
children of God. We repudiate the relationship in our lives, whereas his life is a witness to that
relationship.

DR. CRANE: Then you will recognise degrees of divinity. Would you not say that Jesus
was the most divine?

GANDHI: No, for the simple reason that we have no data. Historically we have more data
about Mahomed than anyone else because he was more recent in time. For Jesus there are less
data and still less for Buddha, Rama and Krishna; and when we know so little about them, is it
not preposterous to say that one of them was more divine than another? In fact even if there
were a great deal of data available, no judge should shoulder the burden of sifting all the
evidence, if only for the reason that it requires a highly spiritual person to gauge the degree of
divinity of the subjects he examines. To say that Jesus was 99 percent divine, and Mahomed 50
percent, and Krishna 10 percent, is to arrogate to oneself a function which really does not belong
to man.

DR. CRANE: But, let us take a debatable point. Supposing I was debating between whether
violence is justified or not. Mahomedanism would say one thing, Christianity another.

But suppose we take as a specific instance of contradictory teachings as, for example, we might
find in the Bible and the Koran with reference to the matter of war. Does not Jesus teach non-
violence? And does not Mahomed prescribe the use of the sword in certain circumstances such
as a ‘holy war’?

GANDHI: Then I must decide with the help of the tests I have suggested.

DR. CRANE: But does not Mahomed prescribe the use of the sword in certain
circumstances?

GANDHI: I suppose most Muslims will agree. But I read religion in a different way. Khan
Saheb Abdul Ghaffar Khan derives his belief in non-violence from the Koran, and the Bishop of
London derives his belief in violence from the Bible. I derive my belief in non-violence from the
Gita, whereas there are others who read violence in it. But if the worst came to the worst and if I
came to the conclusion that the Koran teaches violence, I would still reject violence, but I would
not therefore say that the Bible is superior to the Koran or that Mahomed is inferior to Jesus. It
is not my function to judge Mahomed and Jesus. It is enough that my non-violence is
independent of the sanction of scriptures. But the fact remains that religious books have a hold
upon mankind which other books have not. They have made a greater impression on me than
Mark Twain or, to take a more appropriate instance, Emerson. Emerson was a thinker. Jesus
 183

and Mahomed were through and through men of action in a sense Emerson would never be.
Their power was derived from their faith in God.

DR. CRANE: I will take a concrete instance now to show what I mean. I was terribly
shocked on Monday. I counted 37 cows slain on the streets by Muslims in the name of religion,
and in offence to the Hindu sentiment. I asked the Hindu friend who travelled with me why the
Muslims did so. He said it was part of their religion. Is it part of their spiritual growth? I asked
him. He said it was. I met a Mussalman who said, “We both please God and ourselves.” Now
here was a Mussalman revelling in a thing that outrages you and me too. Do you think all this is
counter to the Koran?

GANDHI: I do indeed.239 Just as many Hindu practices, e.g., untouchability - are no part of
Hindu religion, I say that cow-slaughter is no part of Islam. But I do not wrestle with the
Muslims who believe that it is part of Islam.

DR. CRANE: What do you say to the attempts to convert?

GANDHI: I strongly resent these overtures to utterly ignorant men. I can perhaps understand
overtures made to me, as indeed they are being made. For they can reason with me and I can
reason with them. But I certainly resent the overtures made to Harijans. When a Christian
preacher goes and says to a Harijan that Jesus was the only begotten son of God, he will give
him a blank stare. Then he holds out all kinds of inducements which debase Christianity.

I strongly resent these overtures when made to utterly ignorant men who have no more
intelligence than a cow.240 I realise that it is the clear command of your Gospel to seek to win
persons to Christ, as you say. I would not, therefore, resent it at all if you were to try to persuade
me to become a Christian, as many have done. I am able to weigh the evidence and estimate the
values, and we can reason together. What I resent, and resent most deeply, is the attempt of
missionaries to win the depressed classes who have no intelligence at all. These ignorant
creatures can be appealed to in but one way, by offering them some material advantages, by
bribing them, as it were. That I consider unethical. Let them be helped by the Christians in all
material ways, but not at the expense of their rejecting their ancient faith and accepting the new
one which they do not understand at all.

DR. CRANE: I agree that it is unethical to bribe a man to become a Christian by holding out
some material reward while the real meaning of the faith is neither taught nor understood. But if
Hinduism has not done anything for them in all these centuries and one is convinced that
Christianity will do something for them, and they are, as you say, ‘as ignorant as cows,’ just how
are these depressed classes to be won?

GANDHI: They are not to be won. That is just my point. You have no right to take them from the
fold of Hinduism, for Hinduism will one day help them to better things. That is the very thing I
am trying to accomplish in the Harijan movement. To be sure the orthodox Hindus have so

239 Here Gandhi referred the interviewer to the article "Need for Tolerance" (CWMG, Volume 64, pages 330-32).
240 It is surprising that Gandhi again compared ignorant men to a cow, despite protests against a similar
reference in the interview to Dr. Mott on 13 November 1936.
horribly neglected the untouchables that it is astonishing how they adhere to the Hindu faith. But
since they do, and since the Harijan movement will surely do much for them, I say it is
outrageous for others to shake their faith in Hinduism.

DR. CRANE: Would you say a Harijan is not capable of reason?

GANDHI: He is. For instance, if you try to take work out of him without payment, he will
not give it. He also has a sense of ethical values. But when you ask him to understand
theological beliefs and categories he will not understand anything. I could not do so even when I
was 17 and had a fair share of education and training. The orthodox Hindus have so horribly
neglected the Harijan that it is astonishing how he adheres to the Hindu faith. Now I say it is
outrageous for others to shake his faith.

Dr. CRANE: Are you just as convinced as ever that the principle of non-violence can be made
effective in this demon-possessed world?

GANDHI: If men would but learn the art of dying without killing in defence of all that they hold
dear, they could perform miracles, achieve anything. More than ever do I believe that non-
violence is the way to permanent power. My faith in it, like my faith in myself, has never
wavered, because they both derive from my faith in God.

DR. CRANE: What about a man who says he is commanded by God to do violence?

GANDHI: There you would not put another God before him. You need not disturb his
religion, but you will disturb his reason.

DR. CRANE: But take Hitler. He says he is carrying out God's behest in persecuting the
Jews and killing his opponents.

GANDHI: You will not pit one word of God against another word of God. But you will have
to bear down his reason. For him you will have to produce a miracle which you will do when
Christians will learn the art of dying without killing in defence of what they hold dearer than
religion. But we can go on arguing like this endlessly. And then I may tell you that you are
talking against time.

And with this Gandhi looked at the watch.

DR. CRANE: Just one question, then. Would you say then that your religion is a synthesis
of all religions?

GANDHI: Yes, if you will. But I would call that synthesis Hinduism, and for you the
synthesis will be Christianity. If I did not do so, you would always be patronising me, as many
Christians do now, saying, "How nice it would be if Gandhi accepted Christianity," and Muslims
would be doing the same, saying, "How nice it would be if Gandhi accepted Islam!" That
immediately puts a barrier between you and me. Do you see that?
 185

DR. CRANE: I do. Just one last question. In your Hinduism do you basically include the
caste system?

GANDHI: I do not. Hinduism does not believe in caste. I would obliterate it at once. But I
believe in varnadharma, which is the law of life. I believe that some people are born to teach
and some to defend and some to engage in trade and agriculture and some to do manual labour,
so much so that these occupations become hereditary. The law of varna is nothing but the law of
conservation of energy. Why should my son not be a scavenger if I am one?

DR. CRANE: Indeed? Do you go so far?

GANDHI: I do, because I hold a scavenger's profession in no way inferior to a clergyman's.

All work must be considered as worthy and dignified. This also implies that there must be some
sort of equalisation of financial remuneration, that men shall be paid on the basis of their needs
rather than because of what they do.

DR. CRANE: I grant that, but should Lincoln have been a wood-chopper rather than
President of the U.S.A.?

GANDHI: But why should not a wood-chopper be a President of the United States?
Gladstone used to chop wood.

DR. CRANE: But he did not accept it as his calling.

GANDHI: He would not have been worse off if he had done so. What I mean is, one born a
scavenger must earn his livelihood by being a scavenger, and then do whatever else he likes. For
a scavenger is as worthy of his hire as a lawyer or your President. That, according to me, is
Hinduism. There is no better communism on earth, and I have illustrated it with one verse from
the Upanishads which means: "God pervades all - animate and inanimate. Therefore renounce
all and dedicate it to God and then live." The right of living is thus derived from renunciation. It
does not say, "when all do their part of the work I too will do it." It says, "Don't bother about
others, do your job first and leave the rest to Him." Varnadharma acts even as the law of
gravitation. I cannot cancel it or its working by trying to jump higher and higher day by day till
gravitation ceases to work. That effort will be vain. So is the effort to jump over one another.
The law of varna is the antithesis of competition which kills.

Ms. Florence Mary Fitch, 16 December 1936

[Ms. Fitch received her BA at Oberlin College, a liberal institution in Ohio, in 1897. She then studied in Germany
and was the first American woman to earn a M.A. & Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Berlin. She also
studied at Union Theological Seminary, New York, American School for Oriental Research, Jerusalem, and
University of Chicago Divinity School. She was awarded an honorary Litt. D. by Oberlin College. She taught
Religion and Philosophy and based her religious knowledge on her travels to Israel, Syria, Greece, Egypt, India, Sri
Lanka, Burma, Thailand, China, Japan and Hawaii. In 1936, she interviewed Gandhi, who reviewed her manuscript,
Their Search for God. http://www.oberlinheritagecenter.org/cms/files/File/inventory/reamer347.pdf, accessed on 19
February 2014. The interview was in Sevagram.]

Report by Mahadev Desai241

[Miss Fitch asked Gandhi to tell her the chief values of Hinduism as she had been told that he
was the life and soul of Hinduism. His reply is given below:]

“The chief value of Hinduism lies in holding the actual belief that all life (not only human
beings, but all sentient beings) is one, i.e., all life coming from the one universal source, call it
Allah, God or Parameshwara. There is in Hinduism a scripture called Vishnusahasranama which
simply means “one thousand names of God.” These one thousand names do not mean that God is
limited to those names, but that He has as many names as you can possibly give Him. You may
give Him as many names as you like, provided it is one God, without a second, whose name you
are invoking. That also means that He is nameless too.

“This unity of all life is a peculiarity of Hinduism which confines salvation not to human
beings alone but says that it is possible for all God’s creatures. It may be that it is not possible,
save through the human form, but that does not make man the Lord of creation. It makes him the
servant of God’s creation. Now when we talk of brotherhood of man, we stop there, and feel that
all other life is there for man to exploit for his own purposes. But Hinduism excludes all
exploitation. There is no limit whatsoever to the measure of sacrifice that one may make in order
to realise this oneness with all life, but certainly the immensity of the ideal sets a limit to your
wants. That, you will see, is the antithesis of the position of the modern civilisation which says:
‘Increase your wants.’ Those who hold that belief think that increase of wants means an increase
of knowledge whereby you understand the Infinite better. On the contrary Hinduism rules out
indulgence and multiplication of wants as these hamper one’s growth to the ultimate identity
with the Universal Self.”

Account by Ms. Fitch242

I found Gandhi in the little village where he had chosen to live, to be as near the centre of
India as possible. His house was small and simple like those of the villagers, and he invited me
to a seat on the mat which marked off his corner of the common room. He took up his spinning
wheel and worked, "not to waste any time, and to give you an object lesson." Then he asked,
"What shall we talk about?"

I told him that I was a teacher of religion, that I wanted to understand each religion as it
looked to its own followers. I asked him if there was any one thing, one most significant thing
that he could tell me about Hinduism that I could take back to my students in Oberlin.

He answered, "All life is sacred; all life is one. This is the heart of Hinduism."

241 Harijan, 26 December 1936; CWMG, Volume 64, page 141.

242 Article by Ms. Fitch in The Horn Book Magazine, Boston, March 1948.
 187

These words I have never forgotten nor the way he said them. They have given me my
chief insight in my study of the Hindu way of worship.

The Reverend R.R. Keithahn, 5 March 1937243

[Ralph Richard Keithahn (1898- ) from Fairmont, Minnesota, was a missionary and social worker in India from
1925. He became a supporter of the Indian national movement and an admirer of Gandhi. The British authorities
told the mission of the American Congregational Church in Madura in 1930 that he must leave India because he
wore Khadi and hosted Reginald Reynolds, an Englishman who had stayed in Gandhi’s ashram for some time,
when he visited Madura. His mission forced him to resign from his position as principal of a training college and
leave India. He returned to India later.244 In the 1940s, he severed his connection with the American Madura
Mission, dressed in Indian clothes and worked in the villages. He also worked with the student movement. He was
externed from Mysore State in August 1944 and the Indian Government issued deportation orders in September. He
later lived in Sarvodaya Ashram in Gandhigram near Madura.245]

Mr. Keithahn... was not quite sure what was at the back of Gandhi's mind when he said that
all religions were not only true but equal. Scientifically, he felt, it was hardly correct to say that
all religions are equal. People would make comparisons between animists and theists. "I would
say," said Mr. Keithahn, "it is no use comparing religions. They are different ways. Do you think
we can explain the thing in different terms?

GANDHI: You are right when you say that it is impossible to compare them. But the
deduction from it is that they are equal. All men are born free and equal, but one is much
stronger or weaker than another physically and mentally. Therefore superficially there is no
equality between the two. But there is an essential equality: in our nakedness. God is not going to
think of me as Gandhi and you as Keithahn. And what are we in this mighty universe? We are
less than atoms, and as between atoms there is no use asking which is smaller and which is
bigger. Inherently we are equal. The differences of race and skin and of mind and body and of
climate and nation are transitory. In the same way essentially all religions are equal. If you read
the Koran, you must read it with the eye of the Muslim; if you read the Gita, you must read it
with the eye of a Hindu. Where is the use of scanning details and then holding up a religion to
ridicule? Take the very first chapter of Genesis or of Matthew. We read a long pedigree and then
at the end we are told that Jesus was born of a virgin. You come up against a blind wall. But I
must read it all with the eye of a Christian.

KEITHAHN: Then even in our Bible, there is the question of Moses and Jesus. We must hold
them to be equal.

GANDHI: Yes. All prophets are equal. It is a horizontal plane.

243 Mahadev Desai's "Weekly Letter" in Harijan, 13 March 1937; CWMG, Volume 64, pages 419-20.
244 Reginald Reynolds, A Quest for Gandhi (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1952),
pages 78-81; Edward Holton James, I Tell Everything, pages 126-27, 131.
245 For further biographical information, see Ralph Richard Keithahn, Pilgrimage in India; an Autobiographical
Fragment (Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1973).
 KEITHAHN: If we think in terms of Einstein's relativity all are equal. But I cannot happily
express that equality.

GANDHI: That is why I say they are equally true and equally imperfect. The finer the line
you draw, the nearer it approaches Euclid's true straight line, but it never is true straight line. The
tree of religion is the same, there is not that physical equality between the branches. They are all
growing, and the person who belongs to the growing branch must not gloat over it and say,
`Mine is the superior one.' None is superior, none is inferior, to the other.

V. CHRISTIAN MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES246

Gandhi met many American missionaries at his ashrams and during his travels. Though opposed to conversions,
especially mass conversions of poor people who were unable to understand the tenets of the religions, he maintained
friendly relations with many missionaries. Some of the interviewers deserve special mention.

Bishop Frederick B. Fisher was one of the first American friends of Gandhi in India. He admired Gandhi and
Rabindranath Tagore and supported India’s struggle for freedom. He promoted Indian leadership in the Methodist
Mission.

The Reverend Dr. John R. Mott was the leader of the International Missionary Council for many years and chaired
International Missionary Conferences in Edinburgh in 1910, Jerusalem in 1928 and Tambaram247 in 1938. The
Edinburgh Conference called for greater missionary activity for “the evangelisation of the world” in the words of
Dr. Mott.248

The Christian missions had to rethink their policies in the 1920s in response to the rise of nationalism and freedom
movements in Asia. They faced hostility as they were identified with Western imperialism. Native Christians
resented control by foreign missionaries.

Rufus Jones, a Quaker philosopher who had visited China and India in 1926 and interviewed Gandhi, submitted a
paper to the Jerusalem Conference. He suggested that the main problem facing missions was the growing secularism
and materialism in the world rather than other religions in Asia. The Asian religions, he argued, should be seen as
allies rather than rivals in dealing with this challenge. The paper led to intense discussions in the Conference. It
received much support, but there was no consensus on its conclusions. The Conference report, while “welcoming
every noble quality in non-Christian persons or systems,” encouraged missionaries to press vigorously to obtain
conversions of non-Christians.249

Dr. Mott then undertook a trip around the world and had the first of three extensive interviews with Gandhi,
focussing on conversion. After his return to the United States later in 1929, with the support of John D. Rockefeller,

246 See also interview to the Reverend Sherwood Eddy under “The Struggle for Freedom” above. The
Reverend Kirby Page and Rufus Jones, the Quaker philosopher, were not missionaries but their interviews
are also relevant.
247 At the campus of the Madras Christian College in Tambaram, near Madras.
248 Quoted by Stephen W. Angell in “Rufus Jones and the Laymen’s Foreign Missions Inquiry: How a
Quaker Helped to Shape Modern Ecumenical Christianity.” Accessed at www.quest.quaker.org/issue3-
6.html on 26 April 2014.
249 Ibid. Also Samuel McCrea Cavert, “Beginning at Jerusalem” in Christian Century, Chicago, 10 May
1928.
 189

Jr., he set up a Layman’s Commission on Christian Missions consisting of leaders from several Christian
denominations. The Commission toured India, Burma, China and Japan, meeting with missionaries and local
Church leaders. It produced a unanimous report. The report, Rethinking Missions, “called for greater sensitivity of
missions to the culture, religion, and history of the countries in which they served, and a shift into educational,
medical, and agricultural work as the needs of the local people dictated.” It recommended handing over church
administration as quickly as possible to local Christians.250
This report led to serious controversy among missions. Conservatives continued to regard all non-Christian
religions as false. Moderates, while recognising good ideas in other religions, held that Jesus alone was the “final
revelation of God.” The liberals supported the conclusions of Re-thinking Missions.251

Dr. Mott remained silent during the controversy though his views were probably close to those of the liberals. He
met Gandhi in 1936 and the discussion was mainly on removal of untouchability and how the Missions could help.
His third interview was before the Tambaram Conference in 1938. He wanted to consult Gandhi on matters to be
discussed at the Conference. “India,” he said, “is a land of great faiths and marvellous heritage and traditions, and
we want all the help we can get.” He wanted to know whether the missions were going the right way in dealing with
major problems they had discussed earlier.

The Reverend Eli Stanley Jones had set up the Sat Tal Ashram in the United Provinces as he was anxious that
Christians should not be alienated from their culture. Despite differences about conversion, he had great respect for
Gandhi whom he met many times. He supported India’s freedom movement and was prevented from coming to
India during the Second World War. His book, Mahatma Gandhi – an Interpretation252, influenced the civil rights
and peace movements in America.

Jay Holmes Smith, a Methodist missionary, was Acharya of Lalbagh Mission in Lucknow which was inspired by Eli
Stanley Jones. Ralph Templin, and his wife Lila Horton Templin, were associated with it. They formed, along with
Paul K. Keene and two Indians, a non-violent movement called Kristagraha (Christ-force) to re-orient the Indian
Christian community away from its pro-Western bias. They supported the Indian national movement for
independence and signed an open letter to the Viceroy of India challenging the “missionary pledge” requiring
missionaries not to do anything contrary to or in diminution of "the lawful authority of the country."

They published two Kristagraha manifestoes. In the first Manifesto, they defined Kristagraha as “that movement of
the spirit of Christ in the hearts of men which leads them to offer resistance to whatever enslaves man or withholds
from him his birthright of liberty, equality and justice. A Kristagrahi is one who commits himself to such resistance
and, like his Master, relies only upon the force of God within him for safety and strength… we affirm that there is
no inherently superior race or class or nations. All myths of special responsibility, ‘the white man’s burden,’ Nordic
destiny, and all other pretexts for exploitation, must be uprooted.”

They came under attack by the missions in India for violating the pledge which they had to sign to obtain permission
from the British Indian authorities to work in India. Their mission, after consulting the American Consul in India,
asked them to resign and leave India before the end of 1940. Smith and Keene left immediately and the Templins
remained in India for a few months.253

Soon after his return to America, Smith established the Committee on Non-violent Direct Action of the New York
Fellowship of Reconciliation. A few months later Smith and Templin set up the Harlem Ashram, an inter-racial and
pacifist commune in New York. It helped spread information on non-violent resistance, and promoted action to
persuade business firms in the area to employ African Americans. The work of the Ashram led eventually to non-
violent actions against racial discrimination such as the March on Washington, proposed by J. Phillip Randolph,

250 David M. McFadden, “The ‘Gandhi Diary’ of Rufus Jones” in G. Simon Harak (ed.) Nonviolence for
the Third Millennium; Its Legacy and Future. (Macon, GA, USA: Mercer University Press, 2000), p. 77.
251 Angell, op.cit.
252 E. Stanley Jones, Mahatma Gandhi – an Interpretation (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press and
London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1948).
253 Ralph T. Templin, Democracy and Nonviolence: The Role of the Individual in World Crisis (Boston:
Porter Sargent, 1965), Appendix III: “The Kristagraha Movement.”
which resulted in the Fair Employment Practices Act; and to the establishment of the Congress of Racial Equality
which organised non-violent actions against racial segregation several years before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.254

The Ashram also set up the Free India Committee which organised demonstrations in front of British offices.255

Paul Keene became a professor of mathematics at Drew University, but gave up the job to be associated with the
Templins at the School Living in Suffern, New York.256 Mr. Keane, inspired by Gandhi and the School for
Living, started organic farming in America.257

The Reverend Frederick B. Fisher, 1917-32258

[The Reverend Frederick B. Fisher (1882-1938), an American Methodist Episcopal churchman, went to India in
1904 and lived in Agra as a missionary. He was Bishop of Calcutta from 1920 to 1930. He returned to the United
States in 1930 and became head of the First Methodist Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He resigned from his
episcopacy in protest against the pro-Western complexion of the Church.259He was the author of several books
including India's Silent Revolution (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1919) and That Strange Little Brown Man
Gandhi (1932) which was banned by the British authorities in India.

He first met Gandhi on a train journey from Madras to Calcutta in 1917 and they become life-long friends. He
was also a friend of Rabindranath Tagore. He visited South Africa in 1925 and his report on the plight of Indians in
that country was highly appreciated by Gandhi. The following are extracts from several conversations with Gandhi.]

I can still feel the silent awe with which I listened to his boyhood story of a deadly scorpion
that ran across the floor of the living room where his mother was teaching the children their
Hindu Sunday School lesson, so to speak. His mother's feet were bare, with red painted soles.
She followed the interesting Hindu custom of roughing them each morning after early devotions,

254 Dr. Haridas T. Muzumdar (ed.), The Enduring Greatness of Gandhi, An American Estimate, being the
Sermons of Dr. John Haynes Holmes and Dr. Donald S. Harrington, Community Church of New York
(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1982), page 228n.
255 Paul R. Dekar, “Harlem Ashram 1940-1047: Gandhian Satyagraha in the United States.” Accessed at
www.peacehost.net/HarlemAshram/dekar.htm, on 30 April 2014.
256 Ralph Borsodi, economist and social critic, moved to a family homestead in Suffern in 1920 and
founded the School of Living. He sent one of his books, This Ugly Civilisation, to Gandhi; it has several
references to Gandhi. See E.S. Reddy (ed.), Mahatma Gandhi: Letters to Americans (New York and
Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1998), p. 239.
257 Joanna Poncavage reported:

“In 1939, while teaching at a missionary school in India, Paul Keene met Mahatma Gandhi. The encounter
changed Keene’s life. After returning to the United States, he borrowed $5,000 to buy 100 acres in central
Pennsylvania. He began farming with horses and without the chemicals that had recently ‘revolutionised’
agriculture.
“’In the beginning,’ he says, ‘we were considered kooks. We were called communists. I was
threatened with tar and feathering, and a cross was burned on our lawn because we were so
different.’
“Today, the farm’s Walnut Acres brand is a legend in the organic food industry.” (“Walnut Acres:
The Farm That Gandhi Grew” in Organic Gardening, Emmaus, Pennsylvania, February 1991).

258 Frederick B. Fisher, That Strange Little Brown Man Gandhi (New York: Ray Long & Richard R. Smith, Inc.,
1932).
259 Ralph T. Templin, Democracy and Nonviolence: The Role of the Individual in World Crisis (Boston:
Porter Sargent, 1965), page 325.
 191

in order to carry with her at her daily tasks, the pleasant odour and beauty of her prayers. As
young Mohandas saw the deadly scorpion running straight towards those beautiful painted feet,
he cried out in alarm.

"Mother! A scorpion! It will bite you! Kill it!"

His mother said quietly, "Be still, my son. If you do not frighten it, I shall not be hurt."

She watched the insect crawl up upon her heel, and then slowly disengaging the silk scarf
from her shoulders, she reached down, picked up the scorpion, and dropped it out the window.

"Now it will neither harm me, nor I it," she remarked gently.

Lessons like this, coming from no printed page, but from the book of life, influenced the
future life of a discerning boy. This gentle Puritan mother was one of the biggest factors in
making Gandhi what he is today, a prophet of self-mastery, of national control through control of
self...

***

"We Indians are denied legislative functions," he (Gandhi) once explained to me. "Therefore
we cannot fix a tariff to protect ourselves. The boycott is the Indian tariff, imposed not by law
but by the will of a whole people. We cannot, it appears, obtain legislative power to protect our
nation unless we free ourselves by military revolution. This sort of a revolution is contrary to our
principles. We will not shoot a man, precipitate him into eternity without giving him a chance to
decide what he wants to do about it. We know our passive resistance will cause suffering and
death, in both India and England... but the Englishman can avoid this if he will."

***

"Your highly mechanised system in the West has not brought you settled prosperity, nor
richness of soul, nor world peace, nor cultural poise" Gandhi remarked to me once as we sat
upon the white matting of his living room. I watched the wheel before him go round and round,
guided by his skilful fingers. "England has raised the standard of living not by a marvellous
mindedness, but by an industrialisation that requires ever enlarging fields of natural deposits to
supply her wants. All Europe has done the same. The result is that they have to scour the earth
for more resources and rob other people to keep up an artificial standard of living. This means
imperialism and war."

[Account by Mrs. Welthy Fischer260]

260 From: Welthy Honsinger Fisher, Frederick Bohn Fisher: World Citizen (New York: The Macmillan Company,
1944), pages 67-68, 13-33. Mrs. Fisher (1879-1980), wife and biographer of Bishop Fisher, was an educator. On 15
December 1947, many years after the death of her husband, she met Gandhi who advised her to stay in India and
help the villagers. She established the Saksharta Niketan (Literacy House), a school combining literacy with
agricultural training, near Lucknow, and worked for the education and welfare of the villagers. In 1958 she was
elected President of World Education, New York, which has programmes, especially for educating women, in many
 Fred trusted Gandhi as a leader because Gandhi could see not only the failings of other
nations, but also the sins of Hinduism against the outcastes. Gandhi once said to Fred:

"It is detestable and inconceivable that a religion like Hinduism, which, in the purity of its
origin, taught that all life is a part of God, should have descended to the slough of damning sixty
million untouchables to an outcaste slavery."

***

On closer acquaintance, Gandhi fell easily into informal folksy ways. In describing him, Fred
used to laugh and say, "How can you help liking a man who remembers to ask about your wife,
and teases you for having to take soda mints because you have eaten too much?" And he quoted
Gandhi's whimsical comment, "You Americans amuse me. You eat too much, and then in order
to correct this, take medicine to get rid of it."

One day after a long discussion of the power of ahimsa (non-violence), Gandhi looked up at
Fred with a mischievous twinkle. Taking hold of Fred's strong, determined chin, he said, "Just
think of a man with a chin like yours talking about peace," and he laughed, showing as he did so
the gap in his mouth where two front teeth had been knocked out during a riot in the old South
African days. Fred could not resist the temptation.

"I told him," said Fred, "that he was a fine pacifist himself, for he was always laughing, and
whenever he laughed it showed his missing teeth which made him look as though he had just
been in a fight. And what will they think of a pacifist with two front teeth missing?" Gandhi
was delighted by this sally and the two men laughed together heartily.

Fred took advantage of the opportunity to suggest that Gandhi come to Calcutta and let Fred
take him to an American dentist who would replace the missing teeth. He argued that it would
not only improve Gandhi's appearance, but also his health. Gandhi thought it over for a minute
or two and quietly replied:

"You know, Fred, some years ago, I renounced personal money and property, and gave all my
earnings to our movement, and when I did that, I began to live on the scale that the poorest of our
people must live upon. I have kept my personal expenditures within eleven cents a day. Now,
you see, one of our lowly brothers, whom I call Harijans (sons of God), and you call outcastes,
could never afford your expert dentists; so even your generous offer I cannot accept, but I deeply
thank you."

***

Fred went on, in a lighter vein, telling me intimate things about Gandhi.

"He sleeps on Thoreau's Civil Disobedience – ‘makes an excellent pillow,’" Gandhi laughed.

countries. Among the many honours she received were the Nehru Literacy Award – of which she was the first
recipient – and a postage stamp issued by the Indian Postal Department in 1980.
 193

“We passed one of Tagore’s cows from his new agricultural experiment station for the
villages… Gandhi pulled up some grass and fed it.

“’Isn’t she the best friend of man on earth?” asked Gandhi, patting her. ‘Of course, I believe in
reverence for the cow,’ he went on. ‘To me she symbolises the basic teaching of our Hinduism –
that all life is part of God.’…

“When we talked about idolatry – Gandhi was completely vicarious. As he talked he became
the pariah, the scavenger whose ancestors could not read nor write and whose children’s children
are doomed to that same hopeless future. Unless, as Gandhi told us, ‘We four men, seated here,
can arouse our worlds to white heat on the subject.’

“’The outcastes’ little piece of red-painted stone, used for an altar under the tree,’ argued
Gandhi with emotion, ‘is important. That painted piece of stone is the only tangible symbol of
God our half-starved brother has ever had. How can we deny him the only link between himself
and God’…

“’You dare not take the crutch from a lame man’s arm until you have taught the cripple how to
walk,’ Gandhi warned us quietly.”

An American Architect and Two Women, 1924261

[The architect, after touring many countries, came to India and was very eager to have a short talk with Gandhi. The
women were apparently Christian missionaries.]

After assuring Gandhi that Americans knew him well enough, he put some very straight and
short questions. Gandhiji responded with equally brief replies.

QUESTION: Will you then give us your view as to how our (Christian) Mission should do their
work here?

GANDHI: Yes. By doing, not speaking, not by profession, but by practice.

QUESTION: That is by opening hospitals, schools, colleges etc.? I suppose you mean that.

GANDHI: No. I don't. Because these institutions do not always express Christ's life in action.
His life in fact should be represented in every Christian's actual behaviour. That itself would
inevitably affect others. So the pure and noble way to propagate a religion is its actual practice
by the believer.

QUESTION: How then may we, Americans, help you? Or may we help you or not?

261 Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi (Secretary’s Diary) (Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh
Prakashan, 1970), Volume 4.
GANDHI: Do help us. There is only one way. You can help us by closely studying our
movement. As things stand at present, anything about India is presented to America either too
brightly or too darkly. The right attitude is lacking. What you should do is to study carefully
every movement that goes on here and neither praise nor blame us more than we deserve.

QUESTION: But may we not help Indian students?

GANDHI: Certainly you may. Nobody says, “You mustn't.”

QUESTION: May we help them with money then? But our Christian Mission is not so rich.

GANDHI: No, no. I never wish my country to beg money from any other. I would never
encourage beggary. What I mean by “help” is advice and sympathy. In a big rich country like
U.S.A. a stranger may lose his bearings, may even go the wrong way. Your institution can lead
him to the right path, by showing him the right institutions and neat places for him.

ARCHITECT: Quite so, But for the sympathy of the people here, we could not have moved
about as we have. Wherever we go, we realise the value of Indian sympathy. We had the same
experience in Japan also.

That started one of the women to speak of Japan: "If you don't mind, may I know your attitude
towards Japan?"

After a little deliberation Gandhi said, "Of aloofness and distrust." The questioner was taken
aback. Gandhi then explained:

"For the simple reason that Japan's progress is extremely rapid. One wonders how long that may
continue. One may doubt besides if the progress has been going on along right lines. Japan,
moreover, is after such wholesale adoption of Western ways that I for one would feel inclined to
keep aloof, because in such imitation that country is more likely to be harmed than helped. But
take this for a random shot only. Don't give it any weight. Japan I have neither seen nor read of
much. I am simply speaking from hearsay."

"No, but you are right. I was there when Dr. (Rabindranath) Tagore visited Japan. He also held
the same view. And what do you think of ‘Asia for the Asians’ movement ?"

"I am not for any movement that aims at securing its own rise by wilful harm to others. Asia
must not become a danger to other continents by making itself the preserve of Asiatics only. If
that happens, the Asiatic menace would be greater than the European - if, for nothing else,
because Asiatics are far larger in number."

"Mr. Gandhi, how shall we, the missionaries, fare when you get your freedom? What will happen
to the foreign missions that have settled here?"

"Ours will be an attitude of perfect tolerance. I, at least, will try my best to maintain and
strengthen it."
 195

As they departed they gave their address and said, "Do remember us, if you happen to visit
America."

The Reverend Dr. John R. Mott262

[John Raleigh Mott (1865-1955) was one of the most prominent Christian leaders in the twentieth century. He was
chairman of the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference in 1910, and chaired the International Missionary
Conferences in Jerusalem in 1928 and in Tambaram, Madras, in 1938. He was Chairman of the International
Missionary Council from 1928 to 1946. He was also a leader of the World YMCA for many years. He received the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1946263 and became honorary President of the World Council of Churches in 1948. He had
three extensive discussions with Gandhi in 1929, 1936 and 1938, the last when he visited India to preside over the
Conference in Tambaram.]

262 John Raleigh Mott was born on 25 May 1865. While at Cornell University, he underwent a transformation that
directed him toward a career in religion. He joined the student YMCA and became the student secretary of
intercollegiate YMCA. He was a founder of the World Student Christian Federation 1895.

He relinquished direction of the WSCF to assume chairmanship of the International Missionary Council after its
founding in 1921. During the 1930s he travelled around the world for the IMC and the World YMCA, of which he
became president in 1926.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 for his "earnest and undiscourageable effort to weave together all
nations, all races and all religious communions in friendliness, in fellowship and in cooperation."

He wrote or edited a score of books and hundreds of articles, pamphlets, reports and contributions to books by others
not only on religious, missionary, ecumenical or organisational themes, but also international affairs.

He passed away on 31 January 1955.

The biographical note above is based on information at the collection of his papers at the University of Minnesota.
http://special.lib.umn.edu/findaid/html/ymca/yusa0013.phtml, accessed on 20 February 2014.

See also biography at Nobel Prize website, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1946/mott-

bio.html.

263 He said in his Nobel address in 1946:

“The most trustworthy leader is one who adopts and applies guiding principles. He trusts them like
the North Star. He follows his principles no matter how many oppose him and no matter how few
go with him. This has been the real secret of the wonderful leadership of Mahatma Gandhi 2. In the
midst of most bewildering conditions he has followed, cost what it might, the guiding principles of
non-violence, religious unity, removal of untouchability, and economic independence.”
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1946/mott-lecture.html, accessed on 20
February 2014.
 Interview in March 1929264

DR. MOTT: What do you consider to be the most valuable contribution that India can make
to the progress of the world?

GANDHI: Non-violence, which the country is exhibiting at the present day on a scale
unprecedented in history. But for it, there might have been a blaze, for provocation of the gravest
kind has not been wanting on the side of the Government. There is no doubt a school in the
country that believes in violence, but it is a mere excrescence on the surface and its ideals are not
likely to find a congenial soil in the country.

DR. MOTT: What causes you solicitude for the future of the country?

GANDHI: Our apathy and hardness of heart, if I may use that Biblical phrase, as typified in
the attitude towards the masses and their poverty. Our youth are full of noble feelings and
impulses but these have not yet taken any definite practical shape. If our youth had a living and
active faith in truth and non- violence, for instance, we should have made much greater headway
by now. All our young men, however, are not apathetic. In fact without the closest co-operation
of some of our educated young men and women, I should not have been able to establish contact
with the masses and to serve them on a nation-wide scale; and I am sustained by the hope that
they will act as the leaven, and in time transform the entire mass.

[From this they passed on to the distinctive contributions of Hinduism, Islam and
Christianity to the upbuilding of the Indian nation.]

GANDHI: The most distinctive and the largest contribution of Hinduism to India's culture is
the doctrine of ahimsa. It has given a definite bias to the history of the country for the last three
thousand years and over and it has not ceased to be a living force in the lives of India's millions
even today. It is a growing doctrine, its message is still being delivered. Its teaching has so far
permeated our people that an armed revolution has almost become an impossibility in India, not
because, as some would have it, we as a race are physically weak, for it does not require much
physical strength so much as a devilish will to press a trigger to shoot a person, but because the
tradition of ahimsa has struck deep roots among the people.

Islam's distinctive contribution to India's national culture is its unadulterated belief in the
oneness of God and a practical application of the truth of the brotherhood of man for those who
are nominally within its fold. I call these two distinctive contributions. For in Hinduism the spirit
of brotherhood has become too much philosophised. Similarly though philosophical Hinduism
has no other god but God, it cannot be denied that practical Hinduism is not so emphatically
uncompromising as Islam.

DR. MOTT: What then is the contribution of Christianity to the national life of India? I mean
the influence of Christ as apart from Christianity, for I am afraid there is a wide gulf separating
the two at present.

264 Based on the report by Pyarelal in Young India, 21 March 1929; CWMG, Volume 40, pages 57-61.
 197

GANDHI: Aye, there's the rub. It is not possible to consider the teaching of a religious
teacher apart from the lives of his followers. Unfortunately, Christianity in India has been
inextricably mixed up for the last one hundred and fifty years with the British rule. It appears to
us as synonymous with materialistic civilisation and imperialistic exploitation by the stronger
white races of the weaker races of the world. Its contribution to India has been therefore largely
of a negative character. It has done some good in spite of its professors. It has shocked us into
setting our own house in order. Christian missionary literature has drawn pointed attention to
some of our abuses and set us athinking.

DR. MOTT: What has interested me most is your work in connection with the removal of
untouchability. Will you please tell me what is the most hopeful sign indicating that this
institution is, as you say, on its last legs?

GANDHI: It is the reaction that is taking place in orthodox Hinduism and the swiftness with
which it has come about. As a most illustrious example I will mention Pandit Malaviyaji265. Ten
years back he was as punctilious in the observance of the rules with regard to untouchability as
perhaps the most orthodox Hindu of that day. Today he takes pride in administering the mantra
of purification to the untouchables by the bank of the Ganges, sometimes even incurring the
wrath of unreasoning orthodoxy. He was all but assaulted by the diehard section in Calcutta in
December last for doing this very thing. In Wardha a wealthy merchant Sheth Jamnalal Bajaj266
recently threw open his magnificent temple to the untouchables and that without arousing any
serious opposition. The most remarkable thing about it is that from the record kept in the temple
of the daily visitors it was found that the attendance had gone up instead of declining since the
admission of the untouchables to it. I may sum up the outlook by saying that I expect the tide
against untouchability to rise still more swiftly in the near future, astonishingly swift as it has
already been.

DR. MOTT: Where do you find your friends? Do you get the backing of the Mussalmans and
the Christians in this work?

GANDHI: The Mussalmans and the Christians can from the very nature of the case render
little help in this matter. The removal of untouchability is purely a question of the purification of
Hinduism. This can only be effected from within.

DR. MOTT: But my impression was that Christians would be a great help to you in this
connection. The Rev. [Henry] Whitehead, Bishop of the Church of England Mission, made some
striking statements about the effect of Christian mass movement in ameliorating the condition of
the untouchables in the Madras Presidency.

GANDHI: I distrust mass movements of this nature. They have as their object not the
upliftment of the untouchables but their ultimate conversion. This motive of mass proselytisation
lurking at the back in my opinion vitiates missionary effort.

265 Madan Mohan Malaviya (1861-1946), prominent political leader and social reformer. Founder of
Benares Hindu University and its Vice-Chancellor from 1919 to 1938.
266 Jamnalal Bajaj (1884-1942), industrialist, philanthropist and close associate of Gandhi.
 DR. MOTT: There are conflicting opinions on this point. There are some who seriously
believe that the untouchables would be better off if they turned Christians from conviction, and
that it would transform their lives for the better.

GANDHI: I am sorry I have been unable to discover any tangible evidence to confirm this
view. I was once taken to a Christian village. Instead of meeting among the converts with that
frankness which one associates with a spiritual transformation, I found an air of evasiveness
about them. They were afraid to talk. This struck me as a change not for the better but for the
worse.

DR. MOTT: Do you then disbelieve in all conversion?

GANDHI: I disbelieve in the conversion of one person by another. My effort should never be
to undermine another's faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith. This implies
belief in the truth of all religions and therefore respect for them. It again implies true humility, a
recognition of the fact that the divine light having been vouchsafed to all religions through an
imperfect medium of flesh, they must share in more or less degree the imperfection of the
vehicle.

DR. MOTT: Is it not our duty to help our fellow-beings to the maximum of truth that we may
possess, to share with them our deepest spiritual experience?

GANDHI: I am sorry I must again differ from you, for the simple reason that the deepest
spiritual truths are always unutterable. That light to which you refer transcends speech. It can be
felt only through the inner experience. And then the highest truth needs no communicating, for it
is by its very nature self-propelling. It radiates its influence silently as the rose its fragrance
without the intervention of a medium.

DR. MOTT: But even God sometimes speaks through His prophets.

GANDHI: Yes, but the prophets speak not through the tongue but through their lives. I have
however known that in this matter I am up against a solid wall of Christian opinion.

DR. MOTT: Oh, no, even among Christians there is a school of thought - and it is growing -
which holds that the authoritarian method should not be employed but that each individual
should be left to discover the deepest truths of life for himself. The argument advanced is that the
process of spiritual discovery is bound to vary in the case of different individuals according to
their varying needs and temperaments. In other words they feel that propaganda in the accepted
sense of the term is not the most effective method.

GANDHI: I am glad to hear you say this. That is what Hinduism certainly inculcates.

DR. MOTT: What counsel do you give to the young men who are fighting a losing battle
with their lower selves and come to you for advice?
 199

GANDHI: Simply prayer. One must humble oneself utterly and look beyond oneself for
strength.

DR. MOTT: But what if the young men complain that their prayer is not heard, that they feel
like speaking to brass heavens as it were?

GANDHI: To want an answer to one's prayer is to tempt God. If prayer fails to bring relief it
is only lip prayer. If prayer does not help nothing else will. One must go on ceaselessly. This
then is my message to the youth. In spite of themselves the youth must believe in the all-
conquering power of love and truth.

DR. MOTT: The difficulty with our youth is that the study of science and modern philosophy
has demolished their faith and so they are burnt up by the fire of disbelief.

GANDHI: That is due to the fact that with them faith is an effort of the intellect, not an
experience of the soul. Intellect takes us along in the battle of life to a certain limit but at the
crucial moment it fails us. Faith transcends reason. It is when the horizon is the darkest and
human reason is beaten down to the ground that faith shines brightest and comes to our rescue. It
is such faith that our youth require and this comes when one has shed all pride of intellect and
surrendered oneself entirely to His will.

Interview on 13/14 November 1936267

[Gandhi gave four hours on the two days for discussion with Dr. Mott. C.F. Andrews was also
present.]

