by M K Gandhi
I recognize that in the hour of its danger we must give, as we have decided to give, ungrudging and unequivocal support to the Empire of which we aspire in the near future to be partners in the same sense as the Dominions overseas. But it is the simple truth that our response is due to the expectation that our goal will be reached all the more speedily. On that account, even as performance of duty automatically confers a corresponding right, people are entitled to believe that the imminent reforms alluded to in your speech will embody the main general principles of the Congress-League Scheme, and I am sure that it is this faith which has enabled many members of the Conference to tender to the Government their full-hearted co-operation.
If I could make my countrymen retrace their steps, I would make them withdraw all the Congress resolutions, and not whisper “Home Rule” or “Responsible Government” during the pendency of the War. I would make India offer all her able-bodied sons as a sacrifice to the Empire at its critical moment, and I know that India, by this very act, would become the most favoured partner in the Empire, and racial distinctions would become a thing of the past. But practically the whole of educated India has decided to take a less effective course, and it is no longer possible to say that educated India does not exercise any influence on the masses. I have been coming into most intimate touch with the ryots ever since my return from South Africa to India, and I wish to assure you that the desire for Home Rule has widely penetrated them. I was present at the sessions of the last Congress, and I was a party to the resolution that full Responsible Government should be granted to British India within a period to be fixed definitely by a Parliamentary Statute. I admit that it is a bold step to take, but I feel sure that nothing less than a definite vision of Home Rule to be realized in the shortest possible time will satisfy the Indian people. I know that there are many in India who consider no sacrifice as too great in order to achieve the end, and they are wakeful enough to realize that they must be equally prepared to sacrifice themselves for the Empire in which they hope and desire to reach their final status. It follows then that we can but accelerate our journey to the goal by silently and simply devoting ourselves heart and soul to the work of delivering the Empire from the threatening danger. It will be national suicide not to recognize this elementary truth. We must perceive that, if we serve to save the Empire, we have in that very act secured Home Rule.
Whilst, therefore, it is clear to me that we should give to the Empire every available man for its defence, I fear that I cannot say the same thing about financial assistance. My intimate intercourse with the ryots convinces me that India has already donated to the Imperial Exchequer beyond her capacity. I know that in making this statement I am voicing the opinion of the majority of my countrymen.
The Conference means for me, and I believe for many of us, a definite step in the consecration of our lives to the common cause, but ours is a peculiar position. We are today outside the partnership. Ours is a consecration based on hope of better future. I should be untrue to you and to my country if I did not clearly and unequivocally tell you what that hope is. I do not bargain for its fulfilment, but you should know that disappointment of hope means disillusion.
There is one thing I may not omit. You have appealed to us to sink domestic differences. If the appeal involves the toleration of tyranny and wrongdoing on the part of officials, I am powerless to respond. I shall resist organized tyranny to the uttermost. The appeal must be to the officials that they do not ill-treat a single soul, and that they consult and respect popular opinion as never before. In Champaran by resisting an age-long tyranny I have shown the ultimate sovereignty of British justice. In Kheda a population that was cursing the Government now feels that it, and not the Government, is the power when it is prepared to suffer for the truth it represents. It is, therefore, losing its bitterness and is saying to itself that the Government must be a Government for people, for it tolerates orderly and respectful disobedience where injustice is felt. Thus Champaran and Kheda affairs are my direct, definite and special contribution to the War. Ask me to suspend my activities in that direction and you ask me to suspend my life. If I could popularize the use of soul-force, which is but another name for love-force, in place of brute force, I know that I could present you with an India that could defy the whole world to do its worst. In season and out of season, therefore, I shall discipline myself to express in my life this eternal law of suffering, and present it for acceptance to those who care, and if I take part in any other activity, the motive is to show the matchless superiority of that law.
Lastly, I would like you to ask His Majesty’s Ministers to give definite assurance about Mohammedan States. I am sure you know that every Mohammedan is deeply interested in them. As a Hindu, I cannot be indifferent to their cause. Their sorrows must be our sorrows. In the most scrupulous regard for the rights of those States and for the Muslim sentiment as to their places of worship, and your just and timely treatment of India’s claim to Home Rule lies the safety of the Empire. I write this, because I love the English nation, and I wish to evoke in every Indian the loyalty of Englishmen.’
XXVIII
NEAR DEATH’S DOOR
I very nearly ruined my constitution during the recruiting campaign. In those days my food principally consisted of groundnut butter and lemons.M1 I knew that it was possible to eat too much butterM2 and injure one’s health, and yet I allowed myself to do so.381 This gave me a slight attack of dysentery. I did not take serious notice of this, and went that evening to the Ashram, as was my wont every now and then. I scarcely took any medicine in those days. I thought I should get well if I skipped a meal, and indeed I felt fairly free from trouble as I omitted the morning meal next day. I knew, however, that to be entirely free I must prolong my fast and, if I ate anything at all, I should have nothing but fruit juices.
