THE PHOTOGRAPHS taken yesterday by Kano Gandhi, the Mahatma’s nephew, did not turn out because the films were out of date, and so I shaved again early this morning and walked over to Gandhi. I again found him scooping mango sauce out of a deep glass while his wife fanned him. He asked me how I had slept. I told him I had slept very well, and asked how he had slept. He said he usually sleeps from 9:30 to 4:30.
“Without interruption?” I asked.
“No,” he replied, “with two or three very brief interruptions. But I have no trouble falling asleep again. And then I have half an hour’s sleep every afternoon.” I told him that Churchill did the same. “I hear,” he said, “that this is becoming more and more customary in Europe. Especially in old age it is very important.” I told him that it had been reported that Roosevelt falls asleep the moment he gets into bed. Gandhi inquired about Roosevelt’s health and then asked me to describe Mrs. Roosevelt to him. “Then she has an influence on American politics?” he asked. I tried to explain the progress in social legislation, trade union organization, and social thinking which had taken place under the New Deal. I also stressed the fact that the American government is financing foreign governments and financing domestic war industries. I compared that with the private financing of foreign governments and of American industry during the first World War.
“What about the Negroes?” Gandhi asked.
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.
“As you know,” he answered, “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. “Oh, yes,” he replied, “but it is still very bad.” Kurshed came over and said something in Hindustani which made him laugh. I asked what it was, and she told me she had said, “I bow to your feet.” I said it was like the men in Vienna who say, “I kiss your hand,” but don’t do it. Gandhi laughed. Two young boys appeared as he stood up, and they wriggled into position so that he would lean on them during his walk. There is always quite a competition for this honor. One evening a girl came out from the village to meet our group as we returned from the walk, and she skillfully maneuvered herself to Gandhi’s side so that the girl who had been there was forced to surrender her place.
I returned to the subject of untouchability as soon as we had started on the morning promenade. I said, “Very thoughtful and otherwise progressive people, for instance Varadachariar [a member of the Supreme Court of India who is a high-caste Brahmin] 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?” I asked.
“Of course,” he answered quickly. “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 an other. 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.”
“This is obviously another form of man’s eternal striving for immortality,” I ventured. “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.”
“I have no fear of death,” Gandhi said with emphasis. “I would regard it with relief and satisfaction. But it is impossible for me to think that that is the end. I have no proof. People have tried to demonstrate that the soul of a dead man finds a new home. I do not think this is capable of proof. But I believe it.”
And that was that. I knew this was not a subject for argument, but I felt like stating my view again, so I said, “I think we all seek immortality, only some believe they live in their children or their works and some believe they live in transmuted form in animals, or otherwise. Some men live longer because their works last longer, but I believe that faith in one’s immortality, if it is distinct from one’s acts, is really fear of death and an at tempt to find comfort in an illusion.” Gandhi thereupon reiterated his view with much passion and in fine-flowing English prose; he always spoke a rich, fluent English with a British university accent.
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 Moslems, and that they were not much interested in religion.
“The first is correct,” he agreed. “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 practice 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 favorite 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.” By this time we had returned to Gandhi’s hut and I bade him farewell.
Narendra Dev, the Socialist leader who lives in an alcove next to Gandhi’s room, and Aryanaikam, the huge Ceylonese, came to the guest house again this morning and stayed for a long, heated discussion on Fascism and imperialism. They said they continually encountered British Fascism in India, but had not felt and didn’t know much about German Fascism. Yes, the intellectuals knew how dreadful the Nazis were, but the people knew nothing about it. The people were most impressed by the sinking of the “Prince of Wales” and the “Repulse”; the British Navy had always been the real power behind British rule in India. All of Britain’s military reverses in the Far East had deeply impressed the people. Aryanaikam said Japanese suicide pilots flew their planes straight into the British battleships, but the British were incapable of such acts. I told him that the British had suicide pilots too. He replied he had never heard of them. I recalled the Swordfish airmen of the R. A. F. who struck at the “Gneisenau” and the “Scharnhorst,” the two German warships which had recently made a successful dash through the English Channel. Those pilots, I explained, did not hesitate to go on a death errand any more than the Japanese did. All the armed forces of the world had their heroes, I said, and there was no indication that the young fighting men of the democracies were decadent.
At the end of our conversation I summed up by suggesting that Indian anti-Fascists had to fight on two fronts, against the Axis powers and against British imperialism. My visitors, however, argued that they could not fight on one front, let alone two. “We have no arms,” Dev said, “so we cannot fight on the anti-Japanese front. The British deliberately keep us unarmed. Moreover it is difficult to fight on the side of the British who hold us down, who refuse to arm us, and who refuse to make us free.”
