The Essential Gandhi (40 page)

 … It is my certain conviction that no man loses his freedom except through his own weakness. I am painfully conscious of our own weaknesses. We represent in India all the principal religions of the earth, and it is a matter of deep humiliation to confess that we are a house divided against itself, that we Hindus and Moslems are flying at one another. It is a matter of still deeper humiliation to me that we Hindus regard several millions of our own kith and kin as too degraded even for our touch. I refer to the so-called “untouchables.”

These are no small weaknesses in a nation struggling to be free.…
¹⁴

[During the broadcast a note was passed to Gandhi warning him his time was almost up and New York would cut him off in three minutes. Unperturbed, Gandhi delved into the economics of British rule and closed with a plea:]

 … May I not, then, on behalf of the semi-starved millions, appeal to the conscience of the world to come to the rescue of a people dying to regain its liberty?
¹⁵

[The CBS producer signaled him to stop.] Well, that’s over, [Gandhi said. He was still on the air. His voice was clear and the reception perfect.

During his stay in England Gandhi visited Lancashire, the center of the British textile industry, whose products he had urged Indians to boycott. He had said:]

 … My very English efficient nurse whom I loved to call “tyrant” because she insisted in all loving ways on my taking more food and more sleep than I did, with a smile round her lips … gently remarked … “As I was shading you with my umbrella I could not help smiling that you, a fierce boycotter of everything British, probably owed your life to the skill of a British surgeon handling British surgical instruments, administering British drugs,
and to the ministrations of a British nurse. Do you know … the umbrella that shaded you was of British make?” [Gandhi replied:] “… Do you know that I do not boycott anything merely because it is British? I simply boycott all foreign cloth because the dumping down of foreign cloth in India has reduced millions of my people to pauperism.” …
¹⁶

[The boycott of British textiles had caused widespread unemployment in Lancashire. Nevertheless, Gandhi visited Lancashire during his stay in England. After a meeting that Gandhi addressed, one man said, “I am one of the unemployed, but if I was in India I would say the same thing that Mr. Gandhi is saying.” There is a telling photograph, taken outside the Greenfield Mill at Darwen, Lancashire, showing Gandhi, wrapped in white cotton from neck to knee, overcome with coyness and squeezed in amidst cotton factory workers, most of them women, one of them holding his hand, and all of them cheering the Mahatma and smiling. He made friends among those whom he hurt.

In London, Gandhi stayed in an East End settlement house called Kingsley Hall, five miles from the center of the city and from St. James’s Palace where the Round Table Conference sat. He enjoyed living among his own kind, the poor people, he said.]

In that settlement, which represents the poor people of the East End of London, I have become one of them. They have accepted me as a member, and as a favored member of their family.… I have come in touch with so many Englishmen. It has been a priceless privilege to me. They have listened to what must have often appeared to them to be unpleasant, although it was true. [They] have never shown the slightest impatience or irritation. It is impossible for me to forget these things.… I consider that it was well worth my paying this visit to England in order to find this human affection.

[Although] in Lancashire, the Lancashire people had perhaps some reason for becoming irritated against me, I found no irritation and no resentment.… The operatives, men and women, hugged me. They treated me as one of their own. I shall never forget that.

 … All this hospitality, all this kindness, will never be effaced from my memory, no matter what befalls my unhappy land.…
¹⁷

[Questioned by a reporter about his dress, Gandhi said] You people wear plus-fours, mine are minus fours.
¹⁸

[Gandhi went to Buckingham Palace to have tea with King George V and Queen Mary. On the eve of the event, all England was agog over what he would wear. He wore a loincloth, sandals, a shawl and his dangling watch. Later someone asked Gandhi whether he had had enough on.] The King, [Gandhi replied] had enough on for both of us.
¹⁹

[In a letter to a child at the ashram who asked him to describe London, Gandhi wrote:] London is a very big city. It has many chimneys which blacken everything. Nothing there will stay white. The sun is rarely visible. But the English people are more industrious than we are. And roads in England are very clean.
²⁰

[England was not yet parting with power in India. That was the crucial fact. But Gandhi was not giving up, as he told the Conference.]

[Of] course, the [British] Government may not tolerate, no Government has tolerated, open rebellion. No Government may tolerate Civil Disobedience … I shall hope against hope, I shall strain every nerve to achieve an honorable settlement for my country, if I can do so without having to put the millions of my countrymen and countrywomen, and even children, through this ordeal of fire. [But] if a further ordeal of fire has to be our lot, I shall approach that with the greatest joy and with the greatest consolation that I wag doing what I felt to be right, the country was doing what it felt to be right, and the country will have the additional satisfaction of knowing that it was not at least taking lives, it was giving lives—it was not making the British people directly suffer, it was suffering.… I do know that you will suffer, but I want you to suffer
because I want to touch your hearts, and when your hearts have been touched, then will come the psychological moment for negotiation.…
²¹

[The Round Table Conference was fruitless and Gandhi returned to India by way of Paris, Switzerland, where he met Romain Rolland, and Rome, where he visited the daughter of Count Leo Tolstoy and went to see Mussolini.]

