Mahatma Gandhi’s Interview to Ralph Coniston

[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’s Interview to Ralph Coniston

 

 

RALPH CONISTON: Why do you feel so skeptical about the possibility of a lasting peace emerging from the defeat of the Axis Powers?

GANDHIJI: The reason is patent. Violence is bound sooner or later to exhaust itself but peace cannot issue out of such exhaustion. I am uttering God’s truth when I say that unless there is a return to sanity, violent people will be swept off the face of the earth. Those who have their hands dyed deep in blood cannot build a non-violent order for the world.

RALPH CONISTON: While the representatives of the big powers who would be meeting at San Francisco were what they were, the people at large, after the experience of the horrors of war, would force the hands of their respective Governments.

GANDHIJI: I know the European mind well enough to know that when it has to choose between abstract justice and self-interest, it will plump for the latter. The man in the street even in America does not think much for himself. He will put faith in what Roosevelt says. Roosevelt gives him market, credit and all that. Similarly Churchill can say to the English working class that he has kept the Empire intact and preserved for them the foreign markets. The people will, as they do, follow him.

RALPH CONISTON: So, you don’t think that the average man in Europe or America cares much for the high ideals for which the war is professed to be fought?

GANDHIJI: I am afraid, I do not. If you hold the contrary view, I shall honour you for your belief but I cannot share it.

RALPH CONISTON: Then, you don’t think the Big Five or the Big Three can guarantee peace?

GANDHIJI: I am positive. If they are so arrogant as to think that they can have lasting peace while the exploitation of the coloured and the so-called backward races goes on, they are living in a fool’s paradise.

RALPH CONISTON: You think they will fall out among themselves before long?

GANDHIJI: There you are stealing my language. The quarrel with Russia has already started. It is only a question when the other two England and America will start quarreling with each other. Maybe, pure self-interest will dictate a wiser course and those who will be meeting at San Francisco will say: ‘Let us not fall out over a fallen carcass.’ The man in the street will gain nothing by it. Freedom of India along non-violent lines, on the other hand, will mean the biggest thing for the exploited races of the earth. I am, therefore, trying to concentrate on it. If India acts on the square when her turn comes, it will not dictate terms at the Peace Conference but peace and freedom will descend upon it, not as a terrifying torrent, but as ‘gentle rain from heaven’. Liberty won non-violently will belong to the least. That is why I swear by non-violence. Only when the least can say, ‘I have got my liberty’ have I got mine? The conversation then turned on the issue of the treatment of the aggressor nations after the war.

GANDHIJI: As a non-violent man, I do not believe in the punishment of individuals, much less can I stomach the punishment of a whole nation?

RALPH CONISTON: What about the war criminals?

GANDHIJI: What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered, and conducted wars, war criminals? War criminals are not confined to the Axis Powers alone. Roosevelt and Churchill are no less war criminal than Hitler and Mussolini. Hitler was “Great Britain’s sin”. Hitler is only an answer to British imperialism, and this I say in spite of the fact that I hate Hitlerism and its anti-Semitism. England, America and Russia have all of them got their hands dyed more or less red—not merely Germany and Japan. The Japanese have only proved themselves to be apt pupils of the West. They have learnt at the feet of the West and beaten it at its own game.

RALPH CONISTON: What would you see accomplished at San Francisco?

GANDHIJI: Parity among all nations the strongest and the weakest the strong should be the servants of the weak not their masters or exploiters.

RALPH CONISTON: Is not this too idealistic? May be. But you asked me what I would like to see accomplished. It is my belief that human nature is ever working upward. I can, therefore, never take a pessimistic view of the future of human nature if the Big Five say, ‘We shall hold on to what we have’, the result will be a terrible catastrophe and then Heaven help the world and the Big Five. There will be another and bloodier war and another San Francisco.

RALPH CONISTON: Would the results of the second San Francisco be any better than that of the first?

GANDHIJI: I hope so. They will be saner then. They will have gained their balance somewhat after their third experience.

RALPH CONISTON: Would you not go to the West to teach them the art of peace?

GANDHIJI: In the Second World War some British pacifists, including Dick Sheppard and Maude Royden had written to me asking me to point the way. My reply in substance was: Even if one of you can become true in the right sense of the word, that one man will be able to inculcate non-violence among the European folk. I cannot today save Europe, however much I may like to. I know Europe and America. If I go there I shall be like a stranger. Probably I shall be lionized but that is all. I shall not be able to present to them the science of peace in language they can understand. But they will understand if I can make good my non-violence in India. I shall then speak through India. I, therefore, declined to accept the invitations from America and Europe. My answer would be the same today.

RALPH CONISTON: If you were at San Francisco, what would you be advocating there?

GANDHIJI: If I knew I would tell you but I am made differently. When I face a situation, the solution comes to me. I am not a man who sits down and thinks out problems syllogistically. I am a man of action. I react to a situation intuitively. Logic comes afterwards; it does not precede the event. The moment I am at the Peace Conference, I know the right word will come but not beforehand. This much, however, I can say that whatever I say there will be in terms of peace, not war.

RALPH CONISTON: What kind of world organization would promote an enduring peace or preserve it?

GANDHIJI: Only an organization based predominantly on truth and non-violence.

RALPH CONISTON: With the present imperfect condition of the world and human nature, what means would in your opinion promote peace?

GANDHIJI: Nearest approach to the condition laid down in my answer to the previous question.

RALPH CONISTON: Would you have a world government?

GANDHIJI: Yes. I claim to be a practical idealist. I believe in compromise so long as it does not involve the sacrifice of principles. I may not get a world government that I want just now but if it is a government that would just touch my ideal, I would accept it as a compromise. Therefore, although I am not enamored of a world federation, I shall be prepared to accept it if it is built on an essentially non-violent basis.

RALPH CONISTON: If the nations of the world were to consider world government as a means for preserving peace and promoting the welfare of all peoples, would you advocate the abandonment of India’s aspiration for independence ill order to join in the general plan?

GANDHIJI: If you will carefully go through the much abused Congress resolution of August 1942, you will discover that independence is necessary for India becoming an efficient partner in any scheme for the preservation of lasting peace in the world.

 

Reference:

Mahatma Gandhi—The Last Phase, Vol. I, Book I, pp. 113-6