SAKLATVALA'S BLUNT REPLY
Dear Comrade Gandhi,
I am in receipt of your letter of 10th May, and I see that you have written it from the Nandi Hills, where, I pre sume, you are recuperating from yotir illness. I trust you will be restored to health by the time this letter reaches you.
Let me say in my usual blunt way that "I am returning to my attack upon you." Of course, you understand the meaning and nature of my "attacks" upon you, namely, that recognising in you a man of indomitable spirit, with a real propagandist's heart and qualities, I want you to deal with the various Indian movements in the way in which success is made for such movements in other parts of the world.
In the Midst of Reverses
I am not coming to you in the midst of your success, in the midst of great victories for our poor people, in the midst of great defeats and setbacks to our imperialist oppres sors, with merely a fanciful appeal to you to adopt some new method. I come to you rather in the time of great reverses for our country, when on every front — political, economic and social, we are suffering reverse upon reverse, are being pushed back everywhere, are disorganised, disunited and dispirited in all departments of public life, and our insolent antagonists are launching attack after attack upon us.
I still want you to recognise that the forces within a nation do not depend merely on relative numbers. Now one small section of a nation and now another becomes an im portant factor, occupying a key position at some critical moment in the affairs of the country, and counting as a national force even though in itself a minority. The peasants and the villagers may become at times the most successful factor in defying the tax gatherer ; the soldiers and the fighters may become at times an important factor to reckon with, when in their own mind and consciousness they are unwilling to launch out upon an unholy campaign such as the one carried out by the Government of India in China. And at times the industrial workers, however small in numbers, may become for a country the all-important factor of life, and may bring about a paralysis of the most powerful activities of the imperial exploiter or of a dominating class.
Because our country is largely agricultural, it does not
— 27 —
