Читать книгу China Hand - John Paton Davies Jr. - Страница 13

Writing from New Delhi to the young woman in Washington whom I would later marry, I reported in April 1942 that

Since leaving Chungking I have had trouble with my eyes—infection. So yesterday night after I arrived I went to a specialist recommended by the hotel, Dr. T. K. Uttam Singh, D.O.M.S. (London). First he wanted to sell me spectacles. Then he turned back both my eyelids and announced with profound spiritual detachment that I had trachoma. So I sat down in a rattan chair, tilted my head back and he painted my eyes with 2% silver nitrate caustic solution. That was about 4:40. At 5:30 my eyes ceased to feel as if hot cinders were in them, and I could see.

But in the interim we had a most profitable conversation. It started, of course, on the Cripps-Congress negotiations and ended with the identification of oneself with God through casting out, in the order of increasing difficulty, desire, hate, greed and the sense of personal identity—the ego. En route, we touched upon the cycle through which India has passed and is passing: six thousand years in which she was the most advanced and the dominant nation in the world, then the past two thousand in which she had slept through an evil epoch, and now coming up to a golden age in which India will lead the rest of the world.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to a plain, unimaginative, wicked, whiskey-drinking doctor to find out whether I really have trachoma. In any event, what if I do. We Americans have a health fetish. Disease is like war—it’s normal. It’s a nuisance and uncomfortable and requires a lot of fussing, but it’s good for your character, mellows you. That is, if you get over it.

I got over mine, which was no more than acute conjunctivitis.

India was to me a vast unknown when I had first passed through it a month earlier on my way to Burma and China. To be sure I was acquainted with Mowgli and Gunga Din and had even read E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India. But beyond that I was ignorant of this manifold land.

Most Americans were uninterested in India, except as they imagined it—a freakish place inhabited by snake-charmers, practitioners of the rope trick, starving untouchables, bejeweled maharajahs, and widows flinging themselves in suttee on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Even in places where one might expect to encounter a fund of solid information there were some gaps. I remember Dean Rusk saying later that shortly after Pearl Harbor, as an earnest reserve officer at the War Department, he endeavored to learn about India. He asked for the military intelligence files on that country. He was handed a single folder in which reposed one old newspaper clipping and a National Geographic map of that part of the world on which someone had stamped SECRET.

The American high command, however slightly informed about India, came to regard that country as an important factor in the war against Japan. In the spring of 1942, with the defense of Burma collapsing and a powerful Japanese naval task force scudding into the Bay of Bengal, fears arose that the enemy might invade India and turn that base area for the supply of China and reconquest of Burma into a battlefield.

How would the Indian people react to a Japanese invasion? The Burmese people, we were discovering, were so anti-British that, when they did not actively collaborate with the Japanese, they passively accepted the invaders as new conquerors replacing the old. Would this happen in India? And even if the enemy did not invade, how would the anti-British feeling prevalent among Indians develop and affect us Americans? Would we, as allies and guests of the British in India, be enveloped in the hostility of a population hating its waning colonial rulers more than the new imperialism surging out of the east? We did not have the answers.

The salient facts about the India of 1942 were imposing. It was big, including what are now Pakistan and Bangladesh. Larger than Western Europe, it was referred to as a subcontinent. India was also populous, some 350 million inhabitants.

They were remarkably diverse—australoid peoples, such as the Dravidians, mainly in the south; Aryans, mostly in the north; and Mongoloids (my Naga friends, for example, whom we will learn more about later) along the northern frontiers. The diversity was most striking in the language differences, even within ethnic groups. About 1,500 languages and dialects were spoken in India.

Two of the great religions of the world, Hinduism and Buddhism, had originated in India. Islam was introduced by conquerors from the northwest and displaced Buddhism as the second most popular religion. Hindus and Muslims became inter-mingled, although the principal Muslim communities were in the northwest and northeast, while the Hindus were in the majority in the center and heavily so in the south. Other religious communities were much smaller. Among them were Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Zoroastrians, and, on the southern coast, the remnants of a Jewish colony.

