PREFACE
This book was written by me in Ahmadnagar Fort prison during
the five months, April to September 1944. Some of my colleagues
in prison were good enough to read the manuscript and make
a number of valuable suggestions. On revising the book in prison
I took advantage of these suggestions and made some additions.
No one, I need hardly add, is responsible for what I have
written or necessarily agrees with it. But I must express my deep
gratitude to my fellow-prisoners in Ahmadnagar Fort for the
innumerable talks and discussions we had, which helped me
greatly to clear my own mind about various aspects of Indian
history and culture. Prison is not a pleasant place to live in even
for a short period, much less for long years. But it was a privilege
for me to live in close contact with men of outstanding ability
and culture and a wide human outlook which even the passions
of the moment did not obscure.
My eleven companions in Ahmadnagar Fort were an interesting
cross-section of India and represented in their several ways not
only politics but Indian scholarship, old and new, and various
aspects of present-day India. Nearly all the principal living
Indian languages, as well as the classical languages which have
powerfully influenced India in the past and present, were
represented and the standard was often that of high scholarship.
Among the classical languages were Sanskrit and Pali, Arabic
and Persian; the modern languages were Hindi, Urdu, Bengali,
Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Sindhi and Oriya. I had all this wealth
to draw upon and the only limitation was my own capacity to
profit by it. Though I am grateful to all my companions, I should
like to mention especially Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, whose
vast erudition invariably delighted me but sometimes also rather
overwhelmed me, Govind Ballabh Pant, Narendra Deva and
M. Asaf Ali.
It is a year and a quarter since I finished writing this book
and some parts of it are already somewhat out of date, and much
has happened since I wrote it. I have felt tempted to add and
10 JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
revise, but I have resisted the temptation. Indeed I could not
have done otherwise for life outside prison is of a different
texture and there is no leisure for thought or writing. It has been
difficult enough for me to read again what I have written. I
wrote originally in long-hand; this was typed after my release.
I was unable to find time to read the typescript and the
publication of the book was being delayed when my daughter,
Indira, came to my rescue and took this burden off my shoulders.
The book remains as written in prison with no additions or
changes, except for the postscript at the end.
I do not know how other authors feel about their writings,
but always I have a strange sensation when I read something
that I had written some time previously. That sensation is
heightened when the writing had been done in the close and
abnormal atmosphere of prison and the subsequent reading has
taken place outside. I recognize it of course, but not wholly;
it seems almost that I was reading some familiar piece written
by another, who was near to me and yet who was different.
Perhaps that is the measure of the change that has taken place
in me.
So I have felt about this book also. It is mine and not wholly
mine, as I am constituted today; it represents rather some past
self of mine which has already joined that long succession df
other selves that existed for a while and faded away, leaving
only a memory behind.
Jawaharlal Nehru
Anand Bhawan, Allahabad
29 December 1945
CONTENTS
Foreword 7
Preface 9
CHAPTER ONE: AHMADNAGAR FORT
Twenty Months 15
Famine 16
The War for Democracy 18
Time in Prison: The Urge to Action 20
The Past in Its Relation to the Present 22
Life's Philosophy 24
The flurden of the Past 33
CHAPTER TWO: BADENWEILER, LAUSANNE
Kamala 39
Our Marriage and After 40
The Problem of Human Relationships 43
Christmas 1935 44
Death 45
Mussolini Return 46
CHAPTER THREE: THE QUEST
The Panorama of India's Past 49
Nationalism and Internationalism 52
India's Strength and Weakness 53
The Search for India 57
'Bharat Mata' 59
The Variety and Unity of India 61
Travelling through India 63
General Elections 64
The Culture of the Masses 67
Two Lives 68
CHAPTER FOUR: THE DISCOVERY OF INDIA
The Indus Valley Civilization 69
The Coming of the Aryans 72
What is Hinduism? 74
The Earliest Record, Scripture and Mythology 76
The Vedas 79
The Acceptance and the Negation of Life 80
Synthesis and Adjustment. The Beginnings of the Caste System 84
The Continuity of Indian Culture 87
The Upanishads
12 JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
The Advantages and Disadvantages of an Individualistic 93
Philosophy
Materialism 96
The Epics. History, Tradition, and Myth 99
The Mahabharata 106
.The Bhagavad Gita 108
Life and Work in Ancient India 110
Mahavira and Buddha: Caste 119
Chandragupta and Chanakya. The Maurya Empire Established 122
The Organization of the State 124
Buddha's Teaching 127
The Buddha Story 130
Ashoka 132
CHAPTER FIVE: THROUGH THE AGES
Nationalism and Imperialism under the Guptas 136
South India 139
Peaceful Development and Methods of Warfare 140
India's Urge to Freedom 141
Progress versus Security 143
India and Iran 146
India and Greece ISO
The Old Indian Theatre 157
