116. Quoted in Times of India, 8 Feb. 1930, p. 13.
117. It is not clear from where Irwin could have derived this estimate of only five days, but it does indicate how poor was his understanding of the pattern of Gandhi’s forthcoming campaign on the very eve of the march.
118. IOR/MSS. Eur. C. 152/1, Irwin Correspondence with the King, 1926–1931, No. 71, March 11, 1930, p. 109b.
119. IOR/MSS. Eur. F. 15%. Sir Frederick Sykes Collection. Correspondence to and from Viceroy, Jan. 1, 1930-Dec. 1, 1930. Telegram No. S.D. 82., Jan. 17, 1930.
120. Times of India, March 7, 1930, p. 8.
121. Ibid, March 10, 1930, pp. 10, 15. (The quotes are from the Daily Telegraph, Daily News and Daily Chronicle).
122. Ibid. March 11, 1930, p. 11.
123. IOR/MSS. Eur. C. 15V27. Irwin to Halifax, No. 116, 10 July 1928.
124. IOR/MSS. Eur. C. 15V9, Secretary of State to Irwin, July 10 and July 12, 1928.
125. Leslie Wilson to Irwin, August 16, 1928, Home Poll. File #197, 1928.
126. Irwin to All Governors, August, 1928. Home Poll. File #197. 1928.
127. Secretary of State to Irwin, September 13, 1928, Home Poll. File # 197. 1928.
128. Irwin to Secretary of State, October 11, 1928, Home Poll. File #197. 1928.
129. Irwin should have felt reinforced in his determination to deal firmly with the nationalist movement by a “Minute on the present political situation” from Sir David Petrie, dated June 19, 1929. Petrie had served as Head of the Civil Intelligence Department in India from 1925–1929 and in a less senior capacity for 15 years before that. From this seasoned perspective, he concluded that the political situation in 1929 was “the gravest I have known,” because among a large number of Indians “disaffection has given place to undisguised hostility, and a determination to end the present system of Government as soon as may be. The whole Congress movement…stands for nothing else. I have seen it said that when Mahatma Gandhi will raise the banner of Independence, 33 crore [one crore - 10 million] Indians will take a vow to prefer death to slavery.” Petrie concluded: “The only safe, guiding principle I can see is that violence must be at all costs repressed and prevented from getting anything like a general hold…. manifestations of it as take place must be dealt with exemplary severity. But they must also be dealt with promptly … If the Congress leaders at the beginning of next year should institute a widespread movement for the attainment of Complete Independence—that is, for the deprivation His Majesty of the sovereignty of His Indian dominions, such a step must obviously have far-reaching effects in stimulating violence on a wide scale. If such a contingency should arise, the Government of India should be in no two minds as to the lines on which they should meet it.” Home Poll. File #133. 1930. Petrie’s memo is noteworthy in two respects: first, it associates civil disobedience with terrorist violence in a way that hardliners were wont to do, arguing that once satyagraha challenged government authority, the system of law and order was undermined and, especially in India, likely to dissolve into anarchy. In 1930, the validity of this assumption became Irwin’s burden to prove. This was difficult in the face of Gandhi’s insistence that satyagraha released forces of nonviolence to counter the violence of both Government and the terrorist movement. Second, Petrie perceives the Government’s weakness, by insisting that it must not be in “two minds” about how to act against Gandhi. Hesitation would be Irwin’s downfall.
130. Irwin to Halifax, December 31, 1929, p. 271.
131. Ibid., March 10, 1930, p. 282.
132. IOR/MSS Eur. C. 152/6. Irwin to Wedgwood Benn, March 13, 1930.
133. Irwin to Halifax, March 2, 1930, p. 281.
134. The Pioneer, Allahabad, found in the letter “blind and fanatical prejudice,” “amazing egotism” with a “ridiculous” plan of action, March 9, 1930, p. 12.