It was evident in 1942 that the two major communities did not enjoy an unruffled relationship. Religious animosities sometimes flared into bloody communal rioting. Furthermore, Muslims, who were generally poorer than Hindus, resented what they believed was Hindu economic discrimination against them.

Cleavages also existed within the Hindu community. They were the rigid, hereditary differences among the four principal castes and also between those within the caste system and those outside of it—the untouchables, pariahs.

The paramount authority in India was the Viceroy, representing George VI, who, while only King of England, etc., was Emperor of India. The British wisely had not tried to impose their administration over all of India. They directly governed the 17 provinces of British India. But they allowed a constellation of native states, from tiny to big, varying degrees of autonomy so long as the rajahs, maharajahs, and other princelings, however called, acknowledged the British raj.

The instrument of British rule was the Government of India. It administered British India and supervised, usually lightly, the states. The GOI was run by several hundred Britons who occupied the controlling positions. Nearly all were members of the ICS, the Indian Civil Service, regarded by many Britons as one of the most desirable of careers. The vast majority of officials, from members of the Viceroy’s Council, a pseudo-cabinet, to the village postman, were Indian. A select few were members of the ICS.

The British tolerated Indian political organizations, the most influential of which was a party called the Indian National Congress. It stood for Indian independence and claimed to represent all Indians irrespective of creed or class. In reality its following was predominantly Hindu. Mohandas K. Gandhi, the Mahatma or Great Soul, and originator of nonviolent resistance, dominated the Congress party. Jawaharlal Nehru and Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, known abroad for their literary attainments as well as their political activities, were among the secondary figures in the party.

The Muslim League, headed by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, advocated the creation on the subcontinent of an Islamic state to be called Pakistan, in which the Muslims would be free of what they regarded as oppression by both the British and the Hindus. Militant Hindus, for their part, belonged to the Hindu Mahasabha, which called for the uncompromising supremacy of the Hindu community. Other parties and factions, including rival communist parties, sought attention and support. But none approached the strength of the Congress, the League or the Mahasaba.

My initial instructors on India were colleagues in the American diplomatic mission at New Delhi and the consulate general at Calcutta. They were well informed, generously shared what they had learned with me, and introduced me to their British and Indian contacts. This was most helpful, but I wanted to go further afield, to other parts of India, and to meet influential Indians outside the diplomatic circuit, especially the troublemakers.

Had I been on the staff of the American Mission, it would have been awkward or even improper for me to associate with those hostile to the government to which I would have been accredited, the Government of India. But I was assigned to the American Embassy in China and detailed to General Stilwell. My legitimacy in India derived from my detail to the general who, as Commanding General of American Forces China-Burma-India, enjoyed for himself and his staff an accepted standing in India. As Stilwell allowed me wide latitude of initiative and action, I was free to move about the country and to seek out Indians with whom my Foreign Service colleagues had little or no contact.

Beginning my political explorations, I went to a meeting of the Congress leadership at Allahabad. Uninvited, I intended simply to appear on the scene and ask to be allowed to see and hear as much as permitted. Fortunately, I was in the company of Edgar Snow, who, as a famous liberal journalist, was a presumed partisan of Indian independence and therefore assured of a welcome. In any event, all literate Indians, especially the Congress people, were fascinated by the American newcomers on the Indian scene. It was not simply the novelty of the American presence and personality, it was also, at least during the first half of 1942, an astonishingly widespread assumption that the United States could and might induce Britain to give India back to the Indians. We were expected to identify ourselves with the Indians, for had we not also suffered under the British colonial oppression?

“With the magic password, ‘American correspondent,’“ I wrote in my diary on May 2, “Ed and I were hustled through the crowd into the council hall. The floor was covered with white canvas on which perhaps 300 people were seated. Ed and I sat on some steps at the side of the hall.”

There on the low platform at the end of the small hall were those who only five years later would govern India. Gandhi was absent, but only in the flesh, for although he was at his ashram, in Central India, all of the Working Committee were aware of what he expected of them. Sitting on a chair just off stage was the glamorous super-Brahmin, Nehru. Also on the platform was C. Rajagopalachari, the clever, pragmatic politician from Madras who would in 1948 become Governor General of India. The brilliant, ebullient, poet-politician, Mrs. Naidu, was settled comfortably on the floor with other members of the Working Committee. Maulana Azad, one of Congress’s token Muslims, whose membership was pointed to as a refutation of the Muslim accusation that the party was really a Hindu organization and not representative, presided over the meeting, seated on a chair and hunched over a footstool-high table.