Dr. Das’s niece has a cute little boy of six who plays around the guest house. He speaks a few words of English. I asked him what language he spoke with his playmates. He said he spoke Bengali. He also can talk Hindi and Gujarati. Most of the little children in the ashram speak two or three languages.
Shortly after Dev and Aryanaikan left, I received a visit from Rajah, a Hindu married to a French woman. He had spent many years in France, and his French was even better than his English. He has a handsome Hollywood face with long sideburns and large, arched eyebrows over hanging burning black eyes. He spoke of the rottenness of France. He was spending several months at the ashram to renew his spirit. He had been raised among Moslems in India and had attended a Moslem school. He said the Moslems were more virile than the Hindus and more dynamic, more revolutionary—half the Indian Communist Party, he said, is Moslem. India’s best poets are Moslem. The Hindus, he said, are docile and less imaginative. I asked why, since there was no racial difference between Hindus and Moslems, there could be such a divergence of personal characteristics. “Is it food?” I asked. He attributed it to a different outlook on life. The Moslems have a real joie de vivre. It wasn’t food. In north India many Hindus eat meat. Moslems do not eat pork, but eat beef. “The Hindu,” he said, “is contemplative, has a good memory, is a good businessman. But if you want to have a good time and eat well and dance and swim,” he advised me, “find a Moslem.”
At lunch, Gandhi was in a very jolly mood. He came into the mess hall and made eyes at the two enchanting boys, aged about two and three, who sat on the floor near the entrance patiently waiting for their food. Before he sat down, Gandhi joked with every person he passed and brought them to laughter or smiles. After we had started eating he asked me whether I knew Dr. Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan. I said I knew the Kellogg Food Company, but not Dr. Kellogg. Gandhi recalled having corresponded with Dr. Kellogg about dietary questions. “But it often happens,” Gandhi said, “that men are better known abroad than at home. There was a dietician named Kuhne in Leipzig whose books had been translated many years ago from German into Indian languages, and had gone into hundreds of editions. But when I sent a friend to look up Kuhne in Leipzig nobody knew about him and it was only after considerable difficulty that the man’s son was discovered. Kuhne himself had died.”
Gandhi asked me whether I got enough food at the ashram. I said I was never hungry, but that I missed variety in the diet, and that the eye and the sense of taste were very important in eating. “All the meals I have had here have been exactly alike in every detail,” I protested. “I am going to attack you publicly as a cook.”
Just then Jawaharlal Nehru, dressed in white homespun, a beautiful, smiling figure, entered the dining hall. One could immediately see how much everybody loved him. He sat down on the ground next to me and started eating his food with his fingers, Indian-fashion. I could not help thinking back to a meal we took together in one of the fashionable restaurants of Paris.
Nehru had had a short talk with Gandhi before lunch. After a moment, Gandhi turned to me and said that since he wanted to be able to talk to Jawaharlal tomorrow, Monday, he had planned to change his day of silence and, instead of observing it all day Monday, to go into silence at noon today. But since that would have deprived me of my regular hourly interview this afternoon, he would delay the beginning of the silence until 2:40 this after noon and talk to me from 1:30 to 2:30.
After lunch Nehru and I sat on two beds in the guest house where he too was staying and talked about everything on earth for about an hour. In one connection he said, “India contains all that is disgusting and all that is noble. You take your choice.”
“No,” I said, “you take both.”
Nehru left me at about twelve-thirty for an hour’s talk with Gandhi. When I arrived at Gandhi’s hut for my interview, Nehru was there on the floor. He looked unhappy. I sat down next to him. Gandhi turned to me and invited questions with the customary “now?”
I began the interview by commenting on the fact that whereas British law and British political practice required a high centralization of power in Parliament and the Crown, the American political concept was based on the principle of federation. “Don’t you think,” I asked, “that in view of the diversities of India you will need here a federation which will satisfy the Princes and the Moslems?”
“I am in no position,” he confessed, “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 centralization. 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.”
“No,” I differed, “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.”
“I do not want to be independent like China,” he said with great stress. “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 Chiang. “Very well,” he replied.
“Only you did not understand him,” I smiled, “and he did not understand you.”
“I found him inscrutable,” Gandhi admitted. “Maybe it was the matter of language. We spoke through Madame Chiang. But I do not think it was only that.”
“Of course China is not completely free,” I said, reverting to the subject, “but freedom does not come in a day. Through this war, if we win it, China will become free. We may be approaching the Asiatic century. India and China may shape a great deal of history in the coming decades. I see no sign, however, that the British realize this. They will not go as you ask. If they could not save themselves by their arms in Singapore and Malay, they will not save themselves by their brains in India.”
