China Hand. John Paton Davies, Jr.
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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