135. The Leader, March 9, 1930, p. 9.
136. Ibid., March 10, 1930, p. 8.
137. Ibid., March 12, 1930, p. 8.
138. IOR/MSS. Eur. C. 15V24, Irwin Correspondence with Persons in India, 1930, No. 63d February 16, 1930, p. 124.
139. Ibid., No. 71b, February 24, p. 143a; No. 86a, March 10, p. 164c
140. Ibid., No. 89f, March 17, p. 164.
141. Ibid., No. 99a, March 22, p. 177; No. 107, March 26, p. 187.
142. Home Poll. File # 257/IV. 1930.
143. In an apparent lapse of reason, Sykes actually deployed a large police force around Dandi to destroy all the natural salt before Gandhi arrived. But he nevertheless feared that “there will still be opportunities for manufacturing it unless a force is kept constantly at the work of destroying it.” However, at the moment Gandhi broke the law at Dandi, “Not a single police or excise officer was present.” (S. R. Bakshi, Gandhi and Salt Satyagraha, p. 57).
144. William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, II, ii, The Complete Works (New York: Viking, 1986), p. 41.
145. Home Poll. File # 257/IV. 1930.
146. Judith Brown, Modern India, The Origins of An Asian Democracy (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 260.
147. IOR/MSS. Eur. F. 15°/2, Sykes Collection, Correspondence to and from Viceroy, 1 Jan. 1-Dec. 1930, “Draft Note for Discussion at Delhi,” March 27, 1930. R. J. Moore offers this rationalization of Irwin’s policy at the end of March and early April: “The Government recognized that the purpose of the campaign was to educate Indians in civil disobedience, and that Gandhi planned to use his arrest for breaking the salt laws as the signal for a mass response on a wide range of issues. They unobligingly determined not to arrest him so long as he seemed likely to provoke less excitement by being free than he would by being arrested. They would deny him the mass sympathy that his arrest would arouse. However, they would not ignore the transgression of the salt laws by any other leader if a clear case could be proved against him.” The Crisis of Indian Unity 1917–1940, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 170–71. By the end of April, this policy and its rationale would become untenable.
148. IOR/MSS. Eur. C. 15V24, Irwin Correspondence with Persons in India, 1930, No. 124, April 9, 1930, Telegram from Sykes to Irwin, p. 216.
149. Gandhi and Civil Disobedience, p. 108.
150. IOR/MSS. Eur. C. 15V24. Irwin Correspondence with Persons in India, 1930, No. 111, April 14, 1930, p. 71.
151. IOR/MSS. Eur. C. 15V19. Irwin to Persons Abroad. Jan-Dec. 1930, No. 41, March 31 (to Bray); No. 43, March 31 (to Lane-Fox); No. 45 (April 7) to G. Dawson.
152. Irwin relates his Christian heritage in his autobiography, Fulness of Days (London: Collins, 1957), pp. 18–25. Historians have remarked that he was “a man of deep religious conviction.” Hugh Tinker, South Asia (London: Pall Mall, 1966), p. 214; and Percival Spear, India (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1961), comments that “Irwin was a deeply religious man, and Gandhi’s moral approach to politics made a deep impression upon him.” (p. 374) Also, R. P. Masani, Britain in India (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 126.