DR. MOTT: You have been one that has given a great initiative to the movement [against
untouchability], you have put your life-blood into it, you have suffered and triumphed, and I
want you to help me to a profound understanding of what the issues are and tell me how I may
help, for I do not want to hinder. What is happening in India is going to have a profound effect
on the world. We are in front of forces the influence of which it would be difficult to prophesy or
predict. Give me your own diagnosis of the problem.

GANDHI: So far as I am concerned with the untouchability question, it is one of life and
death for Hinduism. As I have said repeatedly, if untouchability lives Hinduism perishes, and
even India perishes; but if untouchability is eradicated from the Hindu heart root and branch,
then Hinduism has a definite message for the world. I have said the first thing to hundreds of
audiences, but not the latter part. Now that is the utterance of a man who accepts Truth as God. It
is therefore no exaggeration. If untouchability is an integral part of Hinduism, the latter is a spent
bullet. But untouchability is hideous untruth. My motive in launching the [anti-] untouchability
campaign is clear. What I am aiming at is not every Hindu touching an untouchable, but every
touchable Hindu driving untouchability from his heart, going through a complete change of
heart. Inter-dining or intermarrying is not the point. I may not dine with you, but I ought not to
harbour the feeling that if I dined with you I should be polluted. If I was a woman to be married,

267 Harijan, 19 and 26 December 1936; CWMG, Volume 64, pages 33-41.
I should not say “I cannot marry a man because he is an untouchable.” I am making this clear to
you because in the programme of the Harijan Sevak Sangh268 we say we don't ask the orthodox
Hindus to inter-dine or intermarry with the “untouchables.”269 Many of us have no scruples
about inter-dining or intermarriage. That untouchability is an ancient custom I admit, but there
are many such things intertwined with Hinduism because it is an ancient religion, even a
prehistoric religion. Instead of being the dead faith that it threatens to be, I want it to be a living
faith, so that it may exist side by side with other religions of the world.

[With this he explained the genesis of the Harijan Sevak Sangh, and how he could not be a
member of the Sangh, and yet that he had directed and guided the policy of the Sangh.

"The world looks upon you," said Dr. Mott, "as a front-line prophet, conscience, initiator and
warrior, and we pray that you may be spared long for this most fateful period in the life of the
world."

The conversation led to the genesis of the Yeravda Pact,270 beginning with Gandhi's
declaration, at the Round Table Conference, to lay down his life to stop the vivisection of
Hinduism.]

GANDHI: But I had no political axe to grind, I have none. Nor have the other Hindus a
political motive. For instance, the Pact has been a kind of bombshell thrown in the midst of
Bengalis. They have their own Hindu-Muslim problem which has been rendered difficult by the
Yeravda Pact. The original Premier's Award,271 as it was called, gave fewer seats to the
Harijans than the Pact gives. It is almost an overwhelming number. But I said Hinduism loses
nothing if all the seats were captured by the Harijans. I would not alter a comma in the Pact
unless the Harijans themselves wanted it.

DR. MOTT: Removal of untouchability is the business of your lifetime. The importance of
this movement lies beyond the frontiers of India, and yet there are few subjects on which there is
more confusion of thought. Take for instance the missionaries and missionary societies. They are
not of one mind. It is highly desirable that we become of one mind and find out how far we can
help and not hinder. I am Chairman of the International Missionary Council which combines 300

268 In 1932, while in prison, Gandhi launched an anti-untouchability campaign, pressing for the admission of
untouchables (whom he called Harijans) to all temples and promoting programmes for their advancement. A
Harijan Sevak Sangh (Servants of Harijans Society) was formed by his followers for this work.

269 Gandhi explained in a letter to Carl Murphy, publisher of Baltimore Afro-American on 7 May 1934:

“… I have said that inter-dining and inter-marrying are not necessary factors in the removal of
untouchability. Inter-dining means much more than sharing a restaurant or hotel in common with others.
Inter-dining that I have in mind means entry into one's kitchen. That undoubtedly is a matter of individual
choice. Prohibition against other people eating in public restaurants and hotels and prohibition of marriage
between coloured people and white people I hold to be a negation of civilisation.” E.S. Reddy(ed.),
Mahatma Gandhi: Letters to Americans (New York and Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1998), page
278.

270 Pact of September 1932 between Hindu leaders and the Depressed Classes
271 This announced the British Government's scheme of providing separate electorates for the Depressed classes.
 201

missionary societies in the world. I have on my desk reports of these societies, and I can say that
their interest in the untouchables is deepening. I should be interested if you would feel free to tell
me where, if anywhere, the missionaries have gone along wrong lines. Their desire is to help and
not to hinder.

GANDHI: I cannot help saying that the activities of the missionaries in this connection have
hurt me. They with the Mussalmans and the Sikhs came forward as soon as Dr. Ambedkar threw
the bombshell,272 and they gave it an importance out of all proportion to the weight it carried,
and then ensued a rivalry between these organisations. I could understand the Muslim
organisations doing this, as Hindus and Muslims have been quarrelling. The Sikh intervention is
an enigma. But the Christian mission claims to be a purely spiritual effort. It hurt me to find
Christian bodies vying with the Muslims and Sikhs in trying to add to the numbers of their fold.
It seemed to me an ugly performance and a travesty of religion. They even proceeded to enter
into secret conclaves with Dr. Ambedkar. I should have understood and appreciated your prayers
for the Harijans, but instead you made an appeal to those who had not even the mind and
intelligence to understand what you talked; they have certainly not the intelligence to distinguish
between Jesus and Mohammed and Nanak and so on.

[Dr. Mott referred to the Archbishop of Canterbury's speech, and the talks he had with him,
and other bishops and missionary leaders in England, and emphasised the fact that the
Christians should in no way be seen to be bidding with others for the souls of the Indian people.
He said he had a reassurance from the Free as well as the State Church leaders, but in the
secular papers it had got abroad that Dr. Ambedkar could hand over 50 million people to those
who were prepared to accept them. He had sensed that it might mean a tremendous disservice.
He said: "The most trustworthy leaders of Protestant missionary forces would give to what you
have said great heed. They do believe increasingly in work for the untouchables. Tell us what we
can wisely do and what we cannot wisely do."]

GANDHI: So far as this desire of Dr. Ambedkar is concerned, you can look at the whole
movement with utter calmness and indifference. If there is any answer to Dr. Ambedkar's appeal
and if the Harijans and he take the final step and come to you, you can take such steps as your
conscience suggests. But today it seems unseemly and precipitate to anticipate what Dr.
Ambedkar and Harijans are going to do.

[Deenabandhu Andrews referred with condemnation to the Lucknow Conference and Dr.
Mott said that what the Conference did was not authoritative.]

GANDHI: It becomes authoritative owing to the silence of Christian bodies. If they had
disowned all that happened it would have been well, but those who met at Lucknow perhaps felt
that they were voicing the views of the missionary bodies who, in their opinion, were not moving
fast enough.

MOTT: But there was a disclaimer.

272 At the Round Table Conference, Dr. Ambedkar demanded separate electorates for the Depressed
Classes.
 GANDHI: If there was, it did not travel beyond the English Channel.

MOTT: But there is a deplorable confusion of thought and divided counsel even amongst
friends. The Devil would like nothing better. My life has been mostly spent for the intellectual
classes, and I feel very much conscience-moved to help in this movement.

[Gandhi cited the example of good Christians helping by working under the Hindu banner.
There was Mr. Keithahn273 who was trying hard to smooth the path of the untouchables. There
were Miss Barr and Miss Madden274 who had thrown themselves into the rural reconstruction
movement. He then adverted to the problem in Travancore where an indecent competition was
going on for enticing away the Ezhavas from the Hindu fold.]

GANDHI: The Ezhavas in Travancore want temple-entry. But it is no use your asking me
whether they want temple-entry. Even if they do not want it, I must see that they enjoy the same
rights as I enjoy, and so the reformers there are straining every nerve to open the temple doors.

MOTT: But must we not serve them?

GANDHI: Of course you will, but not make conversion the price of your service.

MOTT: I agree that we ought to serve them whether they become Christians or not. Christ
offered no inducements. He offered service and sacrifice.

GANDHI: If Christians want to associate themselves with this reform movement they should
do so without any idea of conversion.

MOTT: Apart from this unseemly competition, should they not preach the Gospel with
reference to its acceptance?

GANDHI: Would you, Dr. Mott, preach the Gospel to a cow? Well, some of the untouchables
are worse than cows in understanding.275 I mean they can no more distinguish between the

273 R.R. Keithahn, an American missionary. See his interview with Gandhi on 5 March 1937.
274 Miss F. Mary Barr, a missionary in India, came under the influence of Gandhi and helped in rural
reconstruction work in Kheda district. She stayed often in Gandhi’s ashram. She went to South Africa in
the 1940s and served a month in prison during the Indian passive resistance of 1946.

Ms. Pearl Madden of Canada helped in village work in Kheda from 1936 to 1938. She was in contact with
Gandhi and was known as Motibehn.
275 This comparison of some of the “untouchables” to cows provoked protests. Gandhi replied that he
meant no offence.

“In my conversations with Dr. Mott, at one stage of it I said, ‘Would you preach the Gospel to a cow? Well,
some of the untouchables are worse than cows in understanding. I mean they no more distinguish between
the relative merits of Islam and Hinduism and Christianity than a cow.’ Some Missionary friends have
taken exception to the analogy. I have no remorse about the propriety of the analogy. There could be no
offence meant to Harijans because the cow is a sacred animal. I worship her as I worship my mother. Both
are givers of milk. And so far as understanding is concerned I do maintain that there are, be it said to the
discredit of superior-class Hindus, thousands of Harijans who can no more understand the merits and
demerits of different religions than a cow. That after a long course of training Harijans can have their
 203

relative merits of Islam and Hinduism and Christianity than a cow. You can only preach through
your life. The rose does not say: "Come and smell me."

MOTT: But Christ said: "Preach and Teach," and also that Faith cometh by hearing, and
hearing by the word of God. There was a day when I was an unbeliever. Then J.E.K. Studd of
Cambridge, a famous cricketer, visited my University on an evangelistic mission and cleared the
air for me. His life and splendid example alone would not have answered my question and met
my deepest need, but I listened to him and was converted. First and foremost we must live the
life; but then by wise and sympathetic unfolding of essential truth we must shed light on
processes and actions and attitudes, and remove intellectual difficulties so that it may lead us into
the freedom which is freedom indeed. You do not want the Christians to withdraw tomorrow?

GANDHI: No. But I do not want you to come in the way of our work, if you cannot help us.

MOTT: The whole Christian religion is the religion of sharing our life and how can we share
without supplementing our lives with words?

GANDHI: Then what they are doing in Travancore is correct? There may be a difference of
degree in what you say and what they are doing, but there is no difference of quality. If you must
share it with the Harijans, why don't you share it with Thakkarbapa and Mahadev276? Why
should you go to the untouchable and try to exploit this upheaval? Why not come to us instead.

MOTT: The whole current discussion since the Ambedkar declaration277 has become badly
mixed with other unworthy motives, which must be eliminated. Jesus said: "Ye shall be

intelligence developed in a manner a cow’s cannot, is irrelevant to the present discussion.” (“Notes: The
Cow and the Harijan” in Harijan, 9 January 1937; CWMG, Volume 64, page 218).

Replying to an American missionary in June 1937, Gandhi wrote:

“I do maintain… that the vast mass of Harijans, and for that matter Indian humanity, cannot understand the
presentation of Christianity, and that generally speaking their conversion wherever it has taken place has
not been a spiritual act in any sense of the term.” He put them on the same level as his wife because of her
lack of education. (Young India, 12 June 1937; CWMG, Volume 65, pages 296-98).

The protests were not only from Christian missionaries. Rajmohan Gandhi pointed out that Jagjivan Ram, a
Congressman, also protested. He commented: “What Mott’s remark brought out was not Gandhi’s calm view but a
reaction of fear-cum-resentment, typical of many Hindus, at the thought of ‘losing’ some of their numbers.”
(Rajmohan Gandhi, Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, his People and an Empire (New Delhi: Penguin/Viking,
2006), pages 402-03).

276 Amritlal Vithaldas Thakkar (1869-1951), known as Thakkar Bapa, was Gandhi’s closest associate in
efforts to eliminate untouchability and help the tribal people. Mahadev Desai (1892-1942) was Gandhi’s
personal secretary.
277 Dr. Ambedkar announced at a Depressed Classes Conference in Yeoli on 14 October 1935, which took place
after brutal violence against untouchables in some villages, that he did not intend to die Hindu. The Conference
decided to look for a religion which would give full equality to untouchables. Gandhi said in a statement to the
press on 15 October:

“The speech attributed to Dr. Ambedkar seems to be unbelievable. If, however, he has made such a speech
and the conference adopted the resolution of complete severance and acceptance of any faith that would
witnesses unto Me." A good Christian has to testify what he has experienced in his own life or as
a result of his own observation. We are not true as his followers, if we are not true witnesses of
Christ. He said: "Go and teach and help through the mists and lead them out into larger light."

[Deenabandhu Andrews here asked to be permitted to put forward a concordat. He said:

"There are fundamental differences between you and the missionaries and yet you are the friend
of missionaries. But you feel that they are not playing the game. You want the leaders of the
Church to say: `We do not want to fish in troubled waters; we shall do nothing to imply that we
are taking advantage of a peculiar situation that has arisen.'"]

GANDHI: I do not think it is a matter which admits of any compromise at all. It is a deeply
religious problem and each should do what he likes. If your conscience tells you that the present
effort is your mission, you need not give any quarter to Hindu reformers. I can simply state my
belief that what the missionaries are doing today does not show spirituality.

MOTT: What are the governing ideals and aims of this Indian Village Industries
movement?278 What is the object of your settling down in this little village?

guarantee equality, I regard both as unfortunate events, especially when one notices that in spite of isolated
events to the contrary, untouchability is on its last legs. I can understand the anger of a high-souled and
highly educated person like Dr. Ambedkar over the atrocities as were committed in Kavitha
and other villages.1 But religion is not like a house or a cloak which can be changed at will… If Dr.
Ambedkar has faith in God, I would urge him to assuage his wrath and reconsider the position and examine
his ancestral religion on its own merits and not through the weakness of its faithless followers…” Harijan,
19 October 1935; CWMG, Volume 62, page 37.

Dr. Ambedkar and his wife converted to Buddhism at a ceremony in Nagpur many years later, on 14 October 1956,
and then converted almost half a million of his supporters.

278 Gandhi established the All India Village Industries Association on 14 December 1934 as an
autonomous unit of the Congress. Congress chose Dr. J.C. Kumarappa to lead the Association. The work of
the Association is described on its website as follows:

“The AIVIA soon got reorganised in Maganwadi, a spacious orchard belonging to Seth Jamnalal Bajaj…

“Soon Maganwadi became a hub of rural industrial activity and a centre to coordinate industrial
experiences and knowledge from all parts of the country with focus on research, production, training,
extension, organisation, propaganda and publication.

“AIVIA succeeded in reviving and nurturing a number of rural industries through science and technology.
Paddy husking, flour grinding, oil pressing, bee keeping, palm gur making, paper making, soap making,
village pottery, paints and ink making, Magan Dipa were some of the initial directions.

“The new processes, techniques and machines were brought to the knowledge of the public through
exhibitions.

“AIVIA also struggled to bring about a transformation in the villages in terms of sanitation, improved diet,
indigenous healthcare and local resource based employment.” http://www.mgiri.org/about/index.html,
accessed on 14 April 2014.
 205

GANDHI: The immediate object of my stay in Segaon is to remove to the best of my ability
the appalling ignorance, poverty and the still more appalling insanitation of the Indian
villages.279 All these really run into one another. We seek to remove ignorance not through
imparting the knowledge of the alphabet by word of mouth, but by giving them object-lessons in
sanitation, by telling them what is happening in the world, and so on.

MOTT: What you are doing here has great industrial significance. Japan with about as high a
rate of literacy as any country in the world is not exempt from the sins of industrialism.

GANDHI: But I am not seeking to industrialise the village. I want to revive the village after
the ancient pattern, i.e., to revive hand-spinning, hand-ginning, and its other vital handicrafts.
The village uplift movement is an offshoot of the spinning movement. So great was my
ignorance in 1908 that I mixed up the spinning-wheel with the loom in my small book on Indian
Home Rule.280

MOTT: what is the cause of your greatest concern, your heaviest burden?

GANDHI: My greatest worry is the ignorance and poverty of the masses of India, and the
way in which they have been neglected by the classes, especially the neglect of the Harijans by
the Hindus. This criminal neglect is unwarranted by any of the scriptures. We are custodians of a
great religion and yet we have been guilty of a crime which constitutes our greatest shame. Had I
not been a believer in the inscrutable ways of Providence, a sensitive man like me would have
been a raving maniac.

MOTT: What affords you the greatest hope and satisfaction?

GANDHI: Faith in myself, born of faith in God.

MOTT: In moments when your heart may sink within you, you hark back to this faith in God?

GANDHI: Yes. That is why I have always described myself as an irrepressible optimist.

MOTT: So am I. Our difficulties are our salvation. They make us hark back to the living God.

GANDHI: Yes. My difficulties have strengthened my faith which rises superior to every
difficulty, and remains undimmed. My darkest hour was when I was in Bombay a few months
ago. It was the hour of my temptation. Whilst I was asleep I suddenly felt as though I wanted to
see a woman. Well a man who had tried to rise superior to the sex instinct for nearly 40 years
was bound to be intensely pained when he had this frightful experience. I ultimately conquered
the feeling, but I was face to face with the blackest moment of my life and if I had succumbed to
it, it would have meant my absolute undoing. I was stirred to the depths because strength and

279 Gandhi moved on 30 April 1936 from the Wardha ashram to the tiny village of Segaon, five miles
away. The ashram in Segaon was renamed Sevagram in 1940.
280 Hind Swaraj, which, however, was written in 1909.
peace come from a life of continence. Many Christian friends are jealous of the peace I possess.
It comes from God who has blessed me with the strength to battle against temptation.

MOTT: I agree. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

[The talk now was switched on to subjects vastly different - those of current politics and other
subjects. But Gandhi would not allow a discussion on current politics in the columns of
Harijan.281 Mr. Desai, his secretary, was therefore reluctantly obliged to omit this very
important part of the discussion.]

MOTT: If money is to be given to India, in what ways can it be wisely given without causing
any harm? Will money be of any value?

GANDHI: No. When money is given it can only do harm. It has got to be earned when it is
required. I am convinced that the American and British money which has been voted for
missionary societies has done more harm than good. You cannot serve God and Mammon both.
And my fear is that Mammon has been sent to serve India and God has remained behind, with
the result that He will one day have His vengeance. When the American says, “I will serve you
through money,” I dread him. I simply say to him: “Send us your engineers not to earn money
but to give us the benefit of their scientific knowledge.”

MOTT: But money is stored-up personality. It can be badly used as well as well used.
Through money you can get the services of a good engineer. But far more dangerous than money
is human personality. It makes possible the good as well as the bad use of money. Kagawa of
Japan admits the use of money and machinery is attended with peril but insists, and I agree with
him, that Christ is able to dominate both the money and the machine.

GANDHI: I have made the distinction between money given and money earned. If an
American says he wants to serve India, and you packed him off here, I should say we had not
earned his services. But take Pierre Ceresole282 who came at his own expense, but after our
consent, to serve earthquake-stricken Bihar. We would love to have as many Ceresoles as could
possibly come to our help. No. It is my certain conviction based on experience that money plays
the least part in matters of spirit.

MOTT: If money is the root of evil, we are living in a time when there is more money than
ever was before.

281 Gandhi founded a weekly Harijan in 1933, while in prison. He had obtained facilities from the
Government on the understanding that he would confine himself with work for the Harijans.
282 Pierre Ceresole (1879-1945) was a prominent peace worker from Switzerland. Son of a former
President of Switzerland and an engineer, he decided in his youth that it was time “to give up using His
name which has divided us, and return to His work, which will unite us.” He organised the international
work camp movement (Service Civil) to work with and help people, for instance during natural disasters.
He was the first secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. He was jailed many times for
his peace activities. He and his colleagues helped after the earthquake in Bihar in 1934 and their services
were greatly appreciated by Gandhi. Nicolas Gillett, Men against War (New Delhi: The Gandhi Book
House, 1991). See also Daniel Anet, Pierre Ceresole: la passion de la paix (Neuchâtel, Switzerland : A la
Baconniere, 1969).
 207

GANDHI: Which means that there is more evil in the world.

MOTT: This makes it supremely important that we study more profoundly than ever how to
dominate this power both among the rich and the poor, with spiritual purpose, motive and
passion...

The greatest thing you have ever done is the observance of your Monday silence. You
illustrate thereby the storing up and releasing of power when needed. What place has it continued
to have in the preparation of your spiritual tasks?

GANDHI: It is not the greatest thing I have done, but it certainly means a great thing to me. I
am now taking silence almost every day. If I could impose on myself silence for more days in the
week than one I should love it. In Yeravda Jail I once observed a 15 days' silence. I was in the
seventh heaven during that period. But this silence is now being utilised to get through arrears of
work. It is a superficial advantage after all. The real silence should not be interrupted even by
writing notes to others and carrying on conversation through them. The notes interrupt the
sacredness of the silence when you should listen to music of the spheres. That is why I often say
that my silence is a fraud.

Interview in December 1938283

[This conversation took place over two days on or before 4 December 1938. Dr. Mott's part of the conversation has
been slightly abridged. Mahadev Desai, in his article in Harijan, introduced the interview as follows:

When Dr. Mott came to Segaon two years ago he confined himself almost exclusively to the question of
“the untouchables in India and how the Missionaries could help rather than hinder Gandhiji’s task of the
removal of the blot.” The discussion ended with Gandhiji’s emphatic assertion… that “what the
missionaries are doing today does not show spirituality.” Dr. Mott agreed that the ulterior motive should be
always discarded and that true Missionaries should serve people “whether they become Christians or not.”
But he insisted on the liberty “to preach and teach.” Gandhiji held that preaching and teaching could be best
done through one’s life which alone should be allowed to speak, that there should be no preaching at people
but to people who sought light and guidance from you, and lastly that it should be addressed to people who
could understand.

Dr. Mott did not reopen these fundamental questions during this visit, but wondered if the world, including
the world of missionaries, had advanced since they had last met. He was going to preside over the
deliberations of the International Missionary Council meeting in Madras during the month , and he wanted
to share with Gandhiji the plans of the meeting, and wanted Gandhiji’s intuition and judgment on things to
be discussed at the Convention.” In his graceful way he said: “I have thanked God with every remembrance
of you, and have always felt that you were never more needed than at this hour. I look upon you as a
prophet and a warrior and you have appealed wonderfully even to people who have not seen you. We are
confronted with possibly the most fateful period in history and we want to our aid all the influence that God
has given you…”

“India,” he added, “is a land of great faiths and marvellous heritage and traditions, and we want all the help
we can get. This is a unique Convention where 14 councils of the younger churches of Asia, Africa and

283 Harijan, 10 December 1938; CWMG, Volume 68, pages 165-73.

 Latin America, and 14 of the older churches of Europe will be represented by over 400 delegates…. Am I, I
ask, right in thinking that the tide has turned a little bit on the great things you impressed on me? First was
the matter of the Communal Award and the perils of it, that you vividly brought before me for Christianity
in India. Second was the great danger of the Christian movement, in connection with the propagation of its
faith, taking advantage of the disabilities of people, in order to augment the number of its adherents. Third
was the question of the wise use of money. We have had a scientific study made of the economic basis of
the church in Asia and Africa. Fourth was the question of untouchability. It is not confined to India. It is
inside some of the so-called churches and in Germany it is practised with reference to the Jews and in
America with reference to the coloured people. Now this is what I want to know. Is there not a turning of
the tide? Is there not a clearer recognition of these evils? Have we been going the right way on these
problems?”]

GANDHI: What I have noticed is that there is a drift in the right direction so far as thought is
concerned, but I do feel that in action there is no advance. I was going to say "not much
advance," but I deliberately say "no advance." You may be able to give solitary instances of men
here and there, but they do not count. Right conviction to be of use has to be translated into
action.

DR. MOTT: Take the first question, viz., that of the Communal Award.284 Has there been no
progress?

GANDHI: No progress at all.

DR. MOTT: I have been studying the manuscript of the life of K.T. Paul, to which I have
been asked to write a foreword. Don't you think there has been an advance since his time? The
attitude of the Roman Catholics is hostile. But what about Protestant Christians?

GANDHI: If Protestant Christians are at one on this question, they can have the Award
changed, so far as they are concerned. But there is no solid action in the matter.

DR. MOTT: I did not know that they could have an exception made in their behalf.

GANDHI: They can.

DR. MOTT: Take the next question. Is not taking advantage of people's disabilities being
avoided now? I must say I was terribly pained to read of the McGavran incident285 and greatly
relieved to know that the misunderstanding has been cleared up.

GANDHI: Even on this question, whilst some friends, I agree, are in earnest, so far as action
goes, there has been no change.

DR. MOTT: You mean to say there is not action enough?

284 At the second Round Table Conference in 1932, several participants from India demanded separate
electorates for the religious minorities and members of the untouchable caste of Hindus. Gandhi opposed
separate electorates, especially for the untouchable caste. In 1932, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald of
Britain announced the “Communal Award”, granting separate electorates.
285 Mr. McGavran had contributed to World Dominion a fabricated report of the talk between Gandhi on the one
hand and Bishops Pickett and Azariah on the other.
 209

GANDHI: No, there is no action at all. I have plenty of evidence to prove what I say. I do not
publish all the correspondence I get. Mr. A.A. Paul, whom you may know, convened a
conference some time ago. The proceedings were revealing. Their resolutions were half-hearted.
As far as I am aware, there was no unanimity about any definite action.

DR. MOTT: I was encouraged by a resolution of the National Christian Council which
insisted on pure motives and pure practice.

GANDHI: You may cite the resolution but you will not be able to show corresponding action.

DR. MOTT: I understand. Without action no decision is anything worth. This lesson was
burnt on my mind even as a student when [John] Foster's great essay on the Decision of
Character helped me more than anything I had read.

GANDHI: I assure you you will find confirmation of what I say. I would say that there is not
even concrete recognition of the danger of taking an undue advantage of people's disabilities.
They will never give up what they call the right of mass conversions.

DR. MOTT: They are now talking of conversion of groups and families. I am not quite clear,
though, as to what in certain cases the word "group" implies.

GANDHI: I am quite clear. It is mass conversions called by another name.

DR. MOTT: That is strange. How can groups or families be converted en masse? Conversion
in my family for instance came first with my father, then my oldest sister, then youngest sister,
then I. It is an individual matter, a matter entirely between one and one's God.

GANDHI: So it is. On this matter of untouchability, I may tell you that for years I could not
carry conviction to my own wife. She followed me willy-nilly. The conviction came to her after
long experience and practice.

DR. MOTT: In dealing with the holiest of things we should use the purest methods. But you
will pardon me if I reiterate that I am hopeful of the tide having turned. Discerning Christian
leaders to my knowledge are not only thinking of these things keenly but sincerely addressing
themselves to fostering right practice. On the third question of the wise use of money I see signs
of encouragement.

GANDHI: But it is a virtue of necessity. The Indian Christians are thinking aloud and of
doing things themselves. They are talking of their own responsibilities and saying, "Thank God,
American money can't come."

[Then came a rather long digression on the wise and unwise use of money. The topic had
engaged their attention on the occasion of the last visit too.]
 DR. MOTT: But your own example proves that there are wise uses of money. What do all the
organisations I saw this morning testify?

GANDHI: You see a contradiction between my theory and practice? Well, you must see the
background. With all my experience and ability to collect money I am utterly indifferent in the
matter. I have always felt that when a religious organisation has more money than it requires, it
is in peril of losing its faith in God and pinning its faith on money. There is no such thing as
"wise" or "unwise" use of money. You have simply to cease to depend on it. You don't even
depend on bread, and bargain with God saying you won't pray until God gives your bread!

DR. MOTT: I am arguing this at some length as I want to understand you and not to misquote
you.

GANDHI: Then I will illustrate what I say by two telling illustrations. In South Africa when I
started the satyagraha march there was not a copper in my pocket, and I went with a light heart. I
had a caravan of 3000 people to support. "No fear", said I. "If God wills it He will carry it
forward." Then money began to rain from India. I had to stop it, for when the money came my
miseries began. Whereas they were content with a piece of bread and sugar, they now began
asking for all sorts of things.

Then take the illustration of the new educational experiment. The experiment I said must go
on without asking for any monetary help. Otherwise, after my death the whole organisation
would go to pieces. The fact is the moment financial stability is assured, spiritual bankruptcy is
also assured.

DR. MOTT: But you wisely used the money.

GANDHI: Not metal, but bread; and even the dog, under God's Providence, has not to go
hungry.

[Then came the last question of untouchability. Dr. Mott wondered if there was no quickening
of the conscience all the world over. There had been, he said, battles royal between groups in
America, conventions refusing to go to hotels where the Negroes were not received, there were
Christians in Germany who had gone to prison for protesting against the inhuman treatment of
the Jews. There was gold coming out of dross. What about India?]

GANDHI: No advance in action, I say again. The British are a fair test. The racial feeling
instead of declining is rising. In South Africa the tide of prejudice is rising high, declarations
made by former Ministers are being disregarded. Similar stories come from East Africa. But I
remain an optimist, not that there is any evidence that I can give that right is going to prosper,
but because of my unflinching faith that right must prosper in the end.

DR. MOTT: Well, in South Africa too are there not people like Hofmeyr286 and Edgar
Brookes287? There is certainly a turn of the tide on the part of certain individuals.

286 Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr (1894-1948), a leader of the United Party in South Africa, friendly to Indians.
287 Edgar Harry Brookes (1897-1979), a liberal intellectual in South Africa.
 211

GANDHI: It would be wrong to draw conclusions from a handful of individual instances. Our
inspiration can come only from our faith that right must ultimately prevail. But on this matter, as
I have said, there is an advance in the thought world, but not in action.

Dr. Mott then insisted that most of the advances of the human race were traceable to the
initiative of individuals who had courageously and sacrificially made unpopular causes popular
and triumphant.

The Second Day

[Dr. Mott began the next day with these prefatory remarks: "You put in your quite original way your views on the
questions I asked. I value it more than I can say. I was impressed by your recognition that there was a certain
amount of advance in thought but not in action... I could show you, too that there are certain things actually
concretely on foot. But, today, I want to engage your attention on another matter. What to do with ‘gangster’
nations, if I may use the expression frequently used? There was individual gangsterism in America. It has been put
down by strong police measures both local and national. Could not we do something similar for gangsterism
between nations, as instanced in Manchuria - the nefarious use of the opium poison - in Abyssinia, in Spain, in the
sudden seizure of Austria, and then the case of Czechoslovakia. Now, in this connection, let me say, I was deeply
impressed by what you wrote on the Czechoslovakian crisis and on the Jewish question. Can we bring something
like international police into being?"]

GANDHI: This question is not new to me.

DR. MOTT: I judge not.

GANDHI: I have to deal with identical questions with reference to conditions in India. We
have had to quell riots, communal and labour. The Ministries have used military force in some
cases and police in most. Now whilst I agree that the Ministers could not help doing so, I also
said that the Congress Ministries had proved themselves bankrupt with their stock-in-trade, I
mean their avowed weapon of non-violence. Even so, I would say in reply to the question you
have asked, viz., that if the best mind of the world has not imbibed the spirit of non-violence,
they would have to meet gangsterism in the orthodox way. But that would only show that we
have not got far beyond the Law of the Jungle, that we have not yet learnt to appreciate the
heritage that God has given us, that in spite of the teaching of Christianity which is 1900 years
old and of Hinduism and Buddhism which are older, and even of Islam (if I have read it aright),
we have not made much headway as human beings. But whilst I would understand the use of
force by those who have not the spirit of non-violence in them, I would have those who know
non-violence to throw their whole weight in demonstrating that even gangsterism has to be met
by non-violence. For, ultimately, force, however justifiably used, will lead us into the same
morass as the force of Hitler and Mussolini. There will be just a difference of degree. You and I
who believe in non-violence must use it at the critical moment. We may not despair of touching
the heart even of gangsters, even if, for the moment, we may seem to be striking our heads
against a blind wall.

DR. MOTT: How may the Missionaries and Christians in general help in constructive
activities like the village industries movement, the new educational movement and so on?
 GANDHI: They should study the movements and work under or in co-operation with these
organisations. I am happy to be able to say that I have some valued Christian colleagues. But
they can be counted on one's fingers. I fear that the vast bulk of them remain unconvinced. Some
have frankly said that they do not believe in the village movement or the education movement as
they are conducted by the associations you have named. They evidently believe in
industrialisation and the Western type of education. And the missionaries as a body perhaps fight
shy of movements not conducted wholly or predominantly by Christians. If I get in my activities
the hearty and active cooperation of the 5000 Protestant missionaries in India, and if they really
believed in the living power of non-violence as the only force that counts, they can help not only
here but perhaps in affecting the West.

DR. MOTT: Happily there are a goodly number amongst them who see eye to eye with you.

GANDHI: I know.

DR. MOTT: I think the Congress movement has great force and every missionary should
consider how he can be most helpful to it.

Dr. Mott next asked a few personal questions.

DR. MOTT: What have been the most creative experiences in your life? As you look back on
your past, what, do you think, led you to believe in God when everything seemed to point to the
contrary, when life, so to say, sprang from the ground, although it all looked impossible?

GANDHI: Such experiences are a multitude. But as you put the question to me, I recalled
particularly one experience that changed the course of my life. That fell to my lot seven days
after I had arrived in South Africa. I had gone there on a purely mundane and selfish mission. I
was just a boy returned from England wanting to make some money. Suddenly the client who
had taken me there asked me to go to Pretoria from Durban. It was not an easy journey. There
was the railway journey as far as Charlestown and the coach to Johannesburg. On the train I had
a first-class ticket, but not a bed ticket. At Maritzburg where the beddings, were issued the guard
came and turned me out and asked me to go to the van compartment. I would not go and the train
steamed away leaving me shivering in the cold. Now the creative experience comes there. I was
afraid for my very life. I entered the dark waiting-room. There was a white man in the room. I
was afraid of him. What was my duty, I asked myself. Should I go back to India, or should I go
forward, with God as my helper, and face whatever was in store for me? I decided to stay and
suffer. My active non-violence began from that date. And God put me through the test during
that very journey. I was severely assaulted by the coachman for my moving from the seat he had
given me.

DR. MOTT: The miseries, the slaps after slaps you received burnt into your soul.

GANDHI: Yes, that was one of the richest experiences of my life.

 213

DR. MOTT: I am grateful to you for sharing this experience with me. What has brought
deepest satisfaction to your soul in difficulties and doubts and questioning?

GANDHI: Living faith in God.

DR. MOTT: When have you had indubitable manifestation of God in your life and
experiences?

GANDHI: I have seen and believe that God never appears to you in person, but in action
which can only account for your deliverance in your darkest hour.

DR. MOTT: You mean things take place that cannot possibly happen apart from God?

GANDHI: Yes. They happen suddenly and unawares. One experience stands quite distinctly
in my memory. It relates to my 21 days' fast for the removal of untouchability. I had gone to
sleep the night before without the slightest idea of having to declare a fast the next morning. At
about 12 o'clock in the night something wakes me up suddenly, and some voice - within or
without, I cannot say - whispers, "Thou must go on a fast." "How many days?" I ask. The voice
again said, "Twenty-one days." "When does it begin?" I ask. It says, "You begin tomorrow." I
went quietly off to sleep after making the decision. I did not tell anything to my companions until
after the morning prayer. I placed into their hands a slip of paper announcing my decision and
asking them not to argue with me, as the decision was irrevocable.

Well, the doctors thought I would not survive the fast. But something within me said I would,
and that I must go forward. That kind of experience has never in my life happened before or after
that date.

DR. MOTT: Now, you surely can't trace such a thing to an evil source?

GANDHI: Surely not. I never have thought it was an error. If ever there was in my life a
spiritual fast it was this. There is something in denying satisfaction of the flesh. It is not possible
to see God face to face unless you crucify the flesh. It is one thing to do what belongs to it as a
temple of God, and it is another to deny it what belongs to it as to the body of flesh.

[Dr. Mott had concluded his visit in 1936 with a question on silence. He had done so during a
brief flying visit to Ahmedabad in 1929 and during this visit too he asked if Gandhi had
continued to find it necessary in his spiritual quest.]

GANDHI: I can say that I am an everlastingly silent man now. Only a little while ago I have
remained completely silent nearly two months and the spell of that silence has not yet broken. I
broke it today when you came. Nowadays I go into silence at prayer time every evening and
break it for visitors at 2 o'clock. I broke it today when you came. It has now become both a
physical and spiritual necessity for me. Originally it was taken to relieve the sense of pressure.
Then I wanted time for writing. After, however, I had practised it for some time I saw the
spiritual value of it. It suddenly flashed across my mind that was the time when I could best hold
communion with God. And now I feel as though I was naturally built for silence. Of course I
may tell you that from my childhood I have been noted for my silence. I was silent at school, and
in my London days I was taken for a silent drone by friends.

DR. MOTT: In this connection you put me in mind of two texts from the Bible:

"My soul, be thou silent unto God."

"Speak Lord, for Thy servant hearkeneth."

I have often sought silence for communion even during my noisiest time...

[But the time was up and there was a cluster of visitors already waiting. Dr. Mott therefore
left, saying: “I am sorry to have overstayed my time. I lose all sense of time when I am with you.
I am more grateful than I can say.”]

The Reverend Dr. Eli Stanley Jones, 1932-34

[Dr. Jones (1884-1973), a missionary in India for 36 years, set up the Sat Tal Ashram at Sitapur, United Provinces.
The inmates lived simply, wearing Indian dress and eating Indian food so that Indian Christians were not alienated
from Indian culture. A friend and admirer of Gandhi, he met Gandhi many times and stayed in his ashram at
Sabarmati for ten days. He wrote that Gandhi "taught me more of the spirit of Christ than perhaps any other man in
East or West."288

He was not allowed to visit India during the Second World War because of his support for Indian independence.
After the end of the war, he spent six months a year in India.

He was a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and helped popularise Gandhi and non-violence in the
United States. He was the author of several books, including The Christ of the Indian Road (1925), Mahatma
Gandhi, an Interpretation (1948) and Gandhi Lives (1948). The Christ of the Indian Road was a best-seller and sold
more than a million copies.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., acknowledged the inspiration he derived from Mahatma Gandhi, an Interpretation.
According to Anne Matthews-Younes, granddaughter of Dr. James, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., told her mother in
1964: “Your father was a very important person to me, for it was his book on Mahatma Gandhi that triggered my
use of Gandhi’s methods of non-violence as a weapon for our own people’s freedom in the United States.” He
continued that though he had been very familiar with the writings on Gandhi and had been interested in his method
of non-violence for years, it had not “clicked” with him that it was a vehicle for use in the United States.
http://www.estanleyjonesfoundation.com/about-esj/esj-biography/, accessed on 3 July 2014.]

Interview in 1923289

Dr. Jones met Gandhi in the Poona hospital after he had been operated on by a British
surgeon.

288 E. Stanley Jones, Mahatma Gandhi, an Interpretation (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1948), page 8.
289 E. Stanley Jones, Along the Indian Road (New York: The Abingdon Press, 1939), page 124.
 215

When I went in, I asked him to give me a message to the West, a message on how we, as
Christians, should live this Christian life. He thought a moment and then said: “A message like
that cannot be given by word of mouth, it has to be lived. The only thing I can do is to live it.”

Interview in 1932290

I first met Dr. Ambedkar, the leader of the outcastes, in jail about five years ago. Neither he
nor I were permanently there! We had both gone to see Mahatma Gandhi. When Mahatma
Gandhi introduced me to Dr. Ambedkar, I remonstrated against taking his time from Dr.
Ambedkar. "His is a life-and-death struggle and my questions are comparatively academic," I
said. "No," replied the Mahatma in his gracious way - and how gracious a man he is! He
disarms you. People come to him with blood on their horns and go away tamed and charmed by
his gracious smile and open frankness. "No," he said, "Dr. Ambedkar and I agreed that we
would talk till you came and then we would suspend our conversation and he would listen in as
you and I talked."

I reminded him of the things on which he and I agreed regarding the outcaste movement and then
came to the points on which I was puzzled. "First, how is it that you are trying to do away with
untouchability, but are leaving caste intact? There are the four castes, the Brahmin, the
Kshatriya, the Vaisya, and the Shudra, while under these are the outcastes with no standing
within caste. You undertake to wipe out the outcastes and put them up one rung higher within the
caste system. It is a matter of degree, not of kind. You raise them one rung, but you leave the
caste system intact with these outcastes embodied in it. You still visualise society this way
(holding my four fingers vertically), while I visualise society this way (holding my four fingers
horizontally), all men equal." "So do I," said the Mahatma. "Then caste is gone," I replied. To
which he answered, "Yes, but there are differences which come over from a previous birth which
make for differences in human qualities." So he did justify a modified form of caste based on
inherent qualities. He defended it though he himself does not keep it.

"Second, I don't see why you get the outcastes to go into the temples of which the Brahmin is
the head. Are you not fastening the yoke of Brahminism on the untouchables by throwing the
weight of the untouchables behind the Brahmins, their traditional oppressors?" At this Dr.
Ambedkar and his outcaste retinue seated with him laughed. The Mahatma replied, "After all, the
Brahmin is not as bad as he has been made out to be. He has been the protector of Hinduism
through the centuries." Here he did not face fairly the issue I raised, and instead fastened on his
evident point of interest, the protection of Hinduism...

"Third, haven't you better phases of Hinduism to which you can introduce the outcastes, better
than temple Hinduism? After all, the temples are the centres of idolatry, and idolatry has been the
mother of superstition in all ages." His reply: "What the mosque is to the Moslem and the church
is to the Christian, so the temple is to the Hindu. Besides, there is idolatry in all religions, Islam
and Christianity as well." To which I replied, "Well, if idolatry is inherent in all religions, then I
am through with them all, for I am against idolatry as such." "But," said the Mahatma, "don't you
have an image in your mind when you go to God?" "Yes," I replied, "I do, but it is a moral and
spiritual image, an image of God which I get from Christ, an image, therefore, which I believe

290 Ibid. pages131-33. See also interview of Ms. Lucille McClymonds with Gandhi in 1936.
represents God and does not misrepresent Him as idolatry does, for I believe that God is a Christ-
like God." To this there was no reply.

"Fourth, when you fast to get your view across on people, is it not a form of coercion?" "Yes,"
he replied, "the kind of coercion that Jesus exercises upon you from the cross." To which I
agreed. For no matter how we disagree on other things, on the matter of Mahatma Gandhi's
method of taking suffering on himself I am at one with him. This is the centre of his discovery
and the most fundamental thing in his contribution to the world.

[There is another matter in which Mahatma Gandhi is behind many national leaders, and that is in the matter of
people staying in their homes and being Christians. I raised the matter with him about fifteen years ago at his
Sabarmati Ashram. I put it somewhat in this way: We have no desire to build up a separate communalism around
the Christian Church. True, this has been done, so we seem to be another community like the Hindu and Moslem
communities, and therefore seem to be driving another wedge into the already divided national life. Part of the
blame for this is ours and part yours. Part is ours in that early missionaries segregated the converts to keep them
from contamination. "A mission-compound mentality" has resulted. We now see the error of this and desire
sincerely that we shall no longer be a nationally divisive force - we do not want to encourage denationalisation of
the Christians. But if the blame is partly ours, it is also partly yours, for you as Hindus would not allow people to
stay in their homes and be frank, open, avowed followers of Christ. You put them out, and they were thrown into a
Christian communalism. If you will allow them to stay in their homes and be frank, open Christians, this will not be.
Will you allow them to do so? This was his answer: "There are thousands who are living the Christian life, but who
have never heard of Christ. But I suppose this will not satisfy your Christian susceptibilities." "No," I replied, "it
will not, for I want them to know Him and openly love Him." His reply here was very vague and unsatisfactory.