Vitality and Persistence of Sanskrit 164
Buddhist Philosophy 170
Effect of Buddhism on Hinduism 174
How did Hinduism Absorb Buddhism in India? 178
The Indian Philosophical Approach 180
The Six Systems of Philosophy 183
India and China 192
Indian Colonies and Culture in South-East Asia 200
The Influence of Indian Art Abroad 207
Old Indian Art 210
India's Foreign Trade 214
Mathematics in Ancient India 216
Growth and Decay 221
CHAPTER SIX: NEW PROBLEMS
The Arabs and the Mongols . 227
The Flowering of Arab Culture and Contacts with India 231
Mahmud of Ghazni and the Afghans 234
The Indo-Afghans. South India. Vijayanagar. Babar. 237
Sea Power
Synthesis and Growth of Mixed Culture. Purdah. Kabir. 24
Guru Nanak. Amir Khusrau
The Indian Social Structure. Importance of the Group
Village Self-Government. The Shukra Nitisara
CONTENTS 13
The Theory and Practice of Caste. The Joint Family 250
Babar and Akbar: The Process of Indianization 257
The Contrast between Asia and Europe in Mechanical 260
Advance and Creative Energy
Development of a Common Culture 265
Aurangzeb Puts the Clock Back. Growth of Hindu Nationalism. 270
Shivaji
The Marathas and the British Struggle for Supremacy. 273
Triumph of the British
The Backwardness of India and the Superiority of the English 276
in Organization and Technique
Ranjit Singh and Jai Singh 281
The Economic Background of India: The Two Englands 284
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE LAST PHASE (1): CONSOLIDATION
OF BRITISH RULE AND RISE OF NATIONALIST MOVEMENT
The Ideology of Empire. The New Caste 289
The Plunder of Bengal Helps the Industrial Revolution 295
in England
The Destruction of India's Industry and the Decay of 298
her Agriculture
India Becomes for the First Time a Political and Economic 302
Appendage of Another Country
The Growth of the Indian States System 307
Contradictions of British Rule in India. Ram Mohan Roy. 312
The Press. Sir William Jones. English Education in Bengal
The Great Revolt of 1857. Racialism 322
The Techniques of British Rule: Balance and Counterpoise 327
Growth of Industry: Provincial Differences 330
Reform and Other Movements among Hindus and Moslems 335
Kemal Pasha. Nationalism in Asia. Iqbal 350
Heavy Industry Begins. Tilak and Gokhale. Separate 352
Electorates
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE LAST PHASE (2): NATIONALISM
VERSUS IMPERIALISM
Helplessness of the Middle Classes. Gandhi Comes 356
The Congress Becomes a Dynamic Organization under 360
Gandhi's Leadership
Congress Governments in the Provinces 365
Indian Dynamism versus British Conservatism in India 371
The Question of Minorities. The Moslem League: Mr M.A. Jinnah 380
The National Planning Committee 395
The Congress and Industry: Big Industry versus Cottage Industry 402
Government Checks Industrial Growth. War Production is 409
Diversion from Normal Production
14 JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
CHAPTER NINE: THE LAST PHASE (3): WORLD WAR II
The Congress Develops a Foreign Policy 416
The Congress Approach to War 422
Reaction to War 426
Another Congress Offer and Its Rejection by the British 432
Government. Mr Winston Churchill
Individual Civil Disobedience 439
After Pearl Harbour. Gandhi and Non-Violence 442
Tension 449
Sir Stafford Cripps Comes to India 453
Frustration 464
The Challenge: Quit India Resolution 468
CHAPTER TEN: AHMADNAGAR FORT AGAIN
The Chain of Happening 479
The Two Backgrounds: Indian and British 480
Mass Upheavals and Their Suppression 484
Reactions Abroad 491
Reactions in India 493
India's Sickness: Famine 495
India's Dynamic Capacity 499
India's Growth Arrested 505
Religion, Philosophy, and Science 509
The Importance of the National Idea. Changes Necessary 515
in India
India: Partition or Strong National State or Centre of 524
Supra-National State?
Realism and Geopolitics. World Conquest or World 536
Association. The U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R.
Freedom and Empire 548
The Problem of Population. Falling Birth-rates and 551
National Decay
The Modern Approach to an Old Problem 557
Epilogue
POSTSCRIPT
Allahabad 29th December 1945 567
Index 569
CHAPTER ONE
AHMADNAGAR FORT
Twenty Months
Ahmadnagar Fort, 13th April 1944
IT IS MORE THAN TWENTY MONTHS SINCE WE WERE BROUGHT HERE,
more than twenty months of my ninth term of imprisonment.
The new moon, a shimmering crescent in the darkening sky,
greeted us on our arrival here. The bright fortnight of the waxing
moon had begun. Ever since then each coming of the new moon
has been a reminder to me that another month of my imprison-
ment is over. So it was with my last term of imprisonment which
began with the new moon, just after the Deepavali, the festival of
light. The moon, ever a companion to me in prison, has grown
more friendly with closer acquaintance, a reminder of the loveli-
ness of this world, of the waxing and waning of life, of light
following darkness, of death and resurrection following each other
in interminable succession. Ever changing, yet ever the same, I
have watched it in its different phases and its many moods in the
evening, as the shadows lengthen, in the still hours of the night,
and when the breath and whisper of dawn bring promise of the
coming day. How helpful is the moon in counting the days and the
months, for the size and shape of the moon, when it is visible,
indicate the day of the month with a fair measure of exactitude.
