1

Xf

1. S

MAHATMA GANDHI TO AMERICANS

INTERVIEWS, CONVERSATIONS. MESSAGES

 2

Edited by
E. S. Reddy
 3

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
I. THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM
Non-cooperation Movement
1. Frazier Hunt (Chicago Tribune), October 1920- High fee.
Material to be dropped or replaced. Or fair use from book.. or fair
use.
2.Ms. Gertrude Emerson, 10 December 1921
3. John Clayton (Chicago Tribune), February 1922. High fee.
Material to be dropped or replaced. This applies to all Chicago
Tribune.
Non-cooperation Movement to Civil Disobedience
4.Thomas Ryan (Chicago Tribune), 15 March 1924 High fee
5.Upton close, 1926 – High fee. 2600 words
Salt March, Civil Disobedience and Round Table Conference
6.Herbert Adolphus Miller, March 1930
7.Dr. Haridas T. Muzumdar, 12 March 1930
8.The Reverend Sherwood Eddy, December 1930
9.The Reverend Kirby Page, December 1930 – fair use
10.Negley Farson (Chicago Daily News), 1930 -fair use
11.William L. Shirer (Chicago Tribune), 22 February 1931- fair use
12.William L. Shirer (Chicago Tribune), 5-21 March and May 1931 –
fair use
13.James A. Mills (Associated Press of America), 21 March 1931
14.Edward Holton James, 1931 – fair use
15.William L. Shirer (Chicago Tribune), 11 September 1931
Civil Disobedience to “Quit India” Movement
16.Ms. Paula Lecler, 1936 – open access
17.William B. Benton, September 1937
18.North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), May 1938. Copied
from NYTimes. High fees.
19.Gobind Bihari Lal (International News Service), 16 March 1939
20.Frederick T. Birchall (New York Times), before 23 March 1939.
High fees.
21.Archibald T. Steele (New York Times), before 17 May 1939
22.United Press of America, 16 March 1940. From NY Times. High
fees.
23.New York Times, before 22 April 1940
24.Francis G. Hickman, 17 September 1940
 4

“Quit India” Movement

25.W.W. Chaplin (International News Service) and Jack Belden (Life
and Time), 6 June 1942
26.Louis Fischer, 4-9 June 1942 = His book “Week with Gandhi”
needs clearance before use.
27.Preston Grover (Associated Press of America), 10 June 1942
28.Edgar Snow (Saturday Evening Post), 14 July 1942 – fair use from
book?. High fees.
29.Archibald T. Steele (Chicago Daily News), 15 July 1942
 5

Towards Independence, 1944-1947

30.Ralph Coniston (Collier’s), before 25 April 1945
31.Preston Grover (Associated Press of America), 29
June 1945
32.Frank E. Bolden (National Negro Press Association),
June or July 1945
33.Louis Fischer, 26 June 1946
34.Louis Fischer, 17 July 1946. High Fees. Third party
material. Needs clearance before use.
35.Louis Fischer, 18 July 1946
36.George E. Jones (New York Times), 21 September
1946
37.Preston Grover (Associated Press of America), 21
October 1946
38.Associated Press of America, 6 November 1946

After Partition and Independence of India, 1947-

1948
39.William Stuart Nelson, August 1947 – open access
40.Ronald Stead (Christian Science Monitor), before 2
November 1947
41.Edgar Snow (Saturday Evening Post), 1948. 638
words.
42.Margaret Bourke-White, January 1948 – fair use
II. THE “CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAMME”
43.Ms. Gertrude Emerson, 1921
44.Ms. Katherine Mayo, 17 March 1926- open access
45.Arthur J. Todd, in or before 1927 – fair use
46.Aimée Semple McPherson, 1935 - fair use
47.An American, 1937
48.Dr. John de Boer, February 1938
49.Andrew Freeman, 1946

III. ENDS AND

MEANS 50.Vincent Sheean, 27/28 January
1948 – fair use

IV. EQUALITY OF
RELIGIONS
 6

51.Rufus Jones, 1 December 1926 – open access. I got

permission
52.Ms. Nellie Lee Holt, December 1926
53.The Reverend Dr. Henry Hitt Crane, 25 February
1937 – open accesss
54.The Reverend R.R. Keithahn, 5 March 1937
55.Ms. Florence Mary Fitch, 16 December 1936
V.CHRISTIAN MISSIONS AND
MISSIONARIES
56.The Reverend Frederick B. Fisher, 1917-32 - high
fees.
57An American Architect and two women, 1924
 7

58.The Reverend Dr. John R. Mott

-Interview in March 1929
-Interview on 13/14 November 1936
-Interview in December 1938
59.The Reverend Eli Stanley Jones, 1932-1934 – fair use
60.American Missionary, 18 April 1934
61.Ms. Lucille McClymonds, 1936
62.American Teachers, December 1938
63.The Reverend Jay Holmes Smith, 1 February 1940
64.The Reverend Ralph Templin, 1940 – fair use
65.James E. McEldowney, date not available
VI. PACIFISTS
66.Dr. Harry Frederick Ward, 1924
67.Roger N. Baldwin, 12 September 1931. Fair use.
68.The Reverend Dr. John Haynes Holmes, 12 September
1931 – fair use
69.Ms. Irma G. Shapleigh, February 1935
70.The Reverend Harold E. Fey, 1940
71.An American Visitor, June 1940
72.Harold Ehrensperger, 1946
73.An American Pacifist, July 1947

VII. AFRICAN AMERICANS AND NON-VIOLENCE

74.An American Visitor, 1929
75.American Negro delegation, 21 February 1936 – fair use
76.Professor Benjamin E. Mays, 31 December 1936 – fair
use
77.Dr. Channing H. Tobias, 10 January 1937
78.Ms. Celestine Smith, December 1938
79.Dr. John, 1942
80.Deton J. Brooks (Chicago Defender), June 1945
VIII. MASS PRODUCTION AND PRODUCTION FOR
THE MASSES
81.Harold Callender (New York Times), 16 October 1931
IX. BIRTH CONTROL AND ABSTINENCE
82.Margaret Sanger, 3 and 4 December 1935 –
Mahadev Desai’s report is open access
 8

X. OTHER INTERVIEWS
83.Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, September 1911
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84.E.M.S., 7 October 1920

85.Gordon Law, 1920
86.Joseph H. Phelan, 1922. High fees.
87.Ms. Gertrude Marvin Williams, 1924 – High
fees.
88.Savel Zimand, 1924
89.Two American Professors, 1924
90.Mrs. Langeloth and Mrs. Kelly, January 1926
91.Mrs. Edward Hanley, 1927
92.Professor Kenneth Saunders, c.1927 – High
fees.
93.William H. Danforth, 22 November 1927 –
fair use
94.William W. Hall, Jr. 1928 – Open access
95.Dr. Ms. Jane Elizabeth Hoyt-Stevens, 1930 –
fair use
96.Newton Phelps Stokes, II, 1930 – fair use
97.Ms. Patricia Kendall, March 1930 – fair use
98.Webb Miller, 1931 – fair use
99.Dr. Dodd, 4 September 1934
100.Swami Paramahansa Yogananda, August
1935 – fair use
101.John Gunther, 1938
102.David Hunter, 1938
103.James A. Mills (Associated Press of
America), 20 May 1938
104.Dr. Gregg Sinclair, December 1938
105.An American Visitor, June 1940
106.William E. Fischer (Life), 1942
107.Three Correspondents, July 1942
108.James G. Vail, 27 June 1944
109.An American Journalist, 1 December 1945
110.Harold Leventhal, December 1945
111.Herbert Hoover, 24 April 1946
112.An American Journalist, before 24
September 1946
113.Preston Grover, 26 October 1946
114.American Journalists, 8 April 1947
115.United Press of America, 1 June 1947. High
fees.
 10

116.Pat Wellington, 2 July 1947

117.Frank Rounds, Jr. (World Report), 1947
118.Robert Trumbull (New York Times), 2
October 1947
119.United States Congressmen, 23 October 1947

GLOSSA
RY
 11

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 1920. The first New York Times
interview was by Harold Callender in London in 1931.
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 the 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

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.
 12

2 Dr. Haridas T. Muzumdar, The Enduring Greatness of Gandhi

an American Estimate, being the Sermons ofDr. 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 foreword by the Reverend John
Haynes Holmes, published by Saraswaty Library, Calcutta in 1922; and
Gandhi and non-violent resistance: the non-co-operation movement
ofIndia: Gleanings from the American press, published by Ganesh,
Madras, in 1923.
4 M.K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or The Story ofMy 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 Louis Fischer, Gandhi refers to the story of a
Negro clergyman,
 13

to London in 1909 in a deputation of Transvaal Indians, he met Myron

H. Phelps, a supporter of 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. 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.
with a Herculean frame in South Africa, saying "pardon me
brother", when insulted by a white man. Cross-ref to item 34 The
clergyman was probably an African American. Cross-ref to
interview by Louis Fisherc
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.
 14

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. Commented [ER1]:
9 Ibid. pages 201-11.
10 “From Slave to College President,” in Indian Opinion, 10
September 1903; Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi,
hereinafter referred to as CWMG, Volume 3, pages 437-40.
11I believe Gandhi wrote this article though it is not reproduced
in the Collected Works ofMahatma 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.
 15

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
 16

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. Cross-
ref to item 44
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.
 17

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, because of their truthful reporting 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.
Refer to high copyright fees which obliged me to omit many
interviews. Suggest government and organizations try to do the needful.
The Interviewers
The interviewers consist mainly of journalists, Christian
missionaries, pacifists and African Americans.
Very few American correspondents interviewed Gandhi until the Salt
Satyagraha in 1930. The first New York Times interview was by Harold
Callender in 1931.
There was an influx 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 Bishop 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. Refer to
article
 18

Gandhi had a special feeling for African Americans because they

suffered like Indians 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.Footnote 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 Rabindranath Tagore and
Mahatma Gandhi and became their interpreter to the West. He was
 19

Four 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 .
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 ofMahatma 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 for participation 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

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: An 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.
 21

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 products 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 1928: Who is he? A professor?
Journalist?
“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
Check s/z throughout manuscript
And he told a group of American teachers in 1938:
“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
 22

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. Paper by Tom Gilsenan,
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. Refer to
editing by the agency and wide circulation.
Pearson also wrote an article with the title “Are Gandhi and
Ford on the Same Road?” in Asia, New York, December 1924.
26 Cross-ref to item 94
 23

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. "27 cross-ref to item 60
Above all, he was conscious of racial discrimination in the United
States and the thousands of lynchings which occurred during his
lifetime.28
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.”29
He told Edward Holton Jones in 1931: Lawyer in Boston. Wrote a
pamphlet or gave a lecture.
“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.”30
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.”31
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 Noncooperation and the other set not only
underrates it but imputes all kinds of motives to those who
are concerned with the movement.”32
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.”33
In 1937, he said in reply to a comment by William Benton:
Give his background
“American opinion is of great importance to us and by our deeds we
hope to win it...
 24

“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
27 Cross-ref to item 62
28 Interview to Preston Grover (Associated Press of America), 10 June
1942. Cross-ref to item 27
29 Interview to the correspondent of the North American
Newspaper Alliance, 4 June 1938. Cross-ref to item 18
30 Cross-ref to item 14
31 Harijan, 9 August 1942; CWMG, Volume 76, pages 357-59.
32 Cross-ref to item 44
33 Cross-ref to item 94
 25

the American is emotionally sympathetic to our cause,

but he is profoundly ignorant of the real facts and of our
real problem.”34
He was anxious that the Americans should understand the
methods adopted in the Indian struggle for freedom as they
were 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.”35

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.”36
"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. "37
 26

"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."38
34 Cross-ref to item 17
35 Cross-ref to item 12
36 To Edward Holton James in 1931 Cross-ref to item 14
37 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." Cross-ref to item 75
38 To Professor Benjamin Mays in 1936 Cross-ref to item 76
 27

“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.”39

An Inspiration to Social Movements

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 few
Americans – especially some African-Americans and some pacifists –
were prepared at that time 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.
In the 1960s, 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 began 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 conversations and interviews, I hope,
provides an introduction to the thought of Gandhi in all its
aspects.40
**
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.41 Make this a
footnote?
39 To James A. Mills in 1938 Cross-ref to item103
 28

40 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.
41 Indians could not obtain American citizenship until 1946.
 29

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 ofMahatma 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.

I have not reproduced many interviews because of copyright

problems. I thank the publishers for advice on this. They can be found
in the book “Gandhi: Interviews to Americans” on the internet.

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 nonviolent movement an
unprecedented experiment in history. He was concerned about
misinformation spread by British propaganda in America. He welcomed
the opportunity to speak to American journalists and to other Americans
who visited 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 December 1920.
Censorship by the British colonial authorities prevented news of these
momentous events from reaching America. Gandhi was hardly known
in the United States until 1920. Frazier Hunt was the first
correspondent of a major American newspaper to arrive in India; he
saw Gandhi in 1920.
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.
 30

Edwin S. Montagu42, 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

42 Edwin Samuel Montagu (1879–1924) was Secretary of State

for India from 1917 to 1922. He was a member of the Liberal
Party.
 31

members.43 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.
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.44 The arrest of Gandhi provoked
people and there were violent protests 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 Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew45 and Dr.
Satya Pal46, 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,47 and
General Reginald Dyer,48 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 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
 32

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
43 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.
44 The ban was lifted in October and he was allowed to visit the Punjab.
45 A barrister
46 Dr. Satya Pal was with the Royal Army Medical Corps during the
First World War.
47 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.
48 Brigadier-General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer (1864–1927), an
officer of the British Indian Army.
 33

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.”49
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.”50
But these events were not known in the rest of India until June 1919
because of censorship. Nor were they known in the United States.51
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 these Holy
Places.52
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.53
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.

