Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948

by Ramachandra Guha

is that these reforms are compulsory.’ Gandhi thought he detected in Mussolini’s speeches a ‘passionate love for his people’, while, on the other side, it seemed to him that ‘the majority of Italian pe...

to know Rolland’s opinions on all this, as one ‘who knows infinitely more than I ...

Of his experiences at the Round Table Conference itself, Gandhi remarked that while the British politicians were ‘honest’, they

laboured under ‘a heavy handicap’; namely, their being ‘spoon-fed on one-sided and often hopelessly false statements and anti-nationalist opinions received by them from their agents in India ever since the commencement of the British Raj’. The British establishment thought

Indians were ‘incapable of handling our own Defence and Finance, they believe that the presence of British troops and British civilians is necessary for the well-being of India’. Indeed, ‘perhaps, there is no nation on earth...

Meanwhile, a deputation of progressive Hindus called on Ambedkar. They asked him to reconsider his decision to leave his ancestral faith. In reply, Ambedkar distinguished between the metaphysical basis of Hinduism and its social practice. As he put it: ‘Though Hinduism is

based on the conception of Absolute Brahma, the practices of the Hindu community as a whole are founded on the doctrines of inequality as pronounced in “Manusmriti”.’ On his wish to convert to another religion, Ambedkar remarked: ‘It is not a personal question

and I desire to carry with me the whole untouchable community—at all events the majority of that community. I do not want it to be split up by some joinin...

On his own political agenda, Ambedkar said: ‘Being born in the untouchable community, I deem it my first duty to strive for its interests and my...

One day, the physicist Sir C.V. Raman came up from Bangalore to see Gandhi. Raman’s conceit was legendary. In the summer of 1930, he booked a passage for his wife and himself on a boat leaving for Europe in October, so confident was he of winning the Nobel Prize for physics that year (which he did). Now, meeting an Indian even more celebrated than himself, Raman told him: ‘Mahatmaji, religions cannot unite. Science offers the best opportunity for a complete fellowship. All men of science are

brothers.’ ‘What about the converse?’ responded Gandhi. ‘All who are not men of science are not brothers?’ Raman had the last word, noting that ‘all can become men of science’.

Some days later, Raman came again, this time with his wife, a social worker. Gandhi was impressed with the Tamil lady’s Hindi, telling her husband that it ‘was as good as your science’. Raman answered that in his view English should be the link language of India.

Gandhi disagreed, saying that it would be far easier for Hindi to assume that role. He asked how the scientist did not speak the language when his wife did. Raman admitted the deficiency, adding by way of justification: ‘It is that conceit, you know, that

I am full of as much ...

It was also while in Nandi that Gandhi heard that his eldest son, Harilal, had converted to Islam, taking the name ‘Abdullah’. The conversion had taken place on 29

May ‘in the midst of a large congregation’ at Bombay’s Jumma Masjid. On hearing the news, Gandhi wrote to his third son, Ramdas, that ‘there could be no harm in his [Harilal] being converted to Islam with understanding and selfless motives. But he suffers from greed

for wealth and sensual p...

It was overwhelmingly likely that Harilal had been offered a material inducement, with a view to embarrassing his famous father. Perhaps, given his own complicated—not to ...

also in a vengeful mood, seeing conversion as a way to finally settle accounts with ...

The modern girl dresses not to protect herself from wind, rain and sun but to attract attention. She improves upon nature by painting herself and looking extraordinary. The non-violent way is not for such girls.’

In March 1939, the Nazis overran what remained of Czechoslovakia. In May, they signed a pact with Italy. In between, the Spanish Civil War had come to an end, with the victory of the authoritarians in uniform.

Gandhi was following these events from afar. On 23 July, he sat down to write a letter to the man who had seeded the war clouds gathering over Europe. ‘Friends have been urging me,’ said Gandhi to Hitler, ‘to write to you for the sake of humanity.’ (The friends

were unnamed, but they most likely were British pacifists.) So, he made his ‘appeal for what it is worth’, which was: ‘It is quite clear that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to the savage state. Must you pay

that price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to be? Will you listen to the appeal of one who has deliberately shunned the method o...