About fifteen years later I saw him and raised the same question, adding this: "The followers of Christ need not
change their dress, their diet, their names - they can stand in the stream of India's culture and life and interpret
Christ from that standpoint rather than stand in the stream of Western culture. If you are willing to allow them to
stay in their homes without penalty or disability, then, as far as we are concerned, we are willing to see the
Christian community as a separate social and political entity fade out, leaving a moral and spiritual organisation,
the Christian Church to contribute its power to India's uplift and redemption." He replied, "If my son should become
a Christian under the circumstances you mention, and there should be no liquor or tobacco involved, then I should
keep him in my home without penalty and without disability." I added, "But this is personal. Would you recommend
this to India?" He replied, "I would, and if you take the position you now take, then most of the objections to
Christianity would fade out of the mind of India." It was a most important statement, and after we left, the three of
us (David Moses, principal of Hislop College, Nagpur; the Rev. S. Aldis, and I) went over our statements word for
word and all agreed on what passed between us. I wrote up the interview the next day and published an account in
the Fellowship. Five months later Mr. Mahadev Desai, Mahatma Gandhi's right-hand man, came out in the public
press with an apparently inspired correction saying that I had misrepresented the interview... Our reply was simple:
We said, "Mahatma Gandhi has a right to say that he has not changed on the matter of `conversion,' and we will
accept it, but he has no right to say that Stanley Jones has misrepresented the facts and statements in the interview;
for if Stanley Jones was mistaken, then we are all three mistaken, and equally so, for we are all agreed that this is
exactly what was said." And all three of us signed it and sent it to the paper where the "correction" appeared. To
their credit they published it, and, to Mahadev Desai's credit, he wrote and said this honest disagreement would not
hurt our friendship. He is one of the most lovable of men.291 ]

Interview on 4 February 1933292

291 Ibid. pages 135-38.

292Harijan, 11 February 1933; CWMG, Volume 53, pages 257-59.
 217

[Rev. Stanley Jones paid a visit to Gandhi before sailing for America. Gandhi wrote: “He said that in America he
would be asked many questions about the campaign against untouchability and had, therefore, some questions which
he wanted me to answer. I was glad of the visit and I readily answered his questions. I do not propose to reproduce
the whole of our conversation and all his questions and cross-questions, but I propose to give to the readers the main
questions and the substance of my answers.”]

JONES: Why do you restrict the movement to the removal of untouchability only? Why not do
away with the caste system altogether? If there is a difference between caste and caste, and caste
and untouchability, is it not one only of degree?

GANDHI: Untouchability as it is practised in Hinduism today is, in my opinion, a sin against

God and man and is, therefore, like a poison slowly eating into the very vitals of Hinduism. In
my opinion, it has no sanction whatsoever in the Hindu Shastras taken as a whole.
Untouchability of a healthy kind is undoubtedly to be found in the Shastras and it is universal in
all religions. It is a rule of sanitation. That will exist to the end of time: but untouchability as we
are observing today in India is a hideous thing and wears various forms in various provinces,
even in districts. It has degraded both the "untouchables" and the "touchables.” It has stunted the
growth of nearly 40 million human beings. They are denied even the ordinary amenities of life.
The sooner, therefore, it is ended, the better for Hinduism, the better for India and, perhaps,
better for mankind in general.

Not so the caste system. There are innumerable castes in India. They are a social institution.
They are so many trade guilds, as was well said by the late Sir William Wilson Hunter. And at
one time they served a very useful purpose, as, perhaps, they are even now doing to a certain
extent. This institution has superadded to it restrictions which, in my opinion, are undesirable
and are bound to go in course of time. There is nothing sinful about them. They retard the
material progress of those who are labouring under them. They are no bar to the spiritual
progress. The difference, therefore, between caste system and untouchability is not one of
degree, but of kind. An "untouchable" is outside the pale of respectable society. He is hardly
treated as a human being. He is an outcaste hurled into an abyss by his fellow-beings occupying
the same platform. The difference, therefore, is somewhat analogous to the difference between
heaven and hell.

There is one thing more to be remembered about the caste system. For me, it is not the same as
varnashramadharma. Whilst the caste system is an answer to the social need, varnashrama is
based upon the Hindu scriptures. Not so the caste system. While there are innumerable castes
(some dying out and new ones coming into being), the varnas are, and have always been, four. I
am a firm believer in varnashrama. I have not hesitated before now to consider it as a gift of
Hinduism to mankind. Acceptance of that dharma is, so far as I have been able to see it, a
condition of spiritual growth. But I may not here elaborate my view of these four famous
divisions in Hinduism. Their consideration is irrelevant to the present purpose. But I may make
this admission that today this varnashramadharma is not being observed in its purity. There is an
utter confusion of varna and if Hinduism is to become a living force in the world, we have to
understand its real purpose and revive it; but we cannot do so, unless the canker of
untouchability is destroyed. The idea of inferiority and superiority has to be demolished. The
four divisions are not a vertical section, but a horizontal plane on which all stand on a footing of
equality, doing the services respectively assigned to them. A life of religion is not a life of
privileges but of duty. Privileges may come, as they do come to all, from a due fulfilment of
duty. In the book of God, the same number of marks are assigned to the Brahmin that has done
his task well as to the Bhangi who has done likewise.293

JONES: Why do you want temple-entry for Harijans? Are not temples the lowest thing in
Hinduism?

GANDHI: I do not think so for one moment. Temples are to Hindus what churches are to
Christians. In my opinion, we are all idolaters; that in Hinduism we have images of stone or
metal inside temples makes to me no difference. Thousands of Hindus who visit temples in
simple faith derive precisely the same spiritual benefit that Christians visiting churches in simple
faith do. Deprive a Hindu of his temple, and you deprive him of the thing he generally prizes
most in life. That superstition and even evil have grown round many Hindu temples is but too
true. That, however, is an argument for temple reform, not for lowering their value for Harijans
or any Hindu. It is my certain conviction that temples are an integral part of Hinduism.

JONES: Was not your fast pure coercion?294

GANDHI: If it is agreed that my fast sprang from love, then it was coercion, only if love of
parents for their children or of the latter for the former, or love of husband for wife and wife for
husband, or to take a sweeping illustration, love of Jesus for those who own Him as their all, is
coercion. It is the implicit and sacred belief of millions of Christians that love of Jesus keeps
them from falling and that it does so against themselves. His love bends the reason and the
emotion of thousands of His votaries to His love. I know that, in my childhood, love of my
parents kept me from sinning, and, even after fifty years of age, love of my children and friends
kept me positively from going to perdition, which I would have done most assuredly but for the
definite and overwhelming influence of that love. And, if all this love could be regarded as
coercion, then the love that prompted my fast and, therefore, my fast, was coercion, but it was
that in no other sense. Fasting is a great institution in Hinduism, as perhaps in no other religion,
and, though it has been abused by people not entitled to fast, it has, on the whole, done the
greatest good to Hinduism. I believe that there is no prayer without fasting and there is no real
fast without prayer. My fast was the prayer of a soul in agony.

Interview in 1934295

[F. Mary Barr, a British social worker in India and a devotee of Gandhi, recorded a conversation between Gandhi
and Dr. Jones in 1934. Dr. Jones had just returned from a furlough in America and had spent some time in Russia.
Miss Barr went into the room while Gandhi and Dr. Jones were talking.]

293 On the evolution of Gandhi’s views on caste and varna, see Anil Nauriya, “Gandhi’s Little-known
Critique of Varna” in Economic and Social Weekly, 13 May 2006.
294 On 20 September 1932, Gandhi began a “fast unto death” in protest against the “communal award” of
the British Prime Minister providing separate electorates for the “untouchables.” There was some criticism
that the fast was a form of coercion. Gandhi replied that the pressure was directed against those who loved
him. He ended the fast when Hindu leaders and Dr. Ambedkar reached an agreement on reservation of seats
for “untouchables” without separate electorates and the British Government accepted the accord.
295 F. Mary Barr, Bapu: Conversations and Correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi (Bombay:
International Book House, 1949), pages 111-13
 219

Gandhi was saying: "I have always had a sneaking admiration for the inventiveness of the
West, and although I do not favour the idea of big machinery to replace our Indian village
economy, I welcome any simple improvements in the existing implements."

Dr. Jones next spoke at some length about Russia and its epoch-making experiment, which
had much impressed him, and which he felt was a great challenge to Christianity. Gandhi
listened with interest, but did not say anything as no question was asked.

DR. JONES. Do you think that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru will remain true to non-violence now
that you are no longer in the Congress?

GANDHI. I have no doubt whatever. I believe that Congress as a whole will be rather more
non-violent than less so, for now they are, as it were, on their honour and standing alone.
Although Pandit Nehru does not believe in creeds and religions because they have so often stood
for things which are not spiritual, I am sure he has really come to believe in non-violence.

DR. JONES. In a recent Round Table Conference I was holding for Indian students somebody
said, "Gandhi wants religious equality for the different castes. Dr. Ambedkar wants social
equality and Pandit Nehru wants economic equality." The chairman, himself a student, said that
"in desiring religious equality Gandhi really wants all three." Do you agree with this?

GANDHI. Of course. If religious equality does not include the other two it is a sham.

DR. JONES. It seems to me to be an unfortunate trend at present that many Indian Christians
are adopting a communal attitude and trying to obtain as many political loaves and fishes as
possible. Some of us feel this to be anti-Christian and a divisive force. Do you agree with me that
a religious and social movement like Christianity should not try to gain separate status?

GANDHI. Yes, I heartily agree with you.

DR. JONES. Well now, suppose we could persuade Indian Christians to cease regarding
themselves as a separate community and also to allow, as it were, the stream of Indian culture to
flow through them, do you think that Hindus, on their side, would allow Christians to remain in
the family and not make any break from their side?

GANDHI. You mean that, supposing my son should wish to become a Christian would I
continue to keep him as an honoured member of my family? Certainly I should, but as soon as he
brought home the whiskey bottle and meat and foreign clothes I should feel like turning him out.

There was laughter at this and the talk turned to the political matters of the day.

American Missionary, 18 April 1934296

296 Harijan, 4 May 1934; CWMG, Volume 57, page 406.

[The name of the missionary was not indicated in Harijan. The interview took place in Jorhat.]

Gandhi had an interesting talk with an American missionary who asked for his views about
conversion. He repeated the opinion he has often given that he did not believe in conversion by
human agency. Seekers after Truth were in the same position as the blind men in the Indian
parable who went to see an elephant, or rather in a worse position. For, if the physically blind
lacked in sight, they were compensated for it to some extent by the enhanced power of other
organs of sense. But seekers after Truth could only see as through a glass, darkly, so far as
inward sight was concerned. It would, therefore, be sheer presumption on their part to seek to
“convert” others to their own faith. God had as many ways of approaching Him as there were
human beings.

Upon the missionary friend attempting a comparison between Jesus and other men revered by
humanity, Gandhiji said that such comparison was fruitless. Jesus of history was not the same as
the Jesus whom Christians adored. For them He was the living God of their conception.
Similarly he himself believed in the Krishna of his own imagination, who was identical with God
and had not much to do with the historic Krishna about whom there was a mass of conflicting
evidence. Historical persons were dead. The mystical incarnations were living ideas—more real
than earthly existences. Religion could never be based on history, for, if it was so based, faith
would be undermined. Tulsidas therefore clinched the point by saying that nama (the name) was
greater than Rama.

Ms. Lucille McClymonds, 1936297

[Lucille McClymonds, an American teacher in a Christian mission school in Bombay, attended the All-India
Conference of the International Fellowship in Wardha in 1936. She met Gandhi on that occasion.]

... As soon as we had freshened up after our journey we walked together to the house where
Gandhi was staying - a little school or retreat where "village uplift work" was being taught. We
climbed the stairs to the flat roof. The first object that met our eyes was a tent… But as we
glanced in we saw - not Gandhi, as I had expected, but a bathtub! No pipes to it, just a tub
standing there.

… He welcomed us in good Oxford English and asked us to sit down near him. "Some young
men will sing Indian hymns for us," he said. "We will listen, and after that we will keep a few
minutes of silence together." Four young men sat at the foot of the bed, played their native
stringed instruments and sang songs in an Indian tongue, probably Sanskrit. Then came a silence
of ten minutes or so. It was "cow-dust time," evening, and sun shone through the dust with a
lovely red glow.

297 Lucille McClymonds, "We Learned from Gandhi" in The Christian Century, 30 January 1957.
 221

Suddenly Gandhi turned to "Brother Stanley" (E. Stanley Jones) and said, "Now let us have a
Christian hymn." Some of us were surprised, for we knew that, though Gandhi often carried a
New Testament about with him and sometimes quoted from it, he did not call himself a
Christian. Also we were a very mixed group religiously.

"What hymn would you like?" asked Dr. Stanley Jones.

"One of the cross," answered Gandhi, and after a moment added: "’When I Survey the
Wondrous Cross’ is my favourite."

Brother Stanley turned to me and said, "Start it, Sister Lucille." I started the tune as found in
most of our hymnbooks - "Hamburg," a Gregorian chant arranged by Lowell Mason in 1824. A
few of us sang it but Gandhi did not join in. When we had finished he said: "That is not the right
tune. This is the right one." And he sang out a tune I had heard used in England - much more
complicated, with many slurred notes and quite a wide range of tones. We sang along with him,
though some of us were only humming by the time we came to the last of the four stanzas.

"Do you know why that is the right tune?" he asked.

"I expect it's the tune you sang in England," I answered.

"That's not the reason. They sing the tune you started in England also. Usually both tunes are
given. But I chose the one I sang because it is so much more triumphant, so much more alive and
beautiful. Don't you think so?" We agreed. "When you sing of the cross," he said, "you must
choose the most beautiful and the most triumphant tune you can find. For nothing else lasts. Only
the cross lasts."

Brother Stanley asked, "And what do you mean by the cross, Gandhi?"

"Suffering love," he answered.

Changing the subject, the Mahatma told us how glad he was to welcome us to Wardha and
how sorry he was not to be able to preside at our conference. But he assured us that he would
follow with great interest the discussions and conclusions of our time together, and that he very
much hoped to have one discussion with us himself.

Then abruptly: "Would you like to know what the bathtub is doing in that tent? Of course
women are not curious and would not ask. But the men, they might like to know." His eyes
danced. "I got very tense because the British authorities would not believe me. I told them I am
not now active in politics, and that when I intend to be so active I will let them know. I want at
this time only to teach methods of village uplift. But they do not believe me - they censor my
mail and have secret service men watching my every move. I got sick and tense and could not
sleep or eat. So a doctor friend of mine told me that I must have warm baths, that I must relax.
You know how we take a bath - we go down to the well and pour water over ourselves. My
doctor said I must lie in warm water. So a friend of mine in Bombay heard about it and sent me
this bathtub. We have no pipes here at the ashram as you have in most homes in England and
America. But we do have running water. The boys bring the water, the women heat it in Standard
Oil tins in the courtyard, run up the steps with it and empty it into the tub. And when I am
through with my bath they fill the tins again and run down the steps and empty the bath water on
our garden. That is our ‘running water.’" And the Mahatma's face broke into a broad smile.

I thought what a genuinely likable, all-round sort of "great soul" this was, who could worship
so intensely and think so earnestly, yet enjoy a joke so thoroughly...

Every evening we had prayers with Gandhi, and every evening we sang a Christian hymn of
the cross, chosen by him. Then one morning at 6.30, after our breakfast of goat's milk in which
sweet lime leaves had been boiled, we went up to the roof to have our personal conference with
Gandhi. He said: "I've been especially interested in your discussion of conversion, and I would
like you to know how I feel about it. I believe in conversion - if it is genuine. There is nothing
worse than being something on the outside that you are not on the inside. If a man really has
found God through discovering Jesus Christ, then he must be baptised and show the world that
he is a follower of Jesus; else he will be living a lie. But if a man, in order to get free schooling
for his children or free food, goes and gets baptised, when all the time he worships his Hindu
gods and in time of trouble whispers ‘Ram! Ram! Ram!’ - then he is living a lie. And such a
divided person is unhealthy and abhorrent. One must be honest clear through."

Brother Stanley spoke for the Christian group: "We agree with you, one hundred percent."

"I believe most of the conversions are not genuine, and therefore I deplore them," Gandhi
added.

"That is where we would disagree, I believe," said Dr. Jones.

"Gandhi, do you really believe there should be caste?" I asked.

"Yes, we cannot do without caste," he said. "But we can give people of all castes a chance for
schooling and decent water, and let them walk on the roads and worship in the temples. Mrs.
Gandhi will take you to see our family temple, which we have opened to the outcasts."

"I don't understand how you can say that caste should continue," I persisted.

"Caste is really a profession or trade with us," he answered. "There were once just enough
teachers and lawyers and priests - they were the Brahmins - and just enough soldiers - the second
caste - and just enough tradesmen and just enough servants. If you do away with caste everyone
will want a white-collar job, and there will be unemployment. We must keep people in the jobs
to which they are born."

"But if an outcaste might make a better priest or teacher than a born Brahmin, would you keep
him down to being a sweeper?" I asked.

"Yes, he should remain within his caste," Gandhi answered...

 223

As we left Gandhi on the last evening of the conference, after the evening prayer, he urged:
"Come again. You are always welcome at our ashram." I was never to see him again, but every
time I sing a hymn of the cross I think of the little man who was so truly a great soul and had
learned much from Jesus who died on that cross. And I watch the hymn tunes more carefully.

American Teachers, December 1938298

[A group of young American teachers from the Ewing College and the Agricultural Institute, Allahabad, who were
returning to America, visited Gandhi at Segaon during the last week of December 1938.]

TEACHER: How would you, an old and experienced leader, advise young men to throw
away their lives in the service of humanity?

GANDHI: The question is not rightly put. You don't throw away your lives when you take up
the weapon of satyagraha. But you prepare yourself to face without retaliation the gravest
danger and provocation. It gives you a chance to surrender your life for the cause when the time
comes. To be able to do so non-violently requires previous training. If you are a believer in the
orthodox method, you go and train yourselves as soldiers. It is the same with non-violence. You
have to alter your whole mode of life and work for it in peace time just as much as in the time of
war. It is no doubt a difficult job. You have to put your whole soul into it; and if you are sincere,
your example will affect the lives of other people around you. America is today exploiting the
so-called weaker nations of the world along with other Powers. It has become the richest country
in the world, not a thing to be proud of when we come to think of the means by which she has
become rich. Again, to protect these riches you need the assistance of violence. You must be
prepared to give up these riches. Therefore, if you really mean to give up violence, you will say,
"We shall have nothing to do with the spoils of violence, and if as a result America ceases to be
rich, we do not mind." You will then be qualified to offer a spotless sacrifice. That is the
meaning of preparation. The occasion for making the extreme sacrifice may not come if you as a
nation have fully learnt to live for peace. It is much more difficult to live for non-violence than to
die for it.

[The friends wanted to know if non-violence as enunciated by Gandhi had a positive quality.]

GANDHI: If I had used the word "love", which non-violence is in essence, you would not
have asked this question. But perhaps "love" does not express my meaning fully. The nearest
word is "charity." We love our friends and our equals. But the reaction that a ruthless dictator
sets up in us is either that of awe or pity according respectively as we react to him violently or
non-violently. Non-violence knows no fear. If I am truly non-violent, I would pity the dictator
and say to myself, "He does not know what a human being should be. One day he will know
better when he is confronted by a people who do not stand in awe of him, who will neither
submit nor cringe to him, nor bear any grudge against him for whatever he may do." Germans
are today doing what they are doing because all the other nations stand in awe of them. None of
them can go to Hitler with clean hands.

298 Harijan, 7 January 1939; CWMG, Volume 68, pages 251-53.

 A TEACHER: What is the place of Christian missions in the new India that is being built up
today? What can they do to help in this great task?

GANDHI: To show appreciation of what India is and is doing. Up till now they have come as
teachers and preachers with queer notions about India and India's great religions. We have been
described as a nation of superstitious heathens, knowing nothing, denying God. We are a brood
of Satan as Murdoch299 would say. Did not Bishop Heber in his well-known hymn "From
Greenland's Icy Mountains" describe India as a country where "every prospect pleases, and only
man is vile"?300 To me this is a negation of the spirit of Christ. My personal view, therefore, is
that if you feel that India has a message to give to the world, that India's religions too are true,
though like all religions imperfect for having percolated through imperfect human agency, and
you come as fellow-helpers and fellow-seekers, there is a place for you here. But if you come as
preachers of the "true Gospel" to a people who are wandering in darkness, so far as I am
concerned you can have no place. You may impose yourselves upon us.

A TEACHER: What is India's real message to the world?

GANDHI: Non-violence. India is saturated with that spirit. It has not demonstrated it to the
extent that you can go to America as living witnesses of that spirit. But you can truthfully say
that India is making a desperate effort to live up to that great ideal. If there is not this message,
there is no other message that India can give. Say what you may, the fact stands out that here you
have a whole sub-continent that has decided for itself that there is no freedom for it except
through non-violence. No other country has made that attempt even. I have not been able to
influence other people even to the extent of believing that non-violence is worth trying. There is
of course a growing body of European opinion that has begun to appreciate the possibilities of
the weapon of non-violence. But I want the sympathy of the whole world for India if she can get
it while she is making this unique experiment. You can, however, be witnesses to that attempt
only if you really feel that we are making an honest effort to come up to the ideal of non-
violence and that all we are doing is not fraud. If your conviction is enlightened and deep
enough, it will set up a ferment working in the minds of your people.

A TEACHER: This is an admirable charge.

GANDHI: Take that charge with you then.

The Reverend Jay Holmes Smith, 1 February 1940301

[Mr. Holmes Smith, a Methodist missionary and the Acharya of the Lalbagh Ashram at Lucknow, and three other
American Methodist missionaries - Paul Keene, Ralph Templin and Mrs. Lila Horton Templin - supported the
Indian national movement for independence. They developed, with their Indian friends, the concept of Kristagraha
(combining Christ and Satyagraha).When instructed by the Government to cease such activities, they signed an open

299 Brian O. Murdoch, professor of German, who wrote several books on the Bible.
300 Bishop Reginald Heber (1783-1826), a prominent writer of hymns, was Bishop of Calcutta from 1823
to 1826. The hymn to which Gandhi referred was resented in India as contemptuous of other religions.
301 Harijan, 10 February 1940: CWMG, Volume 71, pages 168-70.
 225

letter to the Viceroy of India challenging the missionary pledge requiring missionaries not to do anything contrary to
or in diminution of "the lawful authority of the country.” Their mission, after consulting the American Consul in
India, asked them to resign and leave India. After return to the United States, Smith and Templin set up the Harlem
Ashram, an inter-racial and pacifist commune in New York, in 1940. The Ashram promoted non-violent action by
labour and against racism in the United States. Mr. Keane, inspired by Gandhi, started organic farming in America.
Mr. Holmes Smith saw Gandhi in Segaon.]

SMITH: I am now on my way to America where so far as it lies in our power we propose to
start a twofold campaign by (1) opening the eyes of Missions against continuing an unholy
alliance with imperialism; and (2) starting a movement to be organised by the friends of Indian
freedom. I want your reaction to this programme and, if you approve of it, your blessings.

GANDHI: My strong advice to you would be not to have Indians in your society. You will
seek information from them but not members. Their entry would make you suspects. I would like
you to retain your spiritual and purely American character. You are interested in our movement,
I understand, because it is claimed to be strictly non-violent. The hands of those who have fought
for freedom all over the world are dyed red. But you, who claim to be Christians in a special
sense because you insist on living according to the Sermon on the Mount, sympathise with us
because of our unique claim.

And don't expect or accept a single pice [penny] from India, even if you may have to beg and
are reduced to the level of the three tailors of Tooley Street.302

And now I must share with you what I told Mr. Keithahn.303 He, like you, has broken away
from his Mission and chosen to work in the villages of India. I told him that I want every true
Christian to make his contribution to the cause of non-violence. Our movement has been non-
violent for 20 years or even 25, that is, ever since I returned to India and started work. Congress-
minded India has been moving towards non-violence. And yet today I have to say that non-
violence has been non-violence not of the strong but of the weak. But you are attracted to it in
the belief that our non-violence is of the strong. Therefore, you should study the movement
through and through, criticise it, find flaws in it. Thus I do not want you to spin unless you see an
unbreakable connection between spinning or its equivalent and non-violence. It is likely that you
will discover new methods of application or new argument, as Gregg does, in support of mine.
304

SMITH: Do you not mean economic non-violence by the charkha?

GANDHI: Not economic non-violence, but I should say non-violent economics. The charkha
and handicrafts occupy a special place in a non-violent society, as centralised activities do in
modern society constructed on militarism. My hands are feeble today, because I have not a full-
hearted support for my conviction that India can retain her independence by non-violent means.
So long as non-violence is a purely political battle-cry India cannot make a solid contribution to

302 “Three tailors of Tooley Street”, London, were said to have presented a petition to the British Parliament
describing themselves as "We, the people of England.” The phrase is used to describe a group claiming to represent
many more people than it does. The tailors were poor.
303 See interview by Ralph Richard Keithahn above.
304 Richard B. Gregg in his Economics of Khaddar (Madras: S. Ganesan, 1928) and other books.
the peace of the world. Independence cannot be retained if it is a gift of the British. It can be
retained when we have earned it and can retain it by our strength. We have not that non-violent
strength, and we certainly have not the military strength. And so though I am going to Delhi I am
going with my eyes open and in fear and trembling.305 But as I am practical I shall face the
situation as it comes.

But you have to work non-violence out independently and not merely because I swear by it. I
am but a sojourner on this earth for a few days - it may be for a few years, which does not really
matter. I can only repeat what I have been saying all these years. And then I realise my
limitations which to me are amazing. And so I want the help of all who have faith enough to
work for non-violence - especially of Christians, for thousands of them believe that the message
of Christ was that of peace on earth, goodwill to men. I mention Christians specially, because
though there are individual Muslims who believe in non-violence, there are many who do not
regard it as a special message of the Koran. And as you know there are Hindus who disown me
because of my out-and-out belief in non-violence. Now the message of Jesus has been before the
world for 1,900 years; but what are 1,900 years in the life of a religion or in the life of a message
fraught with great consequence for mankind? I therefore want you to be my fellow-workers
testing everything I say on the anvil of cold reason. I want from you a spiritual effort.

SMITH: In this matter we can only sit at your feet for years to come. I am getting in touch
with fellow-seekers here, and I will seek out, on getting back home, men like Gregg. We know
that there is something very vital at stake, and we will hope and pray that India will not barter
satyagraha for a mess of pottage. We want to dig down through the accretions of centuries and
rediscover Christianity...

[Mr. Smith wrote in an article on his return to America:

“I said to Gandhiji on February 1 of this year, ‘A multitude of the lovers of peace

throughout the world, realising something of what is at stake for a war-torn world, are
hoping and praying that India will not sell her birthright of satyagraha (‘truth-force’, in
contrast to violence) for a mess of Swaraj (self-government) pottage.’ Gandhi more than
assured me as regards his own unyielding stand, and shared with me his concern with
reference to the Congress. For twenty years it has adhered to the method of non-violence,
and has developed many stalwart satyagrahis (devotees of ‘truth-force’). But the
Mahatma, speaking from the eminence of his high standards looks upon much of the
resistance of the rank and file, and even of some of their leaders, to tyranny, as the
passive resistance of the weak and not the active resistance of the strong, wholly imbued
with the spirit of thoroughgoing satyagraha…

“The high point of our interview was Mahatmaji’s plea that we, Christian pacifists of the
West, enter more deeply into the understanding (not only of the head but also of the heart
and hand) of the secret of non-violence at work in the whole of life, and help to
encourage and correct his own feeble efforts and those of his countrymen. He believes
that because of their heritage Christians have a great contribution to make to the world’s
most desperately hopeful experiment. Gandhiji feels that we must not be discouraged, for,

305 Gandhi met the Viceroy in Delhi on 5 February 1940.

 227

compared to the history of violence in the world, the history of non-violence is in its
infancy.”306]

The Reverend Ralph T. Templin, 1940307

[Mr. Templin, an American missionary in India for many years and, along with his wife Lila, a founder of the
Kristagraha movement, was forced to leave India because of his support of Gandhi and the national movement for
freedom. He was active in the pacifist movement after his return to the United States.

He met Gandhi on two occasions in 1940 – first (perhaps with other members of Kristagraha) to inform Gandhi of
the movement and second, before his departure for India later in the year.

He wrote in his book Democracy and Nonviolence:

“Gandhi’s experiment in India revealed the availability of the method of peaceful persuasion not only to all
people but in all areas of human need. He bequeathed to the world amazing new possibilities for popular
struggle against injustice or against encroaching regimentation and tyrannical forms.

“In a struggle that implements democracy’s method of peaceful persuasion, method and goal converge. In
each life, in each nation, in the international arena, no longer need the end justify the means; it is now
possible to employ the right means to achieve humanity’s goals. Such was the gift of Gandhi. His great
achievement is not merely a milestone in democratic progress; it is perhaps a thousand-year marker.”308]

Of the first interview he wrote:

“Gandhi said, ‘For me the Christ and Satya (Truth) are one and the same. You must hold
them to this high moral principle.’ He said there were three things to observe: ‘Keep your
movement pure (above-board and without guile); keep it moral (out of politics); keep it
harmless (non-violent in word and deed). Your success cannot be measured in numbers
of adherents or grasp of power which worldly peoples and movements seek. Only one
devoted person,’ he added, ‘if steadfastly loyal to non-violence, can never be defeated nor
his contribution prove vain.’”309

Of the second interview, he wrote:

“On our memorable final visit with Gandhi, we knew we were taking farewell for the last
time and that we were going into forced exile from India, the land of our adoption. Even
so it was a happy occasion.

“The visit took place in Gandhi’s simple thatched hut at Sevagram. The conversation
began in a jocular vein; Gandhi drew me out about futile attempts to learn to spin. He

306 J. Holmes Smith, “Non-violent Direct Action” in Fellowship, Nyack, New York, December 1941.
307 From Ralph Templin, "Gandhi Belongs to Tomorrow" in The Christian Century, 18 February 1948.
Reproduced in Norman Cousins (ed.) Profiles of Gandhi: America Remembers a World Leader (Delhi: Indian Book
Co., 1969).

308 Ralph T. Templin, Democracy and Nonviolence: The Rise of the Individual in World Crisis (Boston:
Porter Sargent, 1965).
309 Ibid., page 326; and “Gandhi Belongs to Tomorrow” in The Christian Century, 18 February 1948.
 laughed heartily about ‘you Americans who want to get things done right now.’ He
dilated in the same amused way about the delicate and elusive ‘art of spinning, which
requires that one place in proper balanced proportion the desire to push ahead and the
patience to hold back.’ One could sense that in twitting an American in this pleasant
spirit, he was gently chiding the West.” 310

James E. McEldowney311

[Mr. McEldowney(1907-2005) was a Methodist missionary in India for 35 years and served in Hyderabad and
Jabalpur.]

… it was when one of my professors from Boston University came to India. Dr. Elmer Leslie
and his son said they wanted to meet Gandhi. We wrote him and he graciously offered to meet
us. So Dr. Orville Davis, the Principal of our College, Dr. Leslie and his son Jim, and I drove
about 200 miles to Sevagram, the little village where Gandhi lived and he received us in his
home.

We sat with him on the floor in his little house. We felt very humble in the presence of such a
great man. We asked him many questions about the future of India and as he replied we could
see he had great plans for the country. Then we were surprised when he said, “I have a great
respect for Christianity. I often read the Sermon on the Mount and have gained much from it. I
know of no one who has done more for humanity than Jesus. In fact, there is nothing wrong with
Christianity, but the trouble is only with you Christians. You do not begin to live up to your own
teachings.” That made us all the more humble. We were impressed by his honesty and his very
gracious words. We stayed with him for about an hour and a half in his home and then we drove
back to Jabalpur.

VI. PACIFISTS

The United States has a long tradition of pacifism, but the pacifists were a small group
An Anti-Militarism Committee (later renamed American Union of Militarism) was established in January 1915 to
oppose entry of the United States into the First World War. Norman Baldwin was elected President in 1917. It
campaigned with demonstrations, lectures and lobbying, but was unable to prevent American entry into the war. It
then opposed conscription and was subjected to repression.
Later in 1915, the Fellowship of Reconciliation was founded at a meeting of 68 persons, mostly Protestant
clergymen opposed to militarism and war.312 This volume includes interviews by several persons associated with

310 Templin, page 330

311 James E. McEldowney, Gateway to India: Children’s Stories. From
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~pm9k/jem/words/gandhi.html, accessed on 3 February 2014.
312 The Fellowship was set up in Britain earlier that year. An International Fellowship of Reconciliation
was established in 1919, with Pierre Ceresole, the Swiss pacifist, as the first secretary.
 229

the Fellowship – John Haynes Holmes, Roger Baldwin, Rufus M. Jones, Harry Frederick Ward, Sherwood Eddy,
Kirby Page, Eli Stanley Jones, Ms. Irma G. Shapleigh, Harold E. Fey and Harold Ehrensperger.

During the First World War, the “conscientious objectors” who refused to join the armed forces were treated
without mercy. The concern of pacifists for conscientious objectors led to the formation of the American Civil
Liberties Union which, under the leadership of Roger Baldwin, played an important role in fighting bigotry and
injustice and is continuing to defend human rights today.

The ability of Gandhi to lead a non-violent mass movement embracing millions of people was a great
encouragement to the pacifists in the United States. Dr. Holmes learnt about Gandhi from an article in a British
magazine.313 In a sermon on 20 April 1921, he called Gandhi the "greatest man in the world." "When I think of
Gandhi," he said, "I think of Jesus Christ."314

But many members of the American pacifist community were not yet convinced about the methods of Gandhi’s
satyagraha. The early leaders of the pacifist movement did not organise or participate in movements of active non-
violence. Professor Leilah C. Danielson observed in an article that the change in the views of the pacifists was a
complex process and was led in the 1930s by younger pacifists, especially in the Fellowship of Reconciliation. To
quote from Ms. Danielson:

“Although they admired his (Gandhi’s) opposition to violence, they (the pacifists of the 1920s) were
ambivalent about non-violent resistance as a method of social change. As heirs to the Social Gospel, they
feared that boycotts and civil disobedience lacked the spirit of love and goodwill that made social
redemption possible. Moreover, American pacifists viewed Gandhi through their own cultural lens, a view
that was often distorted by Orientalist ideas about Asia and Asians. It was only in the 1930s, when
Reinhold Niebuhr and other Christian realists charged that pacifism was impotent in the face of social
injustice, that they began to reassess Gandhian nonviolence. By the 1940s, they were using non-violent
direct action to protest racial discrimination and segregation, violations of civil liberties, and the nuclear
arms race.”315

“… progressive ideology and Social Gospel idealism shaped how American pacifists viewed Gandhi and
the Indian independence movement. Pacifists saw Gandhi as a Christ-like figure who was simply carrying
out the demands of the Gospel. Though they admired him, they were at the same time wary of such
"coercive" tactics as fasting and civil disobedience. It was not until the early 1930s that they began to
reassess Gandhi, which is not surprising since "sweet reason," education, and legislation appeared
increasingly inadequate in the face of dramatic conflict between capital and labour and the threat of fascism

313 Gilbert Murray, “The Soul as it is, and how to deal with it” in The Hibbert Journal, London, Volume
16, Number 2, pages 191-205, January 1918.
314 The first sermon contained several errors about the life of Gandhi, as little information was available in
America.. Later, Dr. Holmes obtained more information on Gandhi from India. He devoted several sermons over the
years to Gandhi and India's struggle for freedom. Haridas T. Muzumdar (ed.), The Enduring Greatness of Gandhi:
an American Estimate, Sermons of Johan Haynes Holmes and Donald S. Harrington (Ahmedabad: Navajivan
Publishing House, 1982), pages 3-25.
Dr. Holmes wrote: “In my extremity I turned to Gandhi, and he took me in his arms, and never let me go.
Had the Mahatma not come into my life, I must sooner or later have been lost. As it was, he saved me.”
John Haynes Holmes, My Gandhi (New York: Harper, 1953), page 29.

Kirby Page wrote in 1930 that though Gandhi was not a Christian, “few men in history have borne so
striking a resemblance to the Divine Galilean.” Kirby Page, Mahatma Gandhi and His Significance: A
Biographical Interpretation and an Analysis of the Political Situation in India, third edition (New York:
Eddy and Page, 1930), page 54.
315 Leilah C. Danielson, “In my extremity I turned to Gandhi”: American pacifists, Christianity and
Gandhian nonviolence, 1915-1941” in Church History, 1 June 2003.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/%22In+my+extremity+I+turned+to+Gandhi%22%3a+American+pacifists%
2c...-a0104522345, accessed on 19 February 2014.
 abroad. As one pacifist put it in 1935, Gandhi's example in India offered a way out of the ‘Christian
dilemma’ of feeling as though there were only two alternatives – ‘violence or ineffectiveness.’”316

There was more communication with Gandhi by American pacifists after C.F. Andrews, Sarojini Naidu, Miraben
and Muriel Lester317 visited the United States, and interviews with him led to a better understanding of satyagraha.
The writings of Richard Gregg, who had been associated with Gandhi, especially the book, Power of Nonviolence
(1934), explained the thought of Gandhi and its relevance to the West in a language understood by the Americans.
The Fellowship of Reconciliation was greatly influenced by Gandhi since then and was no longer limited to
Christians.

Some missionaries in India became admirers and supporters of Gandhi. The Reverend J. Holmes Smith and Ralph
Templin carried Gandhian strategies to America in 1940.

Non-violent movements for peace and against racist oppression of Negroes and other evils developed in the
United States from about 1940. They were initiated or supported by the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Richard Deats
noted in an article on the history of the Fellowship that its members were instrumental in setting up a number of
organisations to promote reconciliation, peace and human rights - the American Civil Liberties Union, the National
Conference of Christians and Jews, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Workers Defense League, the Committee
for Social Responsibility in Science, the Committee on Militarism in Education, and the American Committee on
Africa.318

Dr. Harry Frederick Ward, 1924319

[Dr. Ward (1873-1966), a Methodist Minister, was Professor of Christian Ethics at the Union Theological Seminary,
New York, from 1918 to 1966. An advocate of the "social gospel," he was active in many social movements
concerned with peace, civil liberties and racial equality.320 He visited India in 1924 and delivered lectures on “Non-
violence” and “Policy of Non-violence” in Bombay and requested Gandhi to grant him an interview. He met Gandhi
soon after his 21-day fast in Delhi as a penance for Hindu-Muslim riots and a prayer for unity. ]

316 Ibid.
317 Muriel Lester (1885-1968) was founder of Kingsley Hall, London, where Gandhi stayed in 1931. A
pacifist, she was travelling secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.
318 Richard Deats, “The Rebel Passion: Eighty-five years of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.” Accessed
at http://forusa.org/blogs/for/rebel-passion-eighty-five-years-fellowship-reconciliation/6728 on 21 March
2014.
319 Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi (Secretary’s Diary) (Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh
Prakashan, 1970), Volume 4.

320 “During the first decade of this (twentieth) century he served in churches near Chicago’s stockyards,
and there he learned of the bitter struggles between labour and big business that affected so many people.
He sided with the workers and embraced various aspects of socialist thought; this notoriety made him a
controversial figure for the next fifty years. Ward’s experience and advocacy epitomised the American
Social Gospel. He embodied the conviction that the best form of religion was that which motivated
believers to unite in social action…

“He… espoused the causes of civil liberties, peace, racial equality, and antifascism. Between 1920 and
1940 he chaired the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union. For a time he also chaired the
American League against War and Fascism (later for Peace and Democracy). Through the Great
Depression and past the McCarthy era he issued manifestoes and policy statements for the Citizens
Committee for Constitutional Liberties.” Henry Warner Bowden, Dictionary of American Religious
Biography, second edition (Westport, Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press, 1977), page 580.
 231

Mr. Ward's appointment was fixed but he was ill and in hospital. Mrs. Ward sent word: "It
will now be difficult to see you. Mr. Ward wants to send you some message. Please let me know
how long you are staying in Delhi."

Gandhi wrote back immediately: "I am sorry Mr. Ward is still ill. I am here for several days
yet, but Mr. Ward need not think of coming over here. I will see him at the hospital myself." Mrs.
Ward then came to take Gandhi to the hospital where he saw Mr. Ward.

The following is a substance of that very noteworthy interview.

Mr. WARD: Your teaching of non-violence has deeply impressed our country. I myself
believe in that principle, but we – my colleagues and myself - have some difficulties as regards
its application. I thought I could solve them if I could understand your movement more clearly. I
was eager to see you on that account.

With this preface he began his questions.

QUESTION: Is not your non-violent movement political in character ?

GANDHI: It is used in the field of politics, because it is my firm behalf that political work also
must be done along purely spiritual lines. But non-violence has not been conceived of as an
exclusively political weapon. It is essentially a movement for self-purification.

QUESTION: At present you emphasise only three things and Khadi specially. Do you believe
that these three things alone will make your country free?

GANDHI: Yes, the first two things mean unification of the country. By the third, by Khadi, the
country's economic uplift will be achieved. I for one believe that so long as the country's
economic serfdom is not ended, the other serfdom is certain to continue. That is why I have laid
special stress on gaining economic independence first. Once that is achieved, I am sure, all other
things will be added unto them.

QUESTION: Since you want to teach your people the discipline that non-violence entails and to
propagate that principle, don't you think that the people - the masses - need to be well-educated
first? Without being highly educated how can they understand non-violence, or see the truth?

GANDHI: The education that you speak of - literary education - is not at all necessary for this
work. Except in literacy, our people are fully well-equipped in education in general, common
sense, practical wisdom, general culture, etc. Everyone is quite at home in the stories of
Ramayana and Mahabharata and illiterate villagers specially so - and they generally understand
the essence, the philosophy underlying them. Let me speak here of my mother herself. The three
Rs she was totally innocent of. But she possessed a culture of such respectable height, a spiritual
wisdom of such depths that I have seen a very few women so stainless and pure as she. Many
indelible childhood impressions of the most exalted kind I owe to her. All the same she had no
book-knowledge. And yet like spiritual matters she could understand political tangles also very
well. She could see through the palace intrigues of her days and often gave a very helpful and
wise view on them.

QUESTION: Don't you think that your movement may go along non-violent lines for a time and
then take a turn for violence?

GANDHI: Why, that was exactly what happened. And that was why I had to stop from going
further along the way it was taking. But if the educated classes enthusiastically support the
constructive work I am now doing, I have no doubt we can gain swaraj by non-violent method
only.

QUESTION: But can millions take to that path?

GANDHI: I have complete faith that they can. This work cannot be done mechanically. What is
needed here is to impress and move hearts – and not of Indians only, but of Englishmen as well.
This power (of the soul) cannot be judged by ordinary standards. We cannot say when and how
that power may spread. Why may not the English mentality itself be purified by this fight? It is
my firm faith that numbers are not at all necessary for the movement's success. It is enough if
only a few men of single-minded faith come forth. Millions will then follow. That has been my
uniform experience whatsoever I have made experiments in satyagraha. This experiment is the
most powerful and the most difficult indeed, but it is not impossible. The fact is, I cannot claim
that my own non-violence is pure or deep enough, otherwise that alone would suffice for my
work. One of the surest reasons why I always look out for collaborators in my experiments is my
own imperfection. As for the efficacy of this weapon I have never had any doubt at all.