49 Yogesh Chadha, Rediscovering Gandhi (London: Century, 1997),

page 239.
50 Ibid.
51 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
 34

India with some casualties and that in most places military forces were
maintaining order.
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.
52 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 fightth against Turkish
Muslims. A mutiny took place in Singapore by the 5 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.
53 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.
 35

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. He told Frazier Hunt in October 1920 etc.
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.
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 Pearson54, the American journalist, interviewed Sir George
Lloyd, the Governor of Bombay55, 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.”56 Should this
be “program”
 36

Frazier Hunt (Chicago Tribune), October 192057

[Mr. Hunt (1885-1967), author and war correspondent, was 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 27 December 1967: 58
54 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.
55 A Conservative politician who was Governor of Bombay from 1918
to 1923.
56 Young India, 22 November 1923; CWMG, Volume 23, page 557.
57 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; and Frazier
Hunt, One American and his Attempt at Education (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1938), pp. 213-220.
 37

“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.”] Make this a footnote?
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. 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.59 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.60
 38

A ghost of a smile that seemed to hurt him trailed across his face
like a moving shadow. "During the Boer War61 I had great faith and
confidence in the British and raised a stretcher-
58 UPI report in New York Times, accessed on 15 March 2014 at
http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1967/12/28/93234040.ht
ml?pageNumber=31.
59 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 cross-legged at my feet.” Frazier Hunt, One
American and His Attempt at Education (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1938), page 216.
60 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.
 39

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,62 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 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 Khilafat63 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
 40

February, 1919. Meetings were held everywhere and a tenseness

against the British began to be felt. Gandhi, who attempted to visit the
Punjab, was

61 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.
62 The Ottoman Sultan was also the Caliph. He was the guardian of the
holy places of Muslims in Arabia.
63 Caliphate
 41

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 Pal 1 and Doctor
Kitchlew,2 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...
"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.

1
Dr. Satya Pal was with the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War.
2
Dr. Kitchlew was a barrister.
 42

"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, 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
 43

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 noncooperation. 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.64 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."
...
"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."65
[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.”66]
 44

Gertrude Emerson, 10 December 192167

64 Mr. Hunt added in his autobiography: "Today we would be
satisfied with a full dominion status within the British
Commonwealth of Nations. Tomorrow our people will want
complete independence and full liberty". One American, p. 218..
65 Mr. Hunt added in his autobiography: "Only through universal
education can we win back for India the things that have been
taken from her. So it is that our revolution really means the
cleansing of India of all the excrements and the coming of a new
life. It will take a long time, but we shall not falter." Ibid. pp.218-
19.
66 Ibid. p.219
 45

Make this a footnote [Miss Gertrude Emerson - later Mrs. Gertrude

Sen68 - 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. 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. "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 noncooperation 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
 46

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.69
67 Asia, Concord, NH, United States of America, May 1922. Asia
stopped publication long ago.
68 Miss Emerson married Bisho Sen, an agricultural scientist and stayed
on in India.
69 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.
 47

"My turn will come," he answered.

"After the Prince leaves?" I queried.70
"No, before then. I hope to be able to precipitate my arrest. It will come in
January, I think."71
"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 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." ...
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."

John Clayton (Chicago Tribune), February 192272

[Mr. Clayton interviewed Gandhi in Delhi, probably at the home of Dr.
M.A. Ansari.]
 48

70 The Prince of Wales was then visiting India.

71 Gandhi was arrested on 10 March 1922, and charged with sedition.
72 Chicago Tribune, 2 March 1922. The despatch of Mr. Clayton
was dated 1 March, but Gandhi left Delhi on 28 February for
Ahmedabad.
 49

"You are from America. Be seated. I have long wanted to talk with
America through your great newspapers,” he said as he extended his
hand. He was naked save for a loin cloth of white spun... I glanced at
the wheel curiously.
“That,” he said, “is our weapon. It is more effective than machine
guns and mightier than armies. Already there are 200,000 in the
Punjab. Far away, Manchester is beginning to feel its force. It is
touching the Briton in his most vulnerable spot – his pocket book.” ...
Gandhi was not an easy man to interview. He answered my questions
slowly and volunteered little information.
“Make Own Cloth; Win Battle”
“That then,” I ventured, pointing to the wheel, “is the means by which
you hope to gain India’s independence.”
“That is the symbol of the movement, yes,” Gandhi replied. “When
every home in India turns to its own spinning wheel for its cloth, our
battle is won. There is no need for violence.”
“But you are facing 200,000 armed men,” I said.
“What can these armed men do in India if we do not aid? If every
Indian folds his arms and refuses to cooperate with the forces which
rule the country they are helpless. If the Indians refuse everything,
even to a blade of grass, the British army cannot live a week in India.
Urges Civil Disobedience
“Civil disobedience and imprisonment until the prisons can hold no
more, and refusal to
cooperate with Great Britain so long as she governs India in the present
corrupt way will win all for us.”
“What about Bardoli? Why was the test of mass civil disobedience
abandoned there on the eve of putting it into operation? What of the two
previous attempts?” I asked.
“Bardoli was abandoned because the country was not ready. The
principles of nonviolence had not yet made themselves felt. Therefore,
we postponed the test, but it has not been abandoned. We will continue
our work of sowing seeds which will come to a sure harvest. We will
continue individual disobedience and boycott.
 50

“When the time is ripe we shall call all India to lay down its tools and
British weapons, and to refuse to pay taxes. When that time comes the
wheels of government and industry will cease to turn until Great
Britain gives us what we want. We have made three errors; we will not
make a fourth attempt until the time is ripe.”
What Indians Demand
“What do you ask from England?” was my next question.
“That depends. Barring two points, we are willing to negotiate, but on
two points there is no argument. If Great Britain grants us these two
demands we are willing to accept the status of a dominion, with the
right to complete independence when we wish it. We are willing to enter
into partnership with Great Britain and to become a nation in the British
empire with her to guarantee the peace of the world.
“These are our demands:
“The Punjab and Khilafat wrongs must be redressed and Islam must be
restored to her proper dignity. Those corrupt officials who have robbed
and laid waste the Punjab must be discharged and the pensions of those
who have retired must be stopped.
Turkey Must Be Restored
“As to Islam, the Christian nations must understand that
Mohammedanism is a dignified religion. Turkey must be restored as
nearly as possible to its prewar frontiers, and the other Islamic countries
must be given their proper places in the concert of nations. If Great
Britain refuses these two points, then our goal is complete
independence. There will be no peace in India, no terms with England,
until these ends have been achieved.
“As a dominion India would welcome the viceroy, but the actual
government of India must be in the hands of Indians. I aim to
decentralise the government and to reduce state interference to a
minimum. Every village will be a little republic. The reduction of laws
to a minimum also would be effected.
“The government today is top heavy. There are too many village
officials responsible to district heads and too many district officials to
the various provinces. The opportunities for political corruption and
robbery are too extensive. The entire system must be simplified.
 51

Welcomes America’s Help

“India would expect and welcome aid from all parts of the world to
develop her resources. We have no quarrel with the Englishman. We
trust that he would stay. We would want America also to help. We
would expect technical experts wherever found.
“The foreign corporations would not be touched. The government would
retain the railways and no existing contract would be disturbed unless
manifest unfairness was found. We do not want a
 52

revolutionary overturning. We merely want a complete voice in our

own affairs that we may relieve the suffering and starvation of our
people.”

Thomas Ryan (Chicago Tribune), 15 March 192473

[Mr. Ryan saw Gandhi in Juhu, where he was recuperating from an
operation he had for appendicitis during his imprisonment.]
Today I talked more than an hour with the weary Gandhi...
Gandhi admitted repeatedly the breakdown of the strange creed of his
by which he had hoped to make India a nation such as this materialistic
world never saw...
“Civil Disobedience is always an admirable weapon when the
government is not based on the will of the people, but it is
practicable only when the masses are imbued with a spirit of
nonviolence,” Gandhi said.
“India is now ready for self-rule if it is granted, but India is not
ready to win self-rule either by force which I oppose, or by
disciplined nonviolence.”
Gandhi then defined that mysterious word “swaraj.”
“It means parliamentary government, but I hope not in the sense
of the western nations where the British interests reign supreme.
It means also a return to India’s ancient life. Despite years of
sneering, I still believe the home spinning wheel can oust the
British factory. If so, how can British capital, which is the sole
reason for the British dominion, expect compensation?” he said.
Regarding the famous triple boycott against British courts, schools, and
councils Gandhi was pessimistic. He would organize courts of
arbitration resembling the Sinn Fein tribunals by which suits would be
settled outside of British jurisdiction.
Regarding schools, Gandhi hopes only to make nongovernment
institutions attractive. When asked what advantage the swaraj schools
had over the government schools, he said the former teach freedom of
thought, whereas British schools inculcate only fixed rules, which fit
the natives for service under the present regime. Gandhi insisted that
schools where the western system of teaching is in practice makes
automatons...
 53

Gandhi added that a complete boycott of all British goods could drive
the British from India, but he admitted that the time was not ripe.
When pressed to state what hopes he had for the early attainment of
swaraj, he answered not under the English Labour government, which
in India is called a coolie government. His
73 Chicago Tribune, 16 March 1924
 54

experience in England when he was a student, he said, was that Labour

thinks first of the British constituencies and last of all of India.
Gandhi said he thought that the British, whom he did not regard as a bad
people, would eventually hit an honourable agreement, adding that he had
good reasons for this hope.
Then, passing to the matter of the army, he announced that he would
reduce it to one-fourth the present establishment, changing the whole
railway system, which he thought followed strategic lines too closely.
“Have you no enemies to fear,” Gandhi was asked.
“We fear the Afghans. Once the Hindus and Moslems are united and
established, the emirs will not attack their fellow Moslems.”
“What about Russia?”
“If Russia attacks us, we expect the militaristic nations of Europe to
come to our aid to prevent Russia from becoming too strong, and we
should welcome the aid. That is what I think of the present rulers of
Russia. I take them at their face value. What is built by force ends by
force.”
“Do the Indian masses understand your teaching of nonviolence when at
the same time they are told it is wrong?”
“Yes, but nowhere outside of India is this possible. You westerners
are unable to understand this, but it is the spirit of the Indian people.”
Asked if his attitude was unchanged regarding the evils of western
civilisation, Gandhi replied that he would not abolish railways since they
were already established, and he approved of modern farm implements
since Indian agriculturists needed help.
74 On the proposal of Presidient Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the
Grand National Assembly of the Turkish Republic abolished
the caliphate on March 3, 1924.
 55

“The king of Hedjaz will not do as caliph,” Gandhi said. “All Islam
feels that he is a British creature.”75
Gandhi said that India suffers a great disadvantage as the natives have been
“emasculated” as soldiers since the British came.
“What I want,” he said, “is the end of the Indian’s mortal fear of the
white skin, which was more prevalent when I was a boy than now.
Your slate is not so clean; what about your Negroes?” he added.
Here Gandhi launched into a narration about the exclusion of Booker T.
Washington from a political gathering in Washington. But he said that
America’s record in the Philippines was splendid, as far as he knew...
He said that the schools have gained ground in the last few months. They
had lost because of a lack of funds and because of the eagerness of youth
to enter the government service. Gandhi discussing the untouchables...
remarked that many were convinced that it was inhuman to isolate fellow
creatures. He added that lack of funds handicapped the establishing of
schools for these people. He asserted that temperance had made a slight
headway.

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

75 The Sherif Mecca, Hussein bin Ali, a Hashemite, allied

himself with the British duing the First World War and declared
himself King of Hedjaz (Hejaj). It was expected that he would be
recognised by the British as the new calpih.
 56

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.
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 two
from journalists– Thomas Ryan and Upton Close – on the struggle
for freedom.76

UPTON CLOSE, 192677

[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 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... I will lead them (my people) forward, now, to use
the ultimate weapon, if necessary: mass civil disobedience.”
76 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
 57

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).
77 Upton Close, “Mahatma Gandhi” in Eminent Asians: Six Great
Personalities of the New East (New York: D. Appleton and Company,
1929); and The Revolt ofAsia: the End of the White Man’s World
Dominance (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1927), pages 177-78,
226-35. Mr. Close 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. ]
 58

“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.”
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.
 59

“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.
 60

"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
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
appreciation 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
 61

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....
 62

"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....
"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. footnotes
"If I should now allow the West in its boyishly confident rowdyism
utterly to crush out our opposing system of life and ideals through
 63

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…
"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 can be changed, if you but have patience.
Moral force can be substituted for violence. I can
 64

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?"

The above is extracted from The Revolt ofAsia

[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... "If religion
is not needed in politics, where on earth is it wanted!"
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
"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
 65

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
 66

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.

"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,78 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 lathis79. 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 dominion status and, if Britain did not accede to
the demand within a year, to undertake non-cooperation for complete
independence.
 67

78 Sir John Simon (1873-1954), a British Liberal politician, was

chairman of the Statutory Commission on India from 1927 to
1930.
79 Heavy iron-bound bamboo sticks used by the police.
 68

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 Indian
National Congress) and Mahomed Ali Jinnah (leader of the Muslim
League). He could not assure Gandhi that the conference would 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.80 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. 81
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.82
A fortnight after Gandhi’s arrest, 2,500 volunteers, including Manilal
Gandhi, marched to the salt depots at Dharasana. Webb Miller83 of the
 69

United Press of America was present and provided a graphic description

of police violence: cross-ref to his interview with Gandhi
“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 on
unprotected skulls. The waiting crowd of marchers groaned and
sucked in their breath in sympathetic

80 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.
81 The tax on salt was exorbitant, more than twenty times the cost
of production and facilitated the sale of British salt in India.
82 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.
83 See his interviw with Gandhi in London in 1931. Cross-ref item 98
 70

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.84 cross-ref interview with Gandhi
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,85 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
 71

facilitate continued British rule. He was particularly distressed at the

demand by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar86, 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.

84 Cross ref item 10

85 Lord Willingdon, a former Governor of Bombay and Madras,
was Governor-General and Viceroy of India from 1931 to 1936.
86 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.
 72

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. Hindu
and untouchable leaders agreed, after frantic discussions, 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.