Somehow or other I dread a visit to Europe and America. Not that I distrust the peoples of these great continents any more than I distrust my own but I distrust myself. I have no desire to go to the West in search of health or for sightseeing. I have no desire to deliver public speeches. I detest being lionized.… If God ever sent me to the West, I should go there to penetrate the hearts of the masses, to have quiet talks with the youth of the West and have the privilege of meeting kindred spirits—lovers of peace at any price save that of truth.

 … I believe my message to be universal but as yet I feel that I can best deliver it through my work in my own country.…

 … Owing to my distrust of myself over a general visit, I wanted to make my visit to [Romain Rolland, author of
Jean Christophe
, a literary masterpiece of the twentieth century] that wise man of the West, the primary cause of my journey to Europe.…
²²

[Gandhi later described his visit with Mussolini.]

He has the eyes of a cat, they moved about in every direction as if in constant rotation. The visitor would totally succumb before the awe of his gaze like a rat running directly into the mouth of a cat out of mere fright. I was not to be dazed like that but I noticed that he had so arranged things about him that a visitor would easily get stricken with terror. The walls of the passage through which one has to pass to reach him are all overstudded with various types of swords and other weapons. He keeps no arms on his person.
²³

[“Was he not a remarkable personality?” asked a visitor of Gandhi’s.]

Yes, but a cruel man. A regime based on such cruelty cannot last long.
²⁴

[There] is no state run by Nero or Mussolini which has not good points about it, but we have to reject the whole once we decide to non-coöperate with the system. “There are in our country grand public roads and palatial institutions,” said I to myself, “but they are part of a system which crushes the nation. I should not have anything to do with them. They are like the fabled snake with a brilliant jewel on its head, but which has fangs full of poison.” …
²⁵

[When Gandhi returned to Bombay on December 28, 1931, he reported to the Indian people about his stay abroad.]

I have come back empty-handed, but I have not compromised the honor of my country.
²⁶

I am not conscious of a single experience throughout my three months’ stay in England and Europe that made me feel that after all East is East and West is West. On the contrary, I have been convinced more than ever that human nature is much the same, no matter under what clime it flourishes, and that if you approached people with trust and affection you would have ten-fold trust and thousand-fold affection returned to you.
²⁷

[On January 4 Gandhi was arrested and lodged in Yeravda Jail. Since he worshiped God in prison he called it his “mandir”—temple—and there wrote a book entitled
From Yeravda Mandir
. His thoughts turned to questions of religion, God and prayer. Mahadev Desai, Gandhi’s secretary who had also been arrested and imprisoned at Yeravda, noted that Gandhi leaned “on a wooden board. Very often he keeps it close to the wall and not at an angle. I remarked that if it was kept at an angle it would not fall down from time to time and would be more comfortable.”]

Perhaps, but the proper thing to do is to keep it straight so that the backbone and waist remain straight in their turn and do not bend. It is a general principle that if you keep one thing straight it will tend to straighten everything else and crookedness at one point will make for crookedness at many other points.
¹

Instead of thinking of improving the world let us concentrate on self-improvement. We can scarcely find out if the world is on the right or the wrong path. But if we take the straight and narrow path we shall find all taking it too or discover the method of inducing them to take it.…
²

 … If the world is on fire we cannot extinguish it by our impatience. In fact it is not for us to extinguish it at all. Do you know that when there is a big blaze the firemen do not waste any water on it at all. They only try to save the neighborhood.… When we have done our individual duty that is as good as having extinguished the whole of the fire. In appearance it is still burning but
we may rest assured that it has been put out. This is all I have found as a result of my quest of truth.… We can only insist upon what is possible. It is no use pining after the air of the mountains on the moon, as it is beyond our reach. The same is true of our duty.…
³

…
We tend to become what we worship.…
⁴

[Gandhi’s stay in prison stimulated his thinking about himself and about jails.]

 … Jail for us is no jail at all.…
⁵

[We] have no strangers. All strangers are friends, including criminals, as also jailors. We have here [in Yeravda prison] learned to recognize friends among animals. We have a cat who is a revelation. And if we had vision enough, we should appreciate the language of trees and plants and value their friendship.
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