Mr. WARD: I see what you mean. But work of that type requires deep faith in God. We have in
some respects greater difficulties to face than you. We have to fight against our own people and
in matters where their vested interests lie.

GANDHI: I may be wrong, but I feel that if anybody has to struggle against the greatest
difficulties, it is we. We have not only to pit ourselves against vested interests, but also against a
most well-organised power. But I may not say anything more about your problems. I may only
say that you also have to gain your victory with this very same weapon.

Mr. WARD: Yes, that we have realised long since. We have absolutely no other weapon with us.
If we take to the path of violence, our nations, I mean those of the West, are doomed to
destruction.

Roger N. Baldwin, 12 September 1931321

[Roger Nash Baldwin (1884-1981), a prominent liberal leader in the United States. was a co-founder of the
American Civil Liberties Union and executive director from 1920 to 1950. He was also a founder of American

321 From "We have Known Gandhi" in Asia and the Americas, New York, October 1944.
 233

League for India’s Freedom (later renamed India League of America). He was a delegate to the World Congress
against Imperialism in 1927 in Brussels where he met Jawaharlal Nehru. After the conference, he was Chairman of
the American section of the League against Imperialism.

He met Gandhi at the railway station in Paris while the latter was on his way to the Round Table Conference in
London in 1931, and travelled with him. Following are two accounts of the meeting, the first in an article by Mr.
Baldwin, and the second in his biography.]

Thirteen years ago when Gandhi was sixty-two, he headed the impressive delegation of
Indian leaders to the London Round Table Conference. I was in Paris at the time and contrived
with newspaper credentials to board his train and travel with him to Boulogne. My old friends,
Mrs. Sarojini Naidu and C.F. Andrews, were aboard, and at once took me to Gandhi's
compartment, introducing me as "another jailbird.322 Gandhi, with a broad and toothless grin,
wearing a garland of roses around his neck, put out his hand and asked, "And what were you in
for?"

We settled down to a breakfast of fruits and goat's milk, while we discussed India, America
and Britain. Whoever came, whatever the subject, Gandhi was always gay, ready for a laugh.

I discussed with Gandhi the possibility of an American visit to which he had been strongly
urged by influential people. I counselled against it, feeling certain that his mission would be
subordinated to American preoccupation with his clothes - or lack them - his diet and his unusual
routine. He saw the point though he thought it not persuasive, and only decided not to go when
he was advised similarly by other Americans.

Two characteristics other than gaiety were impressive; the complete absence of self-
consciousness or self-importance, and a self-assurance which made him unconsciously the centre
of any scene. Like other great natural leaders I have known, his self-assurance was expressed by
his unusual concentration on the business of the moment. It gave weight and dignity to the
words, and quickly overcame initial awareness of his physical appearance.

***

[The following is an extract from Mr. Baldwin’s conversation with his biographer, Ms. Peggy
Lamson.323]

"... Gandhi was on train in France coming from Marseilles to one of the channel ports, Calais I
guess it was, and for some reason the train was scheduled to stop for an hour in Paris, and I was
in Paris...

"I went down to the station because I'd never ever seen Gandhi and I was curious, and there he
was with his bald head looking just like in the newspapers, leaning out the train window - I
remember he had a lei around his neck - and greeting people in the crowd who were there

322 Mr. Baldwin, a pacifist and socialist, spent a year in jail during the First World War as a conscientious
objector. The American Civil Liberties Union, of which he was a founder, had its origin in an organisation
set up to defend conscientious objectors.
323 Lamson, Peggy, Roger Baldwin, Founder of the American Civil Liberties Union: a Portrait (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1976), pages 146-47.
looking up at him. And a little farther down the train I spotted Mrs. Naidu... leaning out of the
window too. And she saw me and called out, ‘Oh Roger Baldwin, come and get on the train. We
want to meet you.’ So I got on the train and Mrs. Naidu introduced me to Gandhi. Miraben was
there too324 and Gandhi said, ‘Stay on the train! I'd like to talk to you,’ so of course I said all
right and I stayed with him in his compartment all the way to Calais. He hadn't had breakfast so
he asked me to take breakfast with him. I was told, of course, that he was a very abstemious man
- that he never ate very much - but I assure you that breakfast was as big as any I've ever had. It
was made up entirely of fruits and nuts and goat's milk, but there was lots of it and Miraben kept
serving us one fruit after another, over and over again."

"What did you talk about between bites?"

"Two things. One, the possibility of his going to the United States, which as I told you, I
argued against, and the other, of course, was about India. He talked about what he hoped to
accomplish at the Round Table Conference in London and how the British were misbehaving
themselves...

"Anyway, Mr. Gandhi talked about India and answered my questions about India and people I
knew in India, and then do you know what happened? Believe it or not, I couldn't think of
anything more to ask him. I ran out of conversation...

"I got up and left his compartment and went to talk to Mrs. Naidu...and then just before we got
to Calais, I went back to Gandhi's compartment."

The Reverend Dr. John Haynes Holmes, September 12, 1931325

[Dr. Holmes (1879-1964), clergyman, author, editor and leader of movements for peace, racial equality and civil
liberties, was one of the earliest admirers and consistent supporters of Gandhi in the United States. In a sermon on
20 April 1921, he called Gandhi the "greatest man in the world." "When I think of Gandhi," he said, "I think of Jesus
Christ."326 He devoted several sermons over the years to Gandhi and India's struggle for freedom. In his
autobiography he wrote: "... this great Indian saint and seer was one of the supreme spiritual geniuses of
history."327

Gandhi, in turn, had great respect for Reverend Holmes. As a token of his appreciation, he sent to Dr. Holmes in
1923, through Ms. Jane Addams, a Gandhi cap made out of cotton cloth spun by his own hands.328

324 Mr. Baldwin had met Mrs. leader of the League for India's Freedom.
324 From John Haynes Holmes, My Gandhi (New York: Harper & Row, 1953). Sarojini Naidu and Miraben
during their tours of the United States, as he was a leader of the League for India's Freedom.
325 From John Haynes Holmes, My Gandhi (New York: Harper & Row, 1953). See also S.P.K. Gupta, Apostle
John and Gandhi: The Mission of John Haynes Holmes for Mahatma Gandhi in the United States of America
(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1988), page 216.
326 Haridas T, Muzumdar, The Enduring Greatness of Gandhi, An American Estimate being the Sermons
of Dr. John Haynes Holmes and Dr. Donald S. Harrington (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House,
1982), pages 3-25.
327 I Speak for Myself (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), page 279.
328 Ibid., page 254
 235

Dr. Holmes first met Gandhi in London on 12 September 1931. Later, in 1947-48, he visited India for three
months, on a grant from the Watumull Foundation, as the Rabindranath Tagore Memorial Visiting Professor and
met Gandhi on 12 October 1947, and again a few days later. He spoke of these meetings in a sermon on his return to
New York, on 25 January 1948.329

Holmes and Gandhi had extensive correspondence. They were both admirers of Tolstoy and friends of Romain
Rolland.

A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Dr. Holmes was a Unitarian Minister in Dorchester and New York from
1907 to 1921 when he founded the non-denominational Community Church in New York. He was Minister of that
Church from 1921 to 1949 when he retired. He advocated a “Universal Church” open to the great ideas of all
religions and faiths. He was a radical religious pacifist.

He was a founder and vice-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; a leader
of the Anti-Militarist Committee, formed in New York in 1915, which was succeeded by the American Union
against Militarism in 1916; a founder and later Chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties
Union; and a founder of the War Resisters League in 1923. He was also a co-founder of the American branch of the
Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Dr. Holmes was editor-in-chief of Unity, a weekly, and author of many books, including My Gandhi (1953) and I
Speak for Myself (1959), as well as numerous articles and sermons.

In the sermon he preached on his retirement (27 November 1949), Dr. Holmes recalled that when America
entered the First World War, he had refused to have anything to do with the war, but was troubled.

"... I was not sure of my position. What guarantee did I have that pacifism was sound? Why should the
whole world be wrong, and the little group of pacifists be right? What egotism to set myself against the
opinion of mankind! It was a ghastly experience - this opposition to war. And I was saved only by what still
seems to me a miracle." Holmes continued:

"At the moment I needed him most, I discovered that there was such a man. He was living in the faith
that I had sought. He was making it work and proving it right. In my extremity, I turned to Gandhi, and he
took me into his arms, and never let me go. Away across the globe he cared for me, and caught me, and
reassured me. In London, in 1931, I met him and found him indeed my saint and seer. When I saw him in
India, only a few weeks before his assassination, in 1947, he was as wonderful as ever. Had the Mahatma
not come into my life, I must sooner or later have been lost. As it was, he saved me. He gave me a peace of
mind and a serenity of soul which will be with me to the last…"330]

It was Saturday, the 12th of September, 1931 - a cold, rainy and dismal day. I was in London,
to meet Gandhi. "Charlie" Andrews, beloved of Gandhi through many years, had sent me word
that the Mahatma was landing that very morning at Folkestone, and would I come and join the
little group of friends who would be there on the pier to meet and greet him on his arrival.
Gandhi's mission in England, as all the world knew, was to attend the impending sessions of the
famous Round Table Conference on Indian affairs... In a few moments, which seemed like hours,
we were aboard the ship, and I was standing at the door of Gandhi's cabin, awaiting my turn to
be received. It was here I had my first glimpse of the Mahatma…

I stepped into the little cabin. Instantly, when Gandhi saw me, he jumped to his feet, and with
the lithe quick step of a schoolboy, came forward to greet me. I cannot now seem to remember

329 John Haynes Holmes, My Visit to India (New York: The Community Church, 1947).
330 John Haynes Holmes, An Account of My Ministry: A Sermon Preached on My Retirement (New York:
The Community Church, 1949).
whether or not he gave me the familiar Hindu salutation. But I felt his hands take mine with a
grasp as firm as that of an athlete.

"I wish you might have met me at Marseilles," he said, referring to his landing at the French
port, and taking a train north to the Channel and Folkestone.

I replied that I was afraid that I would be in the way - that I was always reluctant to intrude
upon busy and important people. Whereupon he rebuked me gently, and invited me to be with
him in London. Then the conversation drifted, as conversations have a way of doing on such
occasions, to other and more general themes. I do not recall particularly what was said. I was
too excited and confused to make note of Gandhi's remarks. But I shall never forget those bright
eyes shining through his spectacles, his voice so clear and yet so gentle, his whole presence so
simple and yet so strong. We had only a few precious moments together - others were pressing
upon us and clamouring for attention. So I withdrew and contented myself with watching this
man whose spirit had reached me, years before, across the continents and seas of half the world.

I have often been asked to describe my initial impression of Gandhi. I do not find this
question hard to answer. It centred, first of all, in my somewhat amusing recognition of the fact
that he looked exactly like the photographs and cartoons that I had seen of him in recent years.
In one way, this was inevitable, so distinctive were the characteristics of his personality. In
another way, this was remarkable, so difficult was it to get Gandhi before a camera or drawing
board. I suppose I have seen hundreds of his pictures, but I find it hard to remember one for
which the Mahatma had made a deliberate pose. In an interview with him at New Delhi, on my
visit to India in 1947-48, I was accompanied by my son. I asked if the latter could "snap" us as
we talked. Gandhi smiled, said that he was used to these "instruments of torture," and went right
on in his conversation with me, as though nothing else were going on at all. Gandhi had no time,
least of all any interest, in posing for pictures. So photographs and drawings were in a very
special sense of the word, mere glimpses of a man in action. And here he was, precisely the man
I had seen so many times in the newspaper or on the screen. As I watched the scene in the
crowded cabin of the ship, I felt as though I were looking at mute representations of the
Mahatma suddenly come to life…

What we saw at the start was the physical appearance of one of the world's great figures. But
this almost instantly passed into the spiritual presence of a loving and infinitely loveable man.
What we felt, in the first few moments, was reverence and awe, but this was immediately caught
up and absorbed by his simplicity, innocence, and charm. Gandhi's attitude had all the
naturalness and spontaneity of a little child. There was in him and about him not an iota of self-
consciousness - no pose, pretentiousness, or pride. In no time at all, Gandhi had us all laughing,
as completely at our ease as though we had known one another and him for years. If, in this
world of varied personalities, there is a single man even half as charming, and thus as irresistible,
as Gandhi, I have not seen him...

I last saw Gandhi on my visit to India in 1947-48. I went to the Far East, on appointment by
an American foundation, to lecture at Indian colleges and universities. When the invitation was
received and accepted, and plans for distant travelling were under way, I wrote to the Mahatma
 237

about my journey, and asked if I could come and see him. He answered promptly and as
follows:

"You have given me not only exciting but welcome news. The news appears to be
almost too good to be true, and I am not going to believe it in its entirety unless you are
physically in India."

...Gandhi, in the kindliness of his spirit, arranged an appointment on the very day of my
arrival, at the precise hour of four o'clock in the afternoon. On the very tick of this hour, for I
remembered Gandhi's extreme emphasis on punctuality, I was at Birla House. The door from the
street was wide open, and I entered without ceremony, or any particular attention on the part of
several secretaries or attendants who were moving about, and of one or two native
newspapermen who were squatting on the threshold. Everything was easy and informal and
marvellously quiet. But I soon found I was expected, and was taken without a moment's delay to
Gandhi's room at the far end of the hallway on the main floor.

Gandhi was sitting cross-legged upon his linen-covered cushions placed comfortably upon the
floor. He had given instructions that I should not be asked to remove my shoes, according to
custom, since I would be more at my ease if I did not think of them at all. On seeing me, he
extended his right hand, in smiling welcome, and seized my hand in the warm clasp which was
the familiar gesture of my country and not of his. Then, without a word, he beckoned me to a
chair placed close in front of him, and asked me to sit down...

One thought smote me with astonishment on this visit, and has lingered with me since. I refer
to the fact that, as I looked upon Gandhi in New Delhi, I seemed to see the same man I had
earlier seen in London in 1931. Seventeen years had passed since that first meeting, and they
had apparently not touched the Mahatma at all. Oh yes - his hair had whitened, and retreated
farther back from the broad and open brow. But I could see no wrinkles, nor looseness of the
flesh. He walked more slowly, with a step which had lost its quick and lithe response. But his
strength was quite unexhausted, as witness his pilgrimage into Bengal, to stay the uprisings and
the violent fighting in that unhappy region. Certainly he appeared the same, apart from
unimportant aspects of face and body. As I talked with him, I could feel that it was only the day
before that I had been with him at Kingsley Hall, and that all the years between had been rolled
back and were now as though they had never been. Here was a man who had mastered the
regimen of life - had broken the barriers of the flesh, and entered already into the pure realm of
the spirit...331

331 Dr. Holmes said in his sermon on January 25, 1948: "On the very day of my arrival in New Delhi, I was told that
he [Gandhi] had appointed an hour for me to see him… He greeted me with that ineffable smile which is his
loveliest feature, and we were soon chatting busily together. I thought him looking better than when I had seen him
last, in London in 1931. He certainly was heavier, and his flesh was firm and all aglow with health. Only his voice
was weak - at times I had some difficulty in hearing him. Perhaps this was because of the sadness which the impact
of recent tragic events had impressed upon his soul. He spoke with anguish of the massacres, and especially of the
refugees who were even then pouring into the city. But there was no bitterness, no despair, in what he said. He was
shocked, but not for a moment overborne. His spirit was still triumphant, and single-handed was quieting the
people. Never was Gandhi so great as at this hour; and never so simple and humble, and so truly brave, as when I
saw him that afternoon in the midst of alarms.”
Irma G. Shapleigh, February 1935332

[Ms. Shapleigh was apparently a pacifist as the following was published in Fellowship.]

I arrived in Wardha about eight-thirty on a lovely morning in February. As I alighted from my

third class carriage, a very bright looking, happy young man came to greet me. He proved to be
Mr. Gandhi’s grandson, who is working in close fellowship with his grandfather. We drove a
short distance, and soon arrived at quite an attractive house and garden. My young friend had
told me that as they had moved into their new quarters only a few days before, they were not yet
settled… I was at once ushered into the huge guest tent with dirt floors and containing nothing
but a bed frame. The Mahatma’s secretary soon appeared, when we had a most interesting talk
about the threefold objectives of Mr. Gandhi’s present programme. Having for the time being
given up his political activities, he is now concentrating upon work for the improvement of
village life, upon helping to raise the status of the so-called untouchables and upon endeavouring
to reconcile the Moslem and Hindu communities. The new house, presented to Mr. Gandhi by a
wealthy citizen of Wardha, is to be used primarily, I understand, as headquarters for the village
industries work.

Gandhi on Art

At half past ten I went to breakfast in the main court, and there found a row of men and women
sitting along the veranda, each with a large round brass tray in front of him. I was asked to sit
next to Mr. Gandhi who greeted me in his wonderfully friendly way. He was very jovial. His
breakfast consisted of a bowl of finely chopped greens which grow wild and which he hopes to
persuade the people to use freely. In addition he had a large glass of goat’s milk. He asked me to
have some of the greens. They looked delicious, but proved to be very bitter. I then gave Mr.
Gandhi messages from several mutual friends. One of them, Mr. Ahmed, curator of the Ajanta
caves, had asked me to tell the Mahatma that he had been waiting for ten long years for a visit
from him. Our conversation then turned naturally to the place of beauty or art in one’s life, and
he said he felt that much man-made art often blinded people to the beauty of nature all around
them. The truth is, I fancy, that Mr. Gandhi isn’t much interested in art at all, and does not
consider it very important.

Then an American professor whom I had met at Lingnan University, Canton, suddenly appeared
at the scene. So at one o’clock he and I had a half hour’s interview with Mr. Gandhi. He talked to
us largely about his village improvement work and said that as Indians have little or no sense of
sanitation, he wishes to put over a programme of health and hygiene in every district as far as
possible. Among other things he told us that he realised that Christians as well as other reformers
wish to help the people fundamentally, but he thinks the Christians often do not get down to the
basic needs. One of his remarks was that he would gladly see every machine put out of business
so that all would concentrate in hand work. This he thinks is India’s salvation. To many this
seems like putting back the hands of the clock, but we must remember, as he assured us, that he

332 From: “A Day with Gandhi” in Fellowship, Nyack, NY, USA, January 1936. Fellowship is the
magazine of Fellowship for Reconciliation.
 239

is primarily interested in helping the millions of India’s very poor and underprivileged. In answer
to a question, he said it was true that the depressed classes had never had any chance to have a
religious life of their own. It was plain that Mr. Gandhi is a very busy man indeed, with many
people coming and going, but he has that delightful faculty of seeming to have plenty of time.

Evening Prayers

After a good rest and a little supper, a group started off at five o’clock to walk a mile or more to
the ashram for evening prayers. Mr. Gandhi asked me to walk with his son. On the way several
men fell on their knees in front of Mr. Gandhi and touched his feet, a mark of special respect in
India. Also a number of school children stopped in their play to call out, “Gandhi! Gandhi! Long
live Gandhi!” Surely it is a truly great man who keeps his spirit simple in so much adoration.

I was struck by the quiet, rather sad manner of the son, my companion, but he talked very
pleasantly and seemed happy that I had been interested in his father for so long. He told me that
all the family had been loyal supporters of his father’s ideals except himself, but he first was
obliged to overcome certain weaknesses, he told me. He spoke very feelingly of his father and of
the great pleasure he had in at last coming to work with him. On arriving at the Ashram, we went
to the roof, and there under the stars about fifty people, many of them children, sat for prayers.
Before the service Mr. Gandhi did some hand weaving and explained to me how easily it
worked. Then followed a short time of song and prayer, one man accompanying on a kind of
violin. As we walked back in the moonlight, it was lovely to see how the children clamoured
around Mr. Gandhi, taking turns in walking beside him, he with his arm around a small boy on
either side.

The Reverend Harold E. Fey, 1940333

[Mr. Fey 1898-1990), an ordained minister in the Disciples of Christ, was a writer and editor of religious journals.
He was executive secretary of Fellowship of Reconciliation from 1935 to 1940 and editor of its monthly Fellowship
for many years.. He was associated with The Christian Century, a Protestant weekly published in Chicago, for many
years and was named executive editor in 1956. He spent three days in Sevagram in the first half of 1940.]

...I was greeted by Mr. Gandhi himself and invited to join the members of the ashram in their
evening meal, which is eaten together. There was no fuss of secretaries and factotums and hardly
even an introduction. Mr. Gandhi, who always seems to be capable of high good humour,
immediately said: "If you will guess how I knew how to pronounce your name, I will give you an
orange," and he brought from the cool water of a brass bowl a dripping piece of fruit. When I
"failed in my first examination" he told that both Muriel Lester and John Haynes Holmes had
written that I was coming and gave me the orange anyway. In this informal fashion I was
introduced to Sevagram...

Morning prayers came when the rising bell echoed among the glowing stars at four o'clock.
Mats were spread around the bed of the Mahatma. Only a third of the people arose, and others

333 Harold E. Fey, "Gandhi Faces the Storm" in The Christian Century, Chicago, 24 July 1940.
continuing their slumbers round about while once again the cantor gave the call to prayer and the
musician started chanting the next section of the Hindu scriptures. One of the village workers led
in a protracted section and long before she had finished the Mahatma had gone back to sleep and
was snoring audibly. It was reassuring to discover that Gandhi after all is no superman, but that
he sometimes gets sleepy during long prayers like ordinary mortals. Dawn had just begun to tint
the east when devotions were finished.

Unlike other meals, breakfasts are eaten by the individuals alone. Breakfast consisted that
morning of a tumbler of hot goat's milk, some dates, grapes and chapati, a thin crust of Indian
pancake-like bread. Lunch was more sumptuous. A bowl of curd, some cooked greens, a raw
cabbage leaf and onion, some cooked vegetables, two kinds of hard bread, rice and oranges. All
meals are, of course, strictly vegetarian. Commenting, Gandhi noted that the villagers do not
have as much as he has, and said he was trying to learn how to cut down his consumption of food
and at the same time not lose strength and energy.

After breakfast I had opportunity for my second walk with the Indian leader. The evening
before I had outlined to him my purpose in coming and the questions I wanted to ask. As we
walked down the road, I asked him why the Indian National Congress had voted to begin civil
disobedience again at this time. He said that the British government had never redeemed the
promises made in the First World War and that she had no right to deny India her independence
now. Indians, having been asked to help Britain at this time, were not going to repeat the story of
the last war. When I asked when civil disobedience would begin, he said he did not know. Civil
disobedience is not a strategy like that which is used by generals, he explained. It is an inner
necessity which, if it is done at all, must be done spontaneously and regardless of consequences.
Unfortunately, he continued, India was not ready, but he quickly said that he did not know the
hour and the moment when she might become ready.

His purpose in initiating civil disobedience is not to embarrass Britain. When I asked him why
he should hesitate to embarrass the government that had kept India from her freedom for so long,
he rebuked me for even asking the question. He said that he had no grudge against the British
people, that he admired them very much, and that he strove by every means possible to avoid
causing them any unnecessary difficulty. He stressed the fact that the last thing he had in mind in
initiating civil disobedience was to be of any help to Britain's foes. If by her own refusal to grant
independence to India, Britain gets into a compromising position, then there is no way to avoid
difficulty but Gandhi will not be responsible.

At present, he said that India was far from being ready for mass civil disobedience. If
satyagraha were launched now, it would, he said, "be starting a fire no man could control." India
is in a bad state, he continued. The continual rioting and fighting and the growing rivalry
between Hindus and Moslems indicate that it is not spiritually ready. The salt march to the sea
was successful because the people were spiritually prepared. Lacking this mass preparation, civil
disobedience might now have to be launched on a smaller scale.334 A selected group of
Congressmen might precipitate civil disobedience, or he might do it himself. On the other hand,
mass action was not ruled out. It all depended upon the will of God. God would guide the

334 This interview was before Gandhi launched “individual satyagraha” by selected volunteers.
 241

eventual decision, and Gandhi would know his will through prayer. This was the real reason why
he did not know when disobedience would begin.

Following the interview, Gandhi went back to his spinning wheel, and I to visit the
headquarters of his village industries association...335 Returning in time for prayers in the
evening, I went into Gandhi's hut for the third interview. Both [Mahadev] Desai and Miss
[Rajkumari Amrit] Kaur336 were present, as were several others. Gandhi sat on the floor with his
back against the wall, and I on a mat at his feet. In the light of a kerosene lantern the faces of the
dozen people in the room glowed strangely.

I began by asking him what was the solution of the conflict between Hindus and Moslems. He
said it would be swaraj, or home rule, that the presence of the foreign Viceroy helped to
exaggerate and inflame the problem. He did not minimise the difficulty of reconciliation because
he said the Moslems remember the time when they ruled India and they want to get their power
back again. Moslems reply that Hindus use the Indian National Congress as a cloak for Hindu
rule. So I asked him about the familiar Moslem charge that the Congress is a Hindu organisation.
This he denied, saying that it had mothered minorities ever since it had been founded nearly two
generations ago by the Englishman Hume.337 He said the Congress had gone out of its way to
placate the minorities and would continue to do so, but that if minorities felt their interest
required that they confine themselves into an opposition or anti-Congress party, Congress would
not object to the formation of such a political group.

The organisation of industrial labour into unions is a question that is hotly discussed in India.
In this area communism has its principal support and strength. Gandhi said he is continuing to
encourage the organisation of unions which are not controlled by communists. He pointed out
that his organisation controls one of the oldest industrial unions in India, that this union
maintains schools, hospitals and welfare work and aims to become the owner of the mills it
works and to divide the profits among the workers. He pointed out that the union is now strong
and wealthy and that it manages its affairs by negotiation, without strikes or other difficulties. He
admitted that communists control unions in some places in India, particularly in Cawnpore. The
real problem in India is not industry, but agriculture. It is, therefore, the farmer and not the
industrial worker who constitutes the crux of the Indian problem, he said.

To deal with the problem of the ninety percent of the people of India who live on the land,
Gandhi pointed out that he had organised five principal agencies. The first is the spinning
association which exists to free the people from the tyranny of foreign cloth. The second is the

335 The headquarters of the All India Village Industries Association was at Maganwadi, Wardha.
336 Mahadev Desai (1892-1942), personal secretary of Mahatma Gandhi from 1917, was a writer, editor
and freedom fighter. He went to prison several times and died in prison on 15 August 1942.

Rajkumari (princess) Amrit Kaur (1888-1964) came under the influence of Gandhi and served
imprisonment in the freedom movement. She acted as secretary to Gandhi on several occasions. She was
also a leader of the All India Women’s Conference. After independence, she was Minister of Health for ten
years.
337 Allan Octavius Hume (1829-1912), a British civil servant in India for more than thirty years, was, after
retirement, one of the conveners of the first session of the Indian National Congress in 1885. He served as
general secretary of Congress for more than twenty years.
village industries association whose work is to develop handicrafts. The third is the National
Planning Commission, whose chairman is the brilliant Jawaharlal Nehru, whose work it is to
coordinate the best minds of India on the planned development of Indian economy. The fourth is
the so-called "Wardha education scheme" which seeks to make every Indian, by the same
process, both literate and productive. And the last is the organisation he has built up to rid India
of the curse of untouchability.

Gandhi went on to explain that all his co-workers in these activities are committed with him to
an avowed non-violence position - to the creed of "soul force." This, he insisted, is at the very
heart of democracy. You cannot have both democracy and violence. Democracy, he maintained,
is a drag and hindrance to nations which are committed to war or to methods of violence. If
nations are going to fight, let them first give up democracy, because they cannot keep it anyway.
The creed of non-violence protects the weak, whereas armed and warring nations cannot protect
the weak. In a true democracy, the weakest and the strongest are equal. In no country in the
world today, he said, do the strong show that meticulous regard for the weak which he is seeking
to build in India. In the United States the farmer is a capitalist and he helps exploit the weak. In
India the farmers own only a very small amount of land or perhaps none at all. A society built on
the principle of non-violence will take them into account and seek to serve them.

What is it that Britain is defending today? asked Mr. Gandhi. She is not defending democracy,
he said, or else she would at once give India her freedom. She is defending her right to continue
to control colonies against their will and she is trying to prevent them from falling into the hands
of another nation which has the same aim.

I asked Mr. Gandhi how he managed to carry the enormous responsibility which lay upon him
as the leader of the Indian people. He said: "If I felt I had to carry my responsibilities alone, I
would go mad. I know that if I speak the word, millions of Indians will rise to do my bidding
even unto death. These millions have faith in me and will do what I say. Why is this so? What
have I done for these millions? I have become one of them. I trust God that this power which I
have will be rightly used. I do not worry about it, but I try to do what is right and leave the rest to
God. Nothing can defeat His will."

An American Visitor, June 1940338

[The visitor was a pacifist and represented various women's associations. The interview took place in Sevagram.]

VISITOR: How can I best prepare in India to help in America towards a better understanding
between Indians and Americans?… How could I contribute towards this end in America?

GANDHI: One has to show in one's life one's country's best traits, and that is how one can
bring another country to a better understanding of one's own. If you do not show the best in you
whilst you are here, you make America liable to be misunderstood; and the same thing I would

338 Harijan, 13 July 1940; CWMG, Volume 72, pages 206-07.

 243

say about Indians in America. In America you find a Miss Mayo bringing out all the filth from
the Indian gutters. You will contradict her, and as against one calumny uttered by a hasty or a
paid or an interested observer you will adduce many testimonies gathered out of a sympathetic
understanding and knock the bottom out of that calumny.

VISITOR: What can pacifist Americans do to help the world situation?

GANDHI: It is a difficult question. If you mean pacifist Americans in India, they can do
precious little. But in America they should, I suppose, be able to do a great deal. But it is a
question really outside my depth, and I must not say anything more about it.

VISITOR: I do a lot of writing and speaking, especially among women. Have you any
message to give to American women?

GANDHI: Not as a message. I can throw out a suggestion and, if it appeals to you, you can
develop it. Woman can play a most important part in the work of pacifism. She should refuse to
be swept off her feet and to imitate man's language and refuse to allow herself and hers to be
identified with anything connected with war. For she must know that she can represent peace
more than war. She is made for the demonstration and exhibition of that silent force which is not
less effective because it is silent, but the more effective because it is silent.

Harold Ehrensperger, 1946339

[Mr. Ehrensperger, a member of Fellowship of Reconciliation in the United States and editor of Motive, saw Gandhi
in 1946 in New Delhi.]

The decision to go to the pathetic section of Noakhali at this time has not been an easy one for
him to make.340 When I saw Gandhi at his colony at New Delhi just before he left for this
experiment in living, he spoke of the imminent danger of civil war in India. The riots occurring
all over India were in reality, he said, civil war already.

The Constituent Assembly and the writing of a constitution are making history in India today,
yet Gandhi may have to miss them even though he has given his life to seeing them through.
What is happening in the riot areas, he feels, is of first importance, since if that continues it will
break down all chances for a future independent India.

Moreover, says Gandhi, this is the testing time. If we believe in love as a force, if we believe
in reconciliation as a reality, and if we want to test the validity of these ideas, now is the golden
opportunity. All the high-flown talk of officials, all the resolutions passed by church bodies, all
the long-distance concern that ends in inactivity - these are useless now. Hate and violence are
loose in the country, and the only way to stop them is to live love and non-violence in the midst

339 Fellowship, Nyack, New York, January 1947.

340 During the Hindu-Muslim riots in 1946-47, Gandhi risked his life trying to bring about peace. He went
to Noakhali in east Bengal at the end of October 1946 after reports that hundreds were killed and women
were being abducted and forced to convert to Islam.
of the troubled areas. So Gandhi gave up his cherished dream of being at the nerve centre of
Indian independence and took his place in the worst centre of the Bengal riots. It is a tremendous
sacrifice, but it is a witness to the integrity of what he believes. The world is now seeing another
man who is living his religion even at the risk of his life.

An American Pacifist, July 1947341

[A young American pacifist came to see Gandhi with a note of introduction from Miss Muriel Lester342. He told
Gandhi how she had carried the message of peace to young Americans during the war and explained to them why
they should stay out of the war. He asked Gandhi how young American pacifists should behave today. Gandhi's
reply was that they should behave as they would if the war was still going on. Even if they are a few individuals,
they should not hesitate to do the right thing. The few would multiply into many. The friend was eloquent about
Miss Lester. He had great admiration for her. He thought she was one of the greatest women. Gandhi said:]

She herself would contradict it. There are many great women, but few good women. If you
had said that she was a very good woman, you would have been right. A true pacifist's language
must be correct and thought exact. If you want to play your part effectively in this movement
against war, you have to model your life accordingly. The movement against war is intrinsically
sound. No one can question the value of peace. Yet it has not made enough headway. The fault
lies with the pacifists.

The friend turned back to what Gandhi called inexact language on his part because he had
described Miss Lester as one of the greatest women. He said he had called her great because
she was good.

Gandhi retorted that he never knew that goodness and greatness were synonymous terms. A
man might be great, yet not good.

VII. AFRICAN AMERICANS AND NON-VIOLENCE

Gandhi was aware of the oppression of African-Americans and the lynchings even while he was in South Africa.
Indian Opinion carried reports on discrimination against African-Americans in the United States, and extracts from
two interviews with Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois in British newspapers in 1913.343 Ms. Elizabeth Molteno, a friend of

341 The discussion is extracted from Sushila Nayar's "Notes," dated New Delhi, 27 July 1947, in
Harijan, 10 August 1947; CWMG, Volume 85, page 437.

342 Ms. Muriel Lester (1885-1968), a pacifist and social reformer, was host to Gandhi on his visit to
London in 1931. She was later travelling secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.
343 Indian Opinion, 28 August 1913. Indian Opinion (7 January 1914) reported a speech by Ms. Elizabeth Molteno
at a meeting in Durban on 4 January 1914 to welcome the Reverend C.F. Andrews - Gandhi was among the other
speakers. She said: “We are in the 20th century. Rise to the heights of this glorious century. Try to comprehend the
words of Du Bois - that grand and sympathetic soul: `The 20th century will be the century of colour.'”
 245

Gandhi and Indians in South Africa, speaking at an Indian meeting in Durban on 4 January 1914 to welcome C.F.
Andrews - Gandhi was among the other speakers – said that the whites should try to comprehend the words of Du
Bois - that grand and sympathetic soul: “The 20th century will be the century of colour.”344
Gandhi developed a special feeling for African-Americans who faced a problem similar to that of Indians in South
Africa.

The African-Americans were among the first Americans to show an interest in Gandhi and the Indian struggle.
Marcus Garvey and the United Negro Improvement Association led by him declared support for the Indian struggle.
Hubert Harrison, a leader of UNIA, described Gandhi in Negro World of 19 October 1921 as “the greatest, most
unselfish and powerful leader of the modern world.”345 The Crisis, edited by Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois for the National
Association for the Advancement of the Colored People, carried many articles on Gandhi and the Indian struggle.
Garvey and Du Bois, and their associates, seem to have obtained information from Lala Lajpat Rai, Indian
nationalist leader who was in exile in the United States during the first World War and from Indian residents in the
United States.

In Young India of 21 August 1924, Gandhi wrote about a message he received from Marcus Garvey:

“I gladly publish and gratefully acknowledge the following cable from New York:

‘The Negroes of the world through us send you greetings for fight for freedom of your people and
country. We are with you. Fourth annual international convention Negro peoples of the world.
MARIUS346 GARVEY, CHAIRMAN.’

“Theirs is perhaps a task more difficult than ours. But they have some very fine workers among them.
Many students of history consider that the future is with them. They have fine physique. They have a
glorious imagination. They are as simple as they are brave. Mons. Finot has shown by his scientific
researches that there is in them no inherent inferiority as is commonly supposed to be the case. All they
need is opportunity. I know that if they have caught the spirit of the Indian movement, their progress must
be rapid.”347

African-Americans were proud that Gandhi, a “coloured man,” was able to build a mighty movement and
confront the strongest imperial power. They began to discuss how the African-Americans could organise such a
movement for their liberation.

The visits to the United States of associates of Gandhi - Sarojini Naidu (1928-29), C.F. Andrews (1929) and
Miraben (1934) – helped establish communications between African-American leaders and Gandhi. Gandhi became
more aware of the position of the African-Americans.

Gandhi was outspoken in his denunciation of the oppression of African-Americans. Even in the letter he wrote to
President Roosevelt on 1 July 1942, seeking his understanding for the demand that Britain quit India, he wrote:

344 Indian Opinion, 7 January 1914. Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois said - and this was included in the declaration of the Pan
African Conference held in London in 1900: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour
line..." Ms. Molteno added that the century was also the century of the woman.
345 Nico Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism: the Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India
(Cambridge, MA, USA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2012), page 71. Please add reference to
Indian edition if possible. I do not find it in the libraries here.
346 There was an error in the transcription of the name.
347 CWMG, Volume 25, page 26. Marcus Garvey had sent a similar telegram of solidarity earlier on 1 August
1921, after the second annual convention: Please accept best wishes of 400,000,000 Negroes through us their
representatives, for the speedy emancipation of India from the thraldom of foreign oppression. You may depend on
us for whatsoever help we can give. Second International Convention of Negroes, Marcus Garvey, President.”
Robert A. Hill (ed.). The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, (University of
California Press, 1983), Volume III, page 587. Also Sudarshan Kapur, Raising up a Prophet, pages 16-23.
 “I venture to think that the Allied declaration that the Allies are fighting to make the world safe for
freedom of the individual and for democracy sounds hollow so long as India and, for that matter, Africa are
exploited by Great Britain and America has the Negro problem in her own home.”348

When African-Americans visited him from 1936, he treated them with respect and showed great interest in the
position of the African-Americans. When the American Negro Delegation came to India in 1936, Gandhi invited
them to meet him in Bardoli or Wardha, and added: “If this is impossible, I will come to see you.” When they
arrived in Bardoli, he walked out of his tent to welcome them.

The discussions with Gandhi of the African-American Delegation, as well as Benjamin Mays and Channing
Tobias, centred on non-violent direct action, its applicability to minorities and on a large scale, and the training
required. After their return to the United States, their writings and lectures helped African-Americans to learn more
about Gandhi and non-violence. Not long after these visits, non-violent action against racial segregation, by
organised groups rather than individuals, developed in the United States.

Gandhi told the Delegation in 1936: “…it may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of non-
violence will be delivered to the world." And he affirmed to Frank E. Bolden of the Negro Press in 1945: “We shall
win.” His expectations proved prophetic as they were fulfilled in the 1950s when the Civil Rights Movement was
launched under the leadership of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

African-Americans adapted the thought of Gandhi to their own traditions to build a powerful movement. Taylor
Branch, the African-American historian, wrote:

"Experience in civil rights had taught them that Christianity needed to be modified for politics and
Gandhism modified for American culture. The two systems had to be synthesised, moulded, adjusted."349

Dr. King and his associates did not practice vegetarianism or brahmacharya, and did not resort to fasting. They had
no hesitation in using the law and the courts to advance the struggle.

It is significant that some of the interviewers of Gandhi influenced Dr. King. Dr. Thurman was a classmate and
friend of Dr. King’s father at Morehouse College. He was a student of Rufus Jones and was associated with the
Fellowship of Reconciliation. While on the faculty of the School of Theology at Boston University, he mentored Dr.
King who studied at the University.

Professor Mays, also a friend of Dr. King’s father, was principal of Morehouse College when Dr. King studied
there.

Dr. King acknowledged that he had learnt about Gandhi from a book by the Reverend Eli Stanley Jones.

For further information on Gandhi and African-Americans, see Sudarshan Kapur, Raising up a Prophet: The
African-American Encounter with Gandhi (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), published in India in 1986 under the title
Gandhi and the African-American community, 1919-1955: a study of the image and influence of the Gandhian
movement in the black communities of America before the coming of Martin Luther King, Jr.; and Nico Slate,
Colored Cosmopolitanism: the Shared Struggle for Freedom in United States and India (Harvard University Press,
2012), also published in India.

An American Visitor, 1929350

348 E.S. Reddy (ed.), Mahatma Gandhi: Letters to Americans (Bombay and New York: Bharatiya Vidya
Bhavan, 1998), page 41.
349 Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1968), page 259
350 Young India, 28 March 1929; CWMG, Volume 40, pages 62-63.
 247

[This is from report of an interview with three foreign visitors, including a "fair American"
woman, by Pyarelal, Gandhi's secretary.]

AMERICAN VISITOR: Is the plight of the untouchable as hard as that of the Negro in
America?" she asked.

GANDHI: There can be no true comparison between the two. They are dissimilar. Depressed
and oppressed as the untouchable is in his own land, there is no legal discrimination in force
against him as it is in the case of the Negro in America. Then, though our orthodoxy sometimes
betrays a hardness of heart that cannot but cause deep anguish to a humanitarian, the
superstitious prejudice against the untouchable never breaks out into such savage fury as it does
sometimes in America against the Negro. The lynching of the Negro is not an uncommon
occurrence in America. But in India such things are impossible because of our tradition of non-
violence. Not only that, the humanitarian sentiment in India has so far prevailed against caste
prejudice as to result even in the canonisation of individual untouchables. We have several
untouchable saints. I wonder whether you have any Negro saints among you. The prejudice
against untouchability is fast wearing out. I wish somebody could assure me that the tide of
colour prejudice had spent itself in America.

American Negro delegation, 21 February 1936

[An American Negro delegation, sponsored by the World Student Christian Federation, undertook a four-month tour
of India, Ceylon and Burma in 1935-36, as guests of the local student Christian movements. It was received by
Gandhi in Bardoli on 21 February 1936. The delegation consisted of:

Dr. Howard Thurman (1899-1981), professor of comparative religion and philosophy at Howard University, and
dean of the Rankin Chapel at the university, Washington, D.C. from 1931 to 1943. Before the tour, Dr. Thurman
met Miraben who was visiting the United States and invited her to give a lecture at the Howard University. He also
met Ms. Muriel Lester.351

Mrs. Sue Baily Thurman (1903-1996), lecturer, historian and musician who worked at the national YWCA. In
1936 she founded and edited Aframerican Women’s Journal. In the 1950s, she founded the Museum of Afro-
American History in Boston.

351 Dr. Thurman, a Baptist Minister, was a student at Morehouse College when Dr. Benjamin Mays was a
junior member of the faculty, and came to know the King family. In 1930 he studied at Swarthmore
College with Rufus M. Jones, the Quaker philosopher. He was later professor at Boston University (1953-
67) and knew Martin Luther King, Jr., who was studying at a divinity school. In 1953, Life magazine
named him as one of the twelve greatest preachers of the twentieth century.

He was deeply influenced by his meeting with Gandhi. “… he integrated the Gandhian principles of non-
violent social change into his own Christian vision. It was this vision that formed the core of his most
famous book, Jesus and the Disinherited, which deeply influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil
rights leaders. King carried the book in his briefcase during the Montgomery boycott.” Michele N-K
Collison, “Resurrecting the Thurman Legacy for the Next Millennium” in Black Issues in Higher
Education, 11 November 1999.
 The Reverend Edward G. Carroll, a pastor in Salem, who became the bishop of New England of the United
Methodist Church in 1971.

Mrs. Phenola Carroll, a teacher.

The report of the interview by Mahadev Desai, Gandhi's secretary, is followed by an account of the meeting by
Dr. Thurman in his autobiography. ]

Report by Mahadev Desai in Harijan352

The meeting with the members of the American Negro delegation was the first engagement of an
important nature undertaken by Gandhiji since the breakdown in his health. He could not think
of letting them leave our shores without meeting them, and I had the honour one early morning
to receive them at Navsari station and to escort them to Bardoli.