“I would like you to understand that I am not criticizing China,” he affirmed. “Only I wanted to emphasize that I do not wish to imitate China. I do not want India to be in the same predicament as China. That is why I am saying I do not want British and American soldiers here. I do not want Japanese or German soldiers here. The Japanese broadcast every day that they do not intend to keep India—they only propose to help us win our freedom. I do not welcome their sympathy or help. I know they are not philanthropists. I want for India a respite from all foreign domination. I have become impatient. I cannot wait any longer. Our condition is worse than China’s or Persia’s. I may not be able to convince Congress. Men who have held office in Congress may not rise to the occasion. [Gandhi looked pointedly at Nehru when he said this.] 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. [It seemed to me he was talking to Nehru although directing his words to me, and it was obvious that Gandhi and Nehru had not seen eye to eye in their discussion today.] 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 your self 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 glamor, brilliance, culture, and armed strength of American and British civilization. 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.”
“Yes,” I said, after a pause during which I tried to separate what was meant for me and what for Nehru, “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?”
“You see,” Gandhi began, “the center 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,” Gandhi continued, “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 cooperation—not cooperation induced by Nazi methods. Voluntary cooperation will produce real freedom and a new order vastly superior to the new order in Soviet Russia. Some say there is ruthlessness in Russia but that it is exercised for the lowest and the poorest and is good for that reason. For me it has very little good in it. Some day this ruthlessness will create an anarchy worse than we have ever 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 Moghuls 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 Moslem League will also have an effective influence.”
“I would like you to pursue this idea of the symbolic seven hundred thousand dollars,” I suggested. “What will the villages do with the dollar that has come back to them from the imperial bank of England?” I asked.
“One thing will happen,” Gandhi asserted. “To-day 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.”
“A peasant buries his money in the ground,” I suggested.
“They will not bury their dollars in the ground,” Gandhi said, “because they will have to live. They will go back to the bank, their own bank, and utilize it under their direction for purposes they think best. They may then build wind mills 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.”
“The state, I imagine,” I said, “will then build more industries and develop the country industrially.”
“You must visualize a central government without the British Army,” Gandhi said. “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.”
“I agree,” I said. “Ten years ago I might not have agreed, but after my experiences in Russia and elsewhere I feel that the greatest danger the world faces is the emergence of the all-powerful state which makes individual freedom impossible. Apparently, capitalist economics have made it necessary for the state to intervene more and more in economic affairs. That gives the state more power. The next generation’s real problem will be to devise checks and balances on such a state. One question is: Can we safeguard personal liberty in a country where the government is all-powerful? Another question is: Will nations cooperate inside an international organization, or will we reject internationalism and have some more wars?”
“My question would be,” Gandhi said, “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 us 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.”
“I am absolutely certain,” I agreed, “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.”
“You must say that to America,” Gandhi urged.
“I will say it,” I declared, “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. [They laughed.] 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 Asia. With American help they may understand tomorrow.”
“Therefore it is,” Gandhi said, “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 popularize 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 to day I say, ‘If you must use India as a base lest some one else appropriate it, use it, and stay here on honorable 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.”
“If the British,” I asked, “under pressure, were to accept your offer, how would you launch your republic of seven hundred thousand villages?”
“I cannot give you a concrete plan,” Gandhi said. “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.”
“Well,” I said, “I am not so completely cast-iron as not to understand homespun cotton.”
“But you do not do not understand vegetables,” Gandhi said.
“I do not like the same vegetables every day for lunch and dinner.” He laughed and we all laughed and I got up and left.
For three hours this afternoon Nehru and I sat in the one room of the guest house, he squatting on the bed, I on our single chair, and discussed human happiness, culture, how society could be improved so that men might lead honest lives, America, Russia, India, and so on. He is not as pro-Soviet as he used to be. But he is very pro-Chinese and has been talking to Gandhi today about China. There will be a give and take between them, and Gandhi will win Nehru over to the idea of a civil disobedience movement. Nehru had doubts when he came here. He was waiting for President Roosevelt to intervene again in the Indian situation and induce the British to compromise. But with the British adamantly refusing to negotiate for a war time settlement of urgent Indian problems, Gandhi’s logic of compulsion through non-violence becomes irresistible to an Indian nationalist like Nehru.
I urged Nehru to go to America and talk with President Roosevelt. I told him that Americans spontaneously react in favor of any nation’s desire for independence and that, furthermore, America’s economic interests in India were different from those of Britain.
We also discussed the Hindu religion. Nehru said that Hinduism has no fundamentalism and that no Hindu therefore can be punished or ex-communicated for being unorthodox. “You can even be a Hindu and an atheist,” he said. “As Gandhi said this morning, ‘You don’t cease being a Hindu because you do not believe in caste or in untouchability.’ In like manner, you can be a religious Hindu even if you hang Christ’s picture on your wall and believe in his precepts.”