153. IOR/MSS. Eur. C. 15V19. Irwin to Persons Abroad. Jan.-Dec. 1930, No. 58, April 24, 1930, p. 55.
154. Ibid., No. 45, April 7, to G. Dawson, pp. 43–44
155. IOR/MSS. Eur. C. 15V27. Irwin to Halifax, No. 187, April 7, 1939, p. 286.
156. In New York, The Literary Digest in an editorial on the salt march titled “A Saint in Politics,” wrote that Gandhi “is marching to the sea to further his campaign. The Sermon on the Mount is his book of etiquette.” Moreover, an editorial in The Nadon, 104, No. 13, March 29, 1930, p. 24, entitled “The Terrible Meek,” remarked that Gandhi had always acted “in the name of Christ Jesus and the Holy Word,” and that “whether he is alive or dead, Gandhi’s soul will go marching on.” 130, No. 3385, May 21, 1930, p. 588. The Christian Century (Chicago) called its commentary on the salt march “Gandhi Before Pilate” and drew a series of parallels with Christ and termed the event “a gigantic success” because of the spiritual force it had generated. 47, No. 16, April 16, 1930, p. 488. In a letter to the edi
tor that followed this editorial, written by Blanche Watson, the salt march was called “the greatest manifestation of spiritual power ever recorded in history. Jesus is ‘winning India’ through Gandhi—and by that I mean the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of truth and love.” 47, No. 30, July 23, 1930, p. 919. The American characterization of Gandhi as a modern Christ began as early as April, 1921, when the New York theologian, Rev. John Haynes Holmes preached a sermon on Gandhi entitled “Who is the Greatest Man in the World?” and proclaimed: “When I think of Gandhi, I think of Jesus.” J. H. Holmes, My Gandhi (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1954), p. 31. The remarkable extent to which this image of Gandhi caught on in the American press by as early as 1922 is suggested in Gandhi and Non-Violent Resistance. The Non-Cooperation Movement of India, Gleanings from the American Press, Compiled by Miss Blanche Watson (Madras: Ganesh and Co., 1923), pp. 280–544. But it was the British who first came forth with biographies that stressed Gandhi’s spiritual qualities: the earliest biography by Rev. Joseph J. Doke, M. K. Gandhi: an Indian Patriot in South Africa (London: The London Chronicle, 1909), contained a glowing introduction by Lord Ampthill. Thus began a prolific commentary on Gandhi by Britons who identified with Gandhi because of his moral stature. Many were Quakers like Horace Alexander, Agatha Harrison, and Reginald Reynolds. The last is noteworthy here because of the circumstances of his delivery of Gandhi’s letter of March 2, 1930, to Lord Irwin, recounted in A Quest for Gandhi (New York: Doubleday, 1952), pp. 51–52. Perhaps most important is the contribution of Charles Freer Andrews, who began as an Anglican priest and eventually became Gandhi’s intimate friend. Andrews published a series of books on Gandhi: in 1930 appeared, Mahatma Gandhi—His Own Story, edited by Andrews (New York: Macmillan) and with an introduction by John Haynes Holmes. The latter claims that with the salt satyagraha, Gandhi “has at last become, like Jesus, one of the ‘terrible meek’—the meek who ‘inherit the earth’…Long before the War the Mahatma was compared with the Christ for the sheer beauty and sanctity of his inner life. Now this comparison is immeasurably clarified and strengthened by the spectacle of what Gandhi is seeking to do for India and for the world. If we would know what Jesus was as a saint, and also what he did, or tried to do, as a savior, we have only to look across the seas to this greatest man in the world today” (pp. 30–31). Unlike Holmes or Reynolds, however, Andrews was involved in correspondence with Lord Irwin during the salt march. The seriousness of this exchange is succinctly stated in the outstanding biography of Andrews by Hugh Tinker, The Ordeal of Love. C F. Andrews and India (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1979, pp. 237–240. Irwin’s high regard for Andrews’s views on Gandhi is suggested in his biography, The Earl of Halifax, Fulness of Days, pp. 147–148. Finally, parallels between Gandhi and Christ were stressed before 1930 in Romain Rolland’s influential and widely read biography, Mahatma Gandhi. The Man Who Became One With the Universal Being, in French and translated into English both published in 1924.
157. In Preface to Mahatma Gandhi, His Mission and Message (London: G. S. Dara, November, 1929), p. 6.
158. IOR/MSS. Eur. C. 152/24, Irwin Correspondence to Persons in India, Hailey to Irwin, No. 157, 25 April 1930, pp. 262–265.
