A Week with Gandhi/June 6, 1942
I rose at five, shaved, and dressed in the pants of the blue-striped pajama suit I had bought in London and in the home-spun white khadi blouse which Aryanaikam loaned me. It reached to my knees. Breakfast of mangoes, tea, and bread. Then I walked over to Gandhi’s hut. He was sitting on his bed outside and ladling spoonfuls of mango from a deep tumbler. His wife fanned him. He wore only a loincloth.
He greeted me with an “Oh” and commented on my costume. I said, “How do you like this combination of Piccadilly and khadi?”
He said it looked fine. “You must have had a special size made for you,” he added. I told him I had borrowed it from Aryanaikam. Gandhi said, “You know he studied at Columbia University in America.” I said I knew. After a pause, I asked him whether he had seen my questions. He said, “Yes, I will tackle them this morning.”
Soon after we started on the morning walk, I asked him what was the theory behind his weekly day of silence. “What do you mean by theory?” he asked.
“I mean the principle, the motivation,” I replied.
He smiled. “It happened when I was being torn to pieces,” he began. “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.”
We walked on. He leaned his hand on a young woman who worked in the ashram kitchen. “Silence is very relaxing,” he mused. “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 was walking next to Gandhi but the girl from the kitchen had interposed a big black umbrella between us to keep the sun off Gandhi. He wore no cloth on his chest or head. Dr. Das came up and shaded Gandhi with an umbrella from the other side. At times, Dr. Das hurried ahead and removed long bamboo sticks from the road and threw them into the fields.
I asked Gandhi for his opinion about the proposals of C. Rajagopalachari, who had participated, as Congress representative, in the negotiations with Sir Stafford Cripps in April. Rajaji, as the Indians call him, is one of the wisest men in India, an old friend and associate of Gandhi’s, and the father of the wife of Gandhi’s youngest son, Devadas. Ever since the failure of the Cripps proposals, Rajaji had been making many speeches urging the Congress Party and the Moslem League to get together on the basis of a Congress acceptance of Pakistan—a separate Moslem state. When I asked Gandhi about Rajaji’s program, he said, “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.”
“Isn’t the essence of his scheme,” I asked, “that the Hindus and Moslems collaborate and in common work perhaps discover the technique of peaceful cooperation?”
“Yes,” Gandhi replied, “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 Moslems and Hindus apart in order to facilitate the domination of India.”
I told Gandhi I had seen that Minto quotation. “This has been the principle of British rule ever since,” Gandhi emphasized.
“I have been told,” I said, “that when Congress ministries were in office in the provinces, during 1937, 1938, and 1939, they discriminated against Moslems.”
“The British governors of those provinces have officially testified that that is not so,” Gandhi asserted sharply.
“But isn’t it a fact,” I persisted, “that in the United Provinces, Congress and the Moslems entered into an electoral pact because Congress was not sure of winning, that, then, Congress won a sweeping victory and refused to form a coalition with the Moslems?”
“No,” Gandhi contradicted. “There were four Moslem ministers in the United Provinces government formed by Congress. There were no representatives of the Moslem League, but there were Moslems. No. We have always tried to collaborate with Moslems. It is said that the Maulana [Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, President of the Congress, is a Moslem scholar) 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 Moslems more than ever. Thanks to the British government, the divergence between the two communities has been widened.”
“It was sad,” I volunteered, "that Congress leaders and Moslem Leaguers came to New Delhi to talk to Cripps, and talked to Cripps but did not talk to one another.”
“It was not only sad,” Gandhi agreed, “it was disgraceful. But it was the fault of the Moslem League. Shortly after this war broke out, we were summoned to meet the Viceroy at New Delhi. Rajendra Prasad [a member of the Congress Working Committee] and I went to speak for Congress, and Mr. Jinnah for the Moslem 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 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.”