Herbert Adolphus Miller, March 193087

 73

Gandhi was in the best of health and spirits, running and skipping with
the children on his daily walk, and on all occasions full of laughter and
banter. He has girded his loins for the battle of his life to arouse and free
India; he has absolute confidence that the final outcome would be
victory. When I asked him how large was his following he said that he
did not know, but it was necessary
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.
87 The Nation, weekly, New York, 23 April 1930. Mr. Miller, a
Socialist, was the professor and mentor of Jayaprakash Narayan
while he was a student in the United States.

H.A. Miller, professor of sociology at Ohio State University in the

United States, toured India for five weeks in 1930, and arrived at
Satyagrahashram at Sabarmati as an “ultimatum” was being sent to
the Viceroy by Gandhi through Reginald Reynolds, a British Quaker.
 74

to start in order to find out. He likened his efforts to arouse the people
to a surgeon applying a blister to make a cure, always with the
possibility that he may kill instead.
In reply to the claim that India had benefitted by British rule, he said that
there was no doubt that the British had done many good things – the
hospitals, for example – though these good things reached only a
microscopic percent of those needing them and could not make up for
the killing of self-reliance and the impoverishment of the masses. To the
claim that only the government is able to preserve peace between Hindu
and Moslem, Gandhi answered that the two religions got on
harmoniously before the English came. When the Mohammedans had
shown a tendency to draw away, naturally the English had seized upon
this divergence and stimulated it, on the principle of “divide and rule.”
“Hindus must be developed to such a point of self-control that the
Moslems can have no fear,” said Gandhi.
Mr. Gandhi, as is his custom, was sitting on the floor spinning during our
interview. As I took my leave I said: “In wishing you success I do not
know whether to express the hope that you will or will not be arrested.”
He laughed heartily and said: “It makes no difference; either is good.
There will always be others to carry on, and the work will never stop.” At
evening prayer, with all the members of the ashram sitting on the ground
around him, Mr. Gandhi read the list of those who had volunteered to go
out in the first group on March 12. There were many questions about
details from the audience. They were met with witty repartee by Mr.
Gandhi and called forth bursts of laughter, but I could hardly keep back
the tears...
Mr. Patel, the accepted first lieutenant of Mr. Gandhi, and the brother
of the president of the National Assembly, was arrested the last day we
were at the ashram... Thousands flocked to the ashram, filling the four
miles of dusty country road from Ahmedabad and camping by the gates
of the ashram. The next day Ahmedabad declared a hartal (cessation of
activities) and in the evening 60,000 persons gathered on the bank of
the river to hear Gandhi’s call to arms.
This call to arms was perhaps the most remarkable call to war that has
ever been made. The dominant notes were non-violence, non-hatred,
self-discipline, and sacrifice, fearlessness and persistence to the end.
On the same day students at universities throughout India went on
strike to continue until the day of the march.

Dr. Haridas T. Muzumdar, 12 March 193088

 75

88 The Bombay Chronicle, 18 March 1930; CWMG, Volume 43, page

61.
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 ofSociology: Man in Society (1966). The interview took
place in Aslali during the Salt March.
 76

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.89
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 192990

89 In October-November 1913, Gandhi led nearly three thousand
Indian strikers from the coal mining area near Newcastle to the
Transvaal.
90 Sherwood Eddy, The Challenge of the East (New York: Farrar &
Rinehart, 1931), pages 27-29, 32-35..
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 Irwin.
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. 91
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. ... 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
 77

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 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.”

91 For further biographical information, see Sherwood Eddy, Eighty

Adventurous Years: An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Brothers,
1955).
 78

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,92 from India's point of view, you have the best Prime
Minister; in Wedgewood Benn93 the best Secretary of State since Mr.
Montagu94. 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 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
 79

halfway and do everything to cooperate with them wholeheartedly.95 But

you will find
92 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.
93 William Wedgwood Benn (1877-1960) of the Labour Party was
Secretary of State for India from 1928 to 1931.
94 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.
95 According to the Reverend Kirby Page, Gandhi said:
 80

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 19293

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."97
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
3
 81

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...

“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.
96 From: Kirby Page, "With Gandhi at Sabarmati" in World Tomorrow,
New York, 13: 63-66, February 1930. Also: Haroldth E. Fey (ed.), Kirby
Page, Social Evangelist: The autobiography of a 20 Century Prophetfor
Peace (Nyack, New York: Fellowship Press, 1975).
97 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: Garland Publishing, Inc.,
1976).
 82

“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), 193098

The day after I landed in Bombay and got myself oriented, I headed
straight for Gandhi.
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
 83

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.
98 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.

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.
Was it he who reported on police brutality in Bombay?
 84

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.99
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....
99 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
 85

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?’
“Irwin laughed: ‘You've seen Gandhi. It's for you to say.’”
 86

[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...

William L. Shirer (Chicago Tribune), 22 February 1931100

[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
 87

books, including The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich which was a best
seller and won a National Book award in 1961. ]
How could so humble a man, I wondered, spinning away with his nimble
fingers on a crude wheel as he talked,
100 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 with the title Gandhi.. Bombay
Chronicle, 28 March 1931; CWMG, Volume 45, pages 331-33.
 88

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 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?"

 89

"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
 90

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
 91

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 yearformed 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
 92

abolition of the salt tax, the reduction of land revenue and military
expenditure by 50 per cent., the discharge ofpolitical prisoners and
a prohibitive tariff on foreign cloth.
"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."
"Ifyou obtain swaraj would you consider your labours finished and
retire, or would you take an active part in the reconstruction ofIndia
by the Indians?"
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
 93

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
nonviolence and truth, on which our movement is based and which
must constitute the bedrock of our future constitution."
 94

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.

"And your languages? What about English under the nationalist

government?"
"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 20,000,000 to
40,000,000 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 1931101

[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.
 95

Gandhi merely beamed...

101 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). The reports of conversations with Gandhi in this book are
much more detailed than his despatches published in Chicago
Tribune.
 96

"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 hadjust signed, calledfor 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.]
"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,
 97

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
 98

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 Purna 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."
 99

"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."
 100

"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
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.
 101

"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
 102

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."
 103

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
 104

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."

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 1931.102]
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
 105

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.

102 Shirer, Gandhi: a Memoir, pages 148-49 (Indian edition, page

125).
 106

“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 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 1931103

"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.
 107

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
103 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.
 108

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.
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?
 109

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.
 110

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.104
MILLS: Mr. Gandhi, there are now in Delhi two American aviators
who are on a round-the-world tour in their airplane.105 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, 1931106

[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 Nehru home after
104 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 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
 111

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.”
105 John P. Pratt and Ross Hadley, American aviators, had
arrived in Delhi on that day on a round-the-world flight.
106 Edward Holton James, I Tell Everything: The Brown
Man’s Burden (A Book on India) (Geneva: Imprimerie
Kundig, c. 1932).
 112

the death 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.107 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?”
“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.”108
...
[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.109] ...
Later, I asked Gandhi in Ahmedabad, two miles from the ashram (he was
prevented from going to the ashram by a vow),110 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.”111
...
 113

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

107 Gandhi had called for an official investigation when he was released
from prison.
108 James, Ibid. p.180
109 Ibid. p. 290
110 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.
111 James, pages 191-92
 114

“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
interfere to create this committee. If I were to do so, the government
would rightly interfere. It should not be undertaken lightheartedly.”112

William L. Shirer (Chicago Tribune), 11 September 1931113

[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.
 115

“He seemed excited about touching down in Europe for the first
time in seventeen years and he was as radiant as ever.”114 ]
"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."
112 Ibid. pages 196-97. The international investigation was not
undertaken. Ellen Horup, who had established the Friends of India
Society in Denmark in 1930, founded the International Committee
for India in Geneva in 1933.
113 William L. Shirer, Gandhi: a Memoir (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1979), pages 157-61.
114 Ibid. page 157
 116

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.'
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."
 117

"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
 118

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 feel 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 nonviolence 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 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.115 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
 119

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 the range of their responsibilities. While Congress
was able to implement some of its programmes with the limited resources
available
115 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.
 120

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. 116
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.
 121

Ms. Paula Lecler, 1936117

[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:
116 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.”
117 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.
 122

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.118
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?
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.119
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?

118 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
 123

be interested in the details of the working of the Congress.

(CWMG, Volume 59, pages 3-12, 263-67).
119 Paula Lecler here quotes Gandhi as 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."
 124

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.
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.120
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.121 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.122 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?

120 See "Are We Rivals?" in Harijan, 25 July 1936 ; CWMG, Volume

63, pages 164-65.
 125

121 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."
122 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.
 126

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.123 I have never had even the
suspicion that Jawaharlal's policy has ruined any part of my work.
Because the truth you standfor 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 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.124 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;125
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.126
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.

123 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."
 127

124 Paula Lecler reports: "To say he favours communism on the

Russian model is doing a grave injustice to Jawaharlal."
125 Paula Lecler adds here: "I believe he thinks a class war may be
inevitable, but he is doing his best to avert one."
126 The paragraph that follows is from Paula Lecler's report reproduced
in The Bombay Chronicle.
 128

William B. Benton, July 1937127

[Mr. Benton, an American journalist and advertising executive, 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. ]
I ask him some questions about Indian politics, about the
victorious Congress party's policies.128
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
127 The New York Times. 25 July 1937; The Hindustan Times, 13
September 1937; CWMG, Volume 66, pages 12729.
 129

128 In the elections to provincial legislatures in February 1937,

Congress won a majority in six of the eleven provinces and a
majority, with its allies, in three others.
 130

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.
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.
 131

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.
 132

No, even that does not tempt me.

North American Newspaper Alliance, May 1938129

[The interview took place in a seaside Bungalow near Bombay where
Gandhi stayed after returning from “an exhausting but triumphal tour
of the tumultous Northwest Frontier Province...” 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 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
 133

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
129 New York Times, 5 June 1938. Accessed on 15 April 2016 at
http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/06/05/96826924.h
tml?pageNumber=35
 134

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 (International News Service), 16 March 1939130

[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 Hindustan.
In reply to my first question... Gandhiji tersely 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.”
 135

130 Bombay Chronicle, 19 May 1939; CWMG, Volume 69, pages 62-
63.
 136

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.”

Frederick T. Birchall (New York Times), before 23 March 1939131

[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
131 New York Times, 22 March 1939. Accessed on 15 April 2016 at
 137

http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1939/03/22/94693980.h
tml?pageNumber=1
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.
 138

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?
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.132 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 1939133

[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.]
 139

132 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.
133 Pyarelal, "No Quarrel about Words" in Harijan, 24 June
1939; CWMG, Volume 69, pages 278-80. Could not find the
report in New York Times.
 140

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.
STEELE: But there are elements in the Congress like Subhas Bose134
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.
Gandhi’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
Viceroy135 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.
 141

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?
134 Subhas Chandra Bose (1897- ), a radical nationalist, was
President of the Indian National Congress in 1938.
135 Lord Linlithgow (1887-1952), Viceroy of India, 1936-43.`
 142

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.
Referring next to the communal situation, Mr. Steele asked whether,
in Gandhi’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.
 143

STEELE: Does your renunciation of the Award136 imply an

abandonment of effort?
136 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.
 144

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 1940137

[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.”]
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 1940138

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
 145

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.
137 New York Times, 17 March 1940 Only a short report from
UPA appeared in the New York Times.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-
free/pdf?res=940DE6DE1730E43ABC4F52DFB566838B659EDE
. What is source for long report? Is it Harijan?
138 Report by Rajkumari Amrit Kaur in Harijan, 27 April 1940;
CWMG, Volume 72, pages 10-12. I could not find this report in
New York Times search.
 146

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 Viceroy139: “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, 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
present140) 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
 147

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
139 On 4 September 1939
140 The reference is to a scheme propounded by C.K. Streit.
Clarence Streit (Clarence Kirshman) (18961986), Union Now: a
Proposalfor a Federal Union of the Democracies of the North
Atlantic (London: J. Cape, 1939 and New York: Harper, 1940).
 148

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.”141 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”?142
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 1940143

[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?
 149

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-
141 "Notes" in Harijan, April 13, 1940; CWMG, Volume 71, page 409
142 The words within quotes are from the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of
1922.
143 Mahadev Desai "An American's Questions" in Harijan, 29
September 1940; CWMG, Volume 73, pages 27-30.
 150

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.
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.
 151

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
 152

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 Tatas144 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 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.
 153

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
nonviolent spirit of the nation.
HICKMAN: But you again speak like Christ on earth, and they
cannot understand that language.

144 Indian industrialists

 154

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...’”145
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.
Many American correspondents came to India and 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
 155

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...

145 Gandhi’s interview to W.W. Chaplin (International News

Service) and Jack Belden (Life and Time), 6 June 1942
 156

“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.”146
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 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.147
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. The British Government 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 1942148
[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
 157

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.”]
146 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.
147 Mahadev Desai, "Interview to Three Correspondents," in
Harijan, 26 July 1942; CWMG, Volume 76, pages 298-303. Cross
ref to Interview to Archibald Steele, item 29
148 Report by Mahadev Desai in Harijan, 14 June 1942;
CWMG, Volume 76, pages 192-97. See also Jack Belden, "The
Mind of Mahatma Gandhi" in Time, Chicago, 29 June 1942.
 158

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...
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 noncooperation, 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
 159

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
 160

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?”
“No, not if we have worked among the people. Our arrests would
work up the movement, they would stir everyone 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 nonviolent 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.149 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?”
 161

“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.
149 The reference is to collections by officials for the National War
Fund.
 162

“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 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.
 163

“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
 164

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,150 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 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?”
 165

“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?”
150 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.
 166

“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 nonviolent. 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 nonviolence 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.”
 167

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
 168

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."

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 Gandhi151. 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?
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
 169

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...

