A Week with Gandhi/Comments

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New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, pages 114–138

4165143A Week with Gandhi — CommentsLouis Fischer

AFTER I had left his village, Gandhi sent me a letter for President Roosevelt. In a handwritten note accompanying this letter, Gandhi wrote: “If it does not commend itself to you, you may tear it to pieces. If it is something else you want, you may tell me.” Gandhi has little vanity.

Gandhi never hesitates to admit error, and by preference he does so publicly. In May, 1942, as a consequence of the failure of Sir Stafford Cripps’s mission, Gandhi announced that “The British Must Go.” They must withdraw their troops, he said, or else he would start a campaign of civil dis obedience. In June, however, he altered this demand. “There was obviously a gap in my first writing,” he confessed in an article Harijan, his weekly magazine. “I filled it in as soon as it was discovered by one of my numerous interviewers. Non-violence demands the strictest honesty, cost what it may. The public have therefore to suffer my weakness, if weakness it be. I could not be guilty of asking the Allies to take a step which would involve certain defeat… Abrupt withdrawals of the Allied troops might result in Japan’s occupation of India and China’s sure fall. I had not the remotest idea of any such catastrophe resulting from my action. Therefore, I feel that if, in spite of the acceptance of my proposal [to liberate India] it is deemed necessary by the Allies to remain in India to prevent Japanese occupation, they should do so…”

The ordinary politician, when he seeks office or the adoption of his policy, will promise you peace and prosperity, lower taxes, higher profits—in fact, the moon and the stars, if you support him. Gandhi’s life goal is freedom for his country. He ought, therefore, to assure England and the world that if this end-all of his career is granted every thing will be well in India. Instead he says: “I am not sure that there will be order after the British leave. There could be chaos. I have said: ‘Let the British go in an orderly fashion and leave India to God!’ You may not like such unrealistic language. Then call it anarchy. That is the worst that can happen. But there may not be anarchy. We will try to prevent it.” Such a statement, however, enables Gandhi’s critics to say, “Gandhi predicts chaos if the British leave.”

Gandhi asserts that when the British transfer power to Indians the Indian army is to be disbanded. But a moment earlier he has said: “Naturally there will be no prohibition against any Indian giving his own personal help by way of being a recruit or/and of giving financial aid.” And at another time, (in Harijan, August 6, 1942) he wrote: “Cannot a limitless number of soldiers be trained out of India’s millions? Would they not make as good fighting material as any in the world?” What does it all mean? Is Gandhi simply contradicting himself? No. He wants to disband the Indian army which consists of men who have “volunteered” because they were hungry and expected to eat well as soldiers or who were impressed into the services. But then India can recruit its own national army. This shows, however, with what ease Gandhi can be mischievously misquoted out of context.

Part of the pleasure of intimate intellectual contact with Gandhi is that he really opens his mind and allows the interviewer to see how the machine inside works. When most people talk they try to bring their ideas out in final perfect form so that they are least exposed to attack. Not so with Gandhi. He gives immediate expression to each step in his thinking. It is as though a writer were to publish the first draft of his story, and then the second draft, and ultimately third and last draft. Readers might protest, and claim that the plot had been changed, that the popular lover had been transformed into a villain, and so forth. Gandhi would not listen to such protests. He would say, ‘Yes, I changed my mind.’ Actually, he thinks aloud, and the entire process is for the record. This confuses some people and impels others to say he contradicts himself, or that he is a hypocrite. Gandhi does not care. Maybe he is too old and impersonal and not of this world to bother about the impression he makes. Many Indians and Englishmen in India, when I interviewed them, cautioned me that their words were not for publication. Gandhi never worried about what I would write about him or how I would quote him. He did not talk at me; he talked to me. I spent many hours with Mo hammed Ali Jinnah, the President of the Moslem League of India. He is a brilliant parliamentarian, a skilled debater, and an incorruptible politician. But he talked at me. He was trying to convince me. When I put a question to him I felt as though it had turned on a phonograph record. I had heard it all before or could have read it in the literature he gave me. But when I asked Gandhi something I felt that I had started a creative process. I could see and hear his mind work. With Jinnah I could only hear the needle scratch the phonograph record. Jinnah gave me nothing but his conclusions. But I could follow Gandhi as he moved to a conclusion. He is, therefore, much more exciting than Jinnah. If you strike right with Gandhi you open a new pocket of thought. An interview with him is a voyage of discovery, and he himself is sometime surprised at the things he says. His secretaries, who sat with us as he spoke, were often surprised at the novelty of his assertions. That is why I learned so much from Gandhi and so much about Gandhi. He did not merely give me fact and opinions. He revealed himself. He also supplied one with ammunition against himself. Gandhi did not have to tell me, for instance, that he had ascribed qualities to his weekly day of silence which he knew it did not possess. But that is Gandhi. His brain has no blue pencil; he doesn’t censor himself. This makes him a baffling or even irritating person to some politicians. He says, for instance, that if he had the opportunity, he would go to Japan and try to end the war. He knows, and immediately adds, that he would never get the opportunity to go, and if he went, Japan would not make peace. Then why did he say he would go to Japan? Because he thought it. As a pacifist he would really like to bring about a cessation of hostilities. The fact that this hope is impracticable is for Gandhi not reason not to mention it.