By this time, we had returned to Gandhi’s house. He stopped outside. I leaned against one of the bamboo supports of the house to rest, but Gandhi carried on full of pep. “In actual life,” he insisted, “ it is impossible to separate us into two nations. We are not two nations. Every Moslem will have a Hindu name if he goes back far enough in his family history. Every Moslem 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 Moslems. In Madras, Hindus and Moslems 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.”
“Caroe [the Viceroy’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs who worked for many years as a British official in the Punjab] and Jenkins [a high British official in the Department of Supplies],” I said, “told me that there were no communal differences in the villages, and I heard from others too that the relations between the two religious communities are peaceful in the villages. If that is so, that is very important because India is ninety per cent village.”
“It is so,” Gandhi stated, “and that of course proves that the people are not divided. It proves that the politicians divide us.”
I told Gandhi that the Moslem bartender in my hotel in New Delhi said to me—although he is a member of the Moslem League and an advocate of Pakistan—that the communal troubles always started where Moslems were a minority and never where the Hindus were a minority. “Fischer,” Gandhi explained, “you have been here only for a short time. You cannot study everything. But if you make any investigations and find that we are wrong or guilty, please say so in a loud voice.”
He had walked me over to a long building made of bamboo. “These are my patients,” he said. He stopped at a bed on which a woman was sitting. She seemed ill. Gandhi talked to her for about five minutes and she laughed and he laughed all the time. “She is one of my best patients,” Gandhi declared.
Dr. Das was with us. I said, in order to provoke Gandhi, “Wouldn’t it be better to leave her to the doctor?”
“No,” Gandhi replied, “there is much quackery in all this.” Then he went into a room which was empty but for a red wooden cradle. The mother took the baby out of the cradle as Gandhi entered. He smacked the baby’s cheeks as he said, “She is not my patient, she is my relaxation.” The baby reacted gleefully and he smacked and pinched it some more. Gandhi said, “This baby’s father was a sergeant in the British Army stationed at the Northwest Frontier. He was ordered to shoot at Indians. He refused and was sentenced to sixteen years’ imprisonment. He served six years, but there were so many petitions for his liberation that he was released two years ago. Now he lives here with us.” We walked back to Gandhi’s house, and I left him.
On my way home I stopped at the house opposite mine where one of Gandhi’s secretaries lives. During my interviews with Gandhi, he has sat nearest Gandhi. He is short and dark with an in tense face. He has worked with Gandhi for twenty-four years. I asked him what he thought of Gandhi’s statements to me yesterday about allowing the British to remain in India. He said it was very interesting “and very new and much of a shock. I do not believe that any good can come of war. We must not collaborate in any war.” He repeated these statements several times. This was frank criticism of his saintly chief. It did not indicate that Gandhi’s intimate associates were terrorized by him. I later asked the name of this secretary. It is Kishorlal Ghaneshyamlal Masruwala. The middle name is the name of a god.
I typed in the tub until lunchtime.
At lunch Gandhi said, “Fischer, give me your bowl and I will give you some vegetables.” I told him I had eaten the mess of squash and spinach four times in two days and had no desire for more. He said, “You don’t like vegetables?”
“I don’t like the taste of these vegetables,” I replied.
“Ah,” he exclaimed, “you must add plenty of salt and lemon.”
“You want me to kill the taste,” I suggested. “No,” he replied laughingly, “enrich the taste.”
“You are so non-violent,” I said. “You wouldn’t even kill a taste.”
“If that were the only thing men killed, I wouldn’t mind,” he replied.
I perspired and wiped my face and neck with a handkerchief. I turned to Gandhi and said, “Next time I am in India…” He was chewing and didn’t seem to pay any attention, so I stopped.
Without turning his head to me, Gandhi said, “Yes, the next time you are in India…?”
“You either ought to have air-conditioning in Sevagram,” I continued, “or live in the Viceroy’s palace.”
“All right,” he said as though he meant it.