151 Louis Fischer, A Week with Gandhi (New York: Duell, Sloan and
Pierce, c1942).
 170

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?’ ...
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: 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
 171

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.
 172

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
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
 173

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?
 174

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 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: ... Why have you never said this?... 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.
 175

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?
 176

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...152
I have talked freely and frankly to you. I think you are a sahib loke...
FISCHER: I come from a very poor family.153 I know what it means
to be hungry. I have always sympathised with the downtrodden and
the poor. Many Americans feel the greatest 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
 177

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...
152 The questions and answers were published in Harijan on 14
June 1942, and are reproduced at the end of this interview.
153 Louis Fischer was the son of a fish peddler in Philadelphia
who had emigrated from the Ukraine to escape anti-Jewish
pogroms.
 178

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.
I asked Gandhi about Rajaji’s programme.154
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
 179

sure of winning, that, then, Congress won a sweeping victory and

refused to form a coalition with the Muslims?

154 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.
 180

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 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: Caroe155 and Jenkins156 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
 181

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.

155 Olaf Kirkpatrick Caroe, Secretary, External Affairs Department,

who worked for many years as a British official in the Punjab.
156 Sir Evan Jenkins, Secretary, Department of Supplies
 182

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
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.
 183

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?
 184

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.
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? ...
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 institution 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
 185

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.
 186

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.
 187

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.
 188

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 Chicago157 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.
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....
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
 189

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?

157 Tammany Hall is the site of the Democratic Party’s political

machine in New York City. The Mayor of Chicago had been
notorious for graft and corruption.
 190

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 Varadachariar158, 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
 191

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....
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.
158 A member of the Supreme Court of India who was a high-caste
Brahmin
 192

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 Chiang159.
GANDHI: Very well.
FISCHER: Only you did not understand him, and he did not understand
you.
 193

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....
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
159 Gandhi met Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang in
Calcutta on 18 February 1942.
 194

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
cooperation between these seven hundred thousand units, voluntary co-
operation—not cooperation 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
 195

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 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. ... 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
 196

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 cooperation 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?
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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 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.
 198

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....
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.
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.
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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 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?
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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? ...
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.
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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.
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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.
 203

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: ... 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?
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?
 204

GANDHI: Soon after Cripps’s departure. I wrote a letter to Horace

Alexander in reply to his letter to me.160 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
160 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.
 205

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?
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.
 206

FISCHER: So you intend to tell the British in advance when you will
launch your movement?
GANDHI: Yes....

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.
 207

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?
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 answers161:
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
 208

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
161 They were published in Harijan on 14 June 1942. CWMG,
Volume 76, pages 186-88.
 209

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?
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.
 210

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 from Gandhi dated 1 July 1942
to President Franklin D.
Roosevelt of the United States. Asking for active sympathy to his
proposal for immediate freedom for
 211

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 1942.162

Preston Grover (Associated Press of America), 10 June 1942163

[Preston Grover came from Delhi to Wardha for the interview.]
GROVER: There has been a great deal of questioning in America and
India 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
 212

partner, financing the war, giving her mechanical ability and her
resources which are inexhaustible. America is thus a partner in the guilt.
162 M. S. Venkataramani and B.K. Shrivatsava, Quit India: The
American Response to the 1942 Struggle (New Delhi: Vikas
Publishing House, 1979), page 224.
163 Mahadev Desai, "Throw Away the Carcass" in Harijan, 21
June 1942; CWMG, Volume 76, pages 207-12.
 213

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?
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.
 214

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
 215

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? Gandhi 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. Gandhi 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.
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.
GROVER: What specific things would be done by India to save
China, if India is declared independent?
 216

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.
 217

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?
 218

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.’s164 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.”
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 1942165

 219

"... Gandhi still personified and articulated, more than any one
individual, the leadership of India to the masses. His
contradictions did not bother them. A lot of the incomprehensible
things he said were addressed to the mystical Indian soul which
intuitively understood him. And when he spoke 'logically' he was
talking for the Indian bourgeoisie, which supported him both
morally and financially. Nobody else in India could play this dual
role of saint for the masses and champion of big business, which
was the secret of Gandhi's power. With all his vacillation he never
deviated from his fundamental objective, which was to keep
Indian attention focussed on the British as their main enemy. He
did not want the movement to be side-tracked by the red herring of
fascism versus democracy."166]
"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."

166 Ibid. p.42

 220

Archibald T. Steele (Chicago Daily News), 15 July 1942167

[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 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
167 Mahadev Desai, "With Three Press Correspondents" in
Harijan, 26 July 1942; CWMG, Volume 76, pages 301-02.
 221

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 nonviolent. 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.”...
 222

“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.
 223

“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, after release from prion, 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.
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.
 224

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
 225

and Hindus which lasted for several days. H.S. 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:
 226

“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.”168
Walter Stuart Nelson asked Gandhi why this enormous violence took
place in India which he had led in a nonviolent 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

168 Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi – The Last Phase, Volume II, page 332;
CWMG, Volume 88, page 338.
 227

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.”169

Robert Coniston (Collier’s), before 25 April 1945170

[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 Francisco171 were what they were, the people at large,
after the experience of the horrors of war, would force the hands of their
respective Governments.
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.
169 Interview to William Stuart Nelson, August 1947. William
Stuart Nelson, "Gandhian Values and the American Civil Rights
Movement" in Paul F. Power (ed.) The Meanings of Gandhi. An
 228

East-West Center Book (The University Press of Hawaii, 1971),

page 156. Cross-ref to item 39
170 Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi — The Last Phase, Volume I, Book I,
pages 113-16; CWMG, Volume 79, pages 421-24.
171 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 United Nations came into being on
24 October when the Charter was ratified by the requisite
number of States.
 229

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? 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.
 230

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.
 231

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 Royden172 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 nonviolence 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 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?
 232

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.

172 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.
 233

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 1945173

[The interview took place in Simla (now Shimla). 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.]
Answering an initial request that he should give a report on the
negotiations as they stood at the moment, Mahatma Gandhi said:
“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 statement174 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
 234

already, as I wrote to Lord Linlithgow175, taken him as my guide in

international affairs. He can interpret India’s mind to the outside world
as no one else can.

173 The Hindu, Madras, 1 July 1945; CWMG, Volume 80, pages 382-
84.
174 Statement to the Press, The Hindu, 6 May 1945; CWMG, Volume
80, pages 64-66.
175 Letter of 14 August 1942 from prison, CWMG, Volume 76, pages
406-10.
 235

“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,
Gandhi 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.”
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:
 236

“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.”
 237

Frank E. Bolden (National Negro Press Association), June or July

1945176
[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 Pittsburgh 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,177 and in my bare feet, was
ushered into the presence of Mahatma [M.] K. Gandhi (the title
"Mahatma" 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 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.
"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
 238

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.

176 Frank E. Bolden, "Meet the Great Soul" in The Afro-American,

Baltimore, 18 August 1945.
177 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.
 239

"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."178
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.
 240

"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."
178 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).”
 241

"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,179 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," he solemnly said, as I prepared to make my
departure...

Louis Fischer, 26 June 1946180

[Mr. Fischer (1896-1970), an American journalist, had interviewed
Gandhi earlier from 4 to 9 June 1942.]

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.
 242

“But I am an Asiatic. A mere Asiatic.”

179 Charter of the United Nations
180 From: Louis Fischer, The Life ofMahatma Gandhi, page 454; CWMG,
Volume 84, page 377. Cross-ref to item 26
 243

He laughed, then after a pause:

“Jesus was an Asiatic.”

Louis Fischer, 17 July 1946181

[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. 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?182
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 Street183 in Johannesburg184 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.
 244

181 Extracted from Pyarelal, " After Four Years" in Harijan, 4 August
1946; CWMG, Volume 85, pages 7-11. See also CWMG, Volume 85,
Appendix I.
182 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.
183 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.
184 London, not Johannesburg.
 245

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 Sirius185 if I 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.
 246

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.

185 Brightest star in the night sky.

 247

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 May186, he will tear it up.187
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,
 248

186 The State Paper presented by the Cabinet Mission to the

Congress and Muslim League on 16 May 1946.
187 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."
 249

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.
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.
 250

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.
 251

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!
 252

Louis Fischer, 18 July 1946188

188 Pyarelal, "After Four Years" in Harijan, 4 August 1946; CWMG,

Volume 85, pages 16-18.
 253

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 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.
 254

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
 255

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, 1946189

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, maintain a watchful
eye on the national Government190 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
 256

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.

189 New York Times, 22 September 1946. Accessed on 15 April 2016 at

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-
free/pdf?res=9503E7D81538E532A25751C2A96F9C946793D6CF
190 An interim National Government, with Pandit Jawaharlal
Nehru as the Vice-Chairman, took office on 2 September 1946.
 257

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 1946191

[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.192
“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.
 258

“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:

191 Harijan, 3 November 1946; CWMG, Volume 86, pages 8-11.

192 The Muslim League entered the interim government on 16 October
1946.
 259

“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,193 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:
“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.194 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.”
 260

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

193 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.
194 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.
 261

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.195
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 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
 262

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.”
195 The reference is to the import of Indian indentured labour to
Natal from 1860 to 1911, to work in sugar plantations.
 263

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 1946196

[The interview took place on board the steamboat Kiwi during Gandhi’s
journey to Chandpur.] Where is Chandpur?
JOURNALIST: In view of recent Indian history—1942 unrest, I. N.
A.197 movement and unrest, R. I. N.198 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
 264

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.
196 Report by Pyarelal in Harijan, 17 November 1946; CWMG, Volume
86, pages 87-88.
197 Indian National Army
198 Royal Indian Navy
 265

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.199
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.”200
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.”201
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.202
 266

199 Eventually the number of people killed rose to nearly two

million and the number of displaced persons to more than ten
million.
200 Speech at prayer meeting, Harijan, 18 January 1948; CWMG,
Volume 90, page 409-11.
201 Speech Before Breaking Fast, Harijan, 25 January 1948; CWMG,
Volume 90, pages 444-48.
202 Vincent Sheean, Lead Kindly Light, page 205.
 267

William Stuart Nelson, August 1947203

[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 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."204]
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
 268

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.

203 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.
204 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.
 269

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.
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.” 205
[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

1947206
205 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
 270

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 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 ofResolving Racial, Religious, Class and National
Misapprehensions and Conflicts (Calcutta: Calcutta University
Lectures, 1949).
206 Hindustan Times, 2 November 1947; CWMG, Volume 89, pages
456-57.
 271

[Ronald Stead discussed with Mahatma Gandhi the crucial issue of how
best to combat India’s internecine violence. In a single brief sentence
Gandhi 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 plans207 were altered. He asked:
“How can I go on to the Punjab, when so much remains to be done here?”
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
ofpersons 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 1948208

[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... the avatar had finally struck a
 272

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...
207 The original plan was to go to the Punjab.
208 From Edgar Snow, "The Message of Gandhi" in Saturday Evening
Post, Philadelphia, 27 March 1948.
 273

...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 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....
"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." ...
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."...
 274

Margaret Bourke-White, January 1948209

[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.]
209 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.
 275

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....
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."...
 276

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
 277

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 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
 278

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.
 279

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
 280

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.
 281

II. THE “CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAMME”

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 Indian
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.210 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.”211
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.212
The constructive programme included other measures such as Hindu-
Muslim unity, elimination of poverty, 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.
 282

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

210 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&re
dir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Consideratio
ns%20on%20India%20Affairs&f=false, accessed on 1 July 2014.
211 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.
212 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.
 283

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.
Gertrude Emerson, 10 December 1921213
[The following is part of an interview at Satyagraha Ashram at Sabarmati
on 10 December 1921.]214
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
 284

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
213 Asia, Concord, NH, United States of America, May 1922.
214 See item 2 for another part ofthe interview regarding the political
situation in India.
 285

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 1926215

[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."216]
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 Noncooperation 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.
 286

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.
215 SN 12445; CWMG, Volume 30, pages 119-24.
216 Young India, 15 September 1927; CWMG, Volume 34, pages 539-47.
 287

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...
I want this country to be spared Dyerism217. 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
 288

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.

217 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. See also interview to Frazier Hunt.Cross-ref to item 1.
 289

The testimony of the English historian (official) Sir William

Hunter,218 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 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.
 290

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,
218 Sir William Wilson Hunter (1840-1900) was a member of
the Indian Civil Service, a historian and author of many books,
including Economic History ofIndia.
 291

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.219 was almost a heaven-born thing, and the height of
worldly ambition was to become a member of Council.220 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 Roses221 were going on, if
the European Powers had intervened to impose peace, where would
Britain be today?

Arthur J. Todd, in or before 1927222

 292

219 Indian Civil Service

220 Viceroy's Executive Council
221 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.
222 From: Arthur J. Todd, Three Wise Men of the East and Other
Lectures (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1927),
pages 6-11.
 293

[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.
"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."
 294

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?"
 295

"The real remedy is the charka, the spinning wheel." ... "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.
... 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
 296

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."

Aimée Semple McPherson, 1935223

[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
 297

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 is beautiful!" I answered. "But I am shocked by the

squalor, illiteracy, and
223 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). For biographical information, see John
Updike, "Famous Aimee" (Book Review) in New Yorker, 30 April
2007. Accessed on 9 May 2016 at
http://archives.newyorker.com/?iid=15102&crd=0&searchKey=Aimee
%20Semple#folio=076.
 298

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 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....

"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.224
 299

224 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.
 300

"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. .
 301

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.
 302

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." ...

“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.”
According to a recent biography ofMs. McPherson, Aimée claimed
to be “deeply impressed by the fine and indomitable spirit” burning
deep within his (Gandhi’s) eyes. ... Aimée admired the simple
lifestyle of Gandhi and his followers, which she contrasted with the
materialism of Western missionaries working in India.225

An American, 1937226
[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
 303

persuasion. This method is any day slower than the method of

compulsion, but it is also surer and more stable.