It was a privilege to meet these friends, and even a two hours' concentrated conversation with
them did not seem to tire Gandhiji, who asked Mr. Thurman all kinds of questions about the
American Negroes, in order to acquaint himself a little with his subject before he could talk with
them with confidence. One of the best alumni of the Negro universities, Dr. Thurman explained
to Gandhiji, with the cautious and dispassionate detachment characteristic of a professor of
philosophy, the various schools of Negro thought. Booker T. Washington represented the
economic school which had its place when America was less industrialised than it is today and
there was more demand for skilled labour. A young man of 34 is now in charge trying to adjust
Tuskegee to the new situation. Du Bois, the mulatto representative of the "Talented Tenth" was
still directing part of the intellectual section of the Negroes, teaching sociology in the Atlanta
University, and offering a challenging intellectual solution of the Negro problem through his
latest book - Black Reconstruction. He was now editing a big Encyclopaedia of the American
Negro, giving the entire story of the American Negro from 1619 to the present time. Dr.
Thurman explained the State theory of separate but so-called "equal" education of the Negro and
told how Howard University in Washington was the only illustration of the Federal Government
participating directly in the running of a Negro university, giving 80 percent of the expenses of
its running. Up to ten years ago the whole of the teaching staff were European, now most of them
are Negroes. "The President, Dr. [Mordecai] Johnson," said Dr. Thurman with kindly emotion,
"is one of the greatest of your admirers." He explained how the situation in the Southern States
was still difficult, as the flower of the aristocratic Whites were all killed in the war of 1861-64
and as soon as the armies of occupation moved to the north the economic structure was
paralysed, leaving the whole structure in the hands of the poor Whites who smarted under the
economic competition of the Negro.

"Is the prejudice against colour growing or dying out?" was one of the questions Gandhiji
asked. "It is difficult to say," said Dr. Thurman, "because in one place things look much
improved, whilst in another the outlook is still dark. Among many of the Southern White
students there is a disposition to improve upon the attitude of their forbears, and the migration
occasioned by the World War did contribute appreciably to break down the barriers. But the

352 This appeared under the title "With Our Negro Guests" by Mahadev Desai, in Harijan, 14 March 1936. A
condensed version is reproduced in CWMG, Volume 62, pages 198-202.
 249

economic question is acute everywhere, and in many of the industrial centres in Middle West the
prejudice against the Negro shows itself in its ugliest form. Among the masses of workers there
is a great amount of tension, which is quite natural when the white thinks that the Negro's very
existence is a threat to his own."

"Is the union between Negroes and the whites recognised by law?" was another question.
"Twenty-five States have laws definitely against these unions, and I have had to sign a bond of
500 dollars to promise that I would not register any such union," said Mr. Carol who is a pastor
in Salem. "But," said Dr. Thurman, "there has been a lot of intermixture of races as for 300 years
or more the Negro woman had no control over her body."

But it was now the friends' turn to ask, and Mrs. Thurman, nobly sensitive to the deeper things
of the spirit, broke her silence now and then and put some searching questions. Did the South
African Negro take any part in your movement?" was the very first question Dr. Thurman asked.
"No," said Gandhiji, "I purposely did not invite them. It would have endangered their cause.
They would not have understood the technique of our struggle nor could they have seen the
purpose or utility of non-violence."

This led to a very interesting discussion of the state of Christianity among the South African
Negroes and Gandhiji explained at great length why Islam scored against Christianity there. The
talk seemed to appeal very much to Dr. Thurman, who is a professor of comparative religion.
"We are often told", said Dr. Thurman, "that but for the Arabs there would have been no slavery.
I do not believe it." "No," said Gandhiji, "it is not true at all. For, the moment a slave accepts
Islam he obtains equality with his master, and there are several instances of this in history." The
whole discussion led to many a question and cross-question during which the guests had an
occasion to see that Gandhiji's principle of equal respect for all religions was no theoretical
formula but a practical creed.

Now the talk centred on a discussion which was the main thing that had drawn the
distinguished members to Gandhiji.

"Is non-violence from your point of view a form of direct action?" inquired Dr. Thurman. "It
is not one form, it is the only form," said Gandhiji. "I do not of course confine the words 'direct
action' to their technical meaning. But without a direct active expression of it, non-violence to
my mind is meaningless. It is the greatest and activest force in the world. One cannot be
passively non-violent. In fact 'non-violence' is a term I had to coin in order to bring out the root
meaning of ahimsa. In spite of the negative particle 'non,' it is no negative force. Superficially we
are surrounded in life by strife and bloodshed, life living upon life. But some great seer, who
ages ago penetrated the centre of truth, said: It is not through strife and violence, but through
non-violence that man can fulfil his destiny and his duty to his fellow creatures. It is a force
which is more positive than electricity and more powerful than even ether. At the centre of non-
violence is a force which is self-acting. Ahimsa means 'love' in the Pauline sense, and yet
something more than the 'love' defined by St. Paul, although I know St. Paul's beautiful
definition is good enough for all practical purposes. Ahimsa includes the whole creation, and not
only human. Besides, love in the English language has other connotations too, and so I was
compelled to use the negative word. But it does not, as I have told you, express a negative force,
but a force superior to all the forces put together. One person who can express ahimsa in life
exercises a force superior to all the forces of brutality."

QUESTION: And is it possible for any individual to achieve this?

GANDHIJI: Certainly. If there was any exclusiveness about it, I should reject it at once.

QUESTION: Any idea of possession is foreign to it?

GANDHIJI: Yes. It possesses nothing, therefore it possesses everything.

QUESTION: Is it possible for a single human being to resist the persistent invasion of the
quality successfully?

GANDHIJI: It is possible. Perhaps your question is more universal than you mean. Isn't it
possible, you mean to ask, for one single Indian for instance to resist the exploitation of 300
million Indians? Or do you mean the onslaught of the whole world against a single individual
personality?

DR. THURMAN: Yes, that is one half of the question. I wanted to know if one man can hold
the whole violence at bay?

GANDHIJI: If he cannot, you must take it that he is not a true representative of ahimsa.
Supposing I cannot produce a single instance in life of a man who truly converted his adversary,
I would then say that is because no one had yet been found to express ahimsa in its fullness.

QUESTION: Then it overrides all other forces?

GANDHIJI: Yes, it is the only true force in life.

"Forgive now the weakness of this question," said Dr. Thurman, who was absolutely absorbed
in the discussion. "Forgive the weakness, but may I ask how are we to train individuals or
communities in this difficult art?"

GANDHIJI: There is no royal road, except through living the creed in your life which must be
a living sermon. Of course the expression in one's own life presupposes great study, tremendous
perseverance, and thorough cleansing of one’s self of all the impurities. If for mastering of the
physical sciences you have to devote a whole lifetime, how many lifetimes may be needed for
mastering the greatest spiritual force that mankind has known? But why worry even if it means
several lifetimes? For if this is the only permanent thing in life, if this is the only thing that
counts, then whatever effort you bestow on mastering it is well spent. Seek ye fist the Kingdom
of Heaven and everything else shall be added unto you. The Kingdom of Heaven is ahimsa.

Mrs. Thurman had restrained herself until now. But she could not go away without asking the
question with which she knew she would be confronted any day. "How am I to act, supposing
my own brother was lynched before my very eyes?"
 251

"There is such a thing as self-immolation," said Gandhiji. "Supposing I was a Negro, and my
sister was ravished by a white or lynched by a whole community, what would be my duty? - I
ask myself. And the answer comes to me: I must not wish ill to these, but neither must I
cooperate with them. It may be that ordinarily I depend on the lynching community for my
livelihood. I refuse to cooperate with them, refuse even to touch the food that comes from them,
and I refuse to cooperate with even my brother Negroes who tolerate the wrong. That is the self-
immolation I mean. I have often in my life resorted to the plan. Of course a mechanical act of
starvation will mean nothing. One's faith must remain undimmed whilst life ebbs out minute by
minute. But I am a very poor specimen of the practice of non-violence, and my answer may not
convince you. But I am striving very hard, and even if I do not succeed fully in this life, my faith
will not diminish."

Mrs. Thurman is a soulful singer, and Dr. Thurman would not think of going away without
leaving with us something to treasure in our memory. We sat enraptured as she gave us the two
famous Negro spirituals - "Were you there, when they crucified my Lord," and "We are climbing
Jacob's ladder" - which last suited the guests and hosts equally, as it gave expression to the deep-
seated hope and aspiration in the breast of every oppressed community to climb higher and
higher until the goal was won.

And now came the parting. "We want you to come to America", said the guests with an
insistence, the depth of love behind which could be measured as Mrs. Thurman reinforced the
request with these words: "We want you not for white America, but for the Negroes; we have
many a problem that cries for solution, and we need you badly." "How I wish I could," said
Gandhiji, "but I would have nothing to give you unless I had given an ocular demonstration here
of all that I have been saying. I must make good the message here before I bring it to you. I do
not say that I am defeated, but I have still to perfect myself. You may be sure that the moment I
feel the call within me I shall not hesitate. "

Dr. Thurman explained that the Negroes were ready to receive the message. "Much of the
peculiar background of our own life in America is our own interpretation of the Christian
religion. When one goes through the pages of the hundreds of Negro spirituals, striking things
are brought to my mind which remind me of all that you have told us today."

"Well," said Gandhiji, bidding good-bye to them, "if it comes true it may be through the
Negroes that the unadulterated message of non-violence will be delivered to the world."

Account by Dr. Thurman353

It was during the second day of my lectures at the University of Bombay that I said to Sue, "I
think I will go down to the post office and send a telegram to Mahatma Gandhi at his ashram to

353 From Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart: the Autobiography of Howard Thurman (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), pages 130-35
see if we can see him. We can't go home without visiting him." The next morning I left for the
post office to send the telegram. I passed an Indian in Khadi cloth wearing a Gandhi cap. Our
eyes met as we passed, though we said nothing. When I had gone about fifty feet something
made me turn around to look back at him just as he turned around to look back at me. He
smiled; I smiled. We turned and came toward each other and when we met he said, "Are you,
you?" And I said, "Yes.” He said, "Well, I have a letter for you from Gandhi." I said, "That's
wonderful because I am on my way to the post office now to send a telegram to him to see
whether or not it is possible for us to see each other."

I read his letter; he said he knew our time was drawing to a close, yet we hadn't met. We
must have a chance to talk. He was not at his ashram, but invited us to meet him at Bardoli,
where he was resting for a few days, if our schedule would permit. The letter continued,
"Bardoli is closer to Bombay than my ashram. But if you prefer, when your lectures are over, I
will be back at the ashram and you can come there. If this is impossible I will come to see you."
I quickly cancelled everything scheduled. Sue, Eddie, and I got the train to a designated station
where we were met by Mr. Gandhi's secretary at four o'clock in the morning…

As the car drove up to an open field we saw a bungalow tent over which flew the flag of the
Indian National Congress. Gandhi came out of the tent to greet us as the car came to a stop. His
secretary turned to me and said, "This is the first time in all the years that we have been working
together that I've ever seen him come out to greet a visitor so warmly." We were introduced and
invited to sit on the floor of a rather large room in the centre of the tent where there were two or
three other Indians. Then, to my amazement, the first thing Gandhi did was to reach under his
shawl and take out an old silver watch, saying, "I apologise, but we must talk by the watch,
because we have much to talk about and you have only three hours before you have to leave to
catch your train back to Bombay."

He had questions. Never in my life have I been a part of that kind of examination: persistent,
pragmatic questions about American Negroes, about the course of slavery, and how we had
survived it. One of the things that puzzled him was why the slaves did not become Moslems.
"Because," said he, "the Moslem religion is the only religion in the world in which no lines are
drawn from within the religious fellowship. Once you are in, you are all the way in. This is not
true in Christianity, it is not true in Buddhism or Hinduism. If you had become Moslem, then
even though you were a slave, in the faith you would be equal to your master."

He wanted to know about voting rights, lynching, discrimination, public school education, the
churches and how they functioned. His questions covered the entire sweep of our experience in
American society.

Finally, he looked at his watch and with surprise said, "Our time is almost gone and I haven't
given you the opportunity to ask me any questions at all."

Sue asked, with a tone of urgency, under what circumstances Gandhi would come to America
as the guest of Afro-Americans.
 253

"The only conditions under which I would come would be that I would be able to make some
helpful contributions toward the solution of the racial trouble in your country. I don't feel that I
would have the right to try to do that unless or until I have won our struggle in India. And out of
that discovery and disclosure I may be able to have some suggestions about the problems
involving race relations in your country and the rest of the world." Before we left he said that
with a clear perception it could be through the Afro-American that the unadulterated message of
non-violence would be delivered to all men everywhere.

At that point we asked, "Why has your movement failed of its objectives, namely, to rid the
country of the British?" His reply, as I reconstruct it over these years, is more pertinent to our
concerns now than it was then. He said, in essence: "The effectiveness of a creative ethical ideal
such as non-violence, ahimsa, or no killing depends upon the degree to which the masses of the
people are able to embrace such a notion and have it become a working part of their total
experience. It cannot be the unique property or experience of the leaders; it has to be rooted in
the mass assent and creative push. The result is that when we first began our movement, it
failed, and it will continue to fail until it is embraced by the masses of the people. I felt that they
could not sustain this ethical ideal long enough for it to be effective because they did not have
enough vitality."

It struck me with a tremendous wallop that I had never associated ethics and morality with
physical vitality. It was a new notion trying to penetrate my mind.

He continued, "The masses lacked vitality for two reasons. First, they were hungry. The
thing I needed to do was to attack that problem. There was a time when the masses were not so
poverty-stricken. They wove their own cotton cloth. This is fundamental, because the strategy
of the colonial mentality is to forbid the colony to manufacture the finished product it raises.
The Indian people are not permitted by the British to manufacture the cotton cloth. Instead, the
raw material must be sent to textile mills in England, where it is made into cloth and shipped
back to India. I wanted them to recapture what had been lost during the period of conquest; to
revive the cottage industries, and the spinning wheel. Then every family could spin their own
cloth to use as they needed. This was to be one plan of attack. The other was to raise their own
food and live off the land.

"The second reason for the lack of vitality was the loss of self-respect." When he said that, I
smiled somewhat smugly, as if I knew a secret. He said, "I see you are smiling." I said, "Yes,
but it is not what you think." "I'll tell you," Gandhi said, "You are thinking that we have lost our
self-respect because of the presence of the conqueror in our midst. That is not the reason. We
have lost our self-respect because of the presence of untouchability in Hinduism." And then he
gave us some rather startling statistics about the untouchables, their large percentage in the
population, their completely subordinated position as far as the rest of India was concerned.
"They are the scavengers, the worthless. If the shadow of an untouchable falls on the Hindu
temple or, in some instances, on the street on which the Hindu temple is located, the temple is
considered to be contaminated."

I said, "How on earth did you attack such a thing as that?" He was striking close to home
with this. He said, "The first thing that I did as a caste Hindu was to adopt into my family an
outcaste and make that person a member of my family, legally, and in all the other ways. This
announced to the other caste Hindus, ‘This is what I mean by what I am saying.’ Then I changed
the name from outcaste to Harijan, a word that means ‘Child of God.’"

His theory was that if he could make every caste Hindu, whenever he referred to an outcaste,
call him a ‘Child of God,’ in that act he would create within himself an acute moral congestion
that could not be resolved until his attitude was transformed.

"I became the spearhead of a movement for the building of a new self-respect, a fresh self-
image for the untouchables in Indian society. I felt that the impact of this would be the release of
energy needed to sustain a commitment to non-violent direct action."

With this explanation, our time came to a close. But before we left, he asked, "Will you do
me a favour? Will you sing one of your songs for me? Will you sing ‘Were You There When
They Crucified My Lord?’" He continued, "I feel that this song gets to the root of the experience
of the entire human race under the spread of the healing wings of suffering."

"My wife is a musician," I said, "but the rest of us will join her." Under the tent in Bardoli in
a strange land we three joined in music as one heartbeat. Gandhi and his friends bowed their
heads in prayer. When it was over there was a long silence and there may have been a few
words that Gandhi used in prayer; then we got up to leave.

He gave Sue a basket of tropical fruit. At the door of the tent, I asked, "Would you give me
something?" as I gazed at the spinning wheel beside him. "I would like a piece of cloth woven
out of material that you yourself have spun from the flax." He asked his secretary to make a note
of it. Within a year from that time I received in the mail a piece of cloth made from the thread
that had been spun by Gandhi himself.

At the final leave-taking I said, "Will you now, ending, answer just one question? What do
you think is the greatest handicap to Jesus Christ in India?" It was apropos of something he had
said to me about Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount. I wanted to know his real thought about
the chief obstacle in his own country which prevented the spread of Christianity. He answered,
"Christianity as it is practised, as it has been identified with Western culture, with Western
civilisation and colonialism. This is the greatest enemy that Jesus Christ has in my country - not
Hinduism, or Buddhism, or any of the indigenous religions - but Christianity itself."

And with that we bade each other good-bye.

Professor Benjamin E. Mays, 31 December 1936

[Professor Mays (1894-1984), African-American educator, theologian and social activist, arrived in India to attend
the World Conference of the YMCA in Mysore (January 1937) and met Gandhi at Sevagram on 31 December 1936.
Dr. Mays was professor at Howard University in Washington, DC, and dean of its School of Religion from 1934 to
1940. From 1940 to 1967, he was President of Morehouse College in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King, Jr.,
 255

studied. He was a friend of King, Sr. Dr. King called him his “spiritual mentor.” He delivered the funeral oration
when Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. A report on the interview by Mahadev Desai is reproduced below,
followed by an account by Professor Mays in his autobiography.]

Report by Mahadev Desai in Harijan354

GANDHI: Passive resistance is a misnomer for non-violent resistance. It is much more active
than violent resistance. It is direct, ceaseless, but three-fourths invisible and only one-fourth
visible. In its visibility it seems to be ineffective, e.g., the spinning-wheel which I have called the
symbol of non-violence. In its visibility it appears ineffective, but it is really intensely active and
most effective in ultimate result. This knowledge enables me to detect flaws in the way in which
the votaries of non-violence are doing their spinning. I ask for more vigilance and more
untiredness. Non-violence is an intensely active force when properly understood and used. A
violent man's activity is most visible while it lasts. But it is always transitory. What can be more
visible than the Abyssinians done to death by Italians?355 There it was lesser violence pitted
against much greater. But if the Abyssinians had retired from the field and allowed themselves to
be slaughtered, their seeming inactivity would have been much more effective though not for the
moment visible. Hitler and Mussolini on the one hand and Stalin on the other are able to show
the immediate effectiveness of violence. But it will be as transitory as that of Jhenghis's
slaughter. But the effects of Buddha's non-violent action persist and are likely to grow with age.
And the more it is practised, the more effective and inexhaustible it becomes, and ultimately the
whole world stands agape and exclaims, "a miracle has happened." All miracles are due to the
silent and effective working of invisible forces. Non-violence is the most invisible and the most
effective.

PROF. MAYS: I have no doubt in my mind about the superiority of non-violence but the
thing that bothers me is about its exercise on a large scale, the difficulty of so disciplining the
mass mind on the point of love. It is easier to discipline individuals. What should be the strategy
when they break out? Do we retreat or do we go on?

GANDHI: I have had that experience in the course of our movement here. People do not gain
the training by preaching. Non-violence cannot be preached. It has to be practised. The practice
of violence can be taught to people by outward symbols. You shoot at boards, then at targets,
then at beasts. Then you are passed as an expert in the art of destruction. The non-violent man
has no outward weapon and, therefore, not only his speech but his action also seems ineffective.
I may say all kinds of sweet words to you without meaning them. On the other hand I may have
real love in me and yet my outward expression may be forbidding. Then outwardly my action in
both cases may be the same and yet the effect may be different. For the effect of our action is
often more potent when it is not patently known. Thus the unconscious effect you are making on
me I may never know. It is, nevertheless, infinitely greater than the conscious effect. In violence
there is nothing invisible. Non-violence, on the other hand, is three-fourths invisible, so the effect
is in the inverse ratio to its invisibility. Non-violence, when it becomes active, travels with
extraordinary velocity, and then it becomes a miracle. So the mass mind is affected first

354 "A Discourse on Non-violence", in Harijan, 20 March 1937; CWMG, Volume 64, pages 221-25.
355 Fascist Italy invaded Abyssinia (later Ethiopia) in October 1935. In this brutal war, Italy used not only
heavy weapons but also poison gas. Over 300,000 Ethiopians were killed during the invasion and many
more during the occupation.
unconsciously, then consciously. When it becomes consciously affected there is demonstrable
victory. In my own experience, when people seemed to be weakening there was no
consciousness of defeat in me. Thus I was fuller of hope in the efficacy of non-violence after the
renunciation of Civil Disobedience in 1922, and today I continue to be in the same hopeful
mood. It is not a mere emotional thing. Supposing I saw no signs of dawn coming I should not
lose faith. Everything has to come in its proper time.

I have discussions here with my co-workers about the scavenging work we are doing. "Why
can't we do it after swaraj?" they say. "We may do it better after swaraj." I say to them, "No. The
reform has to come today, it must not wait for swaraj; in fact the right type of swaraj will come
only out of such work." Now I cannot show you, as perhaps I cannot show some of my co-
workers, the connection between swaraj and scavenging. If I have to win swaraj non-violently I
must discipline my people.

The maimed and the blind and the leprous cannot join the army of violence. There is also an
age-limit for serving in the army. For a non-violent struggle there is no age-limit; the blind and
the maimed and the bed-ridden may serve, and not only men but women also. When the spirit of
non-violence pervades the people and actually begins to work, its effect is visible to all.

But now comes your poser. There are people, you say, who do not believe in non-violence as
you do. Are you to sit quiet? The friends ask: "If not now when will you act?" I say in reply: "I
may not succeed in my lifetime, but my faith that victory can only come through non-violence is
stronger than ever." When I spoke on the cult of the spinning-wheel at Faizpur, a newspaper
correspondent imputed astuteness to me. Nothing could be further from my mind. When I came
to Segaon I was told the people might not cooperate and might even boycott me. I said, "That
may be. But this is the way non-violence works." If I go to a village which is still farther off, the
experiment may work better. This thing has come in my search after the technique of non-
violence. And each day that passes makes my faith brighter. I have come here to bring that faith
to fruition and to die in the process if that is God's will. Non-violence to be worth anything has to
work in the face of hostile forces. But there may be action in inaction. And action may be worse
than inaction.

PROF. MAYS: Is it ever possible to administer violence in a spirit of love?

GANDHI: No. Never. I shall give you an illustration from my own experiment. A calf was
lame and had developed terrible sores; he could not eat and breathed with difficulty. After three
days' argument with myself and my co-workers I put an end to its life. Now that action was non-
violent because it was wholly unselfish, inasmuch as the sole purpose was to achieve the calf's
relief from pain. Some people have called this an act of violence. I have called it a surgical
operation. I should do exactly the same thing with my child, if he were in the same predicament.
My point is that non-violence as the supreme law of our being ceases to be such the moment you
talk of exceptions.

PROF. MAYS: How is a minority to act against an overwhelming majority?

 257

GANDHI: I would say that a minority can do much more in the way of non-violence than a
majority. I had an English friend called Symonds.356 He used to say: "I am with you so long as
you are in a minority. After you are in a majority we are quits." I had less diffidence in handling
my minority in South Africa than I had here in handling a majority. But it would be wholly
wrong therefore to say that non-violence is a weapon of the weak. The use of non-violence
requires greater bravery than that of violence. When Daniel defied the laws of the Meads and
Persians, his action was non-violent.

PROF. MAYS: Should the thought of consequences that might accrue to the enemy as a result
of your non-violence at all constrain you?

GANDHI: Certainly. You may have to suspend your movement as I did in South Africa when
the Government was faced with the revolt of European labour. The latter asked me to make
common cause with them. I said "no.”

PROF. MAYS: And non-violence will never rebound on you, whereas violence will be self-
destroyed?

GANDHI: Yes. Violence must beget violence. But let me tell you that here too my argument
has been countered by a great man who said: "Look at the history of non-violence. Jesus died on
the Cross, but his followers shed blood." This proves nothing. We have no data before us to pass
judgment. We do not know the whole of the life of Jesus. The followers perhaps had not imbibed
fully the message of non-violence. But I must warn you against carrying the impression with you
that mine is the final word on non-violence. I know my own limitation. I am but a humble seeker
after truth. And all I claim is that every experiment of mine has deepened my faith in non-
violence as the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. Its use is not restricted to individuals
merely but it can be practised on a mass scale.

[Ms. F. Mary Barr recorded the discussion as follows.357]

After introductions, Dr. Mays immediately asked Gandhi if he would pay a visit to America as
his message was much needed there. Gandhi replied, "I would like to come to your country, but I
do not feel my message is ready for any other country until it has been taken up more widely and
used more effectively in my own country." When we were seated on the verandah, Dr. Mays
began to question Gandhi as follows:

DR. MAYS. I believe in non-violence, but how can one discipline the mass mind? If the mass
takes to force, do you retreat?

356 Richard Symonds (1908-2006), a British Quaker, was a member of the Friends Ambulance Service
which provided relief during the Bengal famine of 1943. He returned to the Indian sub-continent as a
member of the Friends Service Unit during the violence after the partition of the country. When he fell ill,
he stayed at the Birla House in Delhi for a month, at the invitation of Gandhi.
357 F. Mary Barr, Bapu: Conversations and Correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi (Bombay:
International Book House, 1949), pages 165-68.
 GANDHI. You give me credit for really desiring non-violence, which is more than the Times
correspondent always does! He sometimes thinks that I want to precipitate a movement which
will bring violence. Non-violence works in a subtle manner and can include in its army the old,
the blind, the lame and children - very different from armed forces which need only strong young
men. Our army must train itself by stages. It cannot improve by being preached to, but both
instructor and instructed must practise truth and non-violence. Our words and actions must be
one hundred percent true. And by "true" I mean this - for example, it is untruthful even to be
polite, when politeness hides any hypocrisy or ill-will. I may be polite to you and you think me
quite a decent fellow, but if my heart does not reflect the politeness too, I am neither non-violent
nor truthful. Three-quarters of non-violence is invisible. When the people seemed weak during
our struggle, I withdrew, yet even then I did not give up hope, and I won't give up hope even
though I do not see the beginnings of the dawn in my lifetime. I know that the first streaks which
presage the dawn are there. I know that non-violence must continue - so I would say in answer to
your poser, "never use violence, even though the masses are not ready for non-violence."

Dr. MAYS. Is it not possible to administer violence in the spirit of non-violence?

GANDHI. Usually, if we allow violence, even as a temporary expedient, we are using it for our
own convenience, and so far the idea that this is good has not found any response in my breast.
It may, however, be allowable to put a poor suffering creature out of its agony as I treated the
dying calf at Sabarmati. In that, or a similar, case there is no question of my happiness, but only
that of the calf. To destroy flies and mosquitoes is not non-violent as was killing the calf. Yet
even though I see this, I allow them to be killed because I have not yet discovered what good part
they play in nature's plan. If I loved them so much that I were willing to give my life in order to
realise their value, then perhaps I might be able to find it out. If someone after me does not
express more non-violence than I do, that is, sufficient to give his very life to the discovery of the
value of these apparent pests, then non-violence will have failed as far as they are concerned, and
the slaughter will have to continue. Non-violence must be true in every sphere. You must reject
the teaching of anyone who tells you that there must be a little adulteration of non-violence. I
may be in a minority in thinking like this - but a minority is more often right than not. You will
also find such radical ideas are rare in my followers. Aurobindo Ghose once said to me that non-
violent teachers do not always get perfect non-violence in their followers. But I say that perfect
non-violence produces non-violence. Perhaps it seems arrogant for me to speak like this, but I
can't help it. I cannot limit the lustre of non-violence on account of my own imperfections. You
must take me as I am, a man, and not a superman.

Account by Prof. Benjamin Mays in his autobiography358

I had thought that I could arrange a conference with Gandhi at the [session of the Indian
National Congress] Congress and have time to visit the Taj Mahal before the YMCA Conference
in Mysore. However, the Mahatma's secretary assured me that although Mr. Gandhi wanted very
much to see me, it was time for his evening prayers and that if he saw me then it could be for
only a few minutes. However, if I would come to Wardha he could give me unlimited time. So

358 Benjamin Mays, Born to Rebel: an Autobiography (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), pages 155-57.
 259

he made an appointment for me to see Mahatma Gandhi on December 31, 1936. Later, when I
told the Mahatma that I had preferred talking with him to seeing the Taj Mahal, he responded,
"You chose wisely. When you come to India again, the Taj Mahal will be there. I may not be
here." He spoke prophetically, for when I returned to India in late 1952 and early 1953 to attend
a meeting of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches in Lucknow, Gandhi had
been assassinated. The Taj Mahal was as breathtaking as ever, and Sadie and I had the pleasure
of seeing it together.

My ninety minutes with Gandhi were spent mainly in his replying to two of my questions. I
asked him (1) to tell me in his own way what "non-violence" meant to him; and (2) why he didn't
declare war on the caste system as well as make an attack on untouchability. I shall give his
answers as I recorded them in my diary at that time.

Mahatma Gandhi emphasised in his first statement that non-violence is not passive resistance
but rather is an active force. It is three-fourths invisible, one-fourth visible. Likewise, its results
are likely to be invisible and not capable of measurement. Non-violence must never be practised
as a technique or strategy because one is too weak to use violence. It must be practised in
absolute love and without hate. It is better to be violent than to be a coward. One may have to
call off a non-violent campaign if the minds of the participants are not pure; that is, if hate
develops and love ceases to be the dominant motive for action. In non-violence, the welfare of
the opponent must be taken into consideration. If the method of non-violence tends to destroy
one's opponents, it is to be called off. If a non-violent campaign becomes too arduous for one's
adherents, it should be called off unless the participants are willing to die for the cause.

Gandhi argued that no temporary use of violence for what one considered to be for the good
or welfare of others is ever justified. When violence is used, whether temporarily or otherwise, it
is a concession to human weakness. When violence is used to kill dangerous insects and
animals, it is a concession to human weakness, an admission that we do not know any other way
to handle the situation. Violence is always self-defeating. The repercussions from non-violence
will never be hatred and revenge. When one retreats in a non-violent effort, he must never
retreat out of fear, nor because he believes the non-violent technique will never win. His faith
must teach him that non-violence can never lose because three-fourths of it is invisible and
cannot be measured. So it can never be said that the method is impractical, or that it has failed, if
a campaign is called off.

When I questioned Gandhi on the charge that the non-violent man who violates the law has
no respect for it, Gandhi's response was that the non-violent man is law-abiding in that he is
willing to pay the price when he disobeys unjust laws. Later, this part of my experience with
Gandhi was to give me a deeper understanding than most persons of the programme of Martin
Luther King, Jr.

In answer to my question as to why he didn't launch a programme to abolish the caste system,
Mahatma Gandhi made it clear to me that he was not fundamentally against caste. He believed
in caste. He described it as an economic necessity. To him there was no "lower" caste. Caste
was a division of labour. Society must have priests and teachers, politicians, warriors,
merchants, and farmers. Someone must do the ordinary work. For the most part, it is a good
thing for sons to follow in the footsteps of their fathers, for there are no inferior and no superior
castes. He said he condemned caste as it was practised and that he himself recognised no caste
in his evaluation of people. Certainly Gandhi condemned the hard, rigid lines that had developed
among the various castes in India, whereby one caste had no social concern for anyone outside
its own group. Essentially, however, Mahatma Gandhi thought that caste was not an evil in
itself. Caste does give status, he believed, but the untouchable had no status and no rights which
any caste man was bound to respect. All caste men could with impunity step on and spit upon
the untouchable. So Gandhi had cast his lot with the man farthest down, the untouchable.

Dr. Channing H. Tobias, January 10, 1937359

[Dr. Channing Heggie Tobias (1882-1961) was one of the most prominent Africans-Americans of the time. He
studied at Drew Theological Seminary and was professor of biblical literature at Paine College for six years. He
joined the YMCA in 1911 and worked in the YMCA until 1946, first as student secretary and later as Senior
Secretary of the “Colored Work Department.”360 He was active as the leader or board member of many
organisations concerned with race relations and advancement of African Americans.

He had come to India, along with Dr. Benjamin Mays, to attend the World Conference of YMCA in Mysore. As his
interview took place on Gandhi's silence day, Gandhi gave brief written answers.]

DR. TOBIAS: Your doctrine of non-violence has profoundly influenced my life. Do you
believe in it as strongly as ever?

GANDHI: I do indeed. My faith in it is growing.

DR. TOBIAS: Negroes in U.S.A. - 12 million - are struggling to obtain such fundamental
rights as freedom from mob violence, unrestricted use of the ballot, freedom from segregation,
etc. Have you, out of your struggle in India, a word of advice and encouragement to give us?

GANDHI: I had to contend against some such thing, though on a much smaller scale, in
South Africa. The difficulties are not yet over. All I can say is that there is no other way than the
way of non-violence, a way, however, not of the weak and ignorant but of the strong and wise.

DR. TOBIAS: Travancore indicates that your full identification with the untouchables is
bearing fruit.361 Do you think Travancore's example will be followed by other States in the near
future?

GANDHI: I shall be surprised if it is not.

DR. TOBIAS: What word shall I give my Negro brethren as to the outlook for the future?

359 From Mahadev Desai's "A Discourse on Non-violence" in Harijan, 30 March 1937; CWMG, Volume 64, pages
229-30.
360 The YMCA had separate programmes for whites and blacks until 1946.
361 The reference is to the proclamation of the government of that State throwing open all State temples to
Harijans.
 261

GANDHI: With right which is on their side and the choice of non-violence as their only
weapon, if they will make it such, a bright future is assured.

Gandhi’s answer to the first question of Mr. Tobias. From Pittsburgh

Courier, 12 September 1942

Ms. Celestine Smith, December 1938362

[Celestine Smith was the Secretary of the Negro Section of the Young Women's Christian Association, New York.
She was impressed with Gandhi's scheme of education (the Wardha scheme)363 and wanted to know whether she
could send one of her girls and, if she did, what she would learn and take back to America.]

362 From: Harijan, 31 December 1938; CWMG, Volume 68, page 211. A photograph of Gandhi with Celestine
Smith was published in The Bombay Chronicle of 13 December which would indicate that they had met before that
date.
 GANDHI: I had never thought of a girl coming. To take the responsibility of a girl so far
away from her home would perhaps be a bit too much. But as you can see I have plenty of girls
around me here, and if a girl did come from America like that, I should not mind it a bit, i.e., if
she could put up with the incredibly simple life here as it would appear to her. What she can
learn from here and take back is the secret of simple living. However simple life may be in
America, it cannot come anywhere near the simplicity of life here. I do not know if America can
assimilate such simplicity, or wants it. The other thing that she could take back is the spirit of
non-violence, to the extent that she can assimilate it without the help of any words or speeches, if
there is non-violence in the atmosphere here. If there is no non-violence in the atmosphere, no
written or spoken word can make her understand it or grasp it.

Dr. John, 1942364

[Dr. George Washington Carver, Professor of Botany at Tuskegee, had sent through Dr. John
messages and pamphlets for Gandhi.]

Gandhi laughingly said:

"I will not accept the messages, unless Dr. Carver365 comes and delivers them himself."

Dr. John said Dr. Carver was too old now to come to India. But he... remembers Gandhi
whenever he has an Indian visitor...

The very first question that Gandhi asked Dr. John about Dr. Carver was:

"But even this genius suffers under the handicap of segregation, does not he?"

363 The Wardha Scheme of Education was prepared by a committee of educators on March 1938. It was based on
Gandhi’s views on education developed since his stay in South Africa where he ran schools in his two ashrams, the
Phoenix Settlement and the Tolstoy Farm. He had written in an article in Harijan on 31 July 1937: “By education, I
mean an all-round drawing out of the best in child and man – body, mind and spirit… Literacy itself is not
education, I would, therefore, begin the child’s education by teaching it a useful handicraft and enabling it to
produce from the moment it begins its training.” (CWMG, Volume 65, page 450).

364 Harijan, 15 February 1942; CWMG, Volume 75, page 292.

365 Dr. Carver, an African American born into slavery, was a famous agricultural scientist. He taught at
Tuskegee Institute from 1896 to 1943. He developed numerous products but never sought a patent to profit
from them. He donated them to humanity and lived a humble life.

C.F. Andrews and Richard Gregg approached him, on behalf of Gandhi, for advice on diet. Dr. Carver
wrote to Gandhi on 27 July 1935 that he prayed for Gandhi’s success “in this marvellous work you are
doing.” For further information on Gandhi’s contacts with Carver, see Nico Slate, Colored
Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Cambridge, MA, USA,
and London: Harvard University Press, 2012).
 263

DR. JOHN: Oh yes, as much as any Negro.

GANDHI: And yet these people talk of democracy and equality! It is an utter lie.

DR. JOHN: But Dr. Carver is never bitter or resentful.

GANDHI: I know, that is what we believers in non-violence have to learn from him. But what
about the claim of these people who are said to be fighting for democracy?

Deton J. Brooks (Chicago Defender), June 1945366

[Deton Jackson Brooks (1909-1975), an African-American educator, was a teacher in Chicago before he joined the
staff of African-American weekly Chicago Defender in 1944 as wartime correspondent in the China-Burma-India
theatre. He interviewed Gandhi at Mahabaleswar hill station where he was resting after his release from prison. The
interview was on a silence day: Mr. Brooks asked questions and Gandhi wrote out the answers. Mr. Brooks wrote:

“Keen sympathy and understanding of the American Negro’s problems was expressed by India’s great
national leader, Mohandas Gandhi, in an exclusive interview with the Defender this week…

“Judging from pictures, I had expected to see a wizened drawn old man. But his apparently youthfulness
was amazing. This is due in part to his infectious smile which reminds one of a mischievous boy….

“He doesn’t appear to carry the weight of a great liberation movement on his shoulders. He is jolly.”]

In answer to my query to Gandhi, “Is there any special message you would care to send to the
Negro people of America,” he scrawled on a note pad: “My life is its own message. If it is not,
then nothing I write will fulfill the purpose.”

“My faith burns brighter today, even brighter than it has in the past. We are fast approaching a
solution to the troublesome race problem,” he continued when asked to comment on the probable
trend of racial relations.

This he feels will be accomplished in spite of present day discouraging symptoms. He still feels
that the best weapon for use of under-privileged peoples is non-violence.

Pointing to the recent statement made at the beginning of the San Francisco Conference, he
indicated that India’s freedom was closely identified with welfare of all other under-privileged
peoples. At that time he said, “Freedom of India will demonstrate to all exploited races of the
earth that their freedom is very near and that in no case will they be exploited.”367

366 The Chicago Defender, 16 June 1945

367 Gandhi had said in a statement to press on 17 April 1945 on the San Francisco Conference:

“An indispensable preliminary to peace is the complete freedom of India from all foreign control…

“Freedom of India will demonstrate to all the exploited races of the earth that their freedom is very near
and that in no case will they henceforth be exploited.” (CWMG, Volume 79, pages 389-91).
Mr. Brooks reported that since his statement on the San Francisco Conference, Gandhi had
made no public statement on politics, since he did not want to commit the Congress while its
leaders are in prison.

VIII. MASS PRODUCTION AND PRODUCTION FOR THE

MASSES

In this interview with Harold Callender, Gandhi provided a critique of industrialisation which, he asserted, leads to
concentration of wealth, exploitation, unemployment, imperialism and violence. Instead, he advocated a system in
which production and consumption were localised, with elementary type of machinery in the homes of millions.

“Under my system, again, it is labour which is the current coin, not metal. Any person who can use his
labour has that coin, has wealth. He converts his labour into cloth, he converts his labour into grain. If he
wants paraffin oil, which he cannot himself produce, he uses his surplus grain for getting the oil. It is
exchange of labour on free, fair and equal terms - hence it is no robbery.”

See also Chapter II, “The ‘Constructive Programme.’”

Harold Callender, 16 October 1931

[Mr. Callender (1892-1959), a journalist and writer on international affairs, interviewed Gandhi in London . He
wrote in the New York Times Magazine in an introduction to the interview:

“At a moment when the whole Western world seems to be paying a cruel penalty for its creative skill; when
farmers go bankrupt and artisans go hungry for having done their jobs too well and produced too
abundantly: when our faith in machinery has burdened us with an excess of wealth which is hardly
distinguishable from poverty – at this crucial juncture there has come to London a venerable prophet from
the East, subsisting on goat’s milk and fruit, weaving his own garments, going about, even in the chilly air
of a northern Autumn, with only sandals on his feet, while his thin body is swathed in a sort of loose, white
cape; and under the roof of the houses of Parliament, at the centre of an empire grown rich on coal and steel
and textiles, he condemns the highly centralised mass production of the West and preaches the gospel of
the spinning wheel.

“Seated on the floor in a house in Knightsbridge, Mahatma Gandhi recently elaborated his ideas as to the
plight of the Western world and the "limitations of machinery as a means of achieving human happiness"…

“One was reminded of a conversation on the same subject a year earlier – on that occasion with Henry
Ford, the greatest apostle (indeed, one of the creators) of the mass –production which Mr. Gandhi so
profoundly dislikes…

“… Mr. Gandhi’s road to freedom lies in an escape from this very mass production which Mr. Ford extols,
and in a return to a simpler life which may not be more comfortable materially but which will release
mankind from the thraldom of machinery. For him mass production is associated with imperialism and the
exploitation of “the so-called weaker races.” It is therefore associated with force, which he abhors. It tends
to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few; it tends to enslave men by making them dependant upon
machinery, and thus it deprives human labour of its value - witness the millions of capable artisans who are
unable to earn a livelihood because the industrial machine has stalled. Manufacture, Mr. Gandhi believes,
 265

must be localised; the Western powers should not scramble for foreign markets for their own profit, but
should offer their skill for the benefit of other nations from philanthropic motives.

“If only one could have listened to a debate between the prophet from Detroit and the prophet from
Ahmedabad – between the leading apostle of the machine age and the Oriental mystic clad in shawl and
sandals! But one could at least quote some of Mr. Ford’s most characteristic observations and ask Mr.
Gandhi to reply to them, thus confronting Mr. Gandhi (who likes challenging questions) with Mr. Ford.”
368]

Report by Mahadev Desai369

CALLENDER: Do you feel, Gandhiji, that mass production will raise the standard of living of
the people?

GANDHI: I do not believe in it at all. There is a tremendous fallacy behind Mr. Ford’s
reasoning.370 Without simultaneous distribution on an equally mass scale, the production can
result only in a great world tragedy. Take Mr. Ford’s cars. The saturation point is bound to be
reached soon or later. Beyond that point the production of cars cannot be pushed. What will
happen then?

Mass production takes no note of the real requirement of the consumer. If mass production were
in itself a virtue, it should be capable of indefinite multiplication. But it can be definitely shown
that mass production carries within it its own limitations. If all countries adopted the system of
mass production, there would not be a big enough market for their products. Mass production
must then come to a stop.

CALLENDER: I wonder whether you feel that this saturation point has already arrived in the
Western world. Mr. Ford says that there never can be too many articles of quality, that the needs
of the world are constantly increasingly that, therefore, while there might be saturation in the
market for a given commodity, the general saturation would never be reached.

GANDHI: Without entering upon an elaborate argument, I would categorically state my

conviction that the mania for mass production is responsible for the world crisis. Granting for the
moment that machinery may supply all the needs of humanity, still, it would concentrate
production in particular areas, so that you would have to go in a round-about way to regulate
distribution, whereas, if there is production and distribution both in the respective areas where
things are required, it is automatically regulated, and there is less chance for fraud, none for
speculation.