I slept after lunch, then recorded my morning talk with Gandhi and later read from the lengthy report of the Simon Indian Statutory Commission, which was presented to Parliament in May, 1930. On page 59 of Volume I, this passage occurs: “There is among the Hindu minority in Sind a feeling that the independence of the [British] Commissioner is too great, while on the Muhammadan side there is a well-known cry for separation from Bombay. This demand has gathered strength not so much in the homes of the people or among the Muhammadan cultivators of Sind, as among the leaders of Muhammadan thought all over India to whom the idea of a new Moslem province, contiguous to the predominantly Moslem areas of Baluchistan, the Northwest Frontier Province, and the Punjab, naturally appeals as offering a stronghold against the fear of Hindu domination.”
I began my interview with Gandhi this afternoon by reading this passage to him. I said it confirmed his statement to me this morning that the Moslem people are much less interested in separatism than their leaders.
“Of course,” he acquiesced.
“But,” I went on, “how real are the fears of the Moslem leaders? Perhaps they understand better than the Moslem masses that the Hindus desire to dominate. Can you say quite objectively that the Hindus have not tried to gain the upper hand?”
“Here and there,” Gandhi said, “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.”
I said I had several questions to ask him about the Congress Party. Very highly placed Britishers, I recalled, 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?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, they are true,” he declared simply. “Congress hasn’t enough money to conduct its work. We thought in the beginning to collect four annas [about eight cents] from each member per year and operate on that. But it hasn’t worked.”
“What proportion of the Congress budget,” I asked, “is covered by rich Indians?”
“Practically all of it,” he stated. “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.”
“Doesn’t the fact that Congress gets its money from the moneyed interests affect Congress politics?” I asked. “Doesn’t it create a kind of moral obligation?”
“It creates a silent debt,” he said. “But actually we are very little influenced by the thinking of the rich. They are sometimes afraid of our demand for full independence.”
“The other day,” I said, “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.”
“No,” Gandhi demurred, “it is completely owned by Birla.” He laughed. “I know,” he proceeded, “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.”
“Isn’t one of the results,” I asked, “that there is a concentration on nationalism almost to the exclusion of social and economic problems?”
“No,” he said, “Congress has from time to time, especially under the influence of Pandit Nehru, adopted advanced social programs and schemes for economic planning. I will have those collected for you.”
“But is it not a fact,” I persisted, “that all these social changes are projected to a time when independence will have been achieved?”
“No,” he differed. “When Congress was in office in the Provinces [1937-1939] the Congress ministries introduced many reforms which have since been canceled by the British administration. We introduced reforms in the villages, in the schools, and in other fields.”
“I have been told, and I read in the Simon report,” I said, “that one of the great curses of India is the village money-lender to whom the peasant is often in debt from birth to death. In European countries, private philanthropy and governments have in similar circumstances created land banks to oust the usurious money-lender. Why could not some of your rich friends start a land bank on a purely business basis except that, instead of getting forty to seventy per cent interest per year, they would get two or three per cent? Their money would be secure, they would earn a small profit, and they would be helping their country.”
“Impossible,” Gandhi affirmed. “It could not be done without government legislation.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“Because the peasants wouldn’t repay the loans,” he said.
“But surely,” I argued, “the peasant would realize that it was better to repay money which he borrowed at three per cent than to mortgage his life away to the money-lender?”
“Money-lending is an ancient institution,” he explained, “and it is deeply rooted in the village. What you advocate cannot be done before we are free.”
“What would happen in a free India?” I asked. “What is your program for the improvement of the lot of the peasantry?”
“The peasants would take the land,” he replied. “We would not have to tell them to take it. They would take it.”
“Would the landlords be compensated?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “That would be fiscally impossible. You see,” he smiled, “our gratitude to our millionaire friends does not prevent us from saying such things. The village would become a self-governing unit living its own life.”
“But there would of course be a national government,” I said.
“No,” he said.
“But surely you need a national administration to direct the railroads, the telegraphs, and so on,” I insisted.
“I would not shed a tear if there were no railroads in India,” he replied.
“But that would bring suffering to the peasant,” I said. “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 Sukkhur barrage in Sind.”
“And that has been a big disappointment,” Gandhi interjected. “It has put the whole Province in debt.”