The issues before the meeting were conditioned by two recent developments. One was the breakdown of negotiations between Congress and Sir Stafford Cripps, Lord Privy Seal, who had been sent out from London with a qualified offer of independence for India. Each side blamed the other for the failure. The second development was that by bombing some of the east coast towns, the Japanese had suddenly brought home to the Indians the threat of invasion.

Reflecting Gandhi’s position, the sense of the meeting was negative and passive—it would be futile to attempt to reopen negotiations with the British; the British would never relinquish control; also, it would be useless to seek to join forces with the Muslim League in approaching the British because the League would not accept a Congress overture. As for the war against Japan, the Congress would not support the British and if the Japanese invaded, they should be met by Gandhian non-violent resistance. Rajagopalachari voiced the only dissent.

“The windows were open,” I noted in my journal. “The railroad track lay beyond. An occasional train went past whistling in a piping little voice. The windows behind the platform were also open, framing in neat symbolism a corner of a small house with a collapsing roof caused by a crumbling wall.”

Rajagopalachari was speaking when we came in. A slight, stooped little man swathed in white yards of cotton and wearing a pair of large black glasses. He was speaking in well-chosen English. The atmosphere he created and that created by most of the other speakers was that of a polite debating society. There was obvious relish in the making and receiving of witticisms. The only sense of urgency and crisis was that of having to catch the 11 a.m. train to Madras on which some of the congressmen were returning home.

Rajaji was arguing for his so-called Madras resolution: India was being attacked; Indians had already been killed on Indian soil; it was useless to cry out over the inequities of the present Government; India must unite now; Mr. Jinnah’s Muslim League can be brought into a national government. It is a child which wants to sit in the front seat of a car taking a family to the station—if you enter into a discussion with the child on who is to sit up front you miss the train. The principal obstacle to a rational government is the psychological one of Muslim prestige; concede Pakistan in principle and in practice you will find the Muslims cooperating.

Then several other members of the Working Committee spoke. The speeches in native language were sprinkled with English phrases: popular mandate, wishful thinking, subtle brain, child psychology. The members and ladies in the gallery followed the proceedings intently.

Nehru, who had a cold and cough, spoke in opposition to the resolution, of course. He made a very poor case. He did little more than say that the concept of Pakistan was repugnant to him and opposed to the objectives of the Congress. He said that he had sought to bring about a Hindu-Muslim rapprochement, and that if going down on his knees to the Muslims or to the beggars would serve to bring about internal unity, he would gladly do so.

Maulana Azad, who looked and gesticulated rather like a forceful mayor of a small French town, allowed Rajaji a final speech. He [Rajagopalachari] opened with a crack saying that Pandit Nehru, possessing the reputation and personality that he did, had no need to resort to eloquence. He went on to say that time was very short, that the attitude of the Congress might serve in peace time but that in the present crisis the Congress should seize the initiative and seek a solution through compromise with the Muslims. (He did not say here that this was the best revolutionary opportunity before Indians in many years.) “You have proved your case against the British to the hilt, but what purpose does it serve?” The Congress should take such authority as was offered and use it.

The meeting broke up. The hot, tired young ushers in orange colored saris and soiled chemises ceased their bustling, leaned against the walls and fanned themselves. The young troopers in maroon-colored shorts melted into the sweating, milling crowd out in the sunny street. I saw a banner which at first I thought must be a slogan but which turned out to be an advertisement of a potion designed to induce virility.

“And so with the Burma front collapsed and the enemy of the Indian people on the threshold, Congress adjourns,” I wrote, “incapable (for many, many reasons) of adopting toward a threatening dynamic imperialism any more effective program than that employed against a decadent imperialism—non-violent non-cooperation.”

In the dreadful heat of the Allahabad mid-day, Ed and I decided that the only course to follow was non-violent non-cooperation with the climate. So we took sweat-drenched naps.