225 Matthew Avery Smith, Aimée Semple McPherson and

the Resurrection of Christian America (Cambridge, MA,
USA: Harvard University Press, 2009), page 233.
226 Mahadev Desai, "Weekly Letter" in Harijan, 3 July 1937; CWMG,
Volume 65, pages 358-59.
 304

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 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
Constitution227. 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 1938228

[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.229
 305

227 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 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.
228 Mahadev Desai's "Notes" in Harijan, 12 February 1938; CWMG,
Volume 66, pages 353-56.
 306

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
nonviolence.
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.

229 An All India National Education Conference was held at Wardha

on 22-23 October 1937, under the chairmanship of Gandhi. The
 307

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.
 308

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
 309

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
 310

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.

Andrew Freeman, New Delhi, 1946230

[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.’
 311

230 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, 1956), page 798.
 312

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 book231
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.
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
 313

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.

231 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.
 314

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.”232 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?
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:233

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 Gandhi 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
 315

thinking for which otherwise they get no time. It might make them forget
the atom bomb.”

III. ENDS AND MEANS

232 St. Matthew, VII. 21
233 Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi – The Last Phase, Volume II
(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1956), pages 798-99.
 316

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

[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 Pyarelal234
Gandhi's objection to the use offorce 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.
 317

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?

234 Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi-The Last Phase, Volume II, pages 677
and 763-5; CWMG, Volume 90, pages 51012.
 318

Gandhi admitted that ordinarily government was impossible without the

use offorce.
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
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.

Askedfurther 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.
 319

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
 320

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
ofperforming right action by right means only, in a spirit of
detachment, leaving the fruits of action to the care of God.

Account by Vincent Sheean235

27 January 1948
"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." ... "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?"
 321

"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."

235 Vincent Sheean, Lead, Kindly Light (New York: Random

House, 1949), pages 182-99. See also Vincent 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 2nd, 1939 (Bombay: Jaico
Publishing House, 1956), pages 363-71.
 322

"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.
"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...
"How can such a truly righteous battle as our fight against the evil
of Fascism produce the result which now faces us?" ...
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."
 323

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...
 324

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." ...
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 ...
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."
 325

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.
 326

"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,236 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." ...
"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."...
"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...?"
While he continued to talk about renunciation a small book in
Sanskrit was thrust into his hands....
"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
 327

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."...
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?"
236 Gandhi fasted from 13 to 18 January 1948 because of riots
between Hindus and Muslims in Delhi and tensions between India
and Pakistan.
 328

The line is actually from Longfellow's "Psalm of Life...

In another moment broken offfrom 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."
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."...
"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."
 329

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 hadfollowed 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: "Ifyou will give it up I will do so too." Gandhi was moved by
one of those inner necessities which governed his whole life to
 330

take the vow then and there. The vow was not to drink the milk of
the cow or the buffalo again.237
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..."238
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.
 331

237 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.
238 Kasturba Gandhi was in prison with Gandhi from 1942 and passed
away on 22 February 1944.
 332

"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?"
[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."239
“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!”
 333

Rufus Jones, 1 December 1926240

[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.
239 Cross-ref to item 53
240 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.
 334

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 but gathers in all
that is truth in the experience of the human race.”241
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.”
Jones arrived at Sabarmati on the morning of 1 December, when Gandhi
was observing the "day of silence". Gandhi said he could see him in half
an hour.]
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.
 335

“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.”
241 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).
 336

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 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 University242 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.243 He has apparently read almost
nothing of our Quaker books and seemed to know little of George
Fox or John Woolman244. 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.
 337

242 Gujarat Vidyapith

243 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 ofMy
Experiments with Truth, Part II, Chapter XI.
244 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 ofJohn Woolman is a highly respected spiritual
autobiography.
 338

“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 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
 339

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.245
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.”

245 The visit to China did not take place

because of disturbances in China.
 340

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.”246
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 paperfor 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 trying to convert them.
After the Conference John R. Mott, with the support ofJohn 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, “calledfor 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 andfinances, 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 callfor disconnecting
missionary workfrom imperialism and colonialism, and the embracing of
non-Christian religious and cultural traditions ofAsia. It would take
decades, but the new direction ofAmerican 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.”247
In an article he contributed to a volume of reflections on Gandhi on his
70th birthday in 1939248, 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...
 341

“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...”

246 Rufus M. Jones, “The Path of the Peacemakers, in ” The Friend,

December, 1928, quoted by McFadden.
247 From the article by David M. McFadden.
248 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 124129.
 342

Nellie Lee Holt, December 1926

[E.C. Carter, a YMCA official who had worked in India, wrote to

Gandhi on 23 June 1926 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."249 Miss Holt and
her mother stayed in the ashram at Wardha for several days.250 Gandhi
met them after they had breakfast with Seth Jamnalal Bajaj, a mill owner
and disciple of Gandhi.]

Report in the New York Times251

"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.
 343

249 Document SN 10774 at Gandhi archives at Sabarmati

250 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.
251 Nellie Lee Holt, “With Mahatma Gandhi in his Retreat” in
New York Times Magazine, 11 March 1928.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-
free/pdf?res=9903E0D81438E23ABC4952DFB5668383639EDE,
accessed on 20 January 2015. 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.
 344

“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."
"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.
 345

"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.
 346

The Reverend Dr. Henry Hitt Crane, 25 February 1937252

[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:
“... 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.” 253
During a trip around the world, Dr. Crane interviewed Gandhi in
Sevagram on 25 February 1937l. 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’254 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.”
 347

The report of the interview by Mahadev Desai in Harijan is

reproduced here with additions from Dr. Crane’s sermon in
italics.]

252 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 at Bentley
Historical Library, University of Michigan. Quoted with permission
from the Bentley Historical Library.
253 From: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhlead/umich-bhl-
85164?rgn=main;view=text, accessed on 29 January 2014.
254 The title of a book by Frederick B. Fisher, a Methodist
Bishop in Calcutta for several years and a friend of Gandhi and
Rabindranath Tagore.
 348

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, ifI 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 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
 349

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.
 350

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.
 351

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 nonviolence? 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.
 352

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 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.255 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.256 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.257 I realise that it is the clear
command of your Gospel to seek to win persons to Christ, as you say. I
 353

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 255
Dr. Crane said in his sermon: "I was in Bombay on the great Muslim
Holy Day, Bakr Id, and I saw no less than a dozen cows, all held to be
sacred by the Hindus, publicly slaughtered in the city streets".
256 Here Gandhi referred the interviewer to his article "Need for
Tolerance" in Harijan, 13 March 1937; CWMG, Volume 64, pages 30-32
.
257 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.
 354

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 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 nonviolence 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?
 355

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
 356

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?
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
 357

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
 358

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. and 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/reamer34
7.pdf, accessed on 19 February 2014. The interview was in Sevagram.]

Report by Mahadev Desai258

[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
 359

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.”

258 Mahadev Desai "Weekly Letter" in Harijan, 26 December

1936; CWMG, Volume 64, page 141.
 360

Account by Ms. Fitch259

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."
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 1937260

[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 for independence 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.261 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.262]
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?”
 361

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
259 Article by Ms. Fitch in The Horn Book Magazine, Boston, March
1948.
260 Mahadev Desai's "Weekly Letter" in Harijan, 13 March 1937;
CWMG, Volume 64, pages 419-20.
261 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.
262 For further biographical information, see Ralph Richard Keithahn,
Pilgrimage in India; an Autobiographical Fragment (Madras: Christian
Literature Society, 1973).
 362

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.
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 MISSIONARIES263

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
Tambaram264 in 1938. The Edinburgh Conference called for greater
missionary activity for “the evangelisation of the world” in the words of
Dr. Mott.265
 363

263 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.
264 At the campus of the Madras Christian College in Tambaram, near
Madras.
265 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.
 364

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.266
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, 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.267
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.268
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
Interpretation269, 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
 365

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
266 Ibid. Also Samuel McCrea Cavert, “Beginning at Jerusalem”
in Christian Century, Chicago, 10 May 1928.
267 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.
268 Angell, op.cit.
269 E. Stanley Jones, Mahatma Gandhi – an Interpretation (New
York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press and London: Hodder and
Stoughton, 1948).
 366

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.270
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 nonviolent actions against racial
discrimination such as the March on Washington, proposed by J. Phillip
Randolph, 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.271
The Ashram also set up the Free India Committee which organised
demonstrations in front of British offices.272
Paul Keene became a professor of mathematics at Drew University, but
gave up the job to be associated with the Templins at the School for
Living in Suffern, New York.273 Mr. Keane, inspired by Gandhi and
the School for Living, started organic farming in America.274

The Reverend Frederick B. Fisher, 1917-32275

[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
270 Ralph T. Templin, Democracy and Nonviolence: The Role of
the Individual in World Crisis (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1965),
Appendix III: “The Kristagraha Movement.”
271 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.
272 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.
273 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
 367

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.
274 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).
275 Frederick B. Fisher, That Strange Little Brown Man Gandhi (New
York: Ray Long & Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1932).
 368

episcopacy in protest against the pro-Western complexion of the

Church.276He 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, 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
 369

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... "England has raised the standard of living not by a
276 Ralph T. Templin, Democracy and Nonviolence: The Role of
the Individual in World Crisis (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1965),
page 325.
 370

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 Fischer277]

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:
 371

277 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 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.
 372

"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.
“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, 1924278

[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, the architect put some very straight and short questions.
Gandhi responded with equally brief replies.]
 373

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.
278 Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi (Secretary’s Diary)
(Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan, 1970), Volume 4.
 374

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?
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:
 375

"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?"
 376

"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."
As they departed they gave their address and said, "Do remember
us, if you happen to visit America."

The Reverend Dr. John R. Mott

[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 President of the
World YMCA for many years. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in
1946279 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.]

Interview in March 1929280

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.

279 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
 377

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. 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.
280 Based on the report by Pyarelal in Young India, 21 March 1929;
CWMG, Volume 40, pages 57-61.
 378

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.
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
 379

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?
 380

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 Malaviyaji281. 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 Bajaj282 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.
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
 381

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?

281 Madan Mohan Malaviya (1861-1946), prominent political

leader and social reformer. Founder of Benares Hindu
University and its Vice-Chancellor from 1919 to 1938.
282 Jamnalal Bajaj (1884-1942), industrialist, philanthropist and close
associate of Gandhi
 382

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?
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?
 383

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.
 384

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 1936283

[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, 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 Sangh284 we say we
don't ask the orthodox Hindus to inter-dine or intermarry with the
“untouchables.”285 Many of us have no scruples
283 Mahadev Desai, "Dr. Mott's Visit" in Harijan, 19 and 26 December
1936; CWMG, Volume 64, pages 33-41.
284 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
 385

advancement. A Harijan Sevak Sangh (Servants of Harijans

Society) was formed by his followers for this work.
285 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.
 386

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,286
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,287 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 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,288
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
 387

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.
286 Pact of September 1932 between Hindu leaders and the Depressed
Classes
287 This announced the British Government's scheme of providing
separate electorates for the Depressed classes.
288 At the Round Table Conference, Dr. Ambedkar demanded
separate electorates for the Depressed Classes.
 388

[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.
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. Keithahn289 who was trying
hard to smooth the path of the untouchables. There were Miss Barr and
Miss Madden290 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.
 389

MOTT: But must we not serve them?

289 R.R. Keithahn, an American missionary. See his interview with
Gandhi on 5 March 1937. Cross-ref to item 54
290 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.
 390

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.291 I
mean they can no more distinguish between the 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
291 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 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:
 391

“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.” (Young India, 12 June 1937; CWMG, Volume 65, pages
29698).
He put them almost on the same level as his wife because of her lack of
education.
The protests were not only from Christian missionaries. Rajmohan
Gandhi pointed out that Jagjivan Ram, a prominent Congressman and a
Harijan, 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.
 392

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 Mahadev292?
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
declaration293 has become badly mixed with other unworthy motives,
which must be eliminated. Jesus said: "Ye shall be 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.
292 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.
293 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
 393

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 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. 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.
 394

MOTT: What are the governing ideals and aims of this

Indian Village Industries movement?294 What is the object of
your settling down in this little village?
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.295 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.296
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
294 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:
 395

“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.
295 Gandhi moved on 30 April 1936 from the Wardha ashram
to the“AIVIA alsoofstruggled
tiny village Segaon,to bring
five about
miles a transformation
away. The ashram inin the
Segaonvillages in termsSevagram
was renamed of sanitation, improved diet, indigenous
in 1940.
healthcare
296 Hind Swaraj, and localwas
which resource
writtenbased employment.”
in 1909.
http://www.mgiri.org/about/index.html, accessed on 14 April
2014.
 396

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 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 onto 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.297 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.”
 397

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.
297 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 to work for
the Harijans.
 398

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 Ceresole298 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.
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 1938299

[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:

298 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,
 399

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).
299 Mahadev Desai, "Dr. Mott's Second Visit", in Harijan, 10 December
1938; CWMG, Volume 68, pages 165-73.
 400

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 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
 401

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.300 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?
300 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.
 402

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 incident301 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?
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.
 403

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.

301 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.
 404

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.
 405

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.
 406

[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
Hofmeyr302 and Edgar Brookes303? There is certainly a turn of
the tide on the part of certain individuals.
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.
 407

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
302 Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr (1894-1948), a leader of the United
Party in South Africa, was friendly to Indians.
303 Edgar Harry Brookes (1897-1979), a liberal intellectual in South
Africa.
 408

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?
 409

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
 410

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.

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.
 411

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.
 412

[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."304
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
 413

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
304 E. Stanley Jones, Mahatma Gandhi, an Interpretation (New York:
Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1948), page 8.
 414

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 1932305
[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
 415

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
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.
305 Ibid. pages131-33. See also interview of Ms. Lucille McClymonds
with Gandhi in 1936. (Young India, 12 June 1937; CWMG, Volume 65,
pages 296-98). Cross-ref to item 61
 416

"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
 417

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.306 ]

Interview on 4 February 1933307

[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
306 Ibid. pages 135-38.
307Harijan, 11 February 1933 and Mahadev Desai' Diary, Vol. III, pp.
122-26; CWMG, Volume 53, pages 257-59.
 418

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
 419

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
 420

his task well as to the Bhangi who has done likewise.308

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?309
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 1934310
[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.]
 421

308 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.
309 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.
310 F. Mary Barr, Bapu: Conversations and
Correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi (Bombay:
International Book House, 1949), pages 111-13
 422

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
 423

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 1934311

311 Valji Desai, "Weekly Letter" in Harijan, 4 May

1934; CWMG, Volume 57, page 406.
 424

[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, 1936312

[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
 425

Sanskrit. Then came a silence often minutes or so. It was "cow-dust

time," evening, and sun shone through the dust with a lovely red glow.
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
312 Lucille McClymonds, "We Learned from Gandhi" in The Christian
Century, 30 January 1957.
 426

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.
 427

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
 428

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
 429

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...
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
 430

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 1938313

[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 nonviolence 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
 431

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.