It is an easy calendar (though it must be adjusted from time to
time), and for the peasant in the field the most-convenient one to
indicate the passage of the days and the gradual changing of the
seasons.
Three weeks we spent here cut off completely from all news
of the outside world. There were no contacts of any kind, no
interviews, no letters, no newspapers, no radio. Even our presence
here was supposed to be a state secret unknown to any except to
the officials in charge ofus, a poor secret, for all India knew where
we were.
Then newspapers were allowed and, some weeks later, letters
from near relatives dealing with domestic affairs. But no
interviews during these 20 months, no other contacts.
The newspapers contained heavily censored news. Yet they
gave us some idea of the war that was consuming more than half
the world, and of how it fared with our people in India. Little
we knew about these people of ours except that scores of thou-
sands lay in prison or internment camp without trial, that thou-
sands had been shot to death, that tens of thousands had been
driven out of schools and colleges, that something indistinguish-
able from martial law prevailed over the whole country, that terror
and frightfulness darkened the land. They were worse off, far
worse than us, those scores of thousands in prison, like us, without
trial, for there were not only no interviews but also no letters or
newspapers for them, and even books were seldom allowed. Many
sickened for lack of healthy food, some of our dear ones died for
lack of proper care and treatment.
There were many thousands of prisoners of war kept in India,
mostly from Italy. We compared their lot with the lot of our own
people. We were told that they were governed by the Geneva
Convention. But there was no convention or law or rule to govern
the conditions under which Indian prisoners and detenus had to
exist, except such ordinances which it pleased our British rulers to
issue from time to time.
Famine
Famine came, ghastly, staggering, horrible beyond words. In
Malabar, in Bijapur, in Orissa, and, above all, in the rich and
fertile province of Bengal, men and women and little children
died in their thousands daily for lack of food. They dropped down
dead before the palaces of Calcutta, their corpses lay in the mud-
huts of Bengal's innumerable villages and covered the roads and
fields of its rural areas. Men were dying all over the world and
killing each other in battle; usually a quick death, often a brave
death, death for a cause, death with a purpose, death which
seemed in this mad world of ours an inexorable logic of events,
a sudden end to the life we could not mould or control. Death
was common enough everywhere.
But here death had no purpose, no logic, no necessity; it was
the result of man's incompetence and callousness, man-made, a
slow creeping thing of horror with nothing to redeem it, life
merging and fading into death, with death looking out of the
shrunken eyes and withered frame while life still lingered for a
while. And so it was not considered right or proper to mention
it; it was not good form to talk or write of unsavoury topics. To
do so was to 'dramatize' an unfortunate situation. False reports
16
were issued by those in authority in India and in England. But
corpses cannot easily be overlooked; they come in the way.
While the fires of hell were consuming the people of Bengal
and elsewhere, we were first told by high authority that owing
to wartime prosperity the peasantry in many parts of India had
too much to eat. Then it was said that the fault lay with pro-
vincial autonomy, and that the British Government in India, or
the India Office in London, sticklers for constitutional propriety,
could not interfere with provincial affairs. That constitution was
suspended, violated, ignored, or changed daily by hundreds of
decrees and ordinances issued by the Viceroy under his sole and
unlimited authority. That constitution meant ultimately the
unchecked authoritarian rule of a single individual who was
responsible to no one in India, and who had greater power than
any dictator anywhere in the world. That constitution was worked
by the permanent services, chiefly the Indian Civil Service and
the police, who were mainly responsible to the Governor, who
was the agent of the Viceroy, and who could well ignore the
ministers when such existed. The ministers, good or bad, lived on
sufferance and dared not disobey the orders from above or even
interfere with the discretion of the services supposed to be sub-
ordinate to them.
Something was done at last. Some relief was given. But a million
had died, or two millions, or three; no one knows how many
starved to death or died of disease during those months of horror.
No one knows of the many more millions of emaciated boys and
girls and little children who just escaped death then, but are
stunted and broken in body and spirit. And still the fear of wide-
spread famine and disease hovers over the land.
President Roosevelt's Four Freedoms. The Freedom from
Want. Yet rich England, and richer America, paid little heed
to the hunger of the body that was killing millions in India, as
they had paid little heed to the fiery thirst of the spirit that is
consuming the people of India. Money was not needed it was
said, and ships to carry food were scarce owing to war-time
requirements. But in spite of governmental obstruction and desire
to minimize the overwhelming tragedy of Bengal, sensitive and
warm-hearted men and women in England and America and
elsewhere came to our help. Above all, the Governments of
China and Eire, poor in their own resources, full of their own
difficulties, yet having had bitter experience themselves of famine
and misery and sensing what ailed the body and spirit of India,
gave generous help. India has a long memory, but whatever else
she remembers or forgets, she will not forget these gracious and
friendly acts.
