INDIA: Soul Force Wins

The Mahatma or Great Soul seemed to twist around his scrawny finger last week the United Kingdom Government, some 220,000.000 Hindus of all castes (from exalted Brahmins to debased Untouchables) and even the ramrod-stiff British Raj.

Death still hovered over the fragile body (which had lost a pound a day for six days) when Mr. Gandhi ended his hunger strike by saying a prayer, quavering a hymn of joy, sipping an ounce or two of orange juice and exclaiming weakly “Satyagraha [Soul Force] has triumphed.”

Eight doctors shook their heads. The Mahatma, they said, had “begun his fast with little fat and lived on muscle.” After breaking his fast he was “still in the danger zone and might suffer a stroke of paralysis.”

It had been a tfght which only Indians, perhaps only Hindus, can fully understand. Several times the Mahatma showed extreme nausea. Whenever he fainted Mrs. Gandhi vigorously rubbed his head with olive oil.

During the struggle Britain’s common-sense Raj yielded first on a minor point. Viceroy the Earl of Willingdon’s much publicized order to eject the Mahatma from jail and detain him under guard in another place (TIME, Sept. 26) simply was not carried out. Instead Mr. Gandhi was moved to the largest room in Yerovda Prison and it was thrown open to delegations and personages of all sorts who ceaselessly moved in & out, arguing or pleading with the Great Soul who remained cheerful but unmoved, inflexible in his purpose: To eat no food until His Majesty’s Government reached an agreement with Hindus of all castes terminating the decree of the Raj that the higher castes should constitute an electorate separate from the Untouchables in seven of the nine provinces.

Heart Change. Exciting was the change of heart and mind worked by the Mahatma’s fast, last week, upon Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambdekar, the Raj’s hand-picked and appointed “Representative of the Untouchables.”

In London last year at the Indian Round Table Conference, Dr. Ambdekar scornfully denied the Mahatma’s claim that he (Gandhi) represented the Untouchables as well as the rest of India. When Mr. Gandhi announced his fast Dr. Ambdekar, addressing the advisory Indian Legislative Assembly, called it “a political stunt.” Soon afterward Dr. Ambdekar began to break down, saying that perhaps Mr. Gandhi had solved the electoral issue “in a moment of reflection” and that he vished to see him. The meeting took place last week and Untouchable Dr. Ambdekar as well as high-caste Hindu leaders were apparently moved beyond endurance by the piteous sight of the Mahatma quivering on a cot in the prison yard beneath the shade of a mango tree. One & all they rushed away to patch up with the Raj some sort of settlement to which the Mahatma would agree.

The Gandhi IF. In the United Kingdom, where statesmen observe the Friday-to-Monday week-end quite as scrupulously as the Sabbath, extreme inconvenience was caused by the Mahatma’s fast. Daily, then hourly, then every few minutes the King-Emperor, Prime Minister MacDonald and the India Office received bulletins from the eight doctors at Yerovda Jail, not to mention bales of cablegrams from the Viceroy and hundreds of Indian leaders. If— worried the British—if Gandhi actually died without breaking his fast, would that release the violence which hundreds of millions of Indians are capable* of exerting, but which the Mahatma forbade? Far more potent than the potent Kipling IF was the Gandhi IF last week.

What agreement was reached in final frantic haste, His Majesty’s Government and censors, left unclear last week, stressing instead the great fact that the agreement had satisfied Mahatma Gandhi. It was said that to the agreement proper His Majesty’s Government appended “certain reservations”—and the Kingdom of Egypt is regulated from London by means of “reservations” inserted when His Majesty’s Government “recognized it as an independent sovereign State” in 1922. Observers could assume no more than that Mr. Gandhi had received convincing assurances that the caste barriers (which he has fought so long to break down) will not be strengthened by the form which India’s electoral laws finally take.

There is, of course, no prospect of Indian democracy, even in the sense that Canada is democratic and mistress of herself under the Crown. When Indians vote under a new Constitution which is being slowly evolved, their elected representatives will still be subordinate to the London Parliament—unless Mother India wins another and far greater victory than Mahatma Gandhi won last week.

* Despite the presence of extra police and two regiments which have been guarding Chittagong in Bengal since the attacks on Britons there last year, a white sahib’s dance at Chittagong was broken up last week by Bengali who threw bombs, killed a white woman and two policemen, wounded six whites.