159. Judith Brown, Gandhi and Civil Disobedience, pp. 174–191 offers a thorough examination of the Gandhi-Irwin talks and the resulting pact. S. R. Bakshi, Gandhi and Salt Satyagraha, pp. 60–66, emphasizes the central aspect of Irwin’s ambivalence; an emphasis first given by the present author in 1974: Dennis Dalton, “Gandhi’s Style of Leadership” in B. N. Pandey, ed., Leadership in South Asia (New (Delhi: Vikas Publishers, 1977), pp. 598–623.
160. IOR/MSS. Eur. C. 152/11. Wedgwood Benn to Irwin, March 11, 1930.
161. IOR/MSS. Eur. C. 152/6. Wedgwood Benn to Irwin, April 22, 1930.
162. John Court Curry, The Joy of the Working. Memoirs of an Indian Policeman. 2, pp. 76, 202–203, 209–210, 216–217. IOR/MSS. EUR.C. 211/2.
163. CWMG 43: 37.
164. Gandhi also realized the discomfort that Government violence was causing many Indians who felt loyal to the Raj. Representative of this ambivalence is a letter from Sir A. K. Ghuznavi to Irwin. Ghuznavi was a Member of the Legislative Assembly and a Muslim supporter of the Government. He wrote to Irwin: “It is impossible and it is impolitic to overlook the bitter psychological effect this method [of police dispersing crowds with violence, using lathis or steel-tipped clubs] is having on people who are pro-government and are anxious to support it. Every time one of these lathi charges takes place some supporters of Government are alienated and the Congress are enabled to strengthen the impression that they are non-violent while Government is meeting nonviolence with violence.” Home Poll. File # 190. 1930.
165. Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, i, Complete Works, p. 951.
166. Bondurant, pp. 226–227.
167. Harijan, Nov. 26, 1938 and Dec. 17, 1938, in CWMG 68: 137—141, 191–193.
168. Harijan, Jan. 7, 1939 in CWMG 68: 276–278, 381–382.
169. A thorough and illuminating analysis of the entire subject of this and related correspondence occurs in Gideon Shimoni, Gandhi, Satyagraha and the Jews: A Formative Factor in India s Policy Towards Israel (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1977), pp. 3760.
170. Martin Buber and J. L. Magnes, Two Letters to Gandhi (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, April, 1939) pp. 2–7. Martin Buber (1878–1965), Israeli theologian and philosopher, born in Austria, had an intimate knowledge of Nazism through his residence in Germany from 1933–1935. Judah Magnes (1877–1948) was an American rabbi and like Hayim Greenberg, a pacifist with a sympathetic grasp of Gandhi’s thought and experience. He was Chancellor and President of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The present writer is indebted to Dr. Daniel Argov, for his assistance in researching the Buber-Gandhi correspondence in Jerusalem, August 1966.
171. Ibid., pp. 23–25. Magnes’s letter is dated two days later than Buber’s, February 26, 1939; both are written in Jerusalem.
172. Shimoni concludes “that the letters may have gone astray in this period, or that Gandhi never actually read them” and cites a communication from Gandhi’s secretary, Pyarelal Nayar, Gandhi, Satyagraha and the Jews, p. 47. When the present author discussed this with Pyarelal he was certain that Gandhi had never received or read the letters. (Interview in Delhi, March, 1975).
173. Greenberg, “An Answer to Gandhi,” in The Inner Eye. Selected Essays (New York: Jewish Frontier Association, 19 5 3), pp. 230–238. Hayim Greenberg (1889–1953), a Labor Zionist, was editor of The Jewish Frontier from 1934–1953. The profound influence that Gandhi had on his thought is evident in his public exchanges as well as in his eulogy to Gandhi on February 1,1948 (pp. 157–161). Also see Marie Syrkin, ed., Hayim Greenberg: Anthology (Detroit: Wayne State University Press), 1968.