There was some festival that day,382 and although383 I had told Kasturbai that I should have nothing for my midday meal, she tempted me and I succumbed. As I was under a vow of taking no milk or milk products, she384 had specially prepared for me a sweet wheaten porridge with oil added to it instead of ghee. She had reserved too a bowlful of385 mung for me. I was fond of these things,M3 and I readily took them, hoping that without coming to grief I should eat just enough to please Kasturbai and to satisfy my palate. But the devil had been only waiting for an opportunity. Instead of eating very little I had my fill of the meal. This was sufficient invitation to the angel of death.386 Within an hour the dysentery appeared in acute form.
The same evening I had to go back to Nadiad. I walked with very great difficulty to the Sabarmati station, a distance of only387 ten furlongs.388 Sjt. Vallabhbhai, who joined me at Ahmedabad, saw that I was unwell, but I did not allow him389 to guess how unbearable the pain was.
We reached Nadiad at about ten o’clock.390 The Hindu391 Anathashram where we had our headquarters392 was only half a mile from the station; but it was as good as ten for me. I somehow managed to reach the quarters, but the griping pain was steadily increasing.393 Instead of using the usual latrine which was a long way off, I asked for a commode to be placed in the adjoining room. I was ashamed to have to ask for this, but there was no escape. Sjt. Fulchand394 immediately procured a commode. All the friends surrounded me deeply concerned. They were all love and attention, but they could not relieve my pain. And my obstinacy added to their helplessness. I refused all medical aid. I would take no medicine, but preferred to suffer the penalty for my folly.M4 So they looked on in helpless dismay. I must have had thirty to forty motions in twenty-four hours. I fasted, not taking even fruit juices in the beginning. The appetite had all gone. I had thought all along that I had an iron frame,M5 but I found that my body had now become a lump of clay. It had lost all power of resistance. Dr. Kanuga395 came and pleaded with me to take medicine. I declined. He offered to give me an injection. I declined that too. My ignorance about injections was in those days quite ridiculous. I believed that an injection must be some kind of serum. Later I di
scovered that the injection that the doctor suggested was a vegetable substance, but the discovery was too late to be of use. The motions still continued, leaving me completely exhausted. The exhaustion brought on a delirious fever. The friends got more nervous, and called in more doctors. But what could they do with a patient who would not listen to them?
Sheth Ambalal with his good wife came down to Nadiad, conferred with my co-workers and removed me with the greatest care to his Mirzapur bungalow in Ahmedabad.396 It was impossible for anyone to receive more loving and selfless service than I had the privilege of having during this illness. But a sort of low fever persisted, wearing away my body from day to day. I felt that the illness was bound to be prolonged and possibly fatal. Surrounded as I was with all the love and attention that could be showered on me under Sheth Ambalal’s roof, I began to get restless and urged him to remove me to the Ashram. He had to yield to my importunity.397
Whilst I was thus tossing on the bed of pain in the Ashram, Sjt. Vallabhbhai brought the news that Germany had been completely defeated, and that the Commissioner had sent word that recruiting was no longer necessary. The news that I had no longer to worry myself about recruiting came as a very great relief.
I had now been trying hydropathy which gave some relief, but it was a hard job to build up the body. The many medical advisers overwhelmed me with advice, but I could not persuade myself to take anything. Two or three suggested meat broth as a way out of the milk vow, and cited authorities from Ayurveda in support of their advice. One of them strongly recommended eggs.398 But for all of them I had but one answer—no.
For me the question of diet was not one to be determined on the authority of the Shastras. It was one interwoven with my course of life which is guided by principles no longer depending upon outside authority. I had no desire to live at the cost of them.M6 How could I relinquish a principle in respect of myself, when I had enforced it relentlessly in respect of my wife, children and friends?
This protracted and first long illness in my life thus afforded me a unique opportunity to examine my principles and to test them. One night I gave myself up to despair.399 I felt that I was at death’s door. I sent word to Anasuyabehn. She ran down to the Ashram. Vallabhbhai came up with Dr. Kanuga, who felt my pulse and said: ‘Your pulse is quite good. I see absolutely no danger.M7 This is a nervous breakdown due to extreme weakness.’ But I was far from being reassured. I passed the night without sleep.
The morning broke without death coming. But I could not get rid of the feeling that the end was near, and so I began to devote all my waking hours to listening to the Gita being read to me by the inmates of the Ashram.400 I was incapable of reading. I was hardly inclined to talk. The slightest talk meant a strain on the brain. All interest in living had ceased, as I have never liked to live for the sake of living. It was such an agony to live on in that helpless state, doing nothing, receiving the service of friends and co-workers, and watching the body slowly wearing away.
Whilst I lay thus ever expectant of death, Dr. Talvalkar came one day with a strange creature. He hailed from Maharashtra. He was not known to fame,M8 but the moment I saw him I found that he was a crank like myself. He had come to try his treatment on me. He had almost finished his course of studies in the Grant Medical College without taking the degree.401 Later I came to know that he was a member of the Brahmo Samaj. Sjt. Kelkar, for that is his name, is a man of an independent and obstinate402 temperament. He swears by the ice treatment, which he wanted to try on me. We gave him the name of ‘Ice Doctor’.403 He is quite confident that he has discovered certain things which have escaped qualified doctors. It is a pity both for him and me that he has not been able to infect me with his faith in his system. I believe in his system up to a certain point, but I am afraid he has been hasty in arriving at certain conclusions.
