Mahatma Gandhi Discussion with Director of British Daily

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

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Mahatma Gandhi Discussion with Director of British Daily

 

GANDHIJI: We are today suffering from a double evil suppression of facts and concoction.

DIRECTOR: It does not pay to emphasize news about riots. My paper does not. But Gandhiji told him that he and his paper would be doing a real service to India not by suppressing relevant facts but by presenting them truthfully, without bias or prejudice.

 He said: Truth never damages a cause that is just. Replying to another question as to when the present trouble would end, Gandhiji remarked that it was bound to go, though he did not see any signs of abatement just yet.

He added: There are interested parties fomenting it. Mine may be a voice in the wilderness today, but I maintain that so long as British troops are here, both Hindus and Mussalmans will continue to look up to they for help and the trouble will continue. Nothing worse could happen to a people struggling to be free. This shocked the British conscience of the friend.

He asked: “The Britishers would like his troops to go out quicker. Who obstructs who else but the British themselves, unless you can show that it is physically impossible to affect immediate withdrawal after some parrying the friend admitted that the British commercial and other vested interests in India and their henchmen stood in the way of their withdrawal. He was, however, still doubtful as to the function of British troops in the maintenance of law and order. “You say there can be no peace while they are here. Yet every day there is an increasing demand for them for the maintenance of peace. The complaint is that they are not sufficiently used.”

GANDHIJI:  That is the very reason why they should be withdrawn. Their presence, in my opinion, does not act as a preventive measure but becomes punitive. Where they are used to maintain law and order, it is after the trouble. Future historians will bear this out. Order will be restored in East Bengal too but after what slaughter, what suffering? No, the British troops are in India not to protect India but to protect British interests which were imposed on India and which are now so well entrenched that even the British Government cannot dislodge them. The British did not come here as philanthropists, nor is there any altruism in their continued stay here or the continuation of their troops, all that might be claimed to the contrary notwithstanding.

 DIRECTOR:  How do you think the succession of war such as we have witnessed of late can be stopped?

GANDHIJI:  I have no doubt that unless big nations shed their desire for exploitation and the spirit of violence of which war is the natural expression and atom bomb the inevitable consequence, there is no hope for peace in the world. I tried to speak out during the war and wrote open letters to the British people, to Hitler and to the Japanese and was dubbed a fifth columnist for my pains.

DIRECTOR:  But non-violence might take a long time to act. But for the Second Front there probably would have been no Russia.

GANDHIJI:  All these are arguments dictated by reason. It is not permitted me to think in these terms or else I would be denying my faith which today burns brighter than ever in spite of all the bitter experiences that I have had. History provides us with a whole series of miracles of masses of people being converted to a particular view in the twinkling of an eye. Take the Boer War. It has given to the English language the word ‘mafficking’. People went mad on the Maffeking Day. Yet inside of two years the whole British nation underwent a transformation. Henry Campbell-Bannerman became the Premier and practically all the gains of war were given up. The recent labour victory at the polls was another instance in point. To me it is a sufficient miracle that in spite of his oratory and brilliance, Churchill should cease to be the idol of the British people who till yesterday hung on his lips and listened to him in awe. All these instances are enough to sustain the faith of a believer like me that when all other powers are gone, one will remain, call it God, Nature or whatever you like. His own faith in the triumph of non-violence he likened to that of the witnesses in the Second Coming of Christ. It was to take place within the lifetime of the witnesses though it has taken two thousand years and yet remains a distant dream. Faith could think in no other terms.

 

Reference:

Harijan, 10-11-1946