174. CWMG 69: 290.
175. Louis Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (New York: Harper, 1950), p. 348.
176. Gandhi’s advice to Hitler was no more persuasive than to the Jews. He wrote two letters to Hitler dated July 23, 1939 and December 24, 1940. Both open with his customary salutation, “Dear Friend,” but unlike his classic letter to Lord Irwin, they have no concrete or practical implications. The first appealed to Hitler as “the one person in the world who can prevent a war,” and so implicitly assigns the sole responsibility for the impending conflict to him. (CWMG 70: 21) The second letter is much longer and substantive. It condemns Hitler’s action as “monstrous and unbecoming of human dignity,” “degrading humanity,” but again implores him, this time “in the name of humanity to stop the war.” Most of this letter tries to present a case for nonviolence as “a force which, if organized, can without doubt match itself against a combination of all the most violent forces in the world.” (CWMG 73: 253–255) When Gandhi put this same argument to Irwin it carried weight because it was backed by the real prospect of mass civil disobedience. It could have no such meaning for the Nazis. There is no evidence that either of these two letters was received. Both were suppressed
by the British (CWMG 73, Editor’s introduction, p. vi) and there was no acknowledgement from Germany. However, the Fuehrer did remark ominously in January, 1942 that “If we took India, the Indians would certainly not be enthusiastic, and they’d not be slow to regret the good old days of English rule!” Hitlers Secret Conversations. 1941–1944 (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1953), p. 163. Joseph Goebbels commented particularly on Gandhi, derisively and contemptuously, calling him “a fool whose policies [of ‘passive resistance’] seem merely calculated to drag India further and further into misfortune.” He believed that India needed “an energetic nationalist,” presumably like Subhas Chandra Bose, to combat British imperialism, and characterized Gandhi’s fasting as “a great comedy for the world.” The Goebbels Diaries. 1942–1943, edited and translated by Louis P. Lochner (New York: Doubleday, 1948), pp. 162, 177, 273. There was no evident ambivalence among the Nazis about Gandhi and his method. But Gandhi was not ambivalent about Hitler. He wrote that “it almost seems as if Herr Hitler knows no God but brute force,” (CWMG70: 162) and pitted his method against Hitler’s in these stark terms: “If we wish to win swaraj through ahimsa, this is the only way. If, however, we wish to use force, then Hitler would point the way. There are only two courses open—either Hitler’s, that is, the way of violence, or mine, that is, the way of non-violence.” (CWMG 75: 10) Such comments may only underscore the importance of Gandhi’s activism, without which his testaments of faith could come as hollow homilies.
177. Gandhi was unusually well informed during the 1930s and 1940s about the plight of Jews in Europe in the face of Nazi persecution. In South Africa, from 1904–1914, he had formed a close relationship with Hermann Kallenbach, a German Jew, who served as the manager of the protest march of 1913. Kallenbach visited Gandhi at the Sevagram ashram in 1937 and 1939. He was an ideal source for presenting to Gandhi an informed and sympathetic account because he came as an old and trusted friend, who shared with Gandhi abundant literature on this subject as well as on Zionism and Palestine. Gideon Shimoni examines Kallenbach’s role in detail, Gandhi, Satyagraha and the Jews, pp. 22–37. While Kallenbach was at Sevagram, a Captain Strunk, representative of an official newspaper in Germany and member of Hitler’s staff, visited Gandhi, and the latter asked him “why the Jews are being persecuted in Germany,” as he introduced him to Kallenbach, “a German Jew sitting there bare-bodied and in a khadi dhoti” Strunk replied “I personally think we have just overdone it. That’s the mistake revolutions always do.” Harijan, July 3,1937. Maurice Frydman, a Polish Jew who fled Europe in 1935 to join Gandhi, lived at Sevagram continuously from 1938–1941. He affirmed Kallenbach’s key role in educating Gandhi on issues relating to European Jews at that time. Frydman judged Gandhi exceptionally knowledgeable on the subject and also claimed that he “never observed a trace of anti-Semitism in Gandhi.” (Interview with Maurice Frydman in Bombay, November, 1966).
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