313 Pyarelal, "Weekly Letter" in Harijan, 7 January 1939;

CWMG, Volume 68, pages 251-53.
 432

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 Murdoch314 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"?315 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 nonviolence 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 1940316

 433

[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 letter to the Viceroy of India
challenging the missionary pledge requiring missionaries not to do
anything contrary to
314 Brian O. Murdoch, professor of German, who wrote several books on
the Bible.
315 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.
316 Mahadev Desai, "Rediscovering Religion" in Harijan, 10 February
1940: CWMG, Volume 71, pages 168-70.
 434

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.317
And now I must share with you what I told Mr. Keithahn.318 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 nonviolence 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. 319
SMITH: Do you not mean economic non-violence by the charkha?
 435

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 the peace of the
world. Independence cannot be retained if it is a gift of the British. It can
be
317 “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.
318 See interview by Ralph Richard Keithahn above. Cross-ref to item
54
319 Richard B. Gregg in his Economics ofKhaddar (Madras: S. Ganesan,
1928) and other books.
 436

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.320 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
 437

understanding (not only of the head but also of the heart and hand)
of the secret of nonviolence 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, compared to the history of violence in the world,
the history of non-violence is in its infancy.”321]

320 Gandhi met the Viceroy in Delhi on 5 February 1940.

321 J. Holmes Smith, “Non-violent Direct Action” in Fellowship, Nyack,
New York, December 1941.
 438

The Reverend Ralph T. Templin, 1940322

[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.”323]
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.’”324
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 laughed
heartily about ‘you Americans who want to get things done
right now.’ He dilated in the same amused way about the
 439

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.” 325
322 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).
323 Ralph T. Templin, Democracy and Nonviolence: The Rise of
the Individual in World Crisis (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1965).
324 Ibid., page 326; and “Gandhi Belongs to Tomorrow” in The
Christian Century, 18 February 1948.
325 Templin, Democracy and Nonviolence, page 330
 440

James E. McEldowney326
[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. It campaigned with
demonstrations, lectures and lobbying, but was unable to prevent
America’s 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.327 This chapter includes interviews by several
persons associated with 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.
 441

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.

326 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.
327 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.
 442

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.328 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."329
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 nonviolence. 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.”330
“... 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 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.’”331
There was more communication with Gandhi by American pacifists
after C.F. Andrews, Sarojini Naidu, Miraben and Muriel Lester332
visited the United States, and their lectures around the country 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.

328 Gilbert Murray, “The Soul as it is, and how to deal with it” in
The Hibbert Journal, London, Volume 16, Number 2, January
1918, pages 191-205
 443

329 The first sermon contained several errors about the life of Gandhi,
as little information was available in
[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.335
He visited India in 1924 and delivered lectures on “Nonviolence” and
“Policy of Non-violence” in Bombay and requested Gandhi to grant him
an interview. He met Gandhi in Delhi soon after his 21-day fast as a
penance for Hindu-Muslim riots and a prayer for unity.
Mr. Ward's appointment was fixed but he fell ill and was 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 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.

333 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.
334 Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi (Secretary’s Diary)
(Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan, 1970), Volume 4.
335 “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 ofAmerican
 444

Religious Biography, second edition (Westport, Connecticut and

London: Greenwood Press, 1977), page 580.
 445

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
 446

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
 447

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 1931336

[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 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
 448

friends, Mrs. Sarojini Naidu and C.F. Andrews, were aboard, and at
once took me to Gandhi's compartment, introducing me as "another
jailbird.337 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?"
336 From "We have Known Gandhi" in Asia and the Americas, New
York, October 1944.
337 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.
 449

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.338]
"... 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
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 too339 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?"
 450

"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...
338 Lamson, Peggy, Roger Baldwin, Founder of the American Civil
Liberties Union: a Portrait (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), pages 146-
47.
339 Mr. Baldwin had met Mrs. Sarojini Naidu and Miraben during their
tours of the United States.
 451

"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, 1931340

[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."341 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."342
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.343
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 1948.344
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.
 452

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.

340 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.
341 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.
342 I Speak for Myself (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), page
279.
343 Ibid., page 254
344 John Haynes Holmes, My Visit to India (New York: The
Community Church, 1947).
 453

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..."345]
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 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
 454

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.
345 John Haynes Holmes, An Account of My Ministry: A Sermon
Preached on My Retirement (New York: The Community Church,
1949).
 455

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 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
 456

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
 457

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...346

Irma G. Shapleigh, February 1935347

[Ms. Shapleigh was apparently a pacifist as the following was published
in a pacifist magazine.]
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
 458

346 Dr. Holmes said in his sermon on January 25, 1948: " 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.”
347 From: “A Day with Gandhi” in Fellowship, Nyack, NY,
USA, January 1936. Fellowship is the magazine of
Fellowship for Reconciliation.
 459

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
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.
 460

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
 461

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, 1940348

[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 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.
 462

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
348 Harold E. Fey, "Gandhi Faces the Storm" in The Christian Century,
Chicago, 24 July 1940.
 463

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.349 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 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
Ito visit the headquarters of his village industries association...350
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]
Kaur351 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
 464

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.
349 This interview was before Gandhi launched “individual satyagraha”
by selected volunteers.
350 The headquarters of the All India Village Industries Association was
at Maganwadi, Wardha.
351 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.
 465

This he denied, saying that it had mothered minorities ever since it had
been founded nearly two generations ago by the Englishman Hume.352
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
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.
 466

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.use in Intro?
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.
352 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.
Check?
 467

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 1940353

[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 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
 468

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.

353 Mahadev Desai, "Occasional Notes" in Harijan, 13 July

1940; CWMG, Volume 72, pages 206-07.
 469

Harold Ehrensperger, 1946354

[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.355 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 of the troubled areas.

An American Pacifist, July 1947356

[A young American pacifist came to see Gandhi with a note of
introduction from Miss Muriel Lester357. 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.
 470

354 Fellowship, Nyack, New York, January 1947.

355 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.
356 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.
357 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.
 471

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 1913.358 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. 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.”359
Marcus Garvey and the United Negro Improvement Association led by
him declared support for the Indian struggle. 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 other Indian residents in the United States.
In Young India of 21 August 1924, Gandhi wrote about a message he
had 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. MARIUS GARVEY, CHAIRMAN.’ 360
“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.”361
 472

358 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.'”
Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois had 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.
359 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.
360 This was an error in the transcription of the name.
361 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
 473

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:
“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.”362
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 nonviolence 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."363
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.
 474

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.

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. See also Sudarshan Kapur, Raising
up a Prophet, pages 16-23.
362 E.S. Reddy (ed.), Mahatma Gandhi: Letters to Americans
(Bombay and New York: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1998), page
41.
363 Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King
Years, 1954-63 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), page
259
 475

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, 1929364

[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 nonviolence. 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:
 476

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.365
364 Report by Pyarelal in Young India, 28 March 1929; CWMG, Volume
40, pages 62-63.
365 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-
 477

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.
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 Harijan366

[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.367 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.]
 478

67) and knew Martin Luther King, Jr., who was studying at the
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 nonviolent 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.
366 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.
367 Gandhi suddenly fell ill in December 1935 and suffered from high
blood pressure for some time.
 479

"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 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
 480

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-
 481

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?
GANDHI: Certainly. If there was any exclusiveness about it, I should
reject it at once.
QUESTION: Any idea of possession is foreign to it?
GANDHI: 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?
GANDHI: 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?
GANDHI: 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?
GANDHI: 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?"
 482

GANDHI: 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
 483

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 Ito act, supposing my own brother was
lynched before my very eyes?"
"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. "
 484

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 Gandhi, 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."
 485

Account by Dr. Thurman368

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 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
 486

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.

368 From Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart: the

Autobiography of Howard Thurman (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1979), pages 130-35
 487

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.
"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
 488

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.
 489

"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.
 490

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.
 491

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., 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 Harijan369
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?370 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
 492

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
369 Mahadev Desai, "A Discourse on Non-violence", in Harijan, 20
March 1937; CWMG, Volume 64, pages 22125.
370 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.
 493

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 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 coworkers, 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 nonviolence. 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
 494

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
nonviolent 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
 495

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?
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.371 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 nonviolence 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.372]

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
 496

message is ready for any other country until it has been taken up more
widely and

371 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.
372 F. Mary Barr, Bapu: Conversations and
Correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi (Bombay:
International Book House, 1949), pages 165-68.
 497

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?
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
 498

nonviolent 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 autobiography373

373 Benjamin Mays, Born to Rebel: an Autobiography (New York:
Scribner’s, 1971), pages 155-57.
 499

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 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
 500

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.
 501

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, 1937374

[Dr. Channing Heggie Tobias (1882-1961) was one of the most
prominent Africans-Americans of his 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.”375 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?
 502

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.

374 From Mahadev Desai's "A Discourse on Non-violence" in Harijan,

30 March 1937; CWMG, Volume 64, pages 229-30.
375 The YMCA had separate programmes for whites and blacks until
1946.
 503

DR. TOBIAS: Travancore indicates that your full identification

with the untouchables is bearing fruit.376 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?
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

376 The reference is to the proclamation of the government of that

State throwing open all State temples to Harijans.
 504

Ms. Celestine Smith, December 1938377

[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)378 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.]
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, 1942379

[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. Carver380 comes and
delivers them himself."
377 From: Pyarelal "Weekly Letter" in 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.
378 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
 505

from the moment it begins its training.” (CWMG, Volume 65, page
450).
379 Harijan, 15 February 1942; CWMG, Volume 75, page 292.
380 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).
 506

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?"
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 1945381

[Deton Jackson Brooks (1909-1975), an African-American educator,
was a teacher in Chicago before he joined the staff of Chicago
Defender, an African American weekly, 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.”
 507

“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.

381 The Chicago Defender, 16 June 1945

 508

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.382
[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 (New York Times Magazine), 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.
 509

“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"...

382 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).
 510

“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 dependent 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, 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.” 383]
Report by Mahadev Desai384
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.385 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 increasing that, therefore, while there might be saturation in
 511

the market for a given commodity, the general saturation would never
be reached.
383 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.
384 Harijan, 2 November 1934; CWMG, Volume 48, pages 163-
67. This report, in the diary of Mahadev Desai, was not published
until 1934.
385 Mr. Callender had earlier met Ford in America, who had put
forward the view that demand for cheaper things would stimulate mass
production.
 512

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 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,
 513

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.
 514

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?
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
 515

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?
 516

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 Callender386

[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
 517

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.”
386 New York Times Magazine, 8 November 1931.
 518

“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 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.

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.
 519

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."387 She
387 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.
 520

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.]
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
 521

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
 522

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." ...
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
 523

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.
 524

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.388 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. 389 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
 525

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?
388 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.
389 Many years later, Sushila Nayar, his physician, as
Minister for Health in independent India, campaigned for
birth control.
 526

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
 527

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?
 528

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 develops 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.
 529

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
 530

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 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.390
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
 531

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?

390 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.
 532

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 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
 533

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.
 534

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?
 535

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.
 536

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 someone 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.
 537

Extracts from report by Mahadev Desai in Harijan391

391 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.
 538

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...
 539

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:
 540

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
 541

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-
 542

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. . .
.392

X. OTHER INTERVIEWS
This chapter includes conversations and 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 interviews.

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, September 1911393

[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
Jewess394 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
 543

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
392 Margaret Sanger's rejoinder appeared in Harijan, 22 February 1936.
393 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).
394 Apparently Miss Sonja Schlesin, Gandhi’s private secretary
 544

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 1921395

[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
 545

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

395 EMS, "Gandhi at First Hand" in Atlantic

Monthly, Boston, May 1932.
 546

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--
--,396 "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
 547

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
396 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.
 548

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
 549

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!
 550

Gordon Law, 1920397

[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 restraint398 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
 551

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
397 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).
398 Gandhi had no daughter, but took care of other children. The
reference is probably to Ms. Jayakunwar Mehta (“Jeki”).
 552

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 underside 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, 1922399

[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, 1924400

[Ms. Williams was an author. Her books include: Understanding India;
Priestess of the Occult: Madame Blavatsky; The Passionate Pilgrim:
 553

Life of Annie Besant; and India’s Silent Revolution (with Fred Fisher).
She spent five months in India and met Gandhi several times.]