17
The War for Democracy
In Asia and Europe and Africa, and over the vast stretches of
the Pacific and Atlantic and Indian Oceans, war has raged in all
its dreadful aspects. Nearly seven years of war in China, over
four and a half years of war in Europe and Africa, and two years
and four months of World War. War against fascism and nazism
and attempts to gain world dominion. Of these years of war I
have so far spent nearly three years in prison, here and elsewhere
in India.
I remember how I reacted to fascism and nazism in their early
days, and not I only, but many in India. How Japanese agres-
sion in China had moved India deeply and revived the age-old
friendship for China; how Italy's rape of Abyssinia had sickened
us; how the betrayal of Czechoslovakia had hurt and embittered
us; how the fall of Republican Spain, after a struggle full of heroic
endurance, had been a tragedy and a personal sorrow for me and
others.
It was not merely the physical acts of aggression in which
fascism and nazism indulged, not only the vulgarity and bruta-
lity that accompanied them, terrible as they were, that affected
us, but the principles on which they stood and which they pro-
claimed so loudly and blatantly, the theories of life on which
they tried to fashion themselves; for these went counter to what
we believed in the present, and what we had held from ages past.
And even if our racial memory had forsaken us and we had lost
our moorings, our own experiences, even though they came to
us in different garb, and somewhat disguised for the sake ofdecency,
were enough to teach us to what these nazi principles and theo-
ries of life and the state ultimately led. For our people had been
the victims for long of those very principles and methods of govern-
ment. So we reacted immediately and intensely against fascism
and nazism.
I remember how I refused a pressing invitation from Signor
Mussolini to see him in the early days of March, 1936. Many of
Britain's leading statesmen, who spoke harshly of the fascist Duce
in later years when Italy became a belligerent, referred to him
tenderly and admiringly in those days, and praised his regime
and methods.
Two years later, in the summer before Munich, I was invited
on behalf of the Nazi government, to visit Germany, an invita-
tion to which was added the remark that they knew my opposi-
tion to nazism and yet they wanted me to see Germany for my-
self. I could go as their guest or privately, in my own name or
incognito, as I desired, and I would have perfect freedom to go
18
where I liked. Again I declined with thanks. Instead I went to
Czechoslovakia, that 'far-away country' about which England's
then Prime Minister knew so little.
Before Munich I met some of the members of the British Cabi-
net and other prominent politicians of England, and ventured
to express my anti-fascist and anti-nazi views before them. I
found that my views were not welcomed and I was told that there
were many other considerations to be borne in mind.
During the Czechoslovak crisis, what I saw of Franco-British
statesmanship in Prague and in the Sudetenland, in London
and Paris, and in Geneva where the League Assembly was then
sitting, amazed and disgusted me. Appeasement seemed to be a
feeble word for it. There was behind it not only a fear of Hitler,
but a sneaking admiration for him.
And now, it is a curious turn of fate's wheel that I, and people
like me, should spend our days in prison while war against
fascism and nazism is raging, and many of those who used to
bow to Hitler and Mussolini, and approve of Japanese aggres-
sion in China, should hold aloft the banner of freedom and
democracy and anti-fascism.
In India the change is equally remarkable. There are those
here, as elsewhere, 'governmentarians', who hover round the
skirts of government and echo the views which they think will
be approved by those whose favour they continually seek.
There was a time, not so long ago, when they praised Hitler
and Mussolini, and held them up as models, and when they
cursed the Soviet Union with bell, book, and candle. Not so
now, for the weather has changed. They are high government
and state officials, and loudly they proclaim their anti-fascism
and anti-nazism and even talk of democracy, though with bated
breath, as something desirable but distant. I often wonder what
they would have done if events had taken a different turn, and
yet there is little reason for conjecture, for they would welcome
with garlands and addresses of welcome whoever happened to
wield authority.
For long years before the war my mind was full of the war that
was coming. I thought of it, and spoke of it, and wrote about
it, and prepared myself mentally for it. I wanted India to take
an eager and active part in the mighty conflict, for I felt that
high principles would be at stake, and out of this conflict would
come great and revolutionary changes in India and the world. At
that time I did not envisage an immediate threat to India: any
probability of actual invasion. Yet I wanted India to take her
full share. But I was convinced that only as a free country and
an equal could she function in this way.
19
That was the attitude of the National Congress, the one great
organization in India which consistently for all these years had
been anti-fascist and anti-nazi, as it had been anti-imperialist.
It had stood for Republican Spain, for Czechoslovakia, and
throughout for China.
And now for nearly two years the Congress has been declared
illegal — outlawed and prevented from functioning in any way.
The Congress is in prison. Its elected members of the provin-
cial parliaments, its speakers of these parliaments, its ex-minis-
ters, its mayors and presidents of municipal corporations, are
in prison.
Meanwhile the war goes on for democracy and the Atlantic
Charter and the Four Freedoms.