The leaders of the Congress were, from the first, struck by the hypocrisy of the British claim that by going to war with Hitler, they were defending democracy and freedom.

When the British (and the French) had denied freedom and democracy to their colonial subjects in Asia and Africa, how could they claim to be consistently in favour of these values? If they wanted credibility for their war against Hitler, said the Congress, then

the British should at once commit themselves to granting full freedom to the c...

In the first week of February 1940, Gandhi travelled to Delhi to meet the viceroy. The talks were cordial, but the British were in no mood to make any commitment to Indian independence during or after the Second World War. There was vague talk of granting

Dominion Status at some unspecified time, but, as Gandhi pointed out afterwards, the existing dominions such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa were part of an imperial system that privileged one race over others. He thus insisted that ‘India

cannot be one of the many Dominions, i.e., partner in the exploitation of the non-European races of the earth…. If India is not to be co-sharer in the exploitation of the Africans and the degrada...

have her own independent ...

At the same time, Gandhi continued: ‘The West attaches an exaggerated importance to prolonging man’s earthly existence. Until the man’s last moment on earth you go on drugging him even by injecting.’ The odd thing, remarked Gandhi, was that this desperate desire

to prolong life was ‘inconsistent with the recklessness with which they [the West] will shed their lives in war’.

Finally, the visitor asked if Christianity could bring ‘salvation to Africa’.

Gandhi’s answer is worth quoting in full: Christianity, as it is known and practised today, cannot bring salvation to your people. It is my conviction that those who today call themselves Christian do not know the true message of Jesus. I witnessed

some of the horrors that were perpetrated on the Zulus during the Zulu rebellion. Because one man, Bambatta, their chief, had refused to pay his tax, the whole race was made to suffer. I was in charge of an ambulance corps. I shall nev...

and were brought to us for nursing because no white nurse was prepared to look after them. And yet those who perpetrated all those cruelties called themselves Christians. They were ‘educated’, better d...

These remarks were a decisive advance on, and in some respects, a clear repudiation of, Gandhi’s older views on Africans. When, in the 1890s, he had first gone to South Africa, he was quite strongly prejudiced against Africans. In petitions to the colonial authorities, he

had asked for Indians to be better treated than (what in his opinion were) the less civilized natives. However, over the two decades he lived in South Africa, Gandhi steadily shed these racist views.

The most interesting aspect of Gandhi’s remarks was the clear recognition that, in South Africa, Indians were less exploited than Africans. Theirs was a ‘far bigger issue’. He knew Indians had a reputation for being collaborators, for cosying up to the whites in order

to extract concessions for themselves. Indeed, his own early efforts in the 1890s had been of this nature. But over time, he came to reject such self-serving behaviour. He now argued that Indians should not seek to extract concessions from the

rulers at the expense of...

The several hundred thousand Indians who lived in Singapore, Malaya and Burma had now witnessed it at first-hand. They had experienced the brutality of the Japanese, but also the amorality of the British, most notably in Burma,

where the whites were evacuated on ships, leaving Indians to find their own way back to their homeland by trekking across hill and forest, many perishing in the process.26

On 9 September, a month after Gandhi’s arrest, Winston Churchill told Leo Amery: ‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.’27 A few days later, Churchill launched a blistering attack on Gandhi and the Congress in the House of Commons.

The Congress, claimed Churchill, ‘did not represent the majority of the people of India’; it ‘did not even represent the Hindu masses’. Churchill characterized Gandhi’s party as ‘a political organisation built around a party machine and sustained by certain manufacturing

and financial interests (cheers an...

Gandhi might claim to advocate non-violence; but, said Churchill, his party had now ‘come out in the open as a revolutionary movement designed to paralyse commun...

to promote disorder…’ Churchill charged the Congress with being ‘committed to hostile and criminal courses’, and worse, of being ...

While Gandhi was in prison in Poona, on the other side of the subcontinent famine was looming. In their bid to stop a Japanese invasion, the British had destroyed thousands of country boats in Bengal. They did