399 New York Times, 13 March 1922,

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-
free/pdf?res=9405E7DA1531EF33A25750C1A9659C946395
D6CF, accessed on 7 December 1914.
400 From: Gertrude Marvin Williams, Understanding India (New
York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1928), pages 29396.
 554

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.401 "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, 1924402

[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....
 555

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?"
401 Gandhi was elected President of the Indian National Congress at its
session in Belgaum.
402 Savel Zimand, Living India (New York: Longmans, Green and Co.,
1928), pages 217-18, 226-29.
 556

"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, 1924403

[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
“His works are best understood as reformist Coercion.404 There is a chapter entitled
and progressive, mostly written in response to
social problems created by the rapid
industrialisation and urbanisation at the turn of
the century.” Ibid.
 557

“Non-cooperation in India” in that book. It shows a good grasp of the

facts 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
403 Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi (Secretary’s Diary)
(Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan, 1970), Volume 4.
404 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.
 558

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 Bagh405 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 cooperation, 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 Acts406 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 Khilafat407 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.408 But I do not wish
to enter into an explanation of the circumstances under which I refrained
from taking any step at that time. 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
405 The scene of the massacre of hundreds of men, women and
children. A meeting was held in a courtyard, called Jallianwala Bagh,
 559

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.
406 The Rowlatt Acts restricting civil liberties were enacted on 22
March 1919 on the recommendation of a Sedition Committee
headed by Sir Sidney Rowlatt.
407 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.
408 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.
 560

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
 561

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?
 562

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?409
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...410 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?
 563

409 Gandhi went on a fast in Delhi for 21 days from 18 September 1924
as a penance for Hindu-Muslim riots and a prayer for unity.
410 Here Gandhi entered into a long exposition of the reasons
for the fast, of the perverse effect noncooperation had
produced in the minds of the people etc.
 564

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 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.
 565

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
 566

that I have not got any freedom, but it is difficult to decide where the
freedom to act converts 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?
 567

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.
 568

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 nonviolent 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)
 569

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.
 570

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 nonviolence. 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 1926411

[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.412
They were evidently prepared for the reply of Gandhi but had to present
the resolution.]
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

411 From: A report by Mahadev Desai in Young India, 21 January 1926;

CWMG, Volume 29, pages 416-18.
 571

412 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.
 572

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. Ward413 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.414
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
 573

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
413 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.
414 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.”
 574

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.415

Mrs. Edward Hanley, 1927416

[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."
 575

415 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!”
416 New York Times, 14 May 1927
http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1927/05/14/1186
43632.html?pageNumber=19, accessed on 25 July 2014.
 576

Professor Kenneth Saunders, c. 1927417

[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 noncooperation 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....

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.418]
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
 577

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.
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

417 Kenneth Saunders, Whither Asia? A Study of Three Leaders

(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1933), pages 35-37.
418 William H. Danforth, Random Ramblings in India: Letters
Written to the Purina Family, (Privately printed, 1928), pages 130-32.
 578

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., 1928419

[Mr. Hall, an American teaching at Robert College, Istanbul,
interviewed Gandhi at the Sabarmati Ashram. H introduced the
conversation as follows:
"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.
 579

"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 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...

419 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.
 580

"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
 581

should test his own 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
 582

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?"
 583

"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.
 584

"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...

Dr. Ms. Jane Elizabeth Hoyt-Stevens, 1930420

[Dr. Hoyt-Stevens, M.D. (1860-1933) lived for three or four years in
India from 1927, and spent four days in February 1930 at Sabarmati
Ashram. She had an opportunity of putting a few questions to Gandhi,
daily during the walks between the evening and the prayer service at
7.30 p.m., but did not record any questions or answers except for one:]
“... I asked him, one evening, if he would be willing to tell me his
opinion of Krishnamurthi421. After laughing heartily, he replied:
‘I hold that opinion suspended in mid air.’”422
On the day of her departure from the ashram, she went to see Gandhi. It
was his silence day and he wrote on a piece of paper:
“I am glad that you have been happy here in this place, which
provides so little comfort for friends from the West. We are the
poorest people in the world, and in the light of our poverty I often
feel guilty of having what we do have.”423

Newton Phelps Stokes, II, 1930424

[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.]

420 J. Elizabeth Hoyt-Stevens, M.D. Some Impressions of

Mahatma Gandhi or “Gandhiji”. Concord, N.H., USA:
Rumford Press, 1931.
421 Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), Indian writer and lecturer on
philosophical and spiritual subjects. In his childhood, he had been
adopted by Dr. Annie Besant, President of Theosophical Society,
 585

who groomed him to be a world teacher. He renounced that role in

1929.
422 Ibid. page 45
423 Ibid. page 27.
424 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).
 586

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."

Patricia Kendall, March 1930425

[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."426 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.
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
 587

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.”
425 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.
426 New York Times, July 9, 1932
 588

“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.”427
“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.”
“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!”
 589

“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.

427 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.
 590

Webb Miller, 1931428

[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.’”429]
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 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
 591

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.
428 From Webb Miller, I Found No Peace: the Journal of a Foreign
Correspondent (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936).
429 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.
 592

"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
 593

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
 594

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 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,430 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."
 595

Although we had attended the luncheon with the idea of writing about it,
we observed Gandhi's whimsical request.

Dr. Dodd, 4 September 1934431

[Dr. Dodd was in charge of a girls’ college in America.]
430 cross-ref to item 10
431 "A Talk with an American Friend" in Harijan, 14 September
1934 and the manuscript of Mahadev Desai’s Diary; CWMG,
Volume 58, pages 399-403.
 596

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.For
Intro
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 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
 597

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.For Intro 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.
 598

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.
 599

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?
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?
 600

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 “brethren.” I should refuse to shoot
down any human being, black or white, Christian or non-Christian.
Your declaration must apply to the whole humanity.
 601

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.
 602

Swami Paramhansa Yogananda, August 1935432

[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.
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.
 603

"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 instinct. Semi-starvation or unbalanced diets are not the
answer. After overcoming the inward
432 From Yogananda Paramahansa, Autobiography of a Yogi
(New York: Philosophical Library, 1946), Chapter 44.
 604

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." 433
The following is from a biography of Mr. Gunther.434]
 605

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
433 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.
434 Ken Cuthbertson, Inside: The Biography of John Gunther
(Chicago: Bonus Books, Inc. 1992), pages 166-67.
 606

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.435

David Hunter, 1938436

[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 was 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. he wrote. as they talked only about paper.

James A. Mills (Associated Press of America), 20 May 1938437

[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 1938438

[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."]
"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."

435 New York Post, 31 January 1948, quoted by Ken Cuthbertson.

 607

436 New York Times, 15 May 1938. Mr. Hunter was author of
Paper-making through Eighteen Centuries (New York: William
Edwin Rudge, 1930) http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-
free/pdf?res=9401E7DE1431E03ABC4D52DFB3668383629ED
E, accessed on 14 January 2016.
437 The Hindu, Madras, 23 May 1938; CWMG, Volume 67, page 90.
438 Pyarelal, "From Far Off Hawaii" in Harijan, 14 January 1939.
 608

William E. Fischer (Life), 1942439

...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 state440, 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
 609

passed around with big copper cauldrons filled with raw and cooked
vegetables, mostly carrots, and trays of coarse brown bread. We also
had 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."
439 William E. Fisher, "Gandhi at Home" in Life, Chicago, 17 August
1942.
440 Rajkumari Amrit Kaur
 610

James G. Vail, June 27, 1944441

[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 1945442

[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?

Harold Leventhal, December 1945443

[Mr. Leventhal, member of a poor immigrant family, born on 24 May
1919, was involved in social causes such as support of trade unions and
the anti-fascist movements abroad at an early age and joined the Young
 611

Communist League. During World War II, he served as a corporal in

the United States Army Signal Corps in Bengal. He met and developed
friendships with many political leaders, as well as artists, writers and
other intellectuals.

441 From "We have Known Gandhi" in Asia and the Americas, New
York, October 1944.
442 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 2 December 1945; CWMG, Volume 82, page
148
443 Michael Kleff, "Speaker of the (Carnegie) Hall," at www.
woodyguthrie.org/harold.htm, accessed on 15 April 2016. See
also obituaries on the death of Mr. Leventhal on 4 October 2005.
 612

In December 1945, the All India Congress Committee was meeting in

Calcutta. Mr. Leventhal obtained a letter of introduction to Jawaharlal
Nehru who arranged an appointment for him to meet with Gandhi.
He developed a great fondness for India and its culture. After return
to the United States, where he became a prominent impresario of
folk music, he arranged exhibitions of works by Jamini Roy, Satish
Gujral and M.F. Husain, and produced Tagore's play, King of the
Dark Chamber.
His meetings with Nehru and Gandhi had a profound influence on Mr.
Leventhal. He was involved in the civil rights movement, led by the
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He became a target of anti-
communists but never wavered. He was denied a passport until 1955
and could not visit India until later.
Of his meeting with Gandhi, Mr. Leventhal said:]
"... I brought along with me a black soldier who was a well known
communist in the United States444. Gandhi was seated in his room
running his spinning wheel. He asked someone to get us chairs but we
said no, we will sit on the floor as he did. Fist question he asked was
'Why are there American soldiers in India and what are you doing
here?445 What is the attitude of the American soldiers? How was Paul
Robeson? Who was Harry Truman?' He kept probing us on the role of
the American soldiers in India. He gave me, which I still have, the flag
of the Indian National Congress."

Herbert Hoover, April 24, 1946446

[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.
 613

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
444 Edward Strong
445 American soldiers were in India for several months after the
surrender of Japan as all of them could not be transported promptly
to the United States because of shortage of shipping. Mr. Leventhal
was in India after I left Indian for the United States in February
1946. I happened to meet him in Madras in 1945 and we became
life long friends.
446 From: Norman Cousins (ed.), Profiles of Gandhi: America
Remembers a World Leader. (Delhi: Indian Book Company, 1969).
 614

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 1946447

[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?
Gandhi 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?
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?
 615

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
447 Pyarelal’s “Weekly letter” in Harijan, 6 October 1946; CWMG,
Volume 85, pages 368-70.
 616

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.
Gandhi’s questioner next asked his opinion about predestination.
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.
 617

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.
 618

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 1947448

[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 nonviolence 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:
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
 619

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
nonviolence.
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?”
448 Biharni Komi Agman, pages 169-71; CWMG, Volume 87, pages
234-35.
 620

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.

United Press of America, 1 June 1947449

[This was a "telegraphic interview". Gandhi answered six questions
sent to him. The United Press described him as "the spiritual leader of
India's Hindus".]
Question: Do you think there is any possibility of armed conflict
between Russia and the United States?
Answer: Anything is possible but it is highly improbable.
Question: Do you foresee possibility of the world's being united
under one central governing body composed of representatives of the
component parts?
Answer: That is the only condition on which the world can live.
Question: Do you feel that India will ultimately be united under
a central government regardless of what the immediate
settlement may be?
Answer: The future will depend on what we do in the present?
Question: What do you feel is the most acceptable solution to the
Palestine problem?
Answer: Abandonment wholly by Jews of terrorism and other forms of
violence.
Question: Do you believe that Egypt and the Sudan should unite
under one government when the British leave?
Answer: I have no doubt that they ought to.
 621

Question: As the result of your experiment during the past five

months do you feel that the principle of non-violence can yet be
triumphant in the solution of the world's problems?

449 UP report in New York Times, June 2, 1947,

http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1947/06/
02/88786293.html?pageNumber=6, accessed on 15 April
1914.
 622

Answer: My five months in Noakhali have only confirmed my

previous experience that nonviolence can solve all our ills.

Pat Wellington, 2 July 1947450

[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.]
“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.”
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.

Frank Rounds, Jr., (World Report), 1947451

[Frank Rounds lived with Gandhi for some time as his guest in the
Bhangi (Sweepers') colony in Delhi. He accompanied Gandhi on
his walk after a prayer meeting.]
"One minute he told me, with barely a smile: 'Peace is not to be had on
earth unless wine, women, meat, smoke, lipstick, hair oil and other
cosmetics are done away with. If all these exist, peace on earth is a vain
hope.'
"And then, almost without a pause in his speech, he switched the
conversation to ask me:
 623

450 New York Times, 3 July 1947

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-
free/pdf?res=9C04E1DB113EE13BBC4B53DFB166838C
659EDE, accessed on 15 July 1915.
451 World Report, 14 October 1947. World Report merged with
U.S. News in 1948 to form U.S. News and World Report.
 624

'Why do you Americans travel so far away all over the world?
It seems to me there is plenty you can do back home in the
United States."

Robert Trumbull, 2 October 1947452

[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 1947453

[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.
 625

452 Robert Trumbull, "Gandhi's Living Legacy" in The New York

Times Magazine, 3 July 1983
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/03/magazine/gandhi-s-living-legacy-
robert-trumbull-was-foreign-correspondent-for-times-for.html, accessed
on 15 July 2014.
453 Associated Press despatch in New York Times, 24 October 1947
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-
free/pdf?res=980DEFDB133AE233A25757C2A9669D946693D6CF,
accessed on 15 July 1914.
 626

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 who
were treated as
"untouchables")
hartal – stoppage of work, especially as a protest
himsa - violence
Khilafat – Caliph; office or jurisdiction of Caliph
Kristagraha - religious concept combining Chrst and Satyagraha
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
Purna Swaraj - complete independence
Rajkumari - princess
sahib loke - ???
 627

salaam – salute, peace

satyagraha – standing firm on truth; non-violent resistance
swaraj - self-rule
 628

takli – hand-held spindle for spinning

tonga – two-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage
upanishad - Hindu sacred texts which form the final
part of the Vedas
varna – caste, colour
varnadharma – duties of different castes of Hindus
veranda – a roofed porch outside a building
 629

LIST OF INTERVIEWS CONSULTED

 630

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, September 19114

4
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).
 631

The Reverend Frederick B. Fisher, 1917-325,6

5
Frederick B. Fisher, That Strange Little Brown Man Gandhi (New York: Ray
Long & Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1932).
6
Welthy Honsinger Fisher, Frederick Bohn Fisher: World Citizen (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1944), pages 67-68, 13-33.
 632

Frazier Hunt (Chicago Tribune), October 19207

7
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; and Frazier Hunt, One American and his
Attempt at Education (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1938), pp. 213-220.
 633

Gordon Law, 19208

E.M.S., 7 October 19219

8
From: Myrtle and Gordon Law, "Gandhi the Man", in The Outlook, April 1922.
Extract reproduced in Blanche Watson, Gandhi and Non-violent Resistance.
9
EMS, "Gandhi at First Hand" in Atlantic Monthly, Boston, May 1932.
 634

Gertrude Emerson, 10 December 192110

John Clayton (Chicago Tribune), February 192211
Thomas Ryan (Chicago Tribune), 15 March 192412
10
Asia, Concord, NH, United States of America, May 1922.
11
Chicago Tribune, 2 March 1922.
12
Chicago Tribune, 16 March 1924
 635