But whatever may be the merits of his discoveries, I allowed him to experiment on my body. I did not mind external treatment.404 The treatment consisted in the application of ice all over the body. Whilst I am unable to endorse his claim about the effect his treatment had on me, it certainly infused in me a new hope and a new energy, and the mind naturally reacted on the body. I began to have appetite, and to have a gentle walk for five to ten minutes. He now suggested a reform in my diet. Said he: ‘I assure you that you will have more energy and regain your strength quicker if you take raw eggs. Eggs are as harmless as milk. They certainly cannot come under the category of meat. And do you know that all eggs are not fertilized? There are sterilizedM9 eggs on the market.’ I was not, however, prepared to take even the sterilizedM10 eggs. But the improvement was enough to give me interest in public activities.M11
XXIX
THE ROWLATT BILLS AND MY405 DILEMMA
Friends and doctors assured me that I should recuperate quicker by a change to Matheran, so I went there.406 But the water at Matheran being very hard, it made my stay thereM1 extremely difficult. As a result of the attack of the dysentery that I had, my anal tract had become extremely tender, and owing to fissures, I felt an excruciating pain at the time of evacuation, so that the very idea of eating filled me with dread. Before the week was over I had to flee from Matheran.407 Shankarlal Banker now constituted himself the guardian of my health, and pressed me to consult Dr. Dalal.408 Dr. Dalal was called accordingly. His capacity for taking instantaneous decisions captured me.
He said: ‘I cannot rebuild your body unless you take milk. If in addition you would take iron and arsenic injections, I would guarantee409 fully to renovate your constitution.’
‘You can give me the injections,’ I replied, ‘but milk is a different question; I have a vow against it.’M2
‘What exactly is the nature of your vow?’ the doctor inquired.
I told him the whole history and the reasons behind my vow, how,410 since I had come to know that the cow and the buffalo were subjected to the process of phooka, I had conceived a strong disgust for milk. Moreover, I had always held that milk is not the natural diet of man. I had therefore abjured its use altogether. Kasturbai was standing near my bed listening all the time to this conversation.411
‘But surely you cannot have any objection to goat’s milk then,’ she interposed.
The doctor too took up the strain. ‘If you will take goat’s milk, it will be enough for me,’ he said.
I succumbed.412 My intense eagerness to take up the satyagraha fight had created in me a strong desire to live, and so I contented myself with adhering to the letter of my vow only, and sacrificed its spirit. For although I had only the milk of the cow and the she-buffalo in mind when I took the vow, by natural implication it covered the milk of all animals. Nor could it be right for me to use milk at all, so long as I held that milk is not the natural diet of man. Yet knowing all this I agreed to take goat’s milk. The will to live proved stronger than the devotion to truth, and for once the votary of truth compromised his sacred ideal by his eagerness to take up the satyagraha fight. The memory of this action even now rankles in my breast and fills me with remorse, and I am constantly thinking how to give up goat’s milk. But I cannot yet free myself from that subtlest of temptations, the desire to serve, which still holds me.
My experiments in dietetics are dear to me as a part of my researches in ahimsa.M3 They give me recreation and joy. But my use of goat’s milk today troubles me not from the view-point of dietetic ahimsa so much as from that of truth, being no less than in breach of pledge. It seems to me that I understand the ideal of truth better than that of ahimsa, and my experience tells me that, if I let go my hold of truth, I shall never be able to solve the riddle of ahimsa. The ideal of truth requires that vows taken should be fulfilled in the spirit as well as in the letter.M4 In the present case I killed the spirit—the soul of my vow—by adhering to its outer form only,413 and that is what galls me. But in spite of this clear knowledge I cannot see my way straight before me.M5 In other words, perhaps, I have not the courage to follow the straight course.M6 Both at bottom mean one and the sam
e thing, for doubt is invariably the result of want or weakness414 of faith. ‘Lord, give me faith’ is, therefore, my prayer day and night.415
Soon after I began taking goat’s milk, Dr. Dalal performed on me a successful operation for fissures.416 As I recuperated, my desire to live revived, especially because God had kept work in store for me.417
I had hardly begun to feel my way towards recovery, when I happened casually to read in the papers the Rowlatt Committee’s418 report which had just been published.419 Its recommendations startled me. Shankarlal Banker and Umar Sobani approached me with the suggestion that I should take some promptM7 action in the matter. In about a month I went to Ahmedabad. I mentioned my apprehensions to Vallabhbhai, who used to come to see me almost daily. ‘Something must be done,’ said I to him. ‘But what can we do in the circumstances?’ he asked in reply. I answered, ‘If even a handful of men can be found to sign the pledge of resistance, and the proposed measure is passed into law in defiance of it,420 we ought to offer satyagraha at once. If I was not laid up like this, I should give battle against it all alone, and expect others to follow suit. But in my present helpless condition I feel myself to be altogether unequal to the task.’