time and maybe I would return when the Congress Working Committee assembled at Wardha to act upon his decision to launch the civil disobedience campaign. “It will meet within a fortnight,” Gandhi informed me. “But come back whenever you like.” Then he asked me whether I had slept well in Sevagram. I replied that I had slept better than I had for many years.
“It is good to sleep under the stars,” he said. “The best thing. But I suppose,” he added, “that would be impossible in Russia.” I told him it was very hot in some parts of Russia.
“Oh,” he exclaimed, “I thought it was always cold in Russia.”
I sat in the guest house with Kurshed and Nehru. Both had been in Indian prisons many times. I got them to talk about life in prison. They said that important leaders received good accommodations and that Gandhi was always well treated and was able to obtain the food he wished. Also Gandhi’s correspondence with people outside jail was not interfered with. Others, however, could not communicate freely with free people. Members of Congress who were in prison never tried to escape, Nehru explained, because Congress members deliberately courted arrest by openly practicing civil disobedience. There was nothing underground or secret in any one of Gandhi’s campaigns of resistance to the British raj. Congress first