Time in Prison : The Urge to Action
Time seems to change its nature in prison. The present hardly
exists, for there is an absence of feeling and sensation which
might separate it from the dead past. Even news of the active,
living and dying world outside has a certain dream-like un-
reality, an immobility and an unchangeableness as of the past.
The outer objective time ceases to be, the inner and subjective
sense remains, but at a lower level, except when thought pulls
it out of the present and experiences a kind of reality in the past
or in the future. We live, as Auguste Comte said, dead men's
lives, encased in our pasts, but this is especially so in prison
where we try to find some sustenance for our starved and locked-
up emotions in memory of the past or fancies of the future.
There is a stillness and everlastingness about the past; it
changes not and has a touch of eternity, like a painted picture
or a statue in bronze or marble. Unaffected by the storms and
upheavals of the present, it maintains its dignity and repose and
tempts the troubled spirit and the tortured mind to seek shelter
in its vaulted catacombs. There is peace there and security, and
one may even sense a spiritual quality.
But it is not life, unless we can find the vital links between it
and the present with all its conflicts and problems. It is a kind
of art for art's sake, without the passion and the urge to action
which are the very stuff of life. Without that passion and urge,
there is a gradual oozing out of hope and vitality, a settling down
on lower levels of existence, a slow merging into non-existence.
We become prisoners of the past and some part of its immobility
sticks to us.
This passage of the mind is all the easier in prison where action
20
is denied and we become slaves to the routine of jail-life.
Yet the past is ever with us and all that we are and that we
have comes from the past. We are its products and we live im-
mersed in it. Not to understand it and feel it as something living
within us is not to understand the present. To combine it with
the present and extend it to the future, to break from it where it
cannot be so united, to make of all this the pulsating and vibrat-
ing material for thought and action — that is life.
Any vital action springs from the depths of the being. All the
long past of the individual and even of the race has prepared
the background for that psychological moment of action. All
the racial memories, influences of heredity and environment
and training, subconscious urges, thoughts and dreams and
actions from infancy and childhood onwards, in their curious
and tremendous mix-up, inevitably drive to that new action,
which again becomes yet another factor influencing the future.
Influencing the future, partly determining it, possibly even largely
determining it, and yet, surely, it is not all determinism.
Aurobindo Ghose writes somewhere of the present as 'the pure
and virgin moment,' that razor's edge of time and existence which
divides the past from the future, and is, and yet, instantaneously
is not. The phrase is attractive and yet what does it mean?
The virgin moment emerging from the veil of the future in all
its naked purity, coming into contact with us, and immediately
becoming the soiled and stale past. Is it we that soil it and violate
it? Or is the moment not so virgin after all, for it is bound up
with all the harlotry of the past?
Whether there is any such thing as human freedom in the
philosophic sense or whether there is only an automatic deter-
minism, I do not know. A very great deal appears certainly to
be determined by the past complex of events which bear down
and often overwhelm the individual. Possibly even the inner
urge that he experiences, that apparent exercise of free will, is
itself conditioned. As Schopenhauer says, 'a man can do what
he will, but not will as he will.' A belief in an absolute deter-
minism seems to me to lead inevitably to complete inaction, to
death in life. All my sense of life rebels against it, though of
course that very rebellion may itself have been conditioned by
previous events.
I do not usually burden my mind with such philosophical or
metaphysical problems, which escape solution. Sometimes they
come to me almost unawares in the long silences of prison, or
even in the midst of an intensity of action, bringing with them
a sense of detachment or consolation in the face of some painful
experience. But usually it is action and the thought of action
21
vhat fill me, and when action is denied, I imagine that I am
preparing for action.
The call of action has long been witn me; not action divorced
from thought, but rather flowing from it in one continuous
sequence. And when, rarely, there has been full harmony bet-
ween the two, thought leading to action and finding its fulfil-
ment in it, action leading back to thought and a fuller under-
standing — then I have sensed a certain fullness of life and a vivid
intensity in that moment of existence. But such moments are rare,
very rare, and usually one outstrips the other and there is a lack
of harmony, and vain effort to bring the two in line. There was
a time, many years ago, when I lived for considerable periods
in a state of emotional exaltation, wrapped up in the action
which absorbed me. Those days of my youth seem far away now,
not merely because of the passage of years but far more so be-
cause of the ocean of experience and painful thought that sepa-
rates them from to-day. The old exuberance is much less now,
the almost uncontrollable impulses have toned down, and passion
and feeling are more in check. The burden of thought is often
a hindrance, and in the mind where there was once certainty,
doubt creeps in. Perhaps it is just age, or the common temper of
our day.