About 4:40 we called on Rajaji, a frail little man with slender hands, the palms of which were dyed lavender. The trouble with Congress is that it has been fighting the British so long that its grievances have become an obsession, observed Rajaji in a cool analytical tone. Congress has the DeValeran mentality; like the Irish it can only object and obstruct. We are presented with the greatest revolutionary opportunity which we have had in many, many years, and we are unable to do anything about it. The purpose of my resolution was to break the stagnant situation in which we find ourselves with an appeal to action. But Congress, again like the Irish, will not accept any considerable compromise (whether with the Muslims or the British) because it talks only in terms of the perfect and complete solution: a united and free India.

Ed asked him if he thought anything could be done, despite Congress’s position on non-violent non-cooperation, in Madras to organize the Madrasis to resist any Japanese attack. Rajaji said no. Congress was too strong and he further implied that he would not wish to work outside the Congress framework.

Rajaji declared that the League could not be ignored as Congress sought to imply. While the more enlightened Muslims were allied with Congress, it could not be denied that the League did represent the great mass of the Indian Muslims.

Chiang Kai-shek, he said, had written a letter to Nehru recently in which he complained about the British conduct of the war in Burma, pointing out their many faults. “What good does that do?” Rajaji asked. To my mind this statement, which surprised me, was one of the clearest indications (if sincerely expressed) of a constructive attitude.

The overall attitude of Rajaji was clearly pessimistic. I had the impression that he felt the situation to be beyond repair.

Ed and I rode by tonga [two-wheeled horse cart] to Nehru’s elegant residence. Mrs. Naidu, her daughter, several disciples and a young Chinese broadcaster from Singapore were there. Nehru was as aristocratic and spiritual looking as depicted. We sat around eating mango ice cream and listened mostly to Nehru, Mrs. Naidu, and Ed. The stone floors were cool, bowls of flowers were arranged in exquisite taste, everyone looked clean and fresh (save Ed and me). A copy of Life was on one of the low tables.

Nehru said that Cripps had done more harm to the British position in India than any one person in a long time. Cripps was a terrible statesman, he hadn’t realized how bad a statesman Cripps was, Cripps had no tact and lost his temper. (Mrs. Naidu agreed emphatically.) The failure of the negotiations was not Cripps’s fault. He was bound hand and foot by Churchill and [Leopold] Amery [Secretary of State for India]. In reply to a question from Ed, Nehru declared that he had no knowledge in advance of Cripps’s arrival of what terms were brought. He had been warned ahead of time that the proposals were “very bad.” That was all. Congress had opened negotiations, of course, with the idea of working itself into full power—that was the reason for the initial compromises. But when Cripps fell back to insisting that the Viceroy’s powers could not be curtailed, the negotiations collapsed (the Indian nationalists felt that they weren’t offered enough to be even a poor Trojan horse). The Churchill-Amery-Linlithgow [Viceroy] combination is the worst India has faced. He quoted with evident satisfaction Amery’s defense of the Japanese action in Manchuria in 1931: “You can’t blame the Japanese, why they’re just doing what we’d do in India.”

Corruption in the Government of India is extraordinarily widespread, Nehru maintained. Especially in connection with defense industries.

Nehru and Mrs. Naidu dominated the scene. The other Indians were very quiet and attentive. Ed later told with amusement of Missimo’s [Mme. Chiang Kai-shek, who had recently visited India] venture into a sari. La Naidu said, “You know how distinguished and refined looking Mme. C. is in her native Chinese costume. She put on the sari which we gave her and, my dear, she looked so common—those Mongolian features, like a hill girl from Nepal, you know.”

Nehru and one of his lieutenants graciously escorted us out to our tonga.

We had no opportunity to say good-bye to the maitre d’hotel of the station restaurant—a rare soul who maintained that life for the white man began to go downhill with the arrival of Lady Curzon, a wealthy American, née Leiter [wife of Lord Curzon, Viceroy at the turn of the century.] Before that the small man had been able to have his three polo ponies, his whiskies and live the life of a God-fearing respectable Englishman. But she spoiled India by bringing in great numbers of her wealthy American friends to show them her Empire and permit them to overpay the natives.