Dr. Harry Frederick Ward, 192413

Gertrude Marvin Williams, 192414
13
Mahadev Desai, “Day-to-Day with Gandhi (Secretary’s Diary)” (Varanasi:
Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan, 1970), Volume 4.
14
From: Gertrude Marvin Williams, Understanding India (New York: Coward-
McCann, Inc., 1928), pages 293-96.
 636

Savel Zimand, 192415

Two American Professors, 192416
15
Savel Zimand, Living India (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1928),
pages 217-18, 226-29.
16
Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi (Secretary’s Diary) (Varanasi: Sarva
Seva Sangh Prakashan, 1970), Volume 4.
 637

An American Architect and Two Women, 192417

Mrs. Langeloth and Mrs. Kelly, January 192618
Ms. Katherine Mayo, 17 March 192619
17
Mahadev Desai, “Day-to-Day with Gandhi, 1970), Volume 4.
18
CWMG, Volume 29, pages 416-18.
19
SN 12445; CWMG, Volume 30, pages 119-24.
 638

Rufus Jones, 1 December 192620

20
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.
 639

Nellie Lee Holt, December 192621, 22

21
Nellie Lee Holt, “With Mahatma Gandhi in his Retreat” in New York Times
Magazine, 11 March 1928. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-
free/pdf?res=9903E0D81438E23ABC4952DFB5668383639EDE, accessed on 20
January 2015.
 640

Upton Close, 192623

22
New York Times, 14 May 1927
http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1927/05/14/118643632.html?page
Number=19, accessed on 25 July 2014.
23
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
 641

William H. Danforth, 22 November 192724

Asia: the End of the White Man’s World Dominance (New York: G. P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1927), pages 177-78, 226-35.
24
William H. Danforth, Random Ramblings in India: Letters Written to the Purina
Family, (Privately printed, 1928), pages 130-32.
 642

Mrs. Edward Hanley, 192725

25
New York Times, 14 May 1927
http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1927/05/14/118643632.html?page
Number=19, accessed on 25 July 2014.
 643

Arthur J. Todd, in or before 192726

26
New York Times, 14 May 1927
http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1927/05/14/118643632.html?page
Number=19, accessed on 25 July 2014.
 644

Professor Kenneth Saunders, c. 192727

William W. Hall, Jr., 192828
27
Kenneth Saunders, Whither Asia? A Study of Three Leaders (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1933), pages 35-37.
28
William W. Hall, Jr. "On Gandhi's Front Porch" in North American Review,
New York, 226:93-100, July 1928.
 645

Dr. Ms. Jane Elizabeth Hoyt-Stevens, 193029

29
J. Elizabeth Hoyt-Stevens, M.D. Some Impressions of Mahatma Gandhi or
“Gandhiji”. Concord, N.H., USA: Rumford Press, 1931.
 646

Newton Phelps Stokes, II, 193030

30
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).
 647

The Reverend Dr. John Haynes Holmes, September

12, 193131
Webb Miller, 193132
31
From John Haynes Holmes, My Gandhi (New York: Harper & Row, 1953).
32
From Webb Miller, I Found No Peace: the Journal of a Foreign Correspondent
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936).
 648

Dr. Dodd, 4 September 193433

Irma G. Shapleigh, February 193534

33
CWMG, Volume 58, pages 399-403.
34
“A Day with Gandhi” in Fellowship, Nyack, NY, USA, January 1936.
 649

Swami Paramhansa Yogananda, August 193535

The Reverend Dr. John R. Mott36
35
From Yogananda Paramahansa, Autobiography of a Yogi (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1946), Chapter 44.
36 . 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.
 650

Interview in March 192936

Interview on 13/14 November 193636
Interview in December 193836
 651

The Reverend Dr. Henry Hitt Crane, 25 February

193737
37
CWMG, Volume 64, pages 397-402. Sermon by Dr. Crane on “My Hour with
Mahatma Gandhi” in papers of Henry Hitt Crane at Bentley Historical Library,
University of Michigan. Quoted with permission from the Bentley Historical
Library.
 652

The Reverend Dr. George Sherwood Eddy,

December 192938

38
Sherwood Eddy, The Challenge of the East (New York: Farrar & Rinehart,
1931), pages 27-29, 32-35.
 653

The Reverend Kirby Page, December 192939

39
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 20th Century Prophet for Peace (Nyack, New
York: Fellowship Press, 1975).
 654

Dr. Haridas T. Muzumdar, 12 March 193040

Herbert Adolphus Miller, March 193041

40
CWMG, Volume 43, page 61.
41
The Nation, weekly, New York, 23 April 1930.
 655

A “fair American woman,” 192942

42
Report by Pyarelal in Young India, 28 March 1929; CWMG, Volume 40, pages
62-63.
 656

Negley Farson (Chicago Daily News), 193043

William L. Shirer (Chicago Tribune), 22 February-
11 September 1931444546
James A. Mills (Associated Press of America), 21
March 193147
 657

43
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.
44
William L. Shirer, Gandhi: a Memoir (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979),
pp. 27-39, 157-61; CWMG, Volume 45, pages 331-33.
 658

47
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.
 659

Edward Holton James, 193148

Harold Callender49
48
Edward Holton James, I Tell Everything: The Brown Man’s Burden (A Book on
India) (Geneva: Imprimerie Kundig, c. 1932).
49
Mass Production and Production for the Masses: Report by Mahadev Desai49
 660

The Reverend Dr. Eli Stanley Jones, 1932-34

Interview in 193250
Interview on 4 February 193351
50
CWMG, Volume 65, pages 296-98).
51
Harijan, 11 February 1933 and Mahadev Desai' Diary, Vol. III, pp. 122-26;
CWMG, Volume 53, pages 257-59.
 661

Interview in 193452
American Missionary, 18 April 193453

52
F. Mary Barr, Bapu: Conversations and Correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi
(Bombay: International Book House, 1949), pages 111-13
53
CWMG, Volume 57, page 406.
 662

Margaret Sanger, 3 and 4 December 193554

Aimée Semple McPherson, 193555

54
CWMG, Volume 62, pages 156-60.
55
Aimée Semple McPherson, I View the World (London: Robert Hale and
Company, 1937), pages 178-82.
 663

Ms. Florence Mary Fitch, 16 December 1936 5657

Professor Benjamin E. Mays, 31 December 1936
Professor Mays in his autobiography

56
CWMG, Volume 64, page 141.
57
Article by Ms. Fitch in The Horn Book Magazine, Boston, March 1948.
 664

Report by Mahadev Desai in Harijan58

[Ms. F. Mary Barr recorded the discussion as
follows.59]
58
CWMG, Volume 64, pages 221-25.
59
F. Mary Barr, Bapu: Conversations and Correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi
(Bombay: International Book House, 1949), pages 165-68.
 665

Account by Prof. Benjamin Mays in his

autobiography60
Ms. Paula Lecler, 193661
60
Benjamin Mays, Born to Rebel: an Autobiography (New York: Scribner’s,
1971), pages 155-57.
61
CWMG, Volume 63, page 204-08.
 666

Ms. Lucille McClymonds, 193662

Dr. Channing H. Tobias, January 10, 193763

62
Lucille McClymonds, "We Learned from Gandhi" in The Christian Century, 30
January 1957.
63
CWMG, Volume 64, pages 229-30.
 667

The Reverend R.R. Keithahn, 5 March 193764

William B. Benton, July 193765

64
CWMG, Volume 64, pages 419-20.
65
The New York Times. 25 July 1937; CWMG, Volume 66, pages 127-29.
 668

An American, 193766
Dr. John de Boer, February 193867

66
CWMG, Volume 65, pages 358-59.
67
CWMG, Volume 66, pages 353-56.
 669

North American Newspaper Alliance, May 193868

68
New York Times, 5 June 1938. Accessed on 15 April 2016 at
http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/06/05/96826924.html?pageN
umber=35
 670

Ms. Celestine Smith, December 193869

Dr. Gregg Sinclair, December 193870
69
From: Pyarelal "Weekly Letter" in Harijan, 31 December 1938; CWMG,
Volume 68, page 211.
67 Pyarelal, "From Far Off Hawaii" in Harijan, 14 January 1939.
 671

John Gunther, 193871

David Hunter, 193872

71
Ken Cuthbertson, Inside: The Biography of John Gunther (Chicago: Bonus
Books, Inc. 1992), pages 166-67.
72
New York Times, 15 May 1938.
 672

Gobind Bihari Lal (International News Service), 16

March 193973

73
CWMG, Volume 69, pages 62-63.
 673

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

March 193974

74
New York Times, 22 March 1939. Accessed on 15 April 2016 at
http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1939/03/22/94693980.html?pageN
umber=1.
 674

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

May 193975

75
CWMG, Volume 69, pages 278-80.
 675

The Reverend Jay Holmes Smith, 1 February

194076
United Press of America, 16 March 194077
76
CWMG, Volume 71, pages 168-70.
77
New York Times, 17 March 1940. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-
free/pdf?res=940DE6DE1730E43ABC4F52DFB566838B659EDE.
 676

New York Times, before 22 April 194078

An American Visitor, June 194079
Francis G. Hickman, 17 September 194080
78
CWMG, Volume 72, pages 10-12.
79
CWMG, Volume 72, pages 206-07.
80
CWMG, Volume 73, pages 27-30
 677

The Reverend Ralph T. Templin, 194081

81
From Ralph Templin, "Gandhi Belongs to Tomorrow" in The Christian
Century, 18 February 1948. Reproduced in Norman Cousins (ed.) Profiles of
Gandhi.
 678

The Reverend Harold E. Fey, 194082

82
Harold E. Fey, "Gandhi Faces the Storm" in The Christian Century, Chicago, 24
July 1940.
 679

James E. McEldowney83
Louis Fischer, 4-9 June 1942

83
James E. McEldowney, Gateway to India: Children’s Stories.
Fromhttp://www.people.virginia.edu/~pm9k/jem/words/gandhi.html, accessed on 3
February 2014.
 680

W.W. Chaplin (International News Service)

and Jack Belden (Life and Time), 6 June 1942
Preston Grover (Associated Press of America), 10
June 194284
84
CWMG, Volume 76, pages 207-12.
 681

Edgar Snow (Saturday Evening Post), 14 July

194285

85
Edgar Snow, Glory and Bondage (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1945), pages
45-46.
 682

Archibald T. Steele (Chicago Daily News), 15

July 194286
Dr. John, 194287

86
CWMG, Volume 76, pages 301-02.
87
CWMG, Volume 75, page 292.
 683

William E. Fischer (Life), 194288

James G. Vail, June 27, 194489

88
William E. Fisher, "Gandhi at Home" in Life, Chicago, 17 August 1942.
89
From "We have Known Gandhi" in Asia and the Americas, New York, October
1944.
 684

Robert Coniston (Collier’s), before 25 April 194590

Deton J. Brooks (Chicago Defender), June 194591

90
CWMG, Volume 79, pages 421-24.
91
The Chicago Defender, 16 June 1945
 685

Preston Grover (Associated Press of America), 29

June 194592

92
CWMG, Volume 80, pages 382-84.
 686

Frank E. Bolden (National Negro Press

Association), June or July 194593
An American Journalist, 1 December 194594
93
Frank E. Bolden, "Meet the Great Soul" in The Afro-American, Baltimore, 18
August 1945.
94
CWMG, Volume 82, page 148
 687

Harold Leventhal, December 194595

Herbert Hoover, April 24, 194696

95
Michael Kleff, "Speaker of the (Carnegie) Hall," at www.
woodyguthrie.org/harold.htm, accessed on 15 April 2016.
96
From: Norman Cousins (ed.), Profiles of Gandhi.
 688

The following account is from Ambassador Hugh

Gibson, a career diplomat, who accompanied Mr.
Hoover on this mission.
Louis Fischer, 26 June 194697
97
CWMG, Volume 84, page 377.
 689

Louis Fischer, 17 July 194698

Louis Fischer, 18 July 194699

98 98
CWMG, Volume 85, pages 7-11, and Appendix I.
99 99
CWMG, Volume 85, pages 16-18.
 690

George E. Jones (New York Times), 21 September,

1946100

100 100
New York Times, 22 September 1946. Accessed on 15 April 2016 at
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-
free/pdf?res=9503E7D81538E532A25751C2A96F9C946793D6CF
 691

An American Journalist, before 24 September

1946101

101
CWMG, Volume 85, pages 368-70.
 692

Andrew Freeman, New Delhi, 1946102 103

102
Pyarelal, “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, 1956), page 798.
103
Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi – The Last Phase, Volume II, pages 798-99.
 693

An American Visitor, June 1940104

Preston Grover (Associated Press of America),
21 October 1946105

104
CWMG, Volume 72, pages 206-07.
105
CWMG, Volume 86, pages 8-11.
 694

Associated Press of America, 6 November 1946106

Harold Ehrensperger, 1946107

106
CWMG, Volume 86, pages 87-88.
107
Fellowship, Nyack, New York, January 1947.
 695

An American Pacifist, July 1947108

William Stuart Nelson, August 1947109

108
CWMG, Volume 85, page 437.
109
CWMG, Volume 89, pages 62-63.
 696

Ronald Stead (Christian Science Monitor), before 2

November 1947110
Vincent Sheean, 27/28 January 1948

110
CWMG, Volume 89, pages 456-57.
 697

Account by Pyarelal111
Account by Vincent Sheean112

111
CWMG, Volume 90, pages 510-12.
112
Vincent Sheean, Lead, Kindly Light (New York: Random House, 1949), pages
182-99.
 698

Edgar Snow (Saturday Evening Post), January

1948113

113
From Edgar Snow, "The Message of Gandhi" in Saturday Evening Post,
Philadelphia, 27 March 1948.
 699

Margaret Bourke-White, January 1948114

114
From Margaret Bourke-White, Portrait of Myself (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1963). Extract reprinted in Norman Cousins (ed.), Profiles of Gandhi.
700