Gandhi sometimes takes delight in expounding ideas which are impractical anachronisms. He scoffs at modern inventions. He is aware that he cannot turn back the clock. He cannot abolish the automobile. But he can make fun of it. He asserts that a federal administration is not necessarily. If you point out the difficulties that would arise in the absence of a federal administration, he is unconvinced. Then you argue further and he finally says, “I know that despite my personal views there will be a central administration.” This is a characteristic Gandhi cycle: He enunciates a principle, defends it, and ultimately admits that it is unworkable. His mind is malleable and fluid. There is something of the dictator in him when he wants action. Then he crushes opposition by the weight of his logic and the strength of his popular following. But there is nothing of the dictator in his thinking. A dictator can never admit he is wrong. Gandhi can; he often does.

Gandhi is very much of a Hindu. The Hindu religion is a tolerant and sponge-like religion. Hindus believe in one God. Some also believe in Christ. Some are atheists; they claim that Hinduism is a code of life independent of a deity. Some pray to idols. Some worship mountains and rivers and gods who were once men and women; they see no conflict between such opposites as monotheism and idolatry. “If the Niagara Falls were in India,” an Indian said to me, “they would be a god.” The Mt. Olympus of Hinduism is densely populated, but many Hindus are sure that there is a place reserved in it for Mahatma Gandhi. The general Indian feeling about Gandhi is that he has devoted his life to the people. He lives like the people and shares their primitive hardships and poverty. He has no money and no property. He wants only one thing—a free India. And since so many millions of Indians want the same thing, Gandhi has become the symbol of a nation’s yearning.

Everywhere in India, whenever an Indian criticized the British I would insist that he explain to me why he was anti-British. I said to an Indian Moslem who is a high civil servant in the British government, “Why are so many Indians anti-British?”

“Why shouldn’t we be?” he exclaimed. “That is the more appropriate question.” No nation likes the foreign nation which rules it, he added.

Gandhi has devoted Moslem followers and Hindu followers, and Parsis and Untouchables who believe in him because he, more than any other man, has striven for decades to free his country. Many of them differ with Gandhi on numerous questions. There are Moslems who accuse him of wanting to establish Hindu rule. But few deny the constancy of his labors for national redemption. In modern times, the urge towards nation hood has been elemental, natural, and instinctive. Gandhi is the most forceful Indian exponent of this urge.

Gandhi has the conviction that he can, sitting in his hut at Sevagram, reading his correspondence, and listening to the Indians who visit him, sense the sentiment and hear the prayers of the Indian masses. He is persuaded that he knows what they want and is, therefore, entitled to act for them. Gandhi is immersed in India. He identifies him self with India. All his antennae are out to catch the voice of India. He hears it. He is sure he interprets it correctly. Such a certainty is often the motive power and guiding light of leaders. Gandhi may have doubts about his views on economics and sociology. He will consent to modify methods and the time-table. But he is undeviating, unyielding and uncompromising on the central issue of independence. Indians tell you Gandhi was born to achieve independence. He is ready to die for it. Sacrifice and renunciation rank very high in the Indian calendar of virtues.

Gandhi’s wisdom, his shrewdness, and his profound religiousness in a nation that is the most religious nation in the world further explain his preeminence. But his strongest popular appeal is his desire for national freedom and the impatient passion with which he drives towards that goal. I think the yearning for India’s independence takes precedence in him over everything else, even over his belief in non-violence. At least, he can work on terms of the friendliest cooperation with men like Nehru, Azad, and Rajagopalachari who, he knows, are not pacifists, but he could not work with enemies of Indian freedom.

In his pursuit of independence there is a musical harmony between Gandhi and millions of Indians. Great leaders must have this harmony; it is the source of their greatness. Winston Churchill has manifested it in many of his speeches. He says brilliantly what so many plain English citizens say crudely to their neighbors or say to themselves at night. You follow a leader who is you in a better edition. Gandhi is father and brother to millions of semi-naked, half-starved, not-too-intellectual peasants and workingmen who want to attain dignity and prosperity through national effort. He is a chip of their block. He also answers the prayers of innumerable highly cultured Indians and mighty industrialists who resent the foreign yoke or even the mere presence of an outside overlord.

Gandhi’s life is single-tracked; he wants a free India. That, too, is characteristic of great men. Churchill’s one absorbing purpose is the preservation of Britain as a first-class power. Lenin’s was the lifting of Russia out of the feudal mire. Lincoln’s was union. Hitler’s is world conquest. A big man is all of one piece like good sculpture.