* * *

On May 3 I wrote that “the Indian I most wanted to meet was, of course, Gandhi, the Mahatma, the great soul. But he was at his retreat near Wardha in the center of the country. The heat there, some of my Indian friends warned me, became so intense that the countryside catches fire. This further whetted my curiosity.“

May 7

The Bombay Mail arrived at Wardha at midnight, six hours late. The obliging station people tell me how to get to the dak bungalow [government rest house], which turned out to be full. So Abdul [a station attendant] gets for me a bench out of the ladies waiting room, I spread my roll on it and go to sleep on the station platform—fortunately no trains unloaded on it during the night.

May 8

At dawn I arise to the interest and delight of a small audience of Indian children who had been impatiently awaiting this event. Abdul gets me a poor breakfast from the Mohammedan food stall and in return gets another extravagant four annas tip.

Passage was arranged for me in what, I was assured, was the most sumptuous tonga in Wardha, painted green, decorated with a painting of Gandhi and lesser prophets and drawn by a runty, indolent white stallion. The driver, with good political sense, wore a white Gandhi cap. He derived great satisfaction from and regularly made use of a particularly cavernous sounding bulb horn.

We left about six. About one third of the way to Gandhiville, I decided to change my clothes—which I did, including underwear, without the driver being aware of the metamorphosis.

We turned off the dusty and already hot road into a straw thatched settlement of one-storied buildings. All exceedingly simple and almost primitive. A young girl in white homespun was rolling up the bedding from five beds set out in front of one of the low thatched houses. Fifty yards away the Mahatma in white dhoti [loin cloth], tucked neatly up his crotch instead of the usual trailing around the ankles, stood with staff in hand talking at length with two small children seated on a hemp bed bare of covering. Around the great man hovered disciples, clean, intelligent, fine looking people, two of whom held black umbrellas over the saintly cranium shielding it from the early morning sun.

I was waiting in front of the office, to which I had been brusquely directed by an occidental woman with, could it have been, a teutonic accent? Two retainers dissuaded me from entering the dark little room in which I could distinguish only a large green safe. I was directed to a bed—they seemed to be everywhere—about 10 yards in front of the office room. Preferring to stand, I watched the Great Soul move by to inspect the room behind the five beds. The train of five or six disciples trailed in the wake of this rustic Friday morning inspection. A gracious Indian appeared to hear my request for a brief talk with Mahatmaji. He directed me to Mr. Desai, the Prophet’s secretary. I found him in another thatched house which seemed to be all partitioned inside with wooden bars. But it had a telephone over which people were arranging for train accommodations.

Mr. Desai explained that the Mahatmaji gave interviews only after 4 p.m. When that didn’t rout me, I indicating a willingness to wait, he explained that there were no toilet facilities available. Evidently there was a look of incredulity on my face for he finally gave the real reason—the Great Soul was that evening leaving for Bombay and had so much to do before departure. I suggested meeting Mr. G in Bombay. That seemed to strike the secretary as being the solution. Throughout these negotiations Mr. Desai had stood with a fistful of checks—one of which was for 50 pounds made out to Mahatma Gandhi (yes I can read upside down) but I couldn’t see who had made it out.

Sitting on a bed in front of this shack was a professorial looking Indian, like Dr. Desai, of refined features. I think he was supposed to be meditating. My presence there obviously distracted him, so his status degenerated into just eavesdropping.

Getting back into my tonga I fell into conversation with three good-looking young Indians perhaps in their late teens or early twenties. They didn’t seem to think much of the Congress policy of non-violent non-cooperation, which seemed to me to be blasphemy hardly uttered in that environment.

A few days later I queried a veteran American missionary about Gandhi. He characterized the Mahatma as hypocritical, reactionary, a Hindu partisan and caste biased. He told of attending a rural mass meeting some years earlier at which Gandhi, speaking in the vernacular, whipped the crowds into such a frenzy of anti-British feeling that some of the missionary’s Indian friends moved quietly to his side to protect him, lest the crowd mistake his nationality and attack him. The Mahatma followed his harangue with a shorter speech in English on the practice of non-violence. It was the latter exposition which appeared in the press as the text of the Mahatma’s address.