And yet, even now, the call of action stirs strange depths within
me, and often a brief tussle with thought. I want to experience
again 'that lonely impulse of delight' which turns to risk and
danger and faces and mocks at death. I am not enamoured of
death, though I do not think it frightens me. I do not believe in
the negation of or abstention from life. I have loved life and it
attracts me still and, in my own way, I seek to experience it,
though many invisible barriers have grown up which surround
me; but that very desire leads me to play with life, to peep over
its edges, not to be a slave to it, so that we may value each other
all the more. Perhaps I ought to have been an aviator, so that
when the slowness and dullness of life overcame me I could have
rushed into the tumult of the clouds and said to myself:
'/ balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind,
In balance with this life, this death. "
The Past in its Relation to the Present
This urge to action, this desire to experience life through action,
has influenced all my thought and activity. Even sustained think-
22
ing, apart from being itself a kind of action, becomes part of the
action to come. It is not something entirely abstract, in the void,
unrelated to action and life. The past becomes something that
leads up to the present, the moment of action, the future some-
thing that flows from it; and all three are inextricably inter-
twined and interrelated.
Even my seemingly actionless life in prison is tacked on some-
how, by some process of thought and feeling, to coming or ima-
gined action, and so it gains for me a certain content without
which it would be a vacuum in which existence would become
intolerable. When actual action has been denied me I have sought
some such approach to the past and to history. Because my own
personal experiences have often touched historic events and some-
times I have even had something to do with the influencing of
such events in my own sphere, it has not been difficult for me
to envisage history as a living process with which I could identify
myself to some extent.
I came late to history and, even then, not through the usual
direct road of learning a mass of facts and dates and drawing
conclusions and inferences from them, unrelated to my life's
course. So long as I did this, history had little significance for
me. I was still less interested in the supernatural or problems of
a future life. Science and the problems of to-day and of our pre-
sent life attracted me far more.
Some mixture of thought and emotion and urges, of which I
was only dimly conscious, led me to action, and action, in its turn,
sent me back to thought and a desire to understand the present.
The roots of that present lay in the past and so I made voyages
of discovery into the past, ever seeking a clue in it, if any such
existed, to the understanding of the present. The domination of
the present never left me even when I lost myself in musings of
past, events and of persons far away and long ago, forgetting
where or what I was. If I felt occasionally that I belonged to the
past. I felt also that the whole of the past belonged to me in the
present. Past history merged into contemporary history: it be-
came a living reality tied up with sensations of pain and pleasure.
If the past had a tendency to become the present, the present
also sometimes receded into the distant past and assumed its
immobile, statuesque appearance. In the midst of an intensity of
action itself, there would suddenly come a feeling as if it was
some past event and one was looking at it, as it were, in retrospect.
It was this attempt to -discover the past in its relation to the
present that led me twelve years ago to write Glimpses of World
History in the form of letters to my daughter. I wrote rather
superficially and as simply as I could, for I was writing for a girl
23
in her early teens, but behind that writing lay that quest and
voyage of discovery. A sense of adventure filled me and I lived
successively different ages and periods and had for companions
men and women who had lived long ago. I had leisure in jail,
there was no sense of hurry or of completing a task within an
allotted period of time, so I let my mind wander or take root for
a while, keeping in tune with my mood, allowing impression to
sink in and fill the dry bones of the past with flesh and blood.
It was a similar quest, though limited to recent and more
intimate times and persons, that led me later to write my auto-
biography.
I suppose I have changed a good deal during these twelve
years. I have grown more contemplative. There is perhaps a
little more poise and equilibrium, some sense of detachment, a
greater calmness of spirit. I am not overcome now to the same
extent as I used to be by tragedy or what I conceived to be
tragedy. The turmoil and disturbance are less and are more
temporary, even though the tragedies have been on a far greater
scale.
Is this, I have wondered, the growth of a spirit of resignation,
or is it a toughening of the texture ? Is it just age and a lessening
of vitality and of the passion of life? Or is it due to long periods
in prison and life slowly ebbing away, and the thoughts that fill
the mind passing through, after a brief stay, leaving only ripples
behind ? The tortured mind seeks some mechanism of escape,
the senses get dulled from repeated shocks, and a feeling comes
over one that so much evil and misfortune shadow the world
that a little more or less does not make much difference. There
is only one thing that remains to us that cannot be taken awa/:
to act with courage and dignity and to stick to the ideals that
have given meaning to life; but that is not the politician's way.
Someone said the other day: death is the birthright of every
person born — a curious way of putting an obvious thing. It is a
birthright which nobody has denied or can deny, and which all
of us seek to forget and escape so long as we may. And yet there
was something novel and attractive about the phrase. Those who
complain so bitterly of life have always a way out of it, if they
so choose. That is always in our power to achieve. If we cannot
master life we can at least master death. A pleasing thought
lessening the feeling of helplessness.
Life's Philosophy
Six or seven years ago an American publisher asked me to write
an essay on my philosophy of life for a symposium he was prepar-
ing. I was attracted to the idea but I hesitated, and the more
24
I thought over it, the more reluctant I grew. Ultimately, I did
not write that essay.
What was my philosophy of life? I did not know. Some years
earlier I would not have been so hesitant. There was a definite-
ness about my thinking and objectives then which has faded
away since. The events of the past few years in India, China,
Europe, and all over the world have been confusing, upsetting
and distressing, and the future has become vague and shadowy
and has lost that clearness of outline which it once possessed in
my mind.