The American friend mentioned Mr. Ford's favourite plan of decentralisation of industry by the
use of electric power conveyed on wires to the remotest corner, instead of coal and steam, as a

368 From Harold Callender, "Gandhi Dissects the Ford Idea: The Preacher of the Doctrine of the Spinning-
Wheel Joins Issue with the Prophet of Mass Production Holding that the High-Speed Machine of the West
Exploits Weak Peoples" in New York Times Magazine, 8 November 1931.
369 Harijan, 2 November 1934; CWMG, Volume 48, pages 163-67. This report, in the diary of Mahadev
Desai, was not published until 1934.
370 Mr. Callender had earlier met Ford in America, who had put forward the view that demand for cheaper things
would stimulate mass production.
possible remedy, and drew up the picture of hundreds and thousands of small, neat, smokeless
villages, dotted with factories, run by village communities. “Assuming all that to be possible”, he
finally asked Gandhiji, “how far will it meet your objection?”

GANDHI: My objection won't be met by that, because, while it is true that you will be producing
things in innumerable areas, the power will come from one selected centre. That, in the end, I
think, would be found to be disastrous. It would place such a limitless power in one human
agency that I dread to think of it. The consequence, for instance, of such a control of power
would be that I would be dependent on that power for light, water, even air, and so on. That, I
think, would be terrible.

CALLENDER: ... have you any idea as to what Europe and America should do to solve the
problem presented by too much machinery?

GANDHI: You see that these nations are able to exploit the so-called weaker or unorganised
races of the world. Once those races gain this elementary knowledge and decide that they are no
more going to be exploited, they will simply be satisfied with what they can provide themselves.
Mass production, then, at least where the vital necessities are concerned, will disappear…

CALLENDER: But even these races will require more and more goods as their needs multiply.

GANDHI: They will then produce for themselves. And when that happens, mass production, in
the technical sense in which it is understood in the West, ceases.

CALLENDER: You mean to say it becomes local.

GANDHI: When production and consumption both become localised, the temptation to speed up
production, indefinitely and at any price, disappears. All the endless difficulties and problems
that our present-day economic system presents, too, would then come to an end. Take a concrete
instance. England today is the cloth shop of the world. It, therefore, needs to hold a world in
bondage to secure its market. But under the change that I have envisaged, she would limit her
production to the actual needs of her 45 millions of population. When that need is satisfied, the
production will necessarily stop. It won't be continued for the sake of bringing in more gold
irrespective of the needs of a people and at the risk of their impoverishment. There would be no
unnatural accumulation of hoards in the pockets of the few, and want in the midst of plenty in
regard to the rest, as is happening today, for instance, in America.

America is today able to hold the world in fee by selling all kinds of trinkets, or by selling her
unrivalled skill, which she has a right to do. She has reached the acme of mass production, and
yet she has not been able to abolish unemployment or want. There are still thousands, perhaps
millions of people in America who live in misery, in spite of the phenomenal riches of the few.
The whole of the American nation is not benefited by the mass production.

CALLENDER: There the fault lies in distribution. It means that, whilst our system of production
has reached a high pitch of perfection, the distribution is still defective. If distribution could be
equalised, would not mass production be sterilised of its evils?
 267

GANDHI: No, the evil is inherent in the system. Distribution can be equalised when production
is localised; in other words, when the distribution is simultaneous with production. Distribution
will never be equal so long as you want to tap other markets of the world to dispose of your
goods. That does not mean that the world has no use for the marvellous advances in science and
organisation that the Western nations have made. It only means that the Western nations have to
use their skill. If they want to use their skill abroad, from philanthropic motives, America would
say, 'Well, we know how to make bridges, we won’t keep it a secret, but we say to the whole
world, we will teach you how to make bridges and we will charge you nothing.’ America says,
‘Where other nations can grow one blade of wheat, we can grow two thousand.’ Then, America
should teach that art free of charge to those who will learn it, but not aspire to grow wheat for the
whole world, which would spell a sorry day for the world indeed.

The American friend next asked Gandhiji, referring to Russia, whether it was not a country that
had developed mass production without exploiting, in Gandhiji's sense, the less industrialised
nations, or without falling into the pit of unequal distribution.

GANDHI: In other words, you want me to express opinion on State-controlled industry, i.e., an
economic order in which both production and distribution are controlled and regulated by the
State as is being today done in Soviet Russia. Well, it is a new experiment. How far it will
ultimately succeed, I do not know. If it were not based on force, I would dote on it. But today,
since it is based on force, I do not know how far and where it will take us.

CALLENDER: Then, you do not envisage mass production as an ideal future of India?

GANDHI: Oh yes, mass production, certainly, but not based on force. After all, the message of
the spinning-wheel is that. It is mass production, but mass production in people's own homes. If
you multiply individual production to millions of times, would it not give you mass production
on a tremendous scale? But I quite understand that your ‘mass production’ is a technical term for
production by the fewest possible number through the aid of highly complicated machinery. I
have said to myself that that is wrong. My machinery must be of the most elementary type which
I can put in the homes of the millions. Under my system, again, it is labour which is the current
coin, not metal. Any person who can use his labour has that coin, has wealth. He converts his
labour into cloth, he converts his labour into grain. If he wants paraffin oil, which he cannot
himself produce, he uses his surplus grain for getting the oil. It is exchange of labour on free, fair
and equal terms—hence it is no robbery. You may object that this is a reversion to the primitive
system of barter. But is not all international trade based on the barter system?

Look, again, at another advantage, that this system affords. You can multiply it to any extent.
But concentration of production ad infinitum can only lead to unemployment. You may say that
workers thrown out of work by the introduction of improved machinery will find occupation in
other jobs. But in an organised country where there are only fixed and limited avenues of
employment, where the worker has become highly skilled in the use of one particular kind of
machinery, you know from your own experience that this is hardly possible. Are there not over
three millions unemployed in England today? A question was put to me only the other day:
"What are we doing today with these three million unemployed?" They cannot shift from factory
to field in a day. It is a tremendous problem.

CALLENDER: Would not machine agriculture make a great difference to India, as it has done to
America and Canada?

GANDHI: Probably. But that is a question I do not consider myself fit to answer. We in India
have not been able to use much complicated machinery in agriculture with profit so far. We do
not exclude machinery. We are making cautious experiments. But we have not found power-
driven agricultural machinery to be necessary.

CALLENDER: Some people have the impression that you are opposed to machinery in general.
This is not true, I believe.

GANDHI: That is quite wrong. The spinning-wheel is also machinery. It is a beautiful work of
art. It typifies the use of machinery on a universal scale. It is machinery reduced to the terms of
the masses.

CALLENDER: So, you are opposed to machinery, only because and when it concentrates
production and distribution in the hands of the few?

GANDHI: You are right. I hate privilege and monopoly. Whatever cannot be shared with the
masses is taboo to me. That is all.

Some additions in the article by Harold Callender371

Reference was made to Mr. Ford’s remark that the traditions of European society which were
opposed to mass production would pass away in a short time. It did not much impress Mr.
Gandhi.

“I think it will automatically limit itself, this mass production,” he said, “because when the things
so extensively produced find no market they have to stop. It is not therefore a matter, in my
opinion, of converting the people to the advantage or the necessity of mass production. (All this
assumes that I have understood Mr. Ford’s ideas.)”…

"You believe then,” the interviewer observed, “that we have overdone mass production.”

“Yes, of course I believe you have overdone it, but I do not know that at the present time
anybody will be prepared to listen to me.”…

“Civilisation, a cultured life with a place in it for literature and the arts, is possible without the
artificial wants that machinery has created. It is amazing how these absurd artificial wants swell

371 New York Times Magazine, 8 November 1931.

 269

the volume of trade. But it is only the devoted few who can live the simple life without
machinery. The masses will never do without it.”…

Mr. Gandhi is not opposed to all machinery, but he emphasises its dangers. He is dubious about
“complicated” machinery and large-scale production, but he highly approves of the spinning
wheel and the sewing machine, which reduce labour without any of the social disadvantages
which he sees in mass production. He recognises the necessity of factories (for making sewing
machines, for instance), but adds: “I am enough of a Socialist to say that such factories should be
nationalised. They ought only to work under the most attractive conditions, not for profit, but for
the benefit of humanity, love taking the place of greed as the motive power. It is an alteration in
the conditions of labour that I want.”

IX. BIRTH CONTROL AND ABSTINENCE

In the long discussion with Margaret Sanger, Gandhi was firm in his opposition to birth control except by self-
restraint. He mentioned only one remedy which could conceivably appeal to him: confining sexual union to the
“safe” period of about ten days during the month, as that had an element of self-control.

He suggested that social reformers should teach couples to sleep apart after they have three or four children. If
they could not impress this idea upon the couples, he would even consider a law.

After independence, the Government of India undertook steps to control the population by propagating birth
control. Ms. Sushila Nayar, Gandhi’s physician and close associate, campaigned for birth control as Minister of
Health.

Margaret Sanger, 3 and 4 December 1935

[Mrs. Sanger (1883-1966), leader of the birth control movement, wrote to Gandhi, before a visit to India in 1935,
requesting an interview. She felt that his endorsement of birth control would be of tremendous value. She received a
reply on arrival in India: "Do by all means come whenever you can, and you shall stay with me, if you would not
mind what must appear to you to be our extreme simplicity; we have no masters and no servants here."372 She
accepted the invitation and had an extensive discussion with Gandhi at Sevagram on 3 and 4 December 1935. She
was unable to persuade him about the desirability of birth control except by abstinence. The text of the discussion
was published in Asia, New York monthly, in November 1936. The text in Asia is reproduced below, followed by
extracts from the article on the interview by Mahadev Desai, Gandhi’s personal secretary, in Harijan.]

372 Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography (New York: Dover Publications, 1971), pages 465-66. She was a member
of India Home Rule League of America, founded by Lala Lajpat Rai in New York in 1917, to support freedom for
India.(Harijan, 22 February 1936). Robert Payne wrote that Gandhi agreed to meet Ms. Sanger after receiving a
telegram from Dr. John Haynes Holmes. Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi (London: The
Bodley Head, 1969), page 461.
Dr. Holmes had been for a long time a supporter of family planning advocated by Ms. Sanger.
 Report in Asia, New York, November 1936

Introduction by the Editor of Asia

Last winter Margaret Sanger spent ten weeks in India, speaking on birth control to large audiences throughout the
country. During her visit she held more than forty public meetings, established about fifty centres of birth control
information and secured the endorsements of the All India Women's Conference, the All-India Medical Conference
and Bombay municipality.

Mrs. Sanger stayed two days with Gandhi at his ashram in Wardha and engaged him in a friendly argument on
birth control. We quote what Mrs. Sanger says in her own diary of their meeting:

"We went directly to his place and met, although this is his day of silence. He rose to greet me, smiling from ear
to ear. I put down my bag and gloves and flowers and magazines in order to take both his hands. He has an unusual
light that shines in his face; that shines through the flesh; that circles around his head and neck like a mist with white
sails of a ship coming through. It lasted only a few seconds, but it is there. When I looked again it was only the
shiny appearance of his flesh that I saw but always the smile and a hospitable welcome."

Since Mrs. Sanger arrived on Gandhi's day of silence, she spent her first day inspecting the industries connected
with the ashram.

In the evening there was "supper on the veranda at Gandhi's residence. They are building another story to the old
house for his study. Now he has no privacy and needs it. We all sat on the floor. Shoes removed first, food is
placed on trays by attendants. No one may eat until prayers are said which are said only when the tray has
considerable food. It was a chant by all in a ‘lullaby’ tune. Gandhi gave me a spoonful of very bitter green puree.
They were all amused at its reception and my face in getting it down. Then there were raw onions cut up in cream.
One hot vegetable soup, one hot milk, dry flap-jacks, a fresh orange and other vegetables and rice. Really a lot of
food. Gandhi is experimenting with foods, trying to find out the most economical for the village people and the
most nourishing. The great majority are living a life of starvation. When you ask a villager how things are going,
he points to his stomach and says, ‘Sahib, stomach too long empty.’

"We went on the roof to see the sun set, then in the tonga to the temple and now to evening prayers. At seven
p.m. all twenty persons were seated with legs crossed under them on the roof. They were all dressed in white, with
the moon shining down and the stars overhead. Gandhi and both woman guests were seated at the head of the circle.
Since we came in a little late we sat in the circle near the poor ‘depressed’ woman workers who were not in white.
Mr. Gandhi's son, his youngest, is here. His grandson led the prayers in the moonlight. Mrs. Gandhi served our
food and spices. She is a short, stoutish, unimpressive woman, but very kind and tender. After prayers, which were
chanted, I went down to Gandhi's office; he wrote a few notes to me inviting me to walk in the morning, also saying
that at seven thirty a.m. he will have a talk with me and it can be absolutely exclusive."

The next morning Mrs. Sanger rose at six and went to meet Gandhi and the two other woman guests. They "all
went with him to the village, Segaon, which is his regular morning walk. He is trying to clean up the village by
erecting ‘privies,’ portable on stilts to be moved from pit to pit to save the fertiliser and use it quickly. Gandhi
walks quickly and has his customary white robes, sandals and staff. We talked of food and diet. He has studied this
question for forty years and disapproves of uncooked starches. After the walk I had a bath and dashed over to keep
the seven thirty appointment on the roof in the morning sun. There were four of his people present and Anna Jane
[Anna Jane Philips, Mrs. Sanger's secretary] and myself. I am to return at three o'clock."

Mrs. Sanger goes on: "At three o'clock promptly, we went to the Mahatma's house and had our talk on the roof.
He sat in the burning sunshine with a white cloth over his head. We sat in the shade. The arguments were along the
same line as in the morning, but I am convinced his personal experience at the time of his father's death was so
shocking and self-blamed that he can never accept sex as anything good, clean or wholesome."

When a western woman of such international prominence as Mrs. Sanger has a serious talk with the greatest
Indian of our time on a subject so important and controversial as birth control, we believe that what they had to say
 271

to each other on this occasion has historical as well as immediate value and should be offered verbatim to our
readers. Fortunately Mrs. Sanger's secretary was present at both the morning and afternoon interviews and took
them down in shorthand. We are therefore presenting the unusual interview, which has never before been published.
A few extracts from it were quoted in the article which Mrs. Sanger wrote while she was in India for The Illustrated
Weekly of India and in the reply to Mrs. Sanger by Mahadev Desai in Mr. Gandhi's paper Harijan - reprinted in part
by The Illustrated Weekly of India. We are presenting the interview exactly as it took place between Mrs. Sanger and
Gandhi, except to strike out a few statements that duplicated what had gone before and eliminate a few unessential
passages to save space.]

Text of Interview

MORNING

Mrs. SANGER: Mr. Gandhi, you and I have the interest of humanity at heart, but while both
of us have that in common, you have greater influence with the masses of humanity. I believe no
nation can be free until its women have control over the power that is peculiarly theirs, I mean
the power of procreation.... Women's lack of control over fecundity results in overpopulation, in
poverty, misery and war. Should women control this force which has made so much trouble in
their lives? Have they a right to control the power of procreation? Do you see any practical
solution for this problem, which in my humble opinion is the direct cause of much of the chaos
in the world today?

GANDHI: I suppose you know that all my life I have been dinning into the ears of women
the fact that they are their own mistresses, not only in this but in all matters. I began my work
with my own wife. While I have abused my wife in many respects, I have tried to be her teacher
also. If today she is somewhat literate it is because I became her teacher. I was not the ideal
teacher because I was a brute. The animal passion in me was too strong and I could not become
the ideal teacher. My wife I made the orbit of all women. In her I studied all women. I came in
contact with many European women in South Africa, but I knew practically every Indian woman
there. I worked with them. I tried to show them they were not slaves either of their husbands or
parents, that they had as much right to resist their husbands as their parents, not only in the
political field but in the domestic as well. But the trouble was that some could not resist their
husbands. I … speak with some confidence and knowledge because I have worked with and
talked with and studied many women. But the remedy is in the hands of the women themselves.
The struggle is difficult for them but I do not blame them. I blame the men. Men have legislated
against them. Man has regarded woman as a tool. She has learned to be his tool and in the end
found it easy and pleasurable to be such, because when one drags another in his fall the descent
is easy.

I have come in contact with some women of the West but not many, so that my deductions
about them may be faulty, but I have known tens of thousands of women in India, their
experiences and their aspirations. I have discussed it with some of my educated sisters but I have
questioned their authority to speak on behalf of their unsophisticated sisters, because they have
never mixed with them. The educated ones have never felt one with them. But I have. They
have regarded me as half a woman because I have completely identified myself with them.
 I have identified myself with my wife to the same extent, but she observes certain decencies
with me, which I have not done with her. I intimately know her. I have made use of her. But I
do not suppose there are many women who can claim to have followed their husbands so
slavishly as she has. She has followed, sometimes reluctantly, but her reluctance has had a tinge
of obedience in it, for she is a good Hindu wife. I have often challenged her and asked her to
lead her own independent life but she will not do so. She is too much a Hindu wife for that.

I have felt that during the years still left to me if I can drive home to women's minds the truth
that they are free, we will have no birth control problem in India. If they will only learn to say
"no" to their husbands when they approach them carnally!... The real problem is that they do not
want to resist them.

I have been reading about this cause which you advocate so eloquently. I know some of the
greatest people in the world agree with you. In India I would mention only two great
representative names, Tagore and Mrs. Naidu.373 I know I have them all arrayed against me. I
have tried to think with them... My fundamental position is that so far as the women of India are
concerned, even if the method you advocate were a solution, it is a long way off, for the women
of India have so many things to think of now. 374 Don't tell me of the educated girl of India. She
will be your slave, much to her damage, I'm afraid.

Mrs. SANGER: You mean for instance that the women of the chawls will be against me, the
women in the tenements of Bombay?

GANDHI: Yes.

Mrs. SANGER: I disagree with you. When I was in Bombay one of the first places I went
was to these women of the tenements. I saw them sitting around, each with three, four or more
children. We asked them how many children they had had, how many were dead. There were
always some dead. Then we asked how many more they were going to have, and every women
but one held out her hands in supplication as though saying: "No more. Pray God, no more!" It
showed that they were already awakened to this idea. Again and again they ask what to do to
prevent more children from coming into the world. I want to go to the villages and see whether
this desire to have fewer children is not there. Let us not worry about the methods. Let us first
discover whether they want more children or not. That will be the beginning.

GANDHI: I don't want to say that women want children but that they will not do the thing
that will keep them from having more children. They will not resist their husbands. Then I
suppose you will say, if neither party resists, why should they not adopt artificial methods?

Mrs. SANGER: You have been a great advocate of civil disobedience, Mr. Gandhi. Do you
also recommend that the women of India adopt legal and marital disobedience?

373 Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) and Mrs. Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949), both poets. Tagore received
the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913. Sarojini Naidu was President of the Indian National Congress in 1925.
374 Many years later, Sushila Nayar, his physician, as Minister for Health in independent India,
campaigned for birth control.
 273

GANDHI: Yes, I do. But no resistance bordering upon bitterness will be necessary in ninety-
nine out of a hundred cases. If a wife says to her husband, "No, I don't want it," he will make no
trouble. But she hasn't been taught...

Mrs. SANGER: But that advice is not practical. It means a revolution in the home. It leads
to divorce. The average marriage contract assumes that the married relationship will be
harmonious.

GANDHI: There should be mutual consent. Without it the thing will be wholly wrong.

Mrs. SANGER: That is right, but the problem is not often discussed by young people before
marriage, although our young of today are beginning to discuss it more and more, which is a
very good thing. But consider the turmoil, the unhappiness it means for the woman if she resists
her husband! What if he puts her out of her home? In some states in the United States a wife has
no rights if she resists her husband. What can she do? I do not know the law in India, but
custom compels her to submit to the sexual needs of her husband.

GANDHI: There are no such laws here.

Mrs. SANGER: Yes, but the custom is here. Customs are harder to change than laws.

GANDHI: Yes.

Mrs. SANGER: You are giving them advice which they cannot accept. Would it not make
their condition worse?

GANDHI: Not if they learn the art of resistance. It boils down to education. I want woman
to learn the primary right of resistance. She thinks now that she has not got it. Among the
women of India it is most difficult to drive home this truth. If I were to devote myself to birth
control I would miss this primary education.

Mrs. SANGER: But cannot education go with birth control? In England many social
workers claim that if they can instruct the poorer women in birth control before their fifth child is
born, before the women have fallen into poverty and drink and degradation, these women can be
helped. In America in the clinics it has been found in a number of cases where women have
been given birth control information and freed from undesired pregnancies for a period of from
eighteen months to two years that the woman and her husband have become self-reliant and self-
supporting and the case has been closed on the welfare books. The woman has more hope. She
is not haunted by the fear of more and more and still more pregnancies. Every case shows a
better condition of the woman's mind, more patience, love, education in the woman's life and
home after she has been freed of the worry of having too many children. Mr. Gandhi, do you not
see a great difference between sex love and sex lust? Isn't it sex lust and not sex love which you
oppose?

GANDHI: Yes, it is. But when both want to satisfy animal passion without having to suffer
the consequences of their act, it is not love. It is lust. But if love is pure it will transcend animal
passion and will regulate itself. We have not had enough education of the passions. When a
husband says "Let us not have children but have relations," what is that but animal passion? If
they do not want to have any more children they should simply refuse to unite.

Mrs. SANGER: Then you hold that all sex union is lust except that for the specific purpose
of having children?

GANDHI: Yes.

Mrs. SANGER: I think that is a weak position, Mr. Gandhi. The act is the same. The force
that brings two people together is sex attraction, a biological urge, which finds expression in sex
union. There are two kinds of passion. One is a force around which centres respect,
consideration and reverence known as love. The latter kind may be the stepladder to God. I do
not call that kind of love lust, even when it finds expression in sex union, with or without
children.

GANDHI: I think there is a flaw in that position and the world will not have to wait long
before it discovers it. I have found the same thing in old Sanskrit volumes, found lust clothed in
the dress of love. But I know from my own experience that, as long as I looked upon my wife
carnally, we had no real understanding. Our love did not reach a high plane. There was
affection, of course, between us. Affection there has been between us always but we came closer
and closer the more we, or rather I, became restrained. There never was want of restraint on the
part of my wife. Very often she would show restraint, but she rarely resisted me although she
showed disinclination very often. All the time I wanted carnal pleasure I could not serve her.
She would be a fairly learned woman today if I had not let this lust interfere with her education.
She is not dull-witted, but it takes all one's resources to drive home a lesson. I had plenty of time
at my disposal to teach her before I became involved in public affairs, but I didn't take advantage
of it. When I had outlived animal passion and found a better mission in life, I had no time.

Mrs. SANGER: I think lust is a very different thing from love. I believe in sex love. Perhaps
love in sex is a new thing in our evolution, and develop in the human race as we evolve toward a
higher consciousness. But it is usually acknowledged to be a very real thing, a force that cannot
be denied...

GANDHI: May one man have pure sex love as distinguished from sex lust with more than
one woman or a woman with more than one man? Your literature is full of that.

Mrs. SANGER: Love, no. Lust, yes. But I think pure love comes of itself.

GANDHI: No, it does not come of itself, you have a love for more than one woman, how do
you know which is which?

Mrs. SANGER: If we can have a choice in our mates there is a natural sex attraction between
two people. You then have a different experience and in the experience an expression of love
which makes you a finer human being. Sex lust is spent in prostitution, the sort of relationship
which makes a man run away after the act, disgusted, ashamed of himself, but a sex love is a
 275

relationship which makes for oneness, for completeness between the husband and wife and
contributes to a finer understanding and a greater spiritual harmony.

GANDHI: You are talking in this strain because social custom has restricted marriage to one
at a time in the West, but in the East it is not so. Many believe it lawful to have more than one
wife. Or you may have a wife and concubines. I have thought this question through. In the East
this practice has been going on a long time. Now I don't ask this question to put you in a corner.
This is the argument I had with a woman with whom I almost fell. It is so personal that I did not
put it in my autobiography. We had considered if there can be this spiritual companionship. The
marriage relationship is a matter of contract. Your parents arrange it in your childhood and you
have nothing to do with it. I come in contact with an illiterate woman. Then I meet a woman
with a broad, cultural education. Could we not develop a close contact, I said to myself? This
was a plausible argument, and I nearly slipped. But I was saved, I awoke from my trance. I
don't know how. For a time it seemed I had lost my anchor. I was saved by youngsters who
warned me. I saw that if I was doomed, they also were doomed. I decided I was not right in my
argument.375

Mrs. SANGER: I wonder if this is a rationalisation or a personal feeling. Even with those
men who have concubines, don't you think there is one person among the concubines to whom
they are most devoted? When a man finds the one woman for him, their personalities tune in.
There is harmony and growth in their union.

GANDHI: Have you read of the Mahabharata legend where Draupadi, the heroine, has five
husbands? In its place this union has been glorified as the ideal union. Each husband has his
own complete right in the wife. Now in Islam, in contrast, they let a man marry up to five wives
on condition that all be treated as upon the same level. The Prophet does not call it lust and
several philosophers in Islam defend the thing. I have talked to many of these men. They think
what is happening in the West is debasing and that if all recognised polygamy the world would
be better. The followers of Islam can advance good arguments for it.

Mrs. SANGER: We cannot speak for all nations. The human race is evolving like a class in
school... But I agree with you that we have to start with the individual. You feel that the
beginning is with the individual's control of sex. There is no argument there. But do you realise
that from the time of marriage until the end of woman's child-bearing period, if she has sex
relations with her husband only once each year, she will have ten or twelve children? So that,
even with the most continent life, she will be the victim of a large family which she cannot take
care of. Must husbands and wives sacrifice their lives of this? Must this relationship, based on a
finer quality of love, take place only three or four times in their entire lifetime?

GANDHI: Why should people not be taught that it is immoral to have more than three or
four children and that after they have had that number they should live separately? If they are

375 The reference is to Gandhi’s relationship with Saraladevi Chowdharani. See Martin Green, Gandhi:
Voice of a New Age Revolution (New York: Continuum, 1993), pages 273-85; Rajmohan Gandhi,
Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, his People and an Empire (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2006),
pages 228-34.
taught this it would harden into custom. And if social reformers cannot impress this idea upon
the people, why not a law?...

Mrs. SANGER: The education that goes with birth control gives men and woman a higher
physical, mental and moral control. Isn't there something you can approve that they can put into
practice? Can't you advise something practical, something that can be applied to solve the
problem of too frequent child bearing for the mothers of India?

AFTERNOON

Mrs. SANGER: Let us go back to your first point, continence. Do you accept the decision of
most modern neurologists and physicians of the world that continence cannot be generally
advised and except for particular cases its practice makes for great nervous and mental
disturbances?

GANDHI: I have read much on the subject. The evidence is all based on examination of
imbeciles. The conclusions are not drawn from the practice of healthy minded people. The
people they take for examples have not lived a life of even tolerable continence. These
neurologists assume that people will be able to exercise self-restraint while they continue to lead
the same ill-regulated life. The consequence is that they do not exercise self-restraint but
become lunatics. I carry on a correspondence with many of these people and they describe their
own ailments to me. I simply say that if I were to present them with this method of birth control,
they would lead far worse lives.

Mrs. SANGER: I just wondered because as you know there are many men who encounter
this problem, who are not abnormal men but good fathers, hard workers, men who want to do
right. I just want to give you two cases in particular... These men are not vicious men. They are
not brutes. They love their wives. They are trying to control a powerful force planted in their
beings at birth. If that force is wrong and evil, why was it placed in their bodies by the Creator
of all good?

GANDHI: If both are not ready it becomes degradation for one to ask. If you eliminate birth
control there will be other methods. The case for birth control is not hopelessly weak, otherwise
these brilliant men would not be aligned with it. As in law, hard cases make bad law and
because you can cite hard cases does not prove your method right. We must devise other means.
As soon as you agree to eliminate certain methods as harmful, you are bound to find others. In
the cases you tell of, as soon as I made the discovery I would have seen to it that the men and
women were separated.

Mrs. SANGER: But what about the woman's economic condition? She has had no
preparation to support herself, especially in India. She has depended upon marriage and her
husband for maintenance and her bread and butter. Who is to take care of the children? You
must think of these things when you suggest separation.
 277

GANDHI: You must devise means. I might suggest that the state take care of them. Or the
law might be called in to give a divorce. At present divorce is granted on grounds of infidelity.
In the future it may be granted on grounds of health. Even then some hard cases will occur....

Mrs. SANGER: But, Mr. Gandhi, the advanced women of the western world have for the
past decade or two refused to submit their bodies as receptacles for a man's passion. Women
have feelings as deep and as amorous as men. There are times when wives desire physical union
as much as their husbands. Doesn't that change the character of the relationship? Doesn't that
make a difference? In such cases where there is a fifty-fifty proposition regarding sex or marital
expression, both feel this is a necessary part of the happiness of their lives. What have you to
say in regard to this?

GANDHI: I would devise other methods. I would not say all methods have universal
application. There would be ways of regulating or curbing that passion. If artificial methods are
to be avoided, other, natural methods will have to be devised. Supposing that you and I as social
reformers said, "If this remedy is not open, we'll have to fall back on others." But the difficulty
of mutual approach stares us in the face, because I belong to a generation that believes that life is
made for self-restraint in every way of life. Your generation believes in a multiplication of
wants, freedom of all human passions... When you make up your mind to follow a code of ethics
you must determine to sacrifice health and ease. There are things more important than health;
things more precious than life and well-being.

Mrs. SANGER: Yes, I agree that such things should not be imposed upon people. I am not
attempting to force birth control upon any one. I am just offering the knowledge to help solve
some difficult problems.

GANDHI: Ah yes, Mrs. Sanger, I know you are not trying to impose birth control but there
are some birth controllers who would compel men and women to follow them....

Mrs. SANGER: In the United States our birth rate is lowering. We have many older people
now because people live longer. Then we have raised the age of marriage, which shortens a
woman's child-bearing period. You think that your poorer people are not fertile? Where does
your population increase come from them? Who has the large families?

GANDHI: The burden of large families falls on the middle class; as far as mere fertility is
concerned; the fertility is greater among the middle than the lower classes. If that was not true
you would not have the low average of five children per family for India. We do not have such a
terrible problem as you face in America or Europe. The problem is with the middle class where
indulgence is running riot. They use their wives as playthings. I am sorry to have to say this, but
it is true. I don't say there is no illicit intercourse among the poor in India but there is not the
fertility... Take the lot of the millions - starvation. I have lived in it for twenty-one days, but I
had no passion. I do not mean to tell you that at sixty-seven I have no passion, but I can regulate
it.
 Mrs. SANGER: But, Mr. Gandhi, there are thousands, millions, who regard your word as that
of a saint. How can you ask them who are so humble, so weak, to follow, when you who are so
much stronger and wiser, have taken years to bring about that self-control in your life?

(Mr. Gandhi just smiled.)

Mrs. SANGER: But to come back to this point. Is the reason you object to artificial means of
birth control because of the means or the act?...

GANDHI: Yes, I object for the latter reasons...

Mrs. SANGER: Have you from your experience in life seen that the people who have had no
love in their lives, who have practised continence and restraint, are higher evolved persons than
those who have lived normally?

GANDHI: I cannot lay down an absolute rule. I know many fine people who have practised
continence and restraint and many who have not...

Mrs. SANGER: Haven't you some message of encouragement that I can take away with me
to help in this work which we are doing for humanity?

GANDHI: I can only say may God guide you right as you would say to me. We are only
human beings. I think highly of your purpose; otherwise I would not have given time to this
subject. With me God is truth. I would sacrifice everything, even India, for the sake of truth.
But if some one wanted to open my mind and tried to prove I was living in a fool's paradise, I
would not close my ears to him. Of course, I should have little part with a man arguing a case
for untruth, but I would let him argue it and say "Let untruth be as much God as truth and have
as much effect on me if it should."...

Mrs. SANGER: The good of humanity is in both our hearts, and I am the last person to say
that the end justifies the means. But in birth control as in everything else the proper use of
knowledge is very important. Everything good can be misused or used without control, and thus
becomes harmful. When we give birth control information it goes hand in hand with education
for the betterment of the children, the family and the race.

GANDHI: Don't go away with the idea that this has been wasted effort. We have certainly
come nearer together.

Extracts from report by Mahadev Desai in Harijan376

376 From: Mahadev Desai's article "Mrs. Sanger and Birth-control" in Harijan, 25 January 1936; CWMG, Volume
62, pages 156-60. Mr. Desai interspersed this report with comments critical of Mrs. Sanger.
 279

Gandhiji poured his whole being into his conversation. He revealed himself inside out, giving
Mrs. Sanger an intimate glimpse of his own private life. He also declared to her his own
limitations, especially the stupendous limitation of his own philosophy of life - a philosophy that
seeks self-realization through self-control, and said that from him there could be one solution
and one alone:

GANDHI: I could not recommend the remedy of birth-control to a woman who wanted my
approval. I should simply say to her: My remedy is of no use to you. You must go to others for
advice.

Mrs. Sanger cited some hard cases. Gandhiji said:

GANDHI: I agree, there are hard cases. Else birth-control enthusiasts would have no case. But I
would say, do devise remedies by all means, but the remedies should be other than the ones you
advise. If you and I as moral reformers put our foot down on this remedy and said, “You must
fall back on other remedies”, those would surely be found.

Both seemed to be agreed that woman should be emancipated, that woman should be the arbiter
of her destiny. But Mrs. Sanger would have Gandhiji work for woman's emancipation through
her pet device, just as believers in violence want Gandhiji to win India's freedom through
violence, since they seem to be sure that non-violence can never succeed.

She forgets this fundamental difference in her impatience to prove that Gandhiji does not know
the women of India. And she claims to prove this on the ground that he makes an impossible
appeal to the women of India - the appeal to resist their husbands. Well, this is what he said:

GANDHI: … I have felt that during the years still left to me if I can drive home to women's
minds the truth that they are free, we will have no birth-control problem in India. If they will
only learn to say “no” to their husbands when they approach them carnally! I do not suppose all
husbands are brutes and if women only know how to resist them, all will be well. I have been
able to teach women who have come in contact with me how to resist their husbands. The real
problem is that many do not want to resist them… No resistance bordering upon bitterness will
be necessary in 99 out of 100 cases. If a wife says to her husband, “No, I do not want it”, he will
make no trouble. But she hasn't been taught. Her parents in most cases won't teach it to her.
There are some cases, I know, in which parents have appealed to their daughters' husbands not to
force motherhood on their daughters. And I have come across amenable husbands too. I want
woman to learn the primary right of resistance. She thinks now that she has not got it…

Mrs. Sanger raises the phantasmagoria of “irritations, disputes, and thwarted longings that
Gandhiji's advice would bring into the home.” …

He told her that when she went to Calcutta she would be told by those who knew what havoc
contraceptives had worked among unmarried young men and women. But evidently for the
purpose of the conversation, at any rate, Mrs. Sanger confined herself to propagation of
knowledge of birth-control among married couples only… The distinction that Gandhiji drew
between love and lust will be evident from the following excerpts from the conversation:
GANDHI: When both want to satisfy animal passion without having to suffer the consequences
of their act it is not love, it is lust. But if love is pure, it will transcend animal passion and will
regulate itself. We have not had enough education of the passions. When a husband says, “Let us
not have children, but let us have relations”, what is that but animal passion? If they do not want
to have more children they should simply refuse to unite. Love becomes lust the moment you
make it a means for the satisfaction of animal needs. It is just the same with food. If food is taken
only for pleasure it is lust. You do not take chocolates for the sake of satisfying your hunger.
You take them for pleasure and then ask the doctor for an antidote. Perhaps you tell the doctor
that whisky befogs your brain and he gives you an antidote. Would it not be better not to take
chocolates or whisky?

SANGER: No I do not accept the analogy.

GANDHI: Of course you will not accept the analogy because you think this sex expression
without desire for children is a need of the soul, a contention I do not endorse.

SANGER: Yes, sex expression is a spiritual need and I claim that the quality of this expression
is more important than the result, for the quality of the relationship is there regardless of results.
We all know that the great majority of children are born as an accident, without the parents
having any desire for conception. seldom are two people drawn together in the sex act by their
desire to have children… Do you think it possible for two people who are in love, who are happy
together, to regulate their sex act only once in two years, so that relationship would only take
place when they wanted a child? Do you think is possible?

GANDHI: I had the honour of doing that very thing and I am not the only one.

Mrs. Sanger thought it was illogical to contend that sex union for the purpose of having children
would be love and union for the satisfaction of the sexual appetite was lust, for the same act was
involved in both. Gandhiji immediately capitulated and said he was ready to describe all sexual
union as partaking of the nature of lust…

Mrs. Sanger is so impatient to prove that Gandhiji is a visionary that she forgets the practical
ways and means that Gandhiji suggested to her. She asked: “Must the sexual union take place
only three or four times in an entire lifetime?”

GANDHI: Why should people not be taught that it is immoral to have more than three or four
children and that after they have had that number they should sleep separately? If they are taught
this it would harden into custom. And if social reformers cannot impress this idea upon the
people, why not a law? If husband and wife have four children, they would have had sufficient
animal enjoyment. Their love may then be lifted to a higher plane. Their bodies have met. After
they have had the children they wanted, their love transforms itself into a spiritual relationship. If
these children die and they want more, then they may meet again. Why must people be slaves of
this passion when they are not of others? When you give them education in birth-control, you tell
them it is a duty. You say to them that if they do not do this thing they will interrupt their
spiritual evolution. You do not even talk of regulation. After giving them education in birth-
 281

control, you do not say to them, ‘thus far and no further.’ You ask people to drink temperately, as
though it was possible to remain temperate. I know these temperate people…

And yet as Mrs. Sanger was so dreadfully in earnest Gandhiji did mention a remedy which could
conceivably appeal to him. That method was the avoidance of sexual union during unsafe
periods confining it to the “safe” period of about ten days during the month. That had at least an
element of self-control which had to be exercised during the unsafe period. Whether this
appealed to Mrs. Sanger or not, I do not know. But therein spoke Gandhiji the truth-seeker. Mrs.
Sanger has not referred to it anywhere in her interviews or her Illustrated Weekly article.
Perhaps if birth-controllers were to be satisfied with this simple method, the birth-control clinics
and propagandists would find their trade gone . . . .377

X. OTHER INTERVIEWS
This chapter includes interviews with, among others, five professors, a tutor, a student at Yale University, a former
President of the United States, a group of Congressmen, an evangelical preacher, a suffragette, a Yogi, a sailor, a
manufacturer of pet food and several journalists, on a wide range of subjects. Some of the items are impressions of
Americans who met Gandhi rather than formal interviews.

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, September 1911378

[Mrs. Catt (1859-1947), a leader of the women’s suffrage movement in America and advocate of peace, met
Gandhi in Johannesburg in September 1911. An account from her diary was published in 1922.]

An English lady insisted upon giving me a letter of introduction to an Indian in Johannesburg,

assuring me that I would not regret any trouble taken to make his acquaintance. By the time I
arrived here [Johannesburg] I had forgotten what she had told me about him and I was not
particularly interested to meet him, but I sent the letter nevertheless and asked him to call upon
me at the hotel, if convenient at a stated time. At the hour named a pretty, intelligent young
Russian Jewess379 called and explained that she was Mr. Gandhi's secretary and that no Indian
was permitted to enter a hotel to call upon a guest.

A prominent lawyer to whom I told the tale offered the use of his office for the purpose of an
interview, so again I wrote, stating the time and place when I would be glad to receive him.
Again the pretty little Jewess came to the lawyer's office to say that Mr. Gandhi had come but the
elevator operator refused to take him up and he would not so far demean himself as to walk when

377 Margaret Sanger's rejoinder appeared in Harijan, 22 February 1936.

378 Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, "Gandhi in South Africa" in The Woman Citizen, March 1922. Reproduced in
Blanche Watson, Gandhi and Non-violent Resistance, The Non-Cooperation Movement in India: Gleanings from the
American Press (Madras: Ganesh & Co., 1923).
379 Apparently Miss Sonja Schlesin, Gandhi’s private secretary
the European was carried. This challenged my curiosity and I told the young girl to tell him to go
back to his office and that I would call upon him.

Directly Miss Cameron and I, escorted by the secretary, were on our way. She took us into
quarters apparently occupied exclusively by Indians. We found his office much the same as any
of the less prosperous sort. The outer room was filled with Indians awaiting their turn to consult
Mr. Gandhi, who was a lawyer. We found the man seated behind an American desk - a small
very black man with his head wrapped in a very white turban. He was not particularly
prepossessing in appearance, but we soon engaged him in conversation and were amazed at his
excellent and correct English; he was a gentleman. He told us that he had been in prison because
he had evaded signing a registration paper which is made compulsory for all Indians for police
purposes. He then spoke of his hope that India would be independent one day. His eyes lighted
with an inner fire and he spoke with such fervour that we recognised that we were in the
presence of no ordinary man. Directly he quoted from the Declaration of Independence, from
Emerson and Longfellow. Proud, rebellious, humiliated, he may earn his livelihood by law, but
he dreams of naught but India's independence.

E.M.S., 7 October 1921380

[Atlantic Monthly printed this letter with the following editorial note: "The following letter, written by a young
American serving as tutor in the family of an Indian nabob, gives a picture of Mahatma Gandhi so familiar and
human that readers will like to substitute it for the lay figure of the daily press."]

October 7, 1921

My dear mother,

Well, I have just seen the great Mahatma Gandhi - at last - and herewith send my first
impressions…

The Mahatma was seated at one end of a long room, on a sofa, which he shared with Bharati
and one of her aunts. I could not help experiencing something of a shock on setting eyes on him
for the first time. For the moment it was not so much him, as his apparel - again, it was not so
much his apparel, as his astonishing lack of it! There he was, the world-famous leader, sitting in
a well-furnished drawing-room; his host immaculately dressed in well-cut English clothes, and
Gandhi - well, let us say a pair of very short "running shorts"; that was his whole trousseau!
"They" were white and, of course, made of homespun material or ‘Khadi.’ Thus arrayed, he
wears no more toggery than the poorest native gardener or beggar.”…

When Gandhi laughs, which he does frequently, his face disappears in innumerable wrinkles.
His expressions are quite fascinating, but I could not quite decide whether I liked him or not.
Sometimes it seemed like the face of a fanatic; sometimes like that of a saint; at one moment he

380 EMS, "Gandhi at First Hand" in Atlantic Monthly, Boston, May 1932.
 283

wears an almost Mephistophelean look; again he is like "the great god Pan." But never
uninteresting or foolish.

A rather pretty impromptu was occasioned by the appearance of the baby of the family, aged
five weeks. The ayah brought it in, and offered it to Gandhi. I was curious to see how this
almost naked ascetic would manage to hold it - I forgot for the moment that he had children of
his own. However, he did very well. Taking it in his bare arms, he made a support for its little
head with one of his hands, in cup-and-ball fashion, and he held it for quite a while. He seemed
very delighted with the little mite; while the baby, for its part, seemed quite contented. It formed
a really charming picture, for the Mahatma's face wore a look of beautiful tenderness. Several
times the mother made a movement to relieve him of his burden, but he clung to it, talking and
laughing to it and to the other kiddies near-by.

Gandhi was very interested to hear I was a Quaker, and said he had some very good friends,
Quakers, in South Africa, especially a Mr. C----,381 "who used to lend me all sorts of books to
try to convert me to Christianity." "He was," he said, "a splendid 24-carat fellow; not very
intellectual, but nevertheless a man you could not help loving at first sight."

Turning to politics, I asked the Mahatma, "Don't you think the problem is the same in India as
in Ireland?" "No, it is not the same," he said: "England does not want to exploit Ireland. With
her it is only a matter of geographical necessity, of strategical considerations. England cannot
sanction the idea of a separate country, outside the British Empire, so near her own doors. But
with India it is a racial question. It is not so with Ireland. If you meet an Irishman outside his
own country, as in South Africa, you make friends with him; at least you treat him with respect,
as an equal. But not so with the Indian in South Africa, as I myself have experienced."

"But," I said, "is it not possible to overcome or overlook that feeling of racial distinction? If
one has a real sense of the Fatherhood of God, does not that make us all feel we are brothers,
irrespective of colour or caste?"