Gandhi granted me an interview in May at Bombay. Shortly after the meeting I recorded my impressions of the encounter.

In a quavering old taxi with a Muslim driver, I drove out to Malabar Hill and the pretentious Birla House. A sleekly simple young Hindu took my card. After a few minutes wait in the uncomfortable reception hall, Mahadev Desai came in, his head cocked to one side in greeting.

I was taken onto a verandah skirting the house. We came to a section facing the lawn. The floor was covered with white cotton cloth. I started to take off my shoes but was told it was all right to wear them. Seated on a white quilt and leaning against pillows, propped against the verandah wall was the skinny little saint. Perhaps because of the absence of teeth, he had very little face below a prominent hooked nose and owlish horn-rimmed spectacles. His spotless white homespun was tossed up over a shoulder. In a thin pleasant voice he begging pardon for not rising—“an old man’s privilege.” I was placed in a chair overlooking him to the left in front of him. On his right were Vallabhbhai Patel (organizational boss), a less sinister looking gentleman and two female acolytes. Desai I lost track of. I explained who I was and that I was an Asiatic of American race. I said that I had come to learn. He cracked back that this was most unusual. “Most Americans come to tell us what to do.” His disciples laughed heartily.

As the interview proceeded I became uncomfortable at my elevation. So I said would he mind if I sat on the floor; I had lived a good deal in Japan and found sitting on the floor very comfortable. This seemed to cause some amusement. As I slipped down I noticed Desai, who had apparently been behind me, sly fox. He was hunched over and began edging further behind me trying to conceal what seemed to be notepaper. I later learned that he had taken 45 pages of notes on the conversation. I don’t see how it was possible.

As Gandhi expounded in his even thin tone, my mind wandered once or twice and I observed one of the female disciples dozing off. But Mr. G’s mind was clicking right along. Nothing fuzzy, excepting, of course, the whole philosophical concept. His mistrust of and obsession with the British was pronounced.

To General Stilwell I reported on May 14 the substance of my conversation with the Mahatma as follows:

In opening the conversation with Mr. Gandhi at Birla House, Bombay, I asked him what he thought the United States could do to be helpful to India. He replied, “Persuade the British to withdraw immediately and completely from India.” He then went on to discuss the concept underlying this statement, a concept formulated during only the past few weeks.

Japan’s primary objective in this part of the world, the Mahatma said, is the destruction of British power. Eliminate the British from India and no incentive remains for the Japanese to attack India. The British were not able to withdraw from Malaya and Burma with dignity. They still have time to withdraw from India with dignity. If they leave now it would be best for Britain, best for India and best for the world.

I observed that the Chinese had not been saved by a pacific attitude toward Japan from a Japanese invasion, and that Japan’s incentives for attacking an independent India would seem to be scarcely less than they had been for attacking an independent China. Mr. Gandhi explained that India is not a neighbor of Japan as is China, and is therefore less likely to be subject to Japanese aggression.

Mr. Gandhi admitted that a Japanese invasion might nevertheless be possible. In such a case, the Mahatma declared, “Our only weapon is non-violent non-cooperation. We are not a nation of heroes,” he said, “I frankly recognize and admit that.” He said that he would advocate that the Indian people refuse the Japanese food, water and labor. But he would not want wells poisoned or filled in with earth, because that would be violence. I asked about the application of a policy of scorched earth. He replied that he would oppose such a policy because it would involve violence.

The practice of non-violent non-cooperation against the Japanese, he recognized, would be quite a different matter than against the British. The British imprisoned and sometimes tortured, but they stopped short of killing. With the Japanese it would be for the Indians success or death.

Some of his friends, like Mr. Rajagopalachari, had argued with him that the British were civilized and the Japanese were barbarians, and that therefore Indians should at this juncture cooperate with the British to check the greater evil. His reply, Mr. Gandhi stated, was that India wanted neither British nor Japanese rule, that non-violence was the strongest force in the world and that its impact on the barbarian might be greater than on the civilized man. He said that the Japanese had experienced little contact with the Indian mind, and implied that if Japanese troops were met by non-violent non-cooperation from the Indian masses, they would in effect be defeated.