This doubt and difficulty about fundamental matters did not
come in my way in regard to immediate action, except that it
blunted somewhat the sharp edge of that activity. No longer
could I function, as I did in my younger days, as an arrow flying
automatically to the target of my choice ignoring all else but
that target. Yet I functioned, for the urge to action was there and
a real or imagined co-ordination of that action with the ideals I
held. But a growing distaste for politics as I saw them seized me
and gradually my whole attitude to life seemed to undergo a
transformation.
The ideals and objectives of yesterday were still the ideals of
to-day, but they had lost some of their lustre and, even as one
seemed to go towards them, they lost the shining beauty which
had warmed the heart and vitalized the body. Evil triumphed
often enough, but what was far worse was the coarsening and
distortion of what had seemed so right. Was human nature so
essentially bad that it would take ages of training, through
suffering and misfortune, before it could behave reasonably and
raise man above that creature of lust and violence and deceit
that he now was? And, meanwhile, was every effort to change
it radically in the present or the near future doomed to failure?
Ends and means: were they tied up inseparably, acting and
reacting on each other, the wrong means distorting and some-
times even destroying the end in view? But the right means
might well be beyond the capacity of infirm and selfish human
nature.
What then was one to do? Not to act was a complete con-
fession of failure and a submission to evil; to act meant often
enough a compromise with some form of that evil, with all the
untoward consequences that such compromises result in.
My early approach to life's problems had been more or less
scientific, with something of the easy optimism of the science
of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. A secure and
comfortable existence and the energy and self-confidence I
possessed increased that feeling of optimism. A kind of vague
humanism appealed to me.
25
Religion, as I saw it practised, and accepted even by thinking
minds, whether it was Hinduism or Islam or Buddhism or Chris-
tianity, did not attract me. It seemed to be closely associated
with superstitious practices and dogmatic beliefs, and behind it
lay a method of approach to life's problems which was certainly
not that of science. There was an element of magic about it, an
uncritical credulousness, a reliance on the supernatural.
Yet it was obvious that religion had supplied some deeply felt
inner need of human nature, and that the vast majority of
people all over the world could not do without some form of
religious belief. It had produced many fine types of men and
women, as well as bigoted, narrow-minded, cruel tyrants. It had
given a set of values to humar life, and though some of these
values had no application to-day, or were even harmful, others
were still the foundation of morality and ethics.
In the wider sense of the word, religion dealt with the un-
charted regions of human experience, uncharted, that is, by the
scientific positive knowledge of the day. In a sense it might be
considered an extension of the known and charted region, though
the methods of science and religion were utterly unlike each
other, and to a large extent they had to deal with different kinds
of media. It was obvious that there was a vast unknown region
all around us, and science, with its magnificent achievements,
knew Httlc enough about it, though it was making tentative
approaches in that direction. Probably also, the normal methods
of science, its dealings with the visible world and the processes
of life, were not wholly adapted to the physical, the artistic, the
spiritual, and other elements of the invisible world. Life does
not consist entirely of what we see and hear and feel, the visible
world which is undergoing change in time and space; it is con-
tinually touching an invisible world of other, and possibly more
stable or equally changeable elements, and no thinking person
can ignore this invisible world.
Science does not tell us much, or for the matter of that any-
thing about the purpose of life. It is now widening its boun-
daries and it may invade the so-called invisible world before
long and help us to understand this purpose of life in its widest
sense, or at least give us some glimpses which illumine the pro-
blem of human existence. The old controversy between science
and religion takes a new form — the application of the scientific
method to emotional and religious experiences.
Religion merges into mysticism and metaphysics and philo-
sophy. There have been great mystics, attractive figures, who
cannot easily be disposed of as self-deluded fools. Yet mysticism
(in the narrow sense of the word) irritates me; it appears to be
26
vague and soft and flabby, not a rigorous discipline of the mind
but a surrender of mental faculties and a living in a sea of
emotional experience. • The experience may lead occasionally
to some insight into inner and less obvious processes, but it is
also likely to lead to self-delusion.
Metaphysics and philosophy, or a metaphysical philosophy,
have a greater appeal to the mind. They require hard thinking
and the application of logic and reasoning, though all this is
necessarily based on some premises, which are presumed to be
self-evident, and yet which may or may not be true. All think-
ing persons, to a greater or less degree, dabble in metaphysics
and philosophy, for not to do so is to ignore many of the aspects
of this universe of ours. Some may feel more attracted to them
than others, and the emphasis on them may vary in different
ages. In the ancient world, both in Asia and Europe, all the
emphasis was laid on the supremacy of the inward life over
things external, and this inevitably led to metaphysics and
philosophy. The modern man is wrapped up much more in
these things external, and yet even be, in moments of crisis and
mental trouble often turn. to philosophy and metaphysical
speculations.