"Yes," said Gandhi, "it is possible; that is what Christianity can do, and that is where Europe
has failed to interpret Christianity. The Quakers have got very near to it, but even they have not
got the complete development. They have, however, a certain warmth in their hearts toward all
the universe."

"But not toward the animals?" I hinted, laughing - for the division among us on the
vegetarian question undoubtedly is an enigma to the religious Indian typified by Gandhi. "No,"
he replied, "that is India's special prerogative, I think."

I told the Mahatma that I was meditating leaving the Quakers, to join the Roman Catholic
Church, and this led to an interesting discussion about the doctrine of the Light Within. "Is it

381 Mr. Coates. Gandhi was introduced to Mr. Coates, a Quaker, when he went to Pretoria in June 1893.
He wrote in his autobiography that Mr. Coates - a "frank-hearted staunch young man" with a pure heart -
became his friend, gave him books on Christianity and tried to convert him. M.K. Gandhi, My Experiments
with Truth, Part II, Chapter XI.
safe," I asked him, "to trust the individual's private intuition, without having any external
authority to limit this, or to serve as a standard?" The Mahatma thought it was "quite safe, if a
man has developed the right conditions."

In reply to my query as to what he meant exactly by "right conditions", he said, "I mean if a
man has subdued, not only his physical passions, but also the sins of the mind. To such I would
say, 'Trust absolutely the voice of God in your hearts, and act on it without fear.'"

I agreed that this was all right, provided one could feel sure he had developed such a state of
perfection, but that he would be a bold man who dared think thus of himself.

"This state of soul comes only to the man who seeks truth with a single mind," said Gandhi
solemnly, "and to him who has followed the doctrine of Ahimsa." (This is a word meaning
"doing no harm," not quite expressed by our word "innocence.") "You must," he went on, "fall
back in the end on the authority of the Voice Within."

"Why," I said, laughing, "you are a regular Quaker!" He laughed, too, and said he had much
in common with their beliefs and practices, so far as he knew them. I told him there was, no
doubt, a great deal to be said for following the Inner Light, but it did not seem to me to be
enough by itself as a guide. For one person's Voice or Light might lead him to do one thing, and
another's quite a different, perhaps quite the opposite, thing. Did he not think that, possibly, the
Roman Catholics had the balance of the argument, in their possession of such large deposits of
"Faith," accumulated through the centuries, enabling the individual to test his particular findings?

But Gandhi seemed to think that they did not in this respect have any advantage over the
Mohammedans; both traditionary edifices seemed to him essentially identical! His ideas as to
what is involved in the notion of Papal Infallibility appeared to be equally original, and his
comparative estimate of the Caliphate and the Roman versions of the Apostolic Succession also
were highly interesting, and to a prejudiced mind even amusing!

As the Mahatma was leaving the house, I asked his permission to take a private snapshot of
him. "No," he said, "I am not going to sit for anyone." (I heard afterward that he has practically
vowed himself on this point).

"But surely," I pleaded, "your Voice Within ought to persuade you to give me a chance of
affording so much pleasure to myself and my friends!" At this he laughed - he has a very hearty
laugh - and stood still for a moment, actually taking a step forward to do so, standing out in the
full sunshine for my benefit, while I snapped him.

Then this wonderful little man, whom Tagore calls "the Greatest Man in the World," this
strange, frail figure arrayed in a loin cloth and a pair of old sandals, stepped into his host's ten-
thousand-dollar car and vanished in a whirl of dust. Such is India!
 285

Gordon Law, 1920382

[Mr. Law was a YMCA official in India for a few years and, with his wife Myrtle, met Gandhi in Lahore in 1920.
They became admirers of Gandhi. After returning to the United States, Mr. Law became Boys' Work Secretary of
the YMCA at Newburgh, NY. He set up a Gandhi Club for boys at the YMCA.]

He seems more completely master of himself than any man I have met. He speaks in a low,
pleasant tone, has a keen sense of humour, is extremely modest and sincere, and there was no
suggestion of his being a "great-man-being-interviewed.” He is simplicity and charm itself, and I
had not been with him ten minutes before I liked him immensely. One does not get the
impression of power so much as of wholesomeness and mental alertness and unusual idealism
and conviction...

Gandhi told me that he has been a celibate for twelve or fifteen years. We discussed the sex
education of Indian boys, a subject of deep interest to him. When he was in South Africa, he
permitted his girl to play with the badmashes (literally, flesh-hoodlums) of Natal without
restraint383 and his four boys were permitted to associate with the roughest characters of the
Transvaal. His theory is that if one obtains the whole-hearted confidence of a boy or girl and
talks matters over with them frankly one may trust them anywhere, with any one, under all
circumstances. He claimed this trust and comradeship method successful in his own experience
with his children. He does not believe in classroom instruction in sex hygiene, thinking it too
special and sacred a subject for this type of handling...

He told me that someone had sent him a copy of Thoreau's essay on "Civil Disobedience," and
that it had arrived when he was in jail in South Africa on a day when he was discouraged. This
essay, he said, put new life into him. He is a great admirer of the New England philosopher and
naturalist and laughed heartily when I told him the well-known anecdote of Emerson coming to
visit him in jail with the exclamation, "Why, Henry, what are you doing here?" and Thoreau's
fine scornful reply, "What are you doing outside?" He had not heard this, nor the reputed
deathbed reply of Thoreau when someone asked him if he did not want to make his "peace with
God" and Thoreau replied, "No, we have never quarrelled." In another paragraph of this sketch it
will be noted that he admires other American writers. He told me that he had been reading
Moffett's translation of the New Testament with much enjoyment, but that the person from
whom he had borrowed it had taken it back. He wanted to know where he could buy a copy. I
sent him my copy when I returned to my bungalow, and the same day had a delightful letter of
thanks from him. His favourite hymn is "In the Cross of Christ I Glory," and he is more Christian
than Hindu. He says that when he read the Sermon on the Mount it came to him as a direct
revelation and inspiration.

He smiled when I asked him if America had any contribution to make to India, and said that
Indians could use what he termed our "pushfulness," and he liked our attention to detail and

382 From: Myrtle and Gordon Law, "Gandhi the Man", in The Outlook, April 1922. Extract reproduced in Blanche
Watson, Gandhi and Non-violent Resistance, The Non-Cooperation Movement of India: Gleanings from the
American Press (Madras: Ganesh & Co., 1923).
383 Gandhi had no daughter, but took care of other children. The reference is probably to Ms. Jayakunwar Mehta
(“Jeki”).
general efficiency, but that spiritually we had nothing to give India. He was more positive just
there than at any time during my talk with him. His eyes gleamed when he talked about the
spirituality of India, and he thought India had much to contribute to America. He likes
Americans and admired a certain American who had come to take charge of a great Indian steel
mill and who from his first day made himself accessible to his humble Indian workmen. There
was no hint of "fine speech" about Gandhi as he talked, and his enunciation is better than that of
the average American university man.

He told me how the Satyagraha (insistence on truth) ideal came to him. As a boy of twelve his
elder brother contracted a small debt and suggested that they chip a little of the gold from the
under side of a bracelet he was wearing. Gandhi agreed that this was a clever idea, and the two
boys carried out the scheme, selling the bit of gold to a moneylender in the bazaar for a few
rupees. The following day Gandhi's conscience hurt him and he went to his father and made a
clean breast of the whole affair. His father was heart-broken and wept. Taking his son into an
inner room, he had a heart-to-heart talk with him, and Gandhi was much affected. Finally, his
father told him he wanted him to take a solemn oath that he would never in his life stray from the
truth again. Gandhi gave his word, and has kept it since that day.

Joseph H. Phelan, 1922384

[Mr. Phelan, head of the United States Cotton Machine Company, enjoyed a long conversation with Gandhi, on a
visit to India "as he sat upon his 'throne,' a thin mattress in a corner of a barren room." He spoke to Gandhi a second
time in his office. He said the following on his return to Boston on 12 March 1922.]

"I like the dash of you Americans," he (Gandhi) said, "but I think your energies are
misdirected. I'm afraid they are too often directed toward selfish ends, and that many Americans
concentrate on material things. When we are able to feed and clothe ourselves we can then smile
at the natives around our shores. Tell your friends in America that we are not running a war of
hatred against Englishmen. It is rather a war against ourselves."

Then pointing to his spinning wheel, he added: "I expect that this will do for the East what
machine guns have done for the West."

Gertrude Marvin Williams, 1924385

[Ms. Williams was an author. Her books include: Understanding India; Priestess of the Occult: Madame Blavatsky;
The Passionate Pilgrim: Life of Annie Besant; and India’s Silent Revolution (with Fred Fisher). She spent five
months in India and met Gandhi several times.]

384 New York Times, 13 March 1922

385 From: Gertrude Marvin Williams, Understanding India (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1928), pages 293-
96.
 287

I had the pleasure of several conversations with Gandhi. Mrs. Sarojini Naidu first introduced
me to him late one afternoon during the National Congress in Belgaum.386 "You may walk back
to my house with me," Gandhi said. The meeting ended, and I joined him. Fifteen thousand
delegates sat cross-legged under the vast homespun tent, waiting until the Mahatma (a title
meaning Great Soul) reached his house, a hundred yards distant, before they dispersed.

We walked between living walls of Indians. Naked children crouched in front. Flashing
turbans, jewelled nose-rings, eager faces of thousands of peasants filled in the mosaic of the wall.
Men and boys on bullock carts sketched an uneven frieze. They had stood in the blazing sun for
hours, waiting for this glimpse of their Saint. They were like two great frescoes, prodigally
thrown across the red clay landscape that powdered us with its fine vermilion dust.

Gandhi wore only a loin cloth. We were surrounded by a bodyguard of eight men who
carried ugly little lashes of knotted rope, a precaution against the crowd's stampeding and
suffocating their Mahatma…

There was a tension, a concentrated adoration, which might well prove a heady draught to any
man. Gandhi ignored it all. There was no bowing to right and left. With eyes on the ground, he
talked earnestly of his mission to restore the spinning industry to India. I knew that my time
with him was brief, and that I must make the most of it. But it was difficult to ignore the throngs
about us, as I walked beside this simple, almost naked man between pulsing walls of eager faces
and beseeching eyes…

Savel Zimand, 1924387

[Mr. Zimand, an American writer, visited India in 1924, and met Gandhi in a cottage in a hospital compound, soon
after his release from prison, and somewhat later at a cottage on the seashore at Juhu, near Bombay, where he was
convalescing. He recalled his meetings in his book, Living India, published in 1928.]

Mr. [C.F.] Andrews took me with him into the cottage [in the hospital] and we shook Gandhi's
hands. The thought came into my mind that here was a modern St. Francis. Here, in the flesh, he
looked entirely different from any photograph I had ever seen. I remember many weeks later
showing him a portrait done by Abanindronath Tagore. "What a caricature," Gandhi exclaimed,
and he added, "I never look in the mirror, but I never believed that I could look so horrible."
Gandhi never uses the mirror, not even for shaving….

The place [cottage in Juhu] was a Mecca for the nationalists. The Mahatma gets up at four
o'clock in the morning for his morning prayer. He lies down again for a short period, but from
five o'clock on he works, writes, discusses policy, edits his papers, spins, until late in the night.

"Do you feel," I asked him, "that a true relationship between the British people and the Indian
people can come only by complete independence of India?"

386 Gandhi was elected President of the Indian National Congress at its session in Belgaum.
387 Savel Zimand, Living India (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1928), pages 217-18, 226-29.
 "A true relationship between the British people and the Indian people," he answered, "does not
necessarily imply an India outside of the British Empire."

"What is your message to America?"

"I would like," said he, "on the part of the people of America an accurate study of the Indian
struggle and the methods adopted for its prosecution."…

"Do you believe," I asked, "that your people will give up every kind of violent method in their
struggle for Swaraj?"

"I believe that the Indians will gradually come to adopt the doctrine of non-violence," he
replied. "All our ancient traditions, our epics, our history show that we are more ready to suffer
than to inflict punishment on others."

***

When I asked the Mahatma to define non-cooperation for me, he replied, "Non-cooperation is
as old as time and is part of the system under which the universe is governed. There can be no
light without darkness somewhere. There is no attraction without repulsion, no love without hate.
There can be no cooperation without non-cooperation. Cooperation with what is good implies
non-cooperation with what is evil. Not that the foreign system under which India is governed
today has no good about it. Evil cannot stand on its own legs. But the net result of its working
has reduced India to pauperism and emasculation. We have lost self-confidence. We are afraid to
fight not because we do not want to, but because we are so hopelessly demoralised.

"We had only two choices," he continued, "either to take to secret assassination, gradually
rising to desultory warfare, or to take up peaceful non-cooperation, i.e., to cease to assist the
administrators in ruling India to her undoing. India seems to have chosen the latter way."

Two American Professors, 1924388

[Mahadev Desai wrote in his introduction: “The interviewers were both American professors,
one of psychology and the other of sociology. The latter is well-known even in India, as the
writer of the Introduction to that very popular book, Non-violent Coercion.389 There is a
chapter entitled “Non-cooperation in India” in that book. It shows a good grasp of the facts

388 Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi (Secretary’s Diary) (Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan,
1970), Volume 4.
389 The reference is to a book by Clarence Marsh Case (1874-1946), Non-violent Coercion: a Study in
Methods of Social Pressure (New York: Century, 1923). The introduction to the book was written by
Edward Alsworth Ross (1866-1951), an eminent sociologist. See his biography at he website of the
American Sociological Association, http://www.asanet.org/about/presidents/Edward_Ross.cfm.

“His works are best understood as reformist and progressive, mostly written in response to social problems
created by the rapid industrialisation and urbanisation at the turn of the century.” Ibid.
 289

about India. The book had impressed me also and I had expected that the professor who wrote its
Introduction and his aged friend, the psychologist, would put some searching questions to
Gandhiji… Both the professors had exclaimed when they were leaving, “We are amazed at the
utter frankness of his answers. We have never come across such perfect plain speaking."]

They began the talk by stating that they wanted to study the Indian question and that they
intended to visit the Jallianwala Bagh390 at Amritsar.

GANDHI: The scene around is just the same. You will see the walls that enclose the courtyard
on all sides. But the ground, the blood-red ground, you will not see.

QUESTION: What do you think? Was that deed a regular part of British policy or merely an
irresponsible act of a headstrong officer?

GANDHI: It was a part of the general policy of British rule – though it may be said to be its
exaggerated edition because after 1857 there has never been such a frightful massacre. I cannot
recall any horror of that magnitude since then. But this thing - to frighten, to terrorise the subject
races and rule over them - is the backbone of their policy.

QUESTION: You cooperated for 25 years. Did you think, even during that period of co-
operation, that the policy of the Government was this same one of rule by terror?

GANDHI: Yes, I think so. But I felt at that time that the British Constitution was sound. It
contained features which, automatically, were capable of responding to a people's genuine needs.
That was why I used to praise the British Constitution in season and out and declare my faith in
it.

QUESTION: Was it then Punjab alone that opened your eyes?

GANDHI: It was really the Rowlatt Acts391 that opened them. The object for which these Acts
were proposed, the way in which they were passed in the teeth of a pronounced public opinion
against them - these were the things that woke me up from stupor. But my faith in the
Government received a final knock-out blow by the attitude of the Government with regard to
the Khilafat392 and the Punjab questions. The first shock to my faith came in 1917 - when my
friend, Mr. Andrews, drew my attention to the Secret Treaties.393 But I do not wish to enter into
an explanation of the circumstances under which I refrained from taking any step at that time.

390 The scene of the massacre of hundreds of men, women and children. A meeting was held in a courtyard, called
Jallianwala Bagh, which is surrounded by walls. The only egress was covered by the army which fired on the crowd,
on orders by General Dyer, after giving a short and hardly audible notice.

391 The Rowlatt Acts restricting civil liberties were enacted on 22 March 1919 on the recommendation of a
Sedition Committee headed by Sir Sidney Rowlatt.
392 Caliphate. The reference is to the movement in India against the dismemberment of the Ottoman
Empire, ruled by a Sultan who was also the Caliph with responsibility to protect the holy places of Mecca
and Medina.
393 On 19 May 1916, Britain and France reached a secret agreement known as Sykes-Picot pact –
negotiated by Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges Picot – to divide the Arab lands in the Ottoman
Empire under the spheres of influence of the two countries.
That was my first shock. Then the War ended. Everybody had hoped for a bright future. Our
country also had cherished hopes, but we were presented with the Rowlatt Acts and, along with
them, of the assurance given by the Viceroy to the British Civil Service and British business that
their stranglehold of India would be maintained permanently. That was why I had to strenuously
oppose those Acts.

QUESTION: But that Act was never put in force?

GANDHI: How was the enforcement possible? And the Act was annulled also later on. That
resistance to the Act stirred the whole country to its depth, roused it from an age-long slumber.

QUESTION: You say the British rule has emasculated the Indians. How do you explain it?

GANDHI: In three ways. In body, mind, and soul - in all the three they have been emasculated.
The life-essence of the country was sucked up, its principal industries destroyed, and today the
country is sinking everyday deeper and deeper into misery. And so the enervation of the body
has reached its lowest point. Then, the education that the Government provides is imparted
through a foreign language. Our physical and mental powers are corroded by that education
given in a foreign tongue. There is no progress in our intrinsic culture, we merely ape the West,
become slaves to the phrases and idioms current in the English language. And finally, the soul of
the country has been killed because it was forcibly disarmed.

The professor of psychology put in: "But can you not turn that situation to your
advantage? You are a known pacifist. Can you not infuse spiritual strength in the people?"

GANDHI: How? When a man is hankering after indulgence in a variety of tastes, because he is
prevented from doing so, do you think he will listen to any talk of control of the palate? I have an
experience of jail-life and I know the working of the prisoner's mind. As a rule, he does not take
any very tasty dishes, when he is out, and does not yearn for varieties in his daily menu. But, in
jail, since he is denied the freedom to eat anything else than the food given to him, his mind runs
after those same prohibited articles. It is the ban itself which creates the wistfulness. Quite
naturally, the prisoner forms the habit of taking an exaggerated view of his disabilities, his
difficulties, and his bans. The same thing can be said of the situation in this country. Owing to
these very orders, under which his arms have been wrested from him, the Indian craves for their
possession all the more greedily. The Englishman has no inhibitions about his blood and iron
policy, he wants to enslave the Indian in every possible way. The Indian, in return, is naturally
impelled to find out ways to avenge the treatment and he delights in the taste of the forbidden
fruit of the use of arms.

QUESTION: Are Indians then entirely bereft, at present, of any lofty, religious or spiritual
sentiments?

GANDHI: Imagine India to be a vast prison-house and you will understand what I say. India has
really become a vast prison today, because people have been totally disarmed and reduced to
utter helplessness This cannot fail to affect the Indian attitude ( towards arms) consciously or
unconsciously ?
 291

QUESTION: People have been deprived of arms at our place also, but there is not that effect on
the mind of our people.

GANDHI: The two situations are different. Here also if people were free like you, nobody would
care if he did not possess arms. But the moment a ban is imposed, trouble is sure to arise. I have
had the experience of about a dozen jails in India and Africa combined and I can tell you what
the prisoner's psychology is.

QUESTION: Your explanation then is that the mentality prevalent here is that of a subject
people. All right. But you give education through a foreign tongue as one of its causes. Cannot
English become the national language of India?

GANDHI: It can't. French is regarded as a common language all over Europe. But will an
Englishman ever talk in French with another Englishman? But you will see that pitiable sight in
India. Not only between people of different provinces, but even between those of one and the
same province, English is the language of communication in writing and speaking!

QUESTION: You are a recognised leader of the whole of India and you yourself speak in
English!

GANDHI: No. You have not heard me speaking before the people. I speak in Hindi only.

QUESTION: Excuse me. We did not know that. So you think this question will be solved by
Hindustani?

GANDHI: Why not? Crores of my countrymen speak Hindustani or understand it, while not
even a million can speak and write in English.

QUESTION: Was it to show how deeply pained you were at the quarrels that you fasted ?

GANDHI: No. That was an indirect result.

QUESTION: How?

GANDHI: Because my penance became a public affair. It was not possible to keep it a secret and
I did not want to keep it either…394 One has but to do penance for the sins of omission and
commission.

QUESTION: So it was not for others that you fasted? You did not follow here the Christian
concept of penance?

GANDHI: I am deeply indebted to Christianity, but not for my idea of penance. My penance was
for my own sins, not for those of others. It is a different thing if my penance affects some other

394 Here Gandhi entered into a long exposition of the reasons for the fast, of the perverse effect non-
cooperation had produced in the minds of the people etc.
person or if some other person's action awakens in me the consciousness of my sin. I have
imbibed the idea of penance from Hinduism which is replete with thousands of such examples.

QUESTION: What then is your debt to Christianity?

GANDHI: You will be surprised to know how my first contact with Christianity and my interest
in my own religious books began. I used to believe that to be a Christian was to have the freedom
to take flesh and wine! I was told that a Christian convert in Rajkot was taking them and that was
my first contact with Christianity. I was under that impression when I went to London. Two
Englishmen there asked me to read Bhagwadgita with them. But I knew absolutely nothing even
of Bhagwadgita then. I took up Arnold's translation (Song Celestial, by Edwin Arnold). The
book deeply impressed me. I was so charmed with it! I saw that Arnold had grasped the real
essence of the Gita and poured all his heart's love in the translation. The shlokas (verses) which I
repeat in my daily evening prayer became for me day and night companions since then. Later on,
a friend met me in a vegetarian restaurant and he gave me the Bible. It made me sick to read the
chapters of the Old Testament one after another, and I wondered ‘Could this be Christianity?’
But I had already promised that friend to go through the whole of the Bible from beginning to
end. So, with grim resolve, I plodded on and on. It was my determination to keep my promise
that saved me. I came at last to the 'Sermon on the Mount' and I breathed a sigh of relief and joy.
That Sermon gave me great peace and consolation.

The American professors were intensely interested. One of them asked: Do you believe in
Christ as the Saviour of humanity through His vicarious suffering?

GANDHI: I am not much impressed with the concept.

QUESTION: Are you shocked?

GANDHI: No, not shocked either. There is something similar in Hinduism also. But I interpret
some parts of the Bible differently – some well-known parts of John's Gospel for instance. I do
not believe at all that one individual can wash off the sins of some other and grant him
redemption. But it is a psychological fact that one individual may feel pained at the sins and
sorrows of another and the consciousness that the former is grieved may lead to the moral uplift
of the latter. But I cannot accept the idea that one man can die for the sake of the sins of millions
and save them.

The answer thronged the mind of the professor of psychology with various questions. He
entered into the realms of psychology and philosophy.

QUESTION: Do you believe in free will?

GANDHI: I believe I am subject to circumstances - to time and space. All the same God has
granted me some freedom and I am preserving it. I think I have the freedom to distinguish
between right and wrong and choose from them whatever I like. It has never appeared to me
that I have not got any freedom, but it is difficult to decide where the freedom to act converts
 293

itself into to a call of duty. The dividing line between helplessness and dependence is very
thin and subtle.

But this was all delving into the depths of a learned discussion. The other professor did not
relish it. His mind was filled with the charge against the British policy. He said something to this
effect: You have roundly condemned the British policy, called it as one that has enervated the
people. But were not the predecessors - the Moghals - worse than the British? What a scourge
Nadirshah was. There is at least peace everywhere in India today.

GANDHI: You do not get a true picture from the accounts you read in history of the invasions of
Nadirshah. The masses, at least, remained unaffected. The tyrants of the past had no machine
guns and aeroplanes and other implements of modern civilisation with which they could
annihilate the masses or reduce them to utter destitution. The Moghals did possess the power of
organisation, the power of a compact force, but they never destroyed the life-spring of the
people. That is why the Englishman cannot be compared with all those foreigners.

QUESTION: But did not the Marathas also sap the vitality of the people?

GANDHI: Not at all. You do not know of our condition at the time of the 1857 revolt. The
persecution of the people at that time has no parallel. You cannot imagine how happy the country
was before the days of the modern innovations - the railways, post and telegraph etc. And what
number of men could have been harmed by the invasions of Sivaji? His arm could not possibly
have reached even a million, whereas the British Government has spread its dragnet around all
the seven hundred thousand villages of India.

QUESTION: But is it not true that there is peace under the aegis of the British?

GANDHI: Yes, the peace of the graveyard.

QUESTION: May not the Nawabs and Nizams repeat in future what the Englishmen are doing
today?

GANDHI: Let them. That possibility does not frighten me. I am quite prepared for that
eventuality. That calamity is far better that the present one.

QUESTION: May not an Oriental despotism be more crushing?

GANDHI: No. That would be easier to bear. It is this Occidental tyranny that is unbearable,
because one can get a chance to rise in revolt against an Oriental tyrant and in the fight the
chances of the people's victory would be fifty-fifty.

QUESTION: But even he can now arm himself with machine guns?

GANDHI: Yes, he can. But he cannot make use of them.

QUESTION: Why? When you get Swaraj, may not one of the Indian Princes rise up and
bring you under his heels?

GANDHI: Doesn't matter if he does. There may be some disorder in that case, but no such Prince
will ever be able to spread his rule over all the seven hundred thousand villages of India. But
why do you indulge in such fancies? British power may be destroyed, but the British are not
going to run away helter-skelter and leave us in the lurch. And even if that happens and there is
chaos due to our own weakness, in a few days we shall be able to see our errors and revert to
peace. And if we got Swaraj by non-violence alone, there would remain no danger of that
outcome. You may not be knowing that it is my cherished ambition to win Swaraj through non-
violent ways.

QUESTION: But may not the people burst into violence? What have you to say about the
races of the North Western Frontier Province?

GANDHI: That is one of the bogies which the British have raised. And the beauty of it is that
inspite of a heavy ransom to Afghanistan the Frontier remains a disturbed area.

QUESTION: And suppose the Afghan descends upon India?

GANDHI: We will see to that, if he does. One of the aims of our Swaraj is conversion of other
nations into friends. Just as other races came and settled in India in the past, we can
accommodate the Afghans also if they come.

There seemed to be no end to this and the psychologist was bored. He broached a new
subject.

QUESTION: What do you think about the debit and credit account between the East and West?

GANDHI: Are you speaking with reference to Britain and India?

QUESTION: Yes.

GANDHI: I think the British have not come here to give us anything. We have gained nothing
from our contact with them. What appears to have been gained has been done in spite of their
contact, not because of it. To my mind, India has to teach the West the truth of non-violence. If
India cannot make that contribution to the world, my pride for India as the land of my birth
would evaporate. It may be only my dream, but that dream I have been cherishing for years past.
That truth (of non-violence) has been sedulously cultivated in this land since hoary ages, the
climate of the country is favourable and it has entered into the blood of the masses in general.

QUESTION: Since the times of the Buddhists?

GANDHI: Even earlier than that. The Buddha gave it only pre-eminence since it had been
forgotten. India's message to the world can be that and no other, my heart tells me.
 295

The sociologist said: Yes, I am a student of sociology. Hatred, anger and the like are stumbling
blocks in the path of peace and non-violence.

The West also, I admit, has got to accept non-violence. We shall have to change our policy.
There is no other go.

The aged psychologist again put a new question: "Has your non-violence risen from your
conscience or experience?

GANDHI: From both. I felt that that was the sacred law of life and my study and experience of
society confirmed the belief.

QUESTION: Do you believe in miracles? What do you say to fire-walking and such other
things we hear so much of?

GANDHI: They may be true. But I have never paid any attention, never taken any interest in
them. Our scriptures impose a ban on such things. They proclaim that if you fall into its deluding
snare, salvation is out of the question for you and you are caught in the noose of births and
deaths. But I do not think it impossible to gain such powers.

QUESTION: But cannot the powers of performing miracles be used for the good of the people?

GANDHI: No. Had it been so, these miracle-workers would have done a lot of good to the
world. It is, besides, neither an easily attainable power nor an essential requisite. Were it so, the
power would have done havoc, brought about the doom of the world. And where is the fun in
upsetting nature's law? If a man is seized with a craze to run to the desert of Sahara and draw out
water from that arid land and even if he succeeds, what then? What's the good of overturning
Nature?

Mrs. Langeloth and Mrs. Kelly, January 1926395

[Mrs. Langeloth and Mrs. Kelly were delegated to present to Gandhi the resolution of invitation to visit America on
behalf of the Fellowship of Faiths, the League of Neighbours, and the Union of East and West.396 They were
evidently prepared for the reply of Gandhi but had to present the resolution.]

395 From: A report by Mahadev Desai in Young India, 21 January 1926; CWMG, Volume 29, pages 416-18.

396 Charles Frederick Weller (1870-1957), an executive of various charities in Chicago from 1901 to 1921, became
a leader of organisations for peace and co-operation. He set up the League of Neighbours in 1918. He associated
with Kedar Nath Das Gupta, founder of the Union of East and West, after he arrived from London and they formed
the Fellowship of Faiths in 1925. The three organisations were later combined into "the Threefold Movement,"
renamed World Fellowship of Faiths in 1929, with Mr. Weller and Mr. Das Gupta as General Executives. The
World Fellowship organised the "International Convention of the World Fellowship of Faiths" on the fiftieth
anniversary of the first World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. A convention of religions, as well as other faiths,
it was held in Chicago and New York in 1933-34. One of its sessions had "Gandhi's Faith" as its theme.
 Mrs. KELLY: Would you not visit America, Mr. Gandhi? We would very much like to hear
from you your message. Money, I know, is not consideration to you, but I may say that your visit
can help us to render you pecuniary assistance in your work here. There are private homes there
ready to receive you and to look after you whilst you are there.

GANDHI: I know, I would be overwhelmed with affection if ever I went to America. But as
I have already explained to other friends I cannot as yet think of going there, without having
finished my work here. I must work away amongst my own people, and not swerve from my
path. Dr. Ward397 writing to me the other day said he was entirely at one with me in thinking
that my visit would not be of much use in the present circumstances. And don't you think he is
right? I know crowds would gather around me to hear me, I would get receptions everywhere but
beyond that my visit would have no other result.

Mrs. KELLY: Don't you think, Mr. Gandhi, we are ready to receive your message? Look at
the gathering under the auspices of the Fellowship of Faiths. No less than ten faiths were
represented there, and when a lecture about you was broadcast millions listened to it with intense
interest. Mr. John Haynes Holmes also earnestly desires you to pay a visit. We are growing, and
we would like to accelerate the growth.

GANDHI: I know you are growing. But a gentle, steady growth would be more enduring
than growth induced by lecturing campaigns and fireworks display. You must, at present, study
my message through my writings and try to live up to it if it is acceptable to you. I could not
hope to make you live up to it unless I have succeeded in making my own people do it. Every
moment of my time is therefore usefully employed here and I would be doing violence to my
inner being if I left my work and proceeded to America.

[Mrs. Kelly and Mrs. Langeloth seemed to be convinced and they now turned to putting a
question or two before they left. "Mr. Gandhi, is it true that you are a reactionary? I have heard
some of your own people say so."]

GANDHI: What do they mean by “reactionary”? If they mean that I am a civil resister and
law-breaker I have been that all these years. If they mean that I have discarded all other methods
and adopted non-violence, symbolised by the spinning-wheel, they are right.398

Mrs. KELLY: Is it true that you object to railways, steamships and other means of speedy
locomotion?

GANDHI: It is and it is not! You should really get the book in which I have expounded my
views in this connection - Indian Home Rule. It is true in the sense that under ideal conditions we
should not need these things. It is not true in the sense that in these days it is not easy to sever

397 The Reverend Dr. Harry Frederick Ward, Professor of Christian Ethics at the Union Theological
Seminary, New York. He visited India in 1924 and interviewed Gandhi.
398 Mahadev Desai explained: “Mrs. Kelly could not say, but I could well guess what was at the back of
her mind from the questions that followed. In his remarkable autobiography, Henry Ford refers to a species
of reformers whom he calls ‘reactionary,’ meaning thereby those who want to go back to an old order of
things.”
 297

ourselves from those things. But is the world any the better for those quick instruments of
locomotion? How do these instruments advance man's spiritual progress? Do they not in the last
resort hamper it? And is there any limit to man's ambition? Once we were satisfied with
travelling a few miles an hour, today we want to negotiate hundreds of miles in an hour, one day
we might desire to fly through space. What will be the result? Chaos - we would be tumbling
upon one another, we would be simply smothered.

But do masses desire these things?

GANDHI: They do. I have seen mobs getting almost mad on Sundays and holidays. In
London a long unbreakable train of motor cars at every corner is quite a usual phenomenon. And
what is all this worry and fateful hurry for? To what end? I tell you if by some sudden
catastrophe all these instruments were to be destroyed I would not shed a single tear. I would
say, it is a proper storm and a proper cleansing.

But supposing you need to go to Calcutta, how would you go unless by train?

GANDHI: Certainly by train. But why should I need to go to Calcutta? Under ideal
conditions, as I have said, I need not traverse those long distances, not at any rate in the shortest
possible time. I shall explain myself. Today two good people come from America with a kind
and loving message. But along with the two come two hundred with all sorts of motives. For
aught we know a large number may be coming just in search of further avenues of exploitation.
Is that the benefit of quick locomotion to India?

I see, but how can we get back to the ideal condition of things?

GANDHI: Not easily. It is an express moving at a terrific speed that we are in. We cannot all
of a sudden jump out of it. We cannot go back to the ideal state all at a jump. We can look
forward to reaching it some day.399

Mrs. Edward Hanley, 1927400

[Mrs. Hanley of Bradford, Pennsylvania, spent the winter of 1926-27 in India and met Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore
and other leaders. The following is from her statement to the New York Times on her return.]

"He is very active and not so thin and fragile as I expected to find him. He was much
interested in America and said he would like to visit this country, but he had not the time and his
work lay in India with his own people."

399 Mahadev Desai added: “In short, the reactionary turn, if at all it was, meant a return to common sense, meant a
restoration of what appears to common sense to be a natural order as distinguished from the present unnatural order,
in a word not everything overturned or everything petrified but everything restored to its proper place. But I do not
think the friends quite saw the drift of the argument. For they too were hurrying through space. They had to catch a
train, and were afraid to get to the station too late!”
400 New York Times, 14 May 1927
Professor Kenneth Saunders, c. 1927401

[Dr. Saunders (1883-1937), Professor of the History of Religion, was with the YMCA in India from 1912 to 1917,
and met Gandhi. He wrote several books on Buddhism and on Asia.]

Some six years ago I went to see it [Sabarmati Ashram], and to talk with the Mahatma, with
whom I had long corresponded. I found him seated in a small whitewashed room at his spinning
wheel. All day long the stream of visitors continued, students reporting on upon the success of
his campaign of spinning, political leaders of Hindus and Mohammedans, leaders of the non-
cooperation movement. He met all with the same calm and friendly spirit… The Mahatma… is
for all his people Bapu or daddy, and the outcaste children whom he has taken into his house are
as dear to him as the intimate friends who have shared the burdens of life with him.

I spent a part of the day visiting his spinning school and reading Young India in a bare cell of
the ashram. In the evening, as the sun was setting, we gathered on the banks of the river, and
here he led us in simple and devout worship...

Before I left I asked him if he would not write a meditation upon the cross of Jesus, for surely
no one has so fully entered into that great experience of self-imposed suffering. "I never write
anything except it comes out of the practical problems of life," was his reply. Nevertheless he
has written much that is relevant to the understanding of Christ, and he has embodied in his
school the principles beaten out on the anvil of experience. He exacts of all students vows which
embody these principles.

William H. Danforth, 22 November 1927

[William H. Danforth (1870-1955), head of Ralston Purina Company, Missouri, which manufactured animal feed
and other food products, was on a visit to India in 1927 and was anxious to meet Gandhi. As Gandhi was due to be
in Ceylon when Mr. Danforth, his wife and two friends, were to be there, a meeting was arranged for the party to
meet Gandhi in Colombo on 22 November. They attended a meeting of the Ceylon National Congress which Gandhi
addressed that afternoon, and then went to see him in the evening. The following is an account of the interview in
Mr. Danforth's letter to his colleagues in America, later published in a book.402]

Long before eight-thirty we were at the home where we were to meet him personally.
Although his secretary said he had already made fourteen talks that day and was very tired, we
saw him on the porch in the centre of a score or more of picked students. They were crowded
around him, breathless, straining to catch every syllable that fell from the great teacher's lips. We
felt like trespassers. Why should mere Americans visiting in a foreign land presume on his time?
Because, like Lincoln, he belongs to all the world. We were hungry for the uplift of his spirit.

401 Kenneth Saunders, Whither Asia? A Study of Three Leaders (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1933),
pages 35-37.
402 Danforth, William H. Random Ramblings in India: Letters Written to the Purina Family, (Privately printed,
1928), pages 130-32.
 299

Finally his conference with the students ended and he came toward the room where we were
awaiting him. Our hearts pounded like trip hammers. Touching his clasped hands to his lips and
then to his forehead, he gave us the namaskar - the Indian gesture of respect. We returned the
salute with our clumsy Western handshake. Then his wonderful smile put us entirely at our ease.
We talked of India and America, of business and of religion.

He didn't spare our feelings, but accused England and America of following the false god,
Materialism. He claimed the West was exploiting India for selfish ends. Although Ford had
brought them quicker transportation and better roads, he maintained his people were worse off,
rather than better off, because of these so-called improvements. He has had many invitations to
come to America but he does not come, because he thinks America is only curious to see him,
and understands that it is not ready to hear his message. He implied that we Americans should
not contaminate the East with gross and selfish Western ideals.

I disagreed with his economic ideas, but in spite of my disagreement, my heart throbbed. In
spite of the fact that he was lashing my opinions, my admiration for him kept growing. The very
atmosphere of the room seemed charged with his spirituality.

His eyes, his smile, his sincerity and genuineness overwhelmed us. Here, before us, was a thin,
little brown body, scarcely weighing a hundred pounds, clothed only in a loin cloth; a wisp of
hair on the crown of his close-cropped head marked him for a Hindu. And yet we forgot how he
looked. All we could realise was that we were in the presence of a saint.

Never before have I been so conscious of the spirit. Just to be in his presence was to tingle all
over. The utter lack of guile or meanness of any sort, the sublime faith translated in real life acted
as a magnet on our little souls. We were lifted to a new plane and given a thirst for still higher
ones.

William W. Hall, Jr., 1928403

[Mr. Hall, an American teaching at Robert College, Istanbul, interviewed Gandhi at the Sabarmati Ashram.]

We alighted from the car and walked along the path between two of the low, broad roofed
houses toward that belonging to Mr. Gandhi. Presently I found myself led up to a broad veranda
with spreading roof, where crouched in a semi-circle were half a dozen or more attentive white-
robed figures. In the centre, cross-legged upon a thin white mat, with his back against the wall
and before him a low bench or table strewn with papers, squatted a diminutive, emaciated, half-
naked man, who, to my amazement, was introduced as Mahatma Gandhi.

In the next five minutes my impressions of this squatting figure changed like the shadows on
the lawn. "Why, this gnarled creature has nothing more to recommend him than any of the road

403 William W. Hall, Jr. "On Gandhi's Front Porch" in North American Review, New York, 226:93-100, July 1928.
A condensed version of the interview was published in Indian Review, Madras, October 1928, and reprinted in
CWMG, Volume 37, pages 320-21.
beggars that infest the highways hereabout," was the sentiment racing through my mind. "The
world has been duped."

This mood quickly changed as I noted the deep furrows in the face, the drooping mouth and
moustache, and the lower jaw devoid of teeth…

Then as the wizened, warped figure became articulate, gradually, but not slowly, I lost
consciousness of the flesh and blood before me, and recognised only a mind and heart of
incomparable strength and beauty. He spoke with the greatest ease and fluency, in low but clear
tones, expressing his thoughts in terse, cogent words, seeking always to define the terms before
presenting his views.

"I have just been talking with my son," he said, after I remarked I was afraid I had caught him
at a busy moment. "He is leaving today."

I then proceeded to make known my identity and remarked that I had been anxious to meet
him because I felt that though Americans were familiar with his name they seldom really
understood him.

"That's true," he said. "Americans seem either to exalt me to a degree wholly out of
proportion to what I deserve or else they consider me a dangerous revolutionary."

I said I thought most Americans had formed no very definite opinion of him, but were
extremely interested in his personality and his programme.

"Yes," he assented, "I have a great number of friends in America and keep up a voluminous
American correspondence."

I asked him if he would permit me to put several questions of a general nature to him, not
specifically applied to India or its problems. He readily consented. I then presented the
questions which follow. He answered each question concisely and directly in clear, studied
terms.

"In what field of endeavour can an American facing the choice of a life-career make the
greatest contribution to society?"

"The vital consideration," he replied, "is not so much the choice of one or another profession
as the achieving of self-realisation. Americans cannot be of any real service through any
profession unless they reconsider the premises on which they are now acting and which appear to
me to be fundamentally unsound. To borrow a phrase from Tolstoy, they are `riding on the
backs' of weaker peoples, financially and commercially. Their achievements are based on
considerations of so-called supply and demand (which is a veiled term for mere self-interest)
rather than of human need. Their civilisation is essentially selfish and materialistic. Doles
handed out to missionary and philanthropic projects furnish small compensation for economic
and industrial oppression. In facing the problem of a career a man should emphasise, above all
else, the spiritual aspects of life. With this uppermost in his thoughts, he should test his own
 301

potentialities, discover how he can best meet the peculiar needs of the local community in which
he finds himself, and apply himself to meeting those needs to the utmost of his ability."

"What relation should religion and character bear to education in our present day
programmes?"

"Education, character and religion should be regarded as convertible terms. There is no true
education which does not tend to produce character, and there is no true religion which does not
determine character. Education should contemplate the whole life. Mere memorising and book
learning is not education. I have no faith in so-called systems of education which produce men
of learning without the backbone of character."

"What fitting substitute can the Western nations find for militarism?"

"Militarism is essentially self-assertion. I should, therefore, substitute for self-assertion, self-

abnegation."

"Just what do you mean by the term `self abnegation'?"

"The sense in which Christ understood it," he replied, smiling. "He who loseth his life shall
find it."

"How should one regard pain and suffering?"

"Voluntary, sacrificial suffering is to be greatly commended; involuntary, inflicted suffering

to be greatly deplored."

"How would you interpret suffering which is both involuntary and non-inflicted, such as that
produced by chance illness?"

"I believe illness to be the result of sin (in the broadest sense of the word). Sin I define as the
breaking of a law, either physical or moral. A headache is the result of sin."

"What is the way out of the present seemingly hopeless antagonism between religious
factions in all parts of the world?"

"Charity. We must learn toleration and respect for others. Every religion in some measure
satisfies the spiritual needs of men. If a religious act, such as tom-toming, annoys me, I should
not try to have it prohibited, but should realise that it ministers to other peoples' needs, and
remove myself from the scene of the disturbance. I have ceased to declare myself publicly on
this issue. My views are well known. As the French proverb has it, ‘He who excuses himself
accuses himself.’ I believe that by maintaining silence my message is more forcibly conveyed
than by constant admonition. There is, however, no need of despairing of this or any other issue
where the right is involved. The world is moving on the right course. When you consider that
our mortal lives are mere specks in relation to the whole of time, you can appreciate that the
world may be progressing even when progress is not apparent. I am supremely hopeful."
 "Do you believe in prayer?"

"Most assuredly. Prayer is the great longing of the soul for God. I do not however, entertain
belief in a personal God."

The time was running on and I was aware that I had intruded long enough. There was an
additional favour however, which I was anxious to ask.

"I am returning very shortly to Robert College in Constantinople," and then I explained
something of the nature of that institution. "I wish you would give me some message to carry
back to the students there!"

He smiled, shook his head, and then said:

"Just tell them to try to be good before great - good before great."