I alluded to his statement in Harijan that guerrilla warfare “is foreign to the Indian soil” and asked if he meant that to apply to the Muslims and the people of Northwestern India. The Mahatma replied that it was true that the people of the northwest had experience in guerrilla warfare, but it was against the small British garrisons there and would be of little value in fighting the Japanese. He intelligently discussed the exacting nature of guerrilla warfare, its limited value and the careful training and coordination with the regular army required for its success. He observed that training the masses for effective guerrilla warfare was a more difficult task than training regular troops.

In commenting on the futility of cooperating with the British at this juncture, Mr. Gandhi said that the British had been particularly oppressive following the conclusion of the First World War; he expected them, in the event that they were still in India at the conclusion of this conflict, to be even more overbearing than they are at present. He would not admit that the hold of British imperialism on India is relaxing; nor that the United States might exert its good offices on behalf of India. He stated that American diplomacy was under the control of the British, and that the voice of those Americans in the United States friendly to India was being stifled by the British.

I asked whether in connection with his wish that the British withdraw he also desired that we leave too. “Naturally, yes,” he replied.

I inquired of Mr. Gandhi whether he felt that there might not ultimately be general acceptance of Mr. Rajagopalachari’s proposal that the Congress concede the principle of Pakistan in order to achieve an understanding with the Muslim League leading to the formation of a National Government. The Mahatma replied in vague terms, seeming to indicate an answer in the negative.

The conflict between the Hindu and Muslim communities Mr. Gandhi attributed to British machinations. Remove British control over India and the differences between the two would “disappear like the miasma that it is.” I observed that this interpretation had been given to me by Hindus and by Muslims as well. In as much as both Hindus and Muslims seemed to recognize that they were being used against one another, I found it difficult to understand why they were not able to make common cause to thwart the designs on the communal unity which, as the Mahatma implied, both groups desired. Mr. Gandhi explained that notwithstanding this mutual Hindu and Muslim desire for unity, the British were able to play the communities off one against the other because “it is the British who distribute the loaves and fishes.” They favor first one group and then the other, thus fostering communal difference.

Mr. Gandhi remarked that in his five hour conversation with General Chiang Kai-shek and “Madame Shek” he had gone over in detail the same ground which he had covered with me, save for his theory of immediate and complete British withdrawal, which he had only recently evolved. He expressed great sympathy for China, adding that the way for the British and us to help China was to get out of India.

Throughout the interview Mr. Gandhi was very cordial. Although not seeming to do so, he apparently watched my face closely, for he commented with amusement on a smile, which I thought was wholly inward.

In my journal I added: “As the interview was closing he said, ‘You can tell whomever you report to that the old man is raving mad.’ I must have had a look of bewilderment about me. Once or twice in the conversation I felt somewhat at a loss as to what I should say. There didn’t seem to be any logical question to ask or comment to make.”

While Gandhi did not make sense in the Anglo-American view of the war against Japan, he was persuasive to the majority of Hindus. He was able to lead them because he not only understood them but also was a concentrated reflection of themselves. He and they knew that the Hindus, at least, lacked confidence in their ability to dispose of the British by force. So for a score of years he had preached satyagraha, non-violent resistance, as the strategy for struggle against the British rule.

For Gandhi, satyagraha was also an expression of the morality that he taught. Non-violent resistance was therefore more than patriotic: it was virtuous. Gandhi was a revolutionary leader, but in the tradition of the Indian ascetic holy man. His pietistic stance and words consequently carried far more weight with many simple people than did the pronouncements of secular politicians. An Indian editor told me that the secret of Gandhi’s power over people was that he treated everyone as a child. During the visit of Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek to India, they met with Gandhi and, the editor smiled, the Mahatma offered to the imperious Madame Chiang the sanctuary of his ashram where she might “live as my daughter.” I did not doubt that Gandhi’s treatment of people as children had brought many under his spell. But Madame Chiang—whose troubled psyche caused her to treat everyone as a subject—was hardly one to have been captivated by the Mahatma’s playfully audacious soul appeal.