“I know,” I said, “but it has brought much new land under cultivation, and it is a boon to the people.”
“I realize,” Gandhi said, shaking his head, “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.”
I was eager to pursue this discussion. “What would you have India do?” I asked.
“There are seven hundred thousand villages in India. Each would be organized 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.”
“That is very much like the Soviet system,” I said.
“I did not know that,” Gandhi admitted. “I don’t mind.”
“Now, Mr. Gandhi,” I said, “I would like to ask you a second question about Congress. Congress has been accused of being an authoritarian organization. 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 dictators of Congress.”
“This is nonsense,” Gandhi said emphatically. “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.”
“He seems to be your favorite British statesman,” I interjected. This provided much laughter.
“At least,” Gandhi said, “I always know where he stands. Parliamentary democracy is not immune to corruption, as you who remember Tammany Hall and the Mayor of Chicago 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.
“Do you mean,” Gandhi asked, “because I had responded to news that proved to be false?”
“No,” I said, “but that you regretted the passing of a man who went to Fascist Germany and identified himself with it.”
“I did it,” Gandhi asserted, “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?”
“Yes, of course,” I said. “It does make a difference to whom you go.”
“I do not want help from anybody to make India free,” Gandhi declared. “I want India to save herself.”
“Throughout history,” I recalled, “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.”
“Individuals, yes,” Gandhi said. “But America is the ally of the 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.”
I said, “This is where, as I told you the other day, we must agree to differ. I find the concentration of Indians on problems of their freedom to the exclusion of social problems a disappointment and a shortcoming. Bose is a young man with a propensity for dramatic action, and were he to succumb in Germany to the lure of Fascism and return to India and make India free but Fascist, I think you would be worse off than under British rule.”
“There are powerful elements of Fascism in British rule,” Gandhi exclaimed, “and in India these are the elements which we see and feel every day. If the British wish to document their right to win the war and make the world better, they must purify themselves by surrendering power in India. Your President,” Gandhi continued with a low voice, “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 our selves?”
At this point Chaplin of the International News Service and Belden of Time and Life, who had spent several years in China and had recently trekked out of Burma with General Stilwell, entered the hut in shirts, shorts, and shoes, to interview Gandhi by appointment. Gandhi said I could stay if I wished to listen, and then he turned to them and said, “Can you squat?” When they did so, he said: “One American has been vivisecting me. Now I am at your disposal.” He talked to them for half an hour and then I escorted them to my hut, served them cold water, and insisted that they take a splash bath in my water room.
During the afternoon, Mahadev Desai, apparently Gandhi’s most important secretary, brought me Gandhi’s replies to the questions I submitted to him yesterday at his request. The replies were typed on two long sheets of white paper with corrections in Gandhi’s own hand.
My questions to Gandhi were contained in the following letter.
Dear Mr. Gandhi:
On the basis of our conversations these last few days I take the liberty of placing the following questions before you in the hope of receiving your full replies:
1. 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?
2. 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?
3. 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?
4. 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?
Submitted with profound respect by Louis FISCHER
Gandhi’s reply was entitled “Important Questions,” and read as follows:
A friend was discussing with us the implications of the new proposal . As the discussion was naturally desultory , I asked him to frame his questions , which I would answer through Harijan. He agreed and gave me the following:
1. Q.—You ask the British Government to withdraw immediately from India. Would Indians thereupon form a national government and what groups or parties would participate in such an Indian government?
A.—My proposal is one-sided, i.e., for the British Government to act upon wholly irrespective of what Indians would do or would not do. I have even assumed temporary chaos on their withdrawal. But if the withdrawal takes place in an orderly manner, it is likely that on their withdrawal a provisional Government will be set up by and from among the present leaders. But another thing may also happen. All those who have no thought of the nation but only of themselves may make a bid for power and get together the turbulent forces with which they would seek to gain control somewhere and somehow. I should hope that with the complete, final and honest withdrawal of the British power, the wise leaders will realize 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 [Moslem] League and the states representatives will be allowed to function and they will come to a loose understanding on the formation of provisional national government. All this is necessarily guess work and nothing more.