Thereupon we arose. I apologised for monopolising so much of his time; he admitted that he
was overburdened with his work. We shook hands and parted…

Patricia Kendall, March 1930404

[Mrs. Patricia Kendall, an author from Bristol, Virginia, who spent a part of each year abroad, visited India several
times. She told the press on return to New York on 8 July 1932:

"I went to India for the first time fifteen years ago, after leaving college, and have just returned from my
fifth visit…

"I had several talks with the Mahatma Gandhi… He is very comfortable in the jail with a nice two-room
apartment and no one to annoy him with stupid questions."405 Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi
contains no reference to her meetings with Gandhi.]

“The Mahatma will receive you now.”

We enter. A small emaciated man, naked save for a loincloth, sits on a floor mat with his
skeleton-like legs folded back beside his thighs, the soles turned uppermost, while his hands are
busy with a small spinning-wheel. A Hindu secretary is seated on either side of him, reverently
taking down every word that falls from his lips; a young woman kneels in adulation before him.
The secretaries stare resentfully; the woman eyes us disapprovingly; the Mahatma smiles gently.
Smiles are rarities in India. Graciously he waves us to a backless wooden bench and benignantly
bids us keep our shoes on. Even our shoes seem rather startled.

404 The following account is from her book, Come with me to India! A Quest for Truth among Peoples and
Problems (New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1931), pages 328-30. The book is contemptuous of
India and Gandhi, rather like Katherine Mayo's Mother India, justifying continued British rule.
405 New York Times, July 9, 1932
 303

We study the face of the most publicised man on earth. Two small dark eyes flash at one from
above an enormous nose and a wide and almost toothless mouth: the eyes of a strategist; the
nose of a dictator; the mouth of a monologist. Huge, pierced ears frame the brown face and one
thread of hair, the shikha by which all Hindus are lifted up to heaven by their gods, protrudes
from a close-clipped head.

“It is always delightful to talk to Americans,” Mr. Gandhi begins. “Unfortunately I have little
time just now, as I am preparing to march to the sea and break the salt laws of this satanic
Government.”

“We appreciate that there are many demands on your time, Mr. Gandhi. We shall be brief. I have
just completed a circle of India and throughout the Provinces the marriage-drums dinned in my
ears incessantly, by day and by night. Thousands of marriages are being perpetrated and some of
the girl-brides are mere infants in arms. The approaching enactment of the Sarda Bill as a law
must be indeed gratifying to you.”406

“We need no such laws. Our law of love is the true answer, and this—the charka.” He lovingly
touches the spinning-wheel.

“But Mr. Gandhi, you yourself have condemned child-marriage, and certainly this law will put
an end to the legalised abuse of girl-children and stop child motherhood!”

Mr. Gandhi’s eyes glow, not with any spirituality or moral fervour, as I had fully expected, but
with indignation and impatience; nevertheless his voice is precise and even as he replies:

“It is a Government measure. Nothing good can come from the Government. Love is the law
of Truth. Did you pass a woman leaving here?”

“Yes, one who was sobbing.”

“She was sobbing for joy. I had forgiven her. She was attacked by two Mussulmans and
resisted them, violently. Now she sees her sin and the glory of love.”

“I have read in many of your writings, Mr. Gandhi, particularly in Young India, that your
philosophy and teaching of Satyagraha forbid a woman defending herself even from assault.”

“Quite true. Satyagraha demands absolute non-violence and that even a woman who is in
danger of being violated must not defend herself with violence. Perfect purity is its own defence.
The worst ruffian becomes tame in the presence of purity.”

“Do you really believe that in practice, and not theory?”

“Certainly. So you see why I am not moved by the satanic Government’s act.”

406 The Bill, named after Harbilas Sarda who proposed it, declares marriages of girls below the age of fourteen and
boys below the age of eighteen invalid. The Sarda Act went into effect on April 1, 1930.
 “But, Mr. Gandhi, the Committee that recommended the bill, after being appointed to
investigate the best remedies, consisted of ten members, all Indians, including the Chairman,
except Mrs. Beadon, the Superintendent of Victoria Government Hospital in Madras!”

“All of my people have not yet seen the light,” Mr. Gandhi shakes his head sadly. “But they
will,” he brightens, “and now you will excuse me?”

We make our departure.

Newton Phelps Stokes, II, 1930407

[Mr. Stokes, a Yale University student, went to India in 1930 with a letter of introduction from C.F. Andrews. He
was received by Gandhi, at the end of March or beginning of April 1930, during the Salt March, in a village five
miles from Surat.]

There were several other persons sitting on the floor when we came in. Gandhi was leaning
against a pillow at one end, spinning. He was gracious in greeting us, asked a few questions
about our travelling, inquired about Mr. Andrews, and wanted to know whether we had any
questions to ask - but we must not try to think up any on the spot. I asked him to what extent he
thought his programme was applicable to the West. He said: "In its entirety." He realised that
hand spinning would seem preposterous to Westerners, but he was convinced that it is a sound
solution of universal economic problems. A Harvard friend who joined us for this trip asked him
to what extent he felt that scientific research should continue. Gandhi replied that he was in
favour of all research that could help humanity, but did not see any point in sending expeditions
to the North Pole. After this he said pleasantly, "that will conclude the interview."

Webb Miller, 1931408

[Mr. Miller (1892-1940) was a foreign correspondent of the United Press of America. He was in India in 1930 when
Gandhi was in prison. His reporting of police violence against non-violent volunteers during the Salt Satyagraha
helped greatly to counteract British propaganda and to enable world public opinion to understand the Indian national
movement. The authorities in India refused him permission to meet Gandhi in prison. He met Gandhi in London in
1931. He covered many wars and crises. “From his years of reporting, Miller became thoroughly disillusioned about
war – its futility, horror, and obscenity. In a cry of despair he exclaimed, ‘poor human race.’”409]

I first encountered him at a tea party at the Dorchester Hotel. He cut a bizarre figure among
the smart, morning-coated Englishmen in the de luxe hotel, for he wore his usual dhoti of coarse

407 Newton Phelps Stokes, II, "Marching with Gandhi" in Review of Reviews, June 1930; reproduced in Charles
Chatfield (ed.), The Americanization of Gandhi: Images of the Mahatma. (New York and London: Garland
Publishing, Inc., 1976).
408 From Webb Miller, I Found No Peace: the Journal of a Foreign Correspondent (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1936).
409 Robert B. Downs and Jane B. Downs, Journalists of the United States: Biographical Sketches of Print
and Broadcast News Shapers from the late 17th Century to the Present (Jefferson, North Carolina and
London: McFarland & Company, Inc. 1991), page 240.
 305

white homespun cotton that looked like jute sacking. His skinny brown legs were quite bare, but
his feet were encased in crude native sandals.

He invited me to sit with him on a silk and gilt sofa, remarking jocularly: "Why didn't you
come to see me when you were in India?" "But you were in jail then, and they wouldn't let me
see you," I replied. The shrivelled, little brown man grinned toothlessly and blinked through his
cheap, steel-rimmed spectacles. "So I was. I spend a good deal of my time in jails." "How
much of your life have you spent in jails?" I asked. Gandhi counted thoughtfully on his fingers
and pondered a while. "I don't really know. I've been in jail seven or eight, may be ten times,
but I don't remember how many years. Since about 1907 in South Africa I have spent much time
in jail. I don't really mind it much because it gives me a chance to think and write better than
when I am out. I am not interrupted so much in jail. They have always treated me well and I
shall probably spend a great many more years in jail and may die in jail."

As a former vegetarian, I was interested in Gandhi's lifelong abstinence from meat and his
extraordinarily frugal diet and frequent fasts, during which he drinks salted water. He told me he
had tasted meat only once in his life.

"When I was a young man I thought much about the reasons for the superior physical strength
of the British. I wondered why they were the dominant race in India and in so much of the
world. Finally I thought that perhaps it was because they are heavy meat-eaters; I thought
perhaps they absorbed some of the strength of the animals they ate. As you know, our religion
forbids the eating of meat or the killing of any animal. But I decided to start eating meat to see
whether it had any useful effect upon me. I ate it once, then my conscience hurt me so much that
I never ate it again. I was afraid my mother would be horrified if she knew I had put the flesh of
a dead animal in my mouth. As I grew older I began to doubt that the British are the strongest
race."

I asked him about his personal habits and diet.

"I rise at four a.m., pray for twenty minutes, write letters about an hour, take about half an
hour's walk, and then breakfast at six o'clock on goat-milk curds, dates, and raisins. Since the
civil disobedience campaign started I card, spin, and sew cotton between six and nine. I made a
vow to spin at least two hundred yards of cotton every day. I want to influence our people to
spin their own cloth and make themselves independent of importation from England. The largest
single item of British importation into India is cotton cloth. At noon I lunch on bread, goat-milk
curds, boiled vegetables, raw tomatoes, and almond paste, take a nap, and spend the afternoon in
reading, meditation, and receiving visitors. I do not eat at night. Before my bedtime at nine-
thirty I write in my diary. Until recently I always slept on the floor, but now I am old [he was
then sixty-three] I sleep in an iron bed. Every Monday I have a day of silence; I speak to no
person, no matter how urgent the matter may seem."

Gandhi told me that his only possessions in the world were two changes of dhotis, which he
said cost the equivalent of about $2.25 each to make, a blanket, a dollar watch, a small hand
spinning machine, writing materials, and a few books. When he started the civil disobedience
campaign he gave away his property and took vows of poverty and celibacy; he insisted upon the
same oath for members of his ashram, the school in which he trained his disciples and the
leaders of his movement…

Later I had a long talk with Gandhi in the dingy apartment in Knightsbridge where he stayed
during the Round Table Conference. He greeted me with the curious characteristic Hindu
salutation, holding his hands palm to palm in a gesture of prayer and supplication. Then he led
me to a little, smoky coal fireplace and sat down on the floor on a blanket. At first, I sat on a
chair talking at the top of his head, but finally squatted on the floor beside him. During the
whole conversation Gandhi deftly spun cotton on a home-made spinning machine.

As an admirer of Thoreau, I thought I detected similarities in Gandhi's ideas and Thoreau's

philosophy. The first question I put to him was: "Did you ever read an American named Henry
D. Thoreau?" His eyes brightened and he chuckled.

"Why, of course I read Thoreau. I read Walden first in Johannesburg in South Africa in 1906
and his ideas influenced me greatly. I adopted some of them and recommended the study of
Thoreau to all my friends who were helping me in the cause of Indian independence. Why, I
actually took the name of my movement from Thoreau's essay, 'On the Duty of Civil
Disobedience,' written about eighty years ago. Until I read that essay I never found a suitable
English translation for my Indian word, Satyagraha. You remember that Thoreau invented and
practised the idea of civil disobedience in Concord, Massachusetts, by refusing to pay his poll
tax as a protest against the United States government. He went to jail, too. There is no doubt
that Thoreau's ideas greatly influenced my movement in India."…

From long reading of Thoreau I am convinced that his philosophical conceptions emanated
largely from Indian literature. In Walden he repeatedly mentions the Vedas and other Hindu
literature and once says: "I... who loved so well the philosophy of India..." It would seem that
Gandhi received back from America what was fundamentally the philosophy of India after it had
been distilled and crystallised in the mind of Thoreau. This perhaps explains why the Hindu
mentality so readily accepted his ideas.

I asked Gandhi to sign his name in my cigarette case - a cigarette case in which at various
times Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Pershing, and other world figures had written their names in
pencil. Gandhi examined it closely, chuckled, and said: "Why, this is a cigarette case, isn't it?
You know what I think about the use of tobacco. I would not want my name covered with
tobacco. If you will promise never to put cigarettes in it, I will sign for you."

I promised and have since used it as a card case. Gandhi's signature was the clearest and most
legible of any of the notables represented…

While the emaciated little brown man talked, he twirled his spinning machine with skinny
fingers. Whenever I asked a question which he wished to ponder or evade he managed to break
the cotton thread and while splicing it gained time to consider his reply. Of all the notable
figures I ever met I found Gandhi the most fascinating and inscrutable. He spoke slowly and
deliberately, in excellent English (he was educated for the law in England), with a slight lisp
 307

because of his missing teeth. He kept his eyelids lowered constantly, and you saw his mild
brown eyes only now and then when he looked up to emphasise a point…

"In India we have the oldest continuous civilisation in the world," he said, whirling the
spinning wheel. "We had a cultured civilisation when Europe was inhabited by uncouth
tribesmen. We do not want or need European machine civilisation. We want to be free to
develop according to the genius of our own people. Our people are inherently simple folk and I
want to inspire them to go back to their ancient simplicity. Modern mechanical civilisation does
not suit our people. We don't want its machines, its cloth, its tobacco and alcohol."

Gandhi accepted an invitation to lunch with the Association of American Correspondents in

London and to make a speech. He brought Madeline Slade, the daughter of a British admiral,
who had joined his movement as a disciple, lived in his ashram, and adopted Hindu customs and
the dress of a Hindu woman. In deference to Gandhi's habits Negley Farson, president of the
Association, chose a vegetarian luncheon prepared without animal fats. When Gandhi arose to
speak he said: "I have nothing new or confidential to tell you. There is really no reason why you
gentlemen should not write what I shall say. But I think the exercise of self-restraint now and
then is good for newspaper correspondents. I think this should be a day of silence for you.
Therefore, please do not write anything about what I am going to say to you." Although we had
attended the luncheon with the idea of writing about it, we observed Gandhi's whimsical request.

Dr. Dodd, 4 September 1934410

[Dr. Dodd was in charge of a girls’ college in America.]

DODD: I have come to India, 10,000 miles, to see Taj which is a monument of the past and Mahatma Gandhi which
is a symbol of the future.

GANDHI: But why not become a living Taj than a dead Taj? And why not a monument of the present than of the
future ?

DODD: Is there any chance of your coming to America? Could we kidnap you to America? We hear, you know, so
much of kidnappers nowadays.

GANDHI: No, for the simple reason that I should be of no use there. If I came there, it would be to demonstrate the
secret and the beauty and the power of non-violence. I should not be able to do it today. I have not yet carried
complete conviction to my own countrymen.

DODD: What is your main objective, Mr. Gandhi ?

GANDHI: The main objective is obvious and it is to gain independence, not for the literate and the rich in India, but
for the dumb millions.

DODD: I know. I have often come across that expression in your writings. What are your methods?

GANDHI: Not many methods, but the one method of unadulterated truth and non-violence. But you might ask me,
‘How are non-violence and truth expressed and applied?’ I would say at once that the central fact in my programme

410 Harijan, 14 September 1934 and the manuscript of Mahadev Desai’s Diary; CWMG, Volume 58, pages 399-403.
is the spinning-wheel. I know that Americans are startled when I say this. What can be the meaning of this pet
obsession, they ask.

DODD: Not all Americans. Our daily paper one day criticised the spinning-wheel programme and in the very next
column had an article describing people working with the shovel on a public thoroughfare, forty doing the work of a
single machine. In a letter to the editor, I drew his attention to the incongruity and told him that, just as we were
fighting unemployment, India, too, was fighting unemployment. But with you, Mr. Gandhi, it is moral and spiritual
symbol, too?

GANDHI: Yes, of truth and non-violence. When as a nation we adopt the spinning-wheel, we not only solve the
question of unemployment but we declare that we have no intention of exploiting any nation, and we also end the
exploitation of the poor by the rich. It is a spiritual force which in the initial stages works slowly, but as soon as it
gets started, it begins working in geometrical progression, i.e., when it gets into the life of the people. When I say I
want independence for the millions, I mean to say not only that the millions may have something to eat and to cover
themselves with, but that they will be free from the exploitation of people here and outside. We can never
industrialise India, unless, of course, we reduce our population from 350 millions to 35 millions or hit upon markets
wider than our own and dependent on us. It is time we realised that, where there is unlimited human power,
complicated machinery on a large scale has no place. An Indian economist told me once that every American had 36
slaves, for, the machine did the work of 36 slaves. Well, Americans may need that, but not we. We cannot
industrialise ourselves, unless we make up our minds to enslave humanity.

Then, we have to fight untouchability. Untouchability of a kind is everywhere. A coal porter coming from a
coalmine would not stretch out his hand to shake yours. He would say he would wash himself clean first. But the
moment a man has rendered himself clean, he should cease to be untouchable. Here however we have regarded a
part of our population as perpetually untouchable. We are trying to abolish that untouchability. Added to their
untouchability is unemployment, which they share in common with a vast number of others. You, too, have got the
unemployment problem, but it is of your own creation. Our unemployment is not entirely of our creation, but,
however it came about, I am sure that, if my method was universalised in India, we should not only find work for
those that exist but for those to come. That is, we should easily be able to tackle our population problem. The
problem is to double the penny a day which is the average income of a poor Indian. If we can achieve that, it would
be quite enough at least till we find a better method. The spinning-wheel, by utilising the idle hours of the nation,
produces additional wealth; it does not, it was never meant to, displace existing employment. Give me a thing which
would increase the daily income of the millions of our impoverished people more than the spinning wheel, and I
should gladly give up the spinning-wheel.

DODD: I quite see. We talk of shortening of the hours of work, but as to what they are to do in their spare hours, we
do not seem for a moment to trouble ourselves about.

I would ask one more question, Mr. Gandhi. I have the opportunity of speaking to many young men and women and
I should like you to tell me what you consider your most satisfactory achievement—I will not say your greatest
achievement, lest I should embarrass you. In other words, what should I put before the young people as a thing that
they should aspire after in life?

GANDHI: It is a difficult question. I do not know what to say. I can simply say this: I do not know whether you will
call it an achievement or not, but I may say that, in the midst of humiliation and so-called defeat and a tempestuous
life, I am able to retain my peace, because of an undying faith in God, translated as Truth. We can describe God as
millions of things, but I have for myself adopted the simple formula - “Truth is God.”

DODD: I see it, I see it. You have achieved peace in a world of confusion and turmoil.

GANDHI: But several American friends say to me, “You cannot have peace unless you believe in Jesus.” Well, I
tell you I have peace, though I do not believe in Jesus as the only son of God.

DODD: I am glad you said this. May I ask you to let me know your conception of Christ ?
 309

GANDHI: I consider him as a historical person—one of the greatest amongst the teachers of mankind. I have
studied his teachings as prayerfully as I could, with the reverence of a Christian, in order to discover the Truth that is
buried in them. I have done so, just as I have done about the teachings of other teachers.

DODD: In this connection, may I ask your opinion on the missionaries’ work in India? Have they wronged India ?

GANDHI: I should not say intentionally. They, of course, come here as critics, they exaggerate our social evils, they
criticise our religion. But that does not matter. All their criticism has but served to make us more conscious of our
weaknesses and more alive to our duties.

DODD: But that, I suppose, you say of missionaries as individuals, not of missionary societies as such ?

GANDHI: I should not draw that distinction, for, missionary societies have certain pre-conceived notions of our
society and religion which the members propagate. Thirty-five years ago, for instance, as I was passing through
Zanzibar, I went to the Bible Society to purchase a copy of the Bible and with that I was given a report of work done
by a mission there. I was astounded to find therein that a missionary could count his work in the terms of £. s. d. A
convert meant so many shillings, as to a recruiting agent a recruit means so many rupees. One cannot think of a
religion in the terms of the number of its adherents.

DODD: What, Mr. Gandhi, has been your greatest disappointment?

GANDHI: Frankly, I have no sense of disappointment, excepting, perhaps, that sometimes I am disappointed with
myself, inasmuch as I cannot control the fleeting thoughts as much as I should like to. That’s all.

DODD: What is the source of your ideals?

GANDHI: The source is truth or the uttermost identity with all life. Truth is the realisation of God.

DODD: One last thing, Mr. Gandhi. I am coming from the Congress of the Baptist Christians in Germany. They
took a firm stand on peace and racialism. I spoke there on the “Gospel of the Day” and spoke “on strict honesty and
integrity in the business of our life” and “war as the most insane and unchristian thing on earth.” I made, in
conclusion, an appeal to all, coupled with my own declaration, that true Christians everywhere should refuse to
shoot down their Christian brethren whenever Governments decided to go to war against any other nation. How
much does that proposition come near you?

GANDHI: It would come very near me, if you were to drop out the word “Christian” and said only “brethern.” I
should refuse to shoot down any human being, black or white, Christian or non-Christian. Your declaration must
apply to the whole humanity.

DODD: I mean it. I said “Christian brethren,” as I was addressing a group of Christians.

GANDHI: That is all right. I have to give this warning, because sometimes it is thought that there is nothing wrong
in shooting down so-called savages.

DODD: No, no.

Swami Paramhansa Yogananda, August 1935411

411 From Yogananda Paramahansa, Autobiography of a Yogi (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946),
Chapter 44.
[Born originally as Mukundalal Ghosh, Yogananda (1893-1952) lived from 1920 in the United States where
he established the Self-Realisation Fellowship. He travelled extensively lecturing and teaching meditation and
Kriya Yoga. He visited Gandhi at Maganvadi ashram, near Wardha, in August 1935, along with Ms. Bletch
and Mr. Wright.]

They arrived in Wardha on 26 August, Gandhi’s silence day. Gandhi welcomed Swamiji with a
note on paper and then repeated the welcome when the silence was ended at 8.00 p.m. after the
prayer meeting.

We had just descended from the roof to his writing room, simply furnished with square mats (no
chairs), a low desk with books, papers, and a few ordinary pens (not fountain pens); a
nondescript clock ticked in a corner. An all-pervasive aura of peace and devotion. Gandhi was
bestowing one of his captivating, cavernous, almost toothless smiles.

"Years ago," he explained, "I started my weekly observance of a day of silence as a means for
gaining time to look after my correspondence. But now those twenty-four hours have become a
vital spiritual need. A periodical decree of silence is not a torture but a blessing."

I agreed wholeheartedly. The Mahatma questioned me about America and Europe; we discussed
India and world conditions.

As I was bidding the Mahatma good night, he considerately handed me a bottle of citronella oil.

"The Wardha mosquitoes don't know a thing about ahimsa, Swamiji!" he said, laughing…

The next day, in the afternoon, he met Gandhi in his writing room.

Gandhi looked up with his unforgettable smile.

"Mahatmaji," I said as I squatted beside him on the uncushioned mat, "please tell me your
definition of ahimsa."

"The avoidance of harm to any living creature in thought or deed."

"Beautiful ideal! But the world will always ask: May one not kill a cobra to protect a child, or
one's self?"

"I could not kill a cobra without violating two of my vows - fearlessness, and non-killing. I
would rather try inwardly to calm the snake by vibrations of love. I cannot possibly lower my
standards to suit my circumstances." With his amazing candor, Gandhi added, "I must confess
that I could not carry on this conversation were I faced by a cobra!"

I remarked on several very recent Western books on diet which lay on his desk.

"Yes, diet is important in the Satyagraha movement - as everywhere else," he said with a
chuckle. "Because I advocate complete continence for satyagrahis, I am always trying to find out
the best diet for the celibate. One must conquer the palate before he can control the procreative
 311

instinct. Semi-starvation or unbalanced diets are not the answer. After overcoming the inward
greed for food, a satyagrahi must continue to follow a rational vegetarian diet with all necessary
vitamins, minerals, calories, and so forth. By inward and outward wisdom in regard to eating, the
satyagrahi's sexual fluid is easily turned into vital energy for the whole body."

The Mahatma and I compared our knowledge of good meat-substitutes. "The avocado is
excellent," I said. "There are numerous avocado groves near my center in California."

Gandhi's face lit with interest. "I wonder if they would grow in Wardha? The satyagrahis would
appreciate a new food."

"I will be sure to send some avocado plants from Los Angeles to Wardha." I added, "Eggs are a
high-protein food; are they forbidden to satyagrahis?"

"Not unfertilised eggs." The Mahatma laughed reminiscently. "For years I would not
countenance their use; even now I personally do not eat them. One of my daughters-in-law was
once dying of malnutrition; her doctor insisted on eggs. I would not agree, and advised him to
give her some egg-substitute.

"'Gandhiji,' the doctor said, 'unfertilised eggs contain no life sperm; no killing is involved.'

"I then gladly gave permission for my daughter-in-law to eat eggs; she was soon restored to
health."

On the previous night Gandhi had expressed a wish to receive the Kriya Yoga of Lahiri
Mahasaya. I was touched by the Mahatma's open-mindedness and spirit of inquiry. He is
childlike in his divine quest, revealing that pure receptivity which Jesus praised in children, ". . .
of such is the kingdom of heaven."

The hour for my promised instruction had arrived; several satyagrahis now entered the room -
Mr. Desai, Dr. Pingale, and a few others who desired the Kriya technique….

John Gunther, 1938

[John Gunther, the American journalist and writer, met Gandhi at Juhu, Bombay, in 1938. He wrote later: "Mr.
Gandhi, who is an incredible combination of Jesus Christ, Tammany Hall, and your father, is the greatest Indian
since Buddha. This man, who is at once a saint and a politician, a prophet and a superb opportunist, defies ordinary
categories." 412

The following is from a biography of Mr. Gunther.413]

412 John Gunther, Inside Asia (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939), page 344. Mr. Gunther is the author
of many books and was particularly known for his “inside” books – Inside Europe, Inside U.S.A., Inside
Asia, Inside Africa, Inside South America etc.
413 Ken Cuthbertson, Inside: The Biography of John Gunther (Chicago: Bonus Books, Inc. 1992), pages
166-67.
 The saintly little man in the loincloth had a mischievous, yet gentle sense of humour, which
John saw one day as they ate lunch together. Conversation got around to the subject of the Aga
Khan. John mentioned to Gandhi how in their recent meeting the Aga Khan had boasted of being
the "only man in the world who could eat mangoes out of season."

"Did he really say that?" Gandhi chuckled. When John nodded, Gandhi waved to one of his
aides who brought him a fresh mango.

"I have a refrigerator," said Gandhi, giggling with boyish delight.414

David Hunter, 1938415

[Mr. Hunter, who was studying paper-making in all parts of India, met Gandhi at Segaon. Gandhi, who
was not seeing visitors, saw him only because he wished to discuss paper-making. The following is from an
article by him in New York Times.]

Mr. Hunter wrote that Gandhi was so far from well that he is “not likely to live very long
– perhaps a year or a little more.”

What was said at his meeting with Gandhi was not of great importance as they talked
only about paper. No political opinions were given.

James A. Mills (Associated Press of America), 20 May 1938416

[Mr. Mills, special correspondent of the Associated Press of America, interviewed Gandhi in Juhu just before his
departure for Wardha on 20 May 1938.]

I hope to live to see India united and independent. When that day comes I hope to carry out the
long-cherished wish of visiting America.

Dr. Gregg Sinclair, December 1938417

[Dr. Sinclair, Director of the Oriental Institute of the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, met Gandhi in Segaon. He
told Gandhi that he had come to find out how best to bring to America an idea of the culture of India. If Gandhi does
visit America, he said, "we will be very glad to welcome you."]

414 New York Post, 31 January 1948, quoted by Ken Cuthbertson.

415 New York Times, 15 May 1938. Mr. Hunter was author of Paper-making through Eighteen Centuries
(New York: William Edwin Rudge, 1930)
416 The Hindu, Madras, 23 May 1938; CWMG, Volume 67, page 90.
417 Harijan, 14 January 1939
 313

"I very nearly went to America on more than one occasion," replied Gandhi, "and the dream
may one day come true. But so far as outward evidence is concerned, today there seems to be no
chance."

William E. Fischer (Life), 1942418

...By this time we had reached Gandhi's house which is not so primitive as the newspapers
would have you think. Its walls are sort of mud stucco with neat bamboo grills serving as
windows. We left our shoes on the porch and, at exactly the appointed time, stepped over the
threshold. Bapuji was lying on a pallet, naked to the waist, a wet towel wrapped around the
upper part of his face. A youth was sitting at the foot of the pallet pulling a punka back and
forth. There were a number of other Ashramites sitting about.

It was a neat little room, by no means uncomfortable. Within easy reach of the pallet stood a
bookcase with the usual reference books. There were a clock, pens and pencils and piles of
notes. Covering the entire floor was a nice clean mat on which we sat cross-legged, waiting for
the great Hindu to speak. I could just barely discern two little eyes looking out from under the
towel.

There was a sharp cackle and Mr. Gandhi piped, "Well, what can I do for you?" I began
asking questions mostly referring to the Far Eastern crisis and India's position in relation to it.
Bapuji would have none of them. Shrill protestations came from under the towel. "Go to
practical politicians!" cracked Bapuji. At this point an Indian woman came in with a cold pack
and applied it to Gandhi's stomach. The businessman took over the punka rope from the youth
and began pulling fast. Gandhi did not mind indulging in a little banter, although he was anxious
to avoid specific questions. He is a genius in the use of English, has a tongue that can cut like a
razor and a moment later turn a singularly beautiful phrase. He is Bernard Shaw one minute and
St. Francis the next. In a few minutes he had everybody in the room laughing, and sometimes he
did quite a lot of cackling himself from under the wet towel. His secretary and an Indian woman,
closely related to the ruling maharaja of an Indian state419, sat by the pallet taking everything
down until the interview came to an end.

I was invited to stay for the evening meal which was held on a long porch by the communal
kitchen. The whole of Ashram attended, everybody sitting cross-legged in long rows. Mr.
Gandhi sat in the most prominent position, where he could see everything going on. He directed
operations even to the point of telling a couple of lady guests that if they wanted to eat with their
dog they would have to go somewhere else. They quickly removed the dog.

Gandhi seated me next to a very beautiful Indian girl who in turn was sitting next to him. She
told me she was a Ph.D. Some men in dhotis passed around with big copper cauldrons filled
with raw and cooked vegetables, mostly carrots, and trays of coarse brown bread. We also had
418 William E. Fisher, "Gandhi at Home" in Life, Chicago, 17 August 1942.
419 Rajkumari Amrit Kaur
nuts, goat's milk and oranges. Every few minutes Mr. Gandhi would peek around the girl and
urge me to make greater exertion with my vegetables. Pointing an accusing finger he would
cackle: "Mr. Fisher, Mr. Fisher, you aren't eating your carrots."

James G. Vail, June 27, 1944420

[Mr. Vail, Vice-President of Philadelphia Quartz Company and foreign secretary of American Friends Service
Committee, worked on famine relief in India in 1944. He met Gandhi in Poona. He went to India again in August
1951 and died unexpectedly in Delhi in December of that year.]

It is a momentous experience to have a direct sense of the spiritual power of the gentle and
unassuming man who has the largest personal following of any living human being…

On 27 June 1944, though much improved since his release, he (Gandhi) was not fully well.
Lying on a thin mattress on the floor at the Nature Cure Health Clinic, he extended his hand in
cordial greeting as I sat close beside him near a little stand which held books and materials for
writing. He appeared better nourished than I had expected but his voice was low and weak. He
listened with keen interest as I told him of the work of Friends Ambulance Unit in Bengal and
American help in bringing milk, vitamins and medicine to depleted survivors of the famine.

As he gave his blessings to the work and those engaged in it I felt the power of the greatest
personality with whom I have had personal contact. Calm, confident, disciplined, gentle, selfless
and utterly devoid of resentment, he has the power to make the people near him better, to hearten
them in striving for the best. A little period of devotional silence at the end of our conversation
added much to this feeling.

An American Journalist, 1 December 1945421

[While Gandhi was on his way from Wardha to Calcutta, a number of journalists entered his compartment on the
train. One of them asked for “a message for America and American people.”]

I know America and America knows me. People in America who want messages do not really
know me. You are prompting me to say something, but why do you not pay for my Harijan
Fund?

Herbert Hoover, April 24, 1946422

420 From "We have Known Gandhi" in Asia and the Americas, New York, October 1944.
421 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 2 December 1945; CWMG, Volume 82, page 148
422 From: Norman Cousins (ed.), Profiles of Gandhi: America Remembers a World Leader. (Delhi: Indian Book
Company, 1969).
 315

[Mr. Hoover (1874-1964) was President of the United States from 1929 to 1933. After World War II, he
organised relief for Poland, Finland and other European states. In 1946, President Harry S. Truman summoned him
to aid in the organisation of relief during the great famine of 1946. In order to coordinate this work, Mr. Hoover
visited 38 countries with his staff. On 24 April, at the Viceroy's Palace in New Delhi, he talked with Mahatma
Gandhi in a meeting that according to Margaret Bourke-White, "lasted under fifteen minutes." "Gandhi was
instrumental in obtaining the surplus grain of the Northwest Provinces," Mr. Hoover later commented. He also
wrote that his meeting with Gandhi had "some interesting details. He was clad in his usual loin cloth and carried
what was then known as a ‘dollar’ watch. I showed him the ‘dollar’ watch I carried and said they were a mark of
our common humility."

The following account is from Ambassador Hugh Gibson, a career diplomat, who accompanied Mr. Hoover on
this mission.]

Promptly at eight o'clock Mr. Gandhi arrived this morning accompanied by two highly
dressed secretaries in dazzling white with bulging briefcases. The secretaries were parked in the
anteroom where newspapermen and photographers had gathered.

Gandhi strode briskly into the room in his familiar meagre costume. There seemed to be no
place for him to tuck in as much as a handkerchief but he had a Waterbury watch attached to the
lower part of his garment with a piece of string. His dark skin glistened like satin. It seems he is
massaged with oil several times a day and the state of his skin is his one vanity. His look is
solemn and wise but now and then his face is transformed by a charming smile. He had little to
say and did not utter a word of politics... When he was leaving the Chief [Mr. Hoover]
suggested it would be very helpful if he would issue a statement to the American press, stressing
the fact that whatever the differences might be in India, there was unity in combating the famine.
Gandhi agreed to do this...

An American Journalist, before 24 September 1946423

[The interview took place in New Delhi.]

QUESTION: Are you full of the joy of life? Why do you want to live for 125 years?

Gandhiji told him that his desire to live up to 125 years was not for enjoyment but service. He
explained that both were not the same and proceeded to explain to the puzzled interviewer the
doctrine of “enjoyment through renunciation” as set forth in the Ishopanishad.

QUESTION: When did your real enjoyment of life begin?

GANDHI: When I was born.

QUESTION: No, I mean when did that pattern of life begin when service became a joy for ever ?

423 Pyarelal’s “Weekly letter” in Harijan, 6 October 1946; CWMG, Volume 85, pages 368-70.
GANDHI: When I understood the inner meaning of life.

QUESTION: Is that India’s speciality?

GANDHI: The only speciality of India is her poverty as America’s is her glamour of riches.

QUESTION: May not there be occasions when one may have to compromise ideals with
expediency?

GANDHI: No, never. I do not believe that the end justifies the means.

QUESTION: Is it possible that your activities may some day be removed from the political field?

GANDHI: Perhaps you do not know that I felt compelled to come into the political field because
I found that I could not do even social work without touching politics. I feel that political work
must be looked upon in terms of social and moral progress. In democracy no part of life is
untouched by politics. Under the British you cannot escape politics in the good sense. It
embraces the whole life. All who breathe must pay a tax. That is British rule in India. Take the
salt tax for instance. It concerns everybody. The collector of revenue and the policeman are the
only symbols by which millions in India’s villages know British rule. One cannot sit still while
the people are being ravaged.

QUESTION: Then your job will never be finished?

GANDHI: It will be finished only with my death. I must be watchful, whether it is the foreign
government that is in power or indigenous, if I am a social reformer in the true sense of the term.
This is applicable to all.

QUESTION: When people attain power they grow away from the people. What about here?

GANDHI: Let us hope and pray that this will never happen here. I have likened our people’s
office-acceptance to wearing a crown of thorns and pretty sharp thorns at that.

QUESTION: What do you think of the students’ strikes?

GANDHI: It seems to be a universal malady, an epidemic.

QUESTION: Do you ever feel depressed?

GANDHI: I believe in an over-ruling Power as I believe I am talking to you just now. This may
be unreal, but that is real. It dominates me and enables me to remain calm even in the midst of
storm.

Gandhiji’s questioner next asked his opinion about predestination.

 317

GANDHI: It is a much-abused word. It is true that we are not quite as free as we imagine. Our
past holds us. But like all other doctrines this may well be ridden to death.

This provoked the question as to how one could overcome the unpleasant effects of one’s
predestination since predestination was a reality.

GANDHI: By taking the pleasant with the unpleasant in perfect detachment and thereby
sterilising the unpleasantness of its sting, even as you have tackled the problem of the prickly
pear by removing its thorns through judicious selection and cultivation and converting it into
edible fodder for cattle.

QUESTION: How to prevent the next war?

GANDHI: By doing the right thing, irrespective of what the world will do. Each individual must
act according to his ability without waiting for others if he wants to move them to act. There
comes a time when an individual becomes irresistible and his action becomes all-pervasive in its
effect. This comes when he reduces himself to zero.

If the third war comes, it will be the end of the world. The world cannot stand a third war. For
me the second war has not stopped, it still goes on.

American Journalists, 8 April 1947424

[Three journalists - two men and a woman - had come from the United States on a four-month visit to India. Gandhi
spoke to them at Bhangi (Sweepers) Colony in New Delhi, where he was staying. The text is translated from
Gujarati.]

GANDHI: If you are proud of your country and wish to convey that impression during your visit
to another country, you should exemplify in your conduct the innate good qualities and special
features of your nation. If, therefore, you, who have come here to make a study, want to leave a
good impression about your country, you will have to bear yourself accordingly. Otherwise you
are liable to be misunderstood and might unknowingly be done injustice. I give the same advice
to Indians living abroad. There are many good features in our country. Take for example non-
violence and Khadi among industries. Therefore I cry myself hoarse telling the Indians settled
abroad that even if they did not ply the charkha here, it is their duty to ply it regularly there. Even
if they did not wear Khadi here, there they should wear it habitually. Instead, innumerable
Indians have become enamoured of silks and other things available in foreign countries. The
result is that the country does not gain in moral strength. They should demonstrate to the women
there that we can do without brandy or cigarettes; they should tell them what an Aryan woman
stands for.”

Addressing the woman journalist Gandhi said:

424 Biharni Komi Agman, pages 169-71; CWMG, Volume 87, pages 234-35.
GANDHI: Similarly you should show here that woman occupies an important place in the world
and she is not merely a plaything for men, that she is courageous too. Try to leave upon the
women here an impress of your culture.

I would like to make a suggestion to you which I feel would appeal to you. If you like it, you
may keep it in mind and try to act accordingly, otherwise forget it. I am obliged to you even for
listening to me. My suggestion is that women can play a very important role in establishing
peace. Instead of being carried away by science they should follow the path of non-violence
because women by nature are endowed with the quality of forgiveness. Women will never
succeed in aping men in everything, nor can they develop the gift nature has bestowed on them
by doing so. They should neither allow their family members to have, nor should they
themselves have, any connection with anything relating to war. God has endowed women with
hearts overflowing with love. They should utilise this gift properly. That power is all the more
effective because it is mute. I hold that God has sent women as messengers of the gospel of non-
violence.

The woman was deeply moved: “If there is anyone in the world who can point the way of
deliverance to womankind, it is you… We realise that what you have told us today is also the
answer to the challenge of the atom bomb… Why do you not visit our country?”

GANDHI: Yes, I would indeed like very much to visit your country. But at present I see no such
prospect. If you want me to go there I would request you to help me by devoting yourself to the
service of my country. Try to quell the riots that are raging amongst us and help in stopping the
killing of women and children. I shall certainly be free to visit your country provided you are
successful in your attempt, provided a democratic government is proclaimed here and the
millions of people here are as happy as you are in your country. But this is like attempting to
pluck a flower from the sky.

Pat Wellington, 2 July 1947425

[Mr. Wellington of Mississippi, 21, chief radio operator on United States Maritime Commission tanker Fort George,
went to New Delhi when his ship put into Bombay for boiler repair. He went to Bhangi Colony with an Indian guide
and he was given a two-minute interview with Gandhi. He said it was easier to meet Gandhi than his Senator, Bilbo,
who always sent word that he was too busy.]

He asked: “Mr. Gandhi, what's all this trouble about over here?”

Mr. Gandhi, sitting cross-legged on the floor while his guest sat on a chair, peered through horn-
rimmed glasses and answered gravely: “It’s the same disease that is affecting the whole world. I
call it poison.”

WELLINGTON: “It seems to be worse in India.”

425 New York Times, 3 July 1947

 319

GANDHI: “Is it? I don’t think India is any worse. Perhaps life is now more secure in India than
in the rest of the world.”

Mr. Gandhi, indicating the low table before him covered with books and papers, then remarked
that he was very busy these days. Mr. Wellington asked if he could have a picture taken with the
leader “to prove I talked with you.” Mr. Gandhi smiled and said, “I’m averse to pictures, but
that’s a different matter. Please don’t tempt me.”

Pat left without his picture, but he got a friendly handshake.

Robert Trumbull, 2 October 1947426

[Mr. Trumbull (1912-1992) was correspondent of the New York Times in India.]

The encounter with Gandhi that I remember best was on October 2, 1947, the day he became
78 years old, in the rose garden of Birla House in New Delhi, near the spot where he was later
killed. Approaching him as he appeared in a flowing dhoti, flanked as usual by his young female
relatives Abha and Manu Gandhi, I requested a birthday interview. "Who told you this was my
birthday?" he asked, peering at me through his old-fashioned round-rimmed glasses and feigning
surprise. "Every day is my birthday," he continued, adding: "Yours too. Every day we begin a
new life." Chuckling, he moved on, leaving me without the interview but with a choice sample
of Gandhian philosophy to ponder.

United States Congressmen, 23 October 1947427

[A group of United States Congressmen, who had been studying United States military installations abroad, talked
to Gandhi in Birla House, New Delhi, for ten minutes.]

Representative W. Sterling Cole, Republican of New York, who headed the group, extended
birthday greetings to Gandhi and congratulations for his success in bringing communal peace to
Calcutta. Gandhi expressed the hope that India one day would be united again. He told the
Congressmen he wanted some day to visit the United States.

426 Robert Trumbull, "Gandhi's Living Legacy" in The New York Times Magazine, 3 July 1983.
427 Associated Press despatch in New York Times, 24 October 1947
 GLOSSARY
acharya – religious guide
ahimsa - non-violence
anna – an Indian coin, one-sixteenth of a rupee
arya-dharma - Hinduism
ashram - hermitage
ashramite - inmate of ashram
ayah - nursemaid
badmash – bad, wicked
bapu – father. Gandhi was called “bapu” out of respect
brahmacharya - celibacy
Bhagavadgita – Part of Mahabharata, translated by Edwin Arnold as "Song Celestial."
chapati - a thin and flat bread made of wheat flour
charkha - spinning wheel
charpoy – a light bedstead
chawls - tenements
chela – a disciple
chota-sahib – term formerly used by servants for son of European master
crore - ten million
Daridranarayana – God in the form of a poor person
Deenabandhu - friend of the poor; title given to C.F. Andrews
dhoti – loin cloth of men in India
Gita - see Bhagawad Gita
guru – a teacher, especially a spiritual guide
Harijans - people of God (the term used by Gandhi for people of the caste of "untouchables")
hartal – stoppage of work, especially as a protest
himsa - violence
Khilafat – Caliph; office or jurisdiction of Caliph
lakh - one hundred thousand
lathi - Heavy stick with iron tip used by the police
mahatma - "great soul"
Mahabharat – Indian epic
Mussalman - Muslim - Moslem
nabob – A governor in the Moghal empire; a person of great wealth
namaskar – Indian greeting bringing palms together and bowing
pice - smallest Indian coin
punka, punkah – canvas fan suspended from the ceiling and pulled
Rajkumari - princess
sahib loke - ???
salaam – salute, peace
satyagraha – standing firm on truth; non-violent resistance
swaraj - self-rule
takli – hand-held spindle for spinning
tonga – two-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage
upanishad - Hindu sacred texts which form the final part of the Vedas
 321

varna – caste, colour

varnadharma – duties of different castes of Hindus
veranda – a roofed porch outside a building