2. 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.
3. 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/and of 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.
4. 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—its is neither “nations” nor “peoples”—must cease if the victory of the Allies is to be ensured. They lack the moral basis. I see no difference between the Fascist or Nazi powers and the Allies. All are exploiters, all resort to ruthlessness to the extent required to compass their end. America and Britain are very great nations but their greatness will count as dust before the bar of dumb humanity, whether African or Asiatic. They and they alone have the power to undo the wrong. They have no right to talk of human liberty and all else unless they have washed their hands clean of the pollution. That necessary wash will be their surest insurance of success for they will have the good wishes—unexpressed but no less certain or millions of dumb Asiatics and Africans. Then but not till then, will they be fight ing for a new order. This is the reality. All else is speculation. I have allowed myself to indulge in it as a test of my bona fides and for the sake of ex plaining in a concrete manner at least what I mean by my proposal.
(These questions and answers appeared in the Harijan of June 14, 1942.)
At dinner today Gandhi asked me whether I knew Upton Sinclair. He was interested to know what Sinclair was doing. He said he now and then got books written by Sinclair but he had little time to read. They had corresponded with one another. He said he thought Sinclair must exercise a salutary influence on American social thinking.
Gandhi watched me eat. Then he said, “You still refuse my vegetables?”
“I defer to you as a man, a leader, and a statesman,” I replied, “but not as a chef.” I had been served this mess of spinach leaves and squash at every meal I had had at Sevagram, and I was through with it.
He asked me about my two sons. From that I concluded that he had been looking into “Men and Politics.” Some cats came in and played under the table on which the large pots and pans of food stood. I said to Gandhi, “In 1938 I visited Mr. Lloyd George at Churt and he told me about you.”
“Yes,” Gandhi said eagerly, “what did he say?“”
“He told me that when you came to Churt you squatted on his couch and just as you got settled a black cat which they had never seen before came in through the window and rested in your lap.”
“That’s correct,” Gandhi said.
“And when you left, Lloyd George declared,” I said, “the cat disappeared and didn’t come back again.”
“Ah,” said Gandhi, “that I don’t know.”
Mr. Lloyd George said,” I continued, “that the same cat returned when Miss Slade visited him at Churt.”
“That too I don’t know,” Gandhi said. He spoke highly of Lloyd George. I told him that Lloyd George had offered me a cigar or cigarette and I refused because I didn’t smoke, and he offered me alcohol which I also refused because I didn’t drink, and then Lloyd George said, “No vices,” and I said, “No visible ones,” and Lloyd George said with gusto, “Well, I have them all, visible and invisible, and that’s why I feel so well at seventy five.” Gandhi laughed long. I then told Gandhi that after I had lunched with Lloyd George we walked back to the parlor through a corridor in which there was an enlarged photograph of General Haig, the British commander-in-chief in France during the first World War. Lloyd George pointed to Haig’s boots and said, “Haig was brilliant—down here.” Gandhi laughed again. He asked me what Lloyd George thought about Churchill. I said I asked Lloyd George that question when I saw him again in the summer of 1941. I asked him why Churchill had no daring, no readiness for adventure. Lloyd George replied in one word, “Gallipoli.” Lloyd George explained that that great misadventure had destroyed Churchill’s taste for adventure. Gandhi said he was very much impressed when at the end of his talk with Lloyd George at one in the morning they had met late in the evening because that was the only time that suited them—Lloyd George brought out the entire working personnel of the house to greet him.
I went to bed at eight, after reading yesterday’s newspaper. No one here is much interested in reading newspapers, and there is no radio in Sevagram. Indians—there are exceptions like Nehru—live very much inside their country. The war and the outside world are very far away. This is one of the disservices of British rule; the Indians see England first, and this picture close to their eyes prevents them from seeing the world and the war. I slept long. The night was almost cool and very refreshing. Quarter moon and a very bright Milky Way.