Some vague or more precise philosophy of life we all have,
though most of us accept unthinkingly the general attitude which
is characteristic of our generation and environment. Most of
us accept also certain metaphysical conceptions as part of the
faith in which we have grown up. I have not been attracted
towards metaphysics; in fact, I have had a certain distaste for
vague speculation. And yet I have sometimes found a certain
intellectual fascination in trying to follow the rigid lines of
metaphysical and philosophic thought of the ancients or the
moderns. But I have never felt at case there and have escaped
from their spell with a feeling of relief.
Essentially, I am interested in this world, in this life, not in
some other world or a future life. Whether there is such a thing
as a soul, or whether there is a survival after death or not, I do
not know; and, important as these questions are, they do not
trouble me in the least. The environment in which I have
grown up takes the soul (or rather the alma) and a future life,
the Karma theory of cause and effect, and reincarnation for
granted. I have been affected by this and so, in a sense, I am
favourably disposed towards these assumptions. There might be
a soul which survives the physical death of the body, and a theory
of cause and effect governing life's actions seems reasonable,
though it leads to obvious difficulties when one thinks of the
ultimate cause. Presuming a soul, there appears to be some logic
also in the theory of reincarnation.
27
But I do not believe in any of these or other theories and
assumptions as a matter of religious faith. They are just intel-
lectual speculations in an unknown region about which we know
next to nothing. They do not affect my life, and whether they
were proved right or wrong subsequently, they would make little
difference to me.
Spiritualism with its seances and its so-called manifestations
of spirits and the like has always seemed to me a rather absurd
and impertinent way of investigating psychic phenomena and
the mysteries of the after-life. Usually it is something worse,
and is an exploitation of the emotions of some over-credulous
people who seek relief or escape from mental trouble. I do not
deny the possibility of some of these psychic phenomena having
a basis of truth, but the approach appears to me to be all wrong
and the conclusions drawn from scraps and odd bits of evidence
to be unjustified.
Often, as I look at this world, I have a sense of mysteries, of
unknown depths. The urge to understand it, in so far as I can,
comes to me: to be in tune with it and to experience it in its
fullness. But the way to that understanding seems to me essen-
tially the way of science, the way of objective approach, though
I realise that there can be no such thing as true objectiveness.
If the subjective element is unavoidable and inevitable, it should
be conditioned as far as possible by the scientific method.
What the mysterious is I do not know. I do not call it God
because God has come to mean much that I do not believe in.
I find myself incapable of thinking of a deity or of any unknown
supreme power in anthropomorphic terms, and the fact that
many people think so is continually a source of surprise to me.
Any idea of a personal God seems very odd to me. Intellectually,
I can appreciate to some extent the conception of monism, and
I have been attracted towards the Advaita (non-dualist) philo-
sophy of the Vedanta, though I do not presume to understand
it in all its depth and intricacy, and I realise that merely an
intellectual appreciation of such matters does not carry one
far. At the same time the Vedanta, as well as other similar
approaches, rather frighten me with their vague, formless incur-
sions into infinity. The diversity and fullness of nature stir me
and produce a harmony of the spirit, and I can imagine myself
feeling at home in the old Indian or Greek pagan and pantheis
tic atmosphere, but minus the conception of God or Gods that
was attached to it.
Some kind of ethical approach to life has a strong appeal for
me, though it would be difficult for me to justify it logically.
I have been attracted by Gandhiji's stress on right means and
I think one of his greatest contributions to our public life has
28
been, this emphasis. The idea is by no means new, but this
application of an ethical doctrine to large-scale public activity
was certainly novel. It is full of difficulty, and perhaps ends and
means are not really separable but form together one organic
whole. In a world which thinks almost exclusively of ends and
ignores means, this emphasis on means seems odd and remark-
able. How far it has succeeded in India I cannot say. But there
is no doubt that it has created a deep and abiding impression
on the minds of large numbers of people.
A study of Marx and Lenin produced a powerful effect on
my mind and helped me to see history and current affairs in
a new light. The long chain of history and of social develop-
ment appeared to have some meaning, some sequence, and the
future lost some of its obscurity. The practical achievements
of the Soviet Union were also tremendously impressive. Often
I disliked or did not understand some development there and
it seemed to me to be too closely concerned with the oppor-
tunism of the moment or the power politics of the day. But
despite all these developments and possible distortions of the
original passion for human betterment, I had no doubt that the
Soviet Revolution had advanced human society by a great leap
and had lit a bright flame which could not be smothered, and
that it had laid the foundations for that new civilization towards
which the world could advance. I am too much of an indivi-
dualist and believer in personal freedom to like overmuch regi-
mentation. Yet it seemed to me obvious that in a complex social
structure individual freedom had to be limited, and perhaps
the only way to read personal freedom was through some such
limitation in the social sphere. The lesser liberties may often
need limitation in the interest of the larger freedom.
Much in the Marxist philosophical outlook I could accept
without difficulty: its monism and non-duality of mind and
matter, the dynamics of matter and the dialectic of continuous
change by evolution as well as leap, through action and inter-
action, cause and effect, thesis, antithesis and synthesis. It did
not satisfy me completely, nor did it answer all the questions
in my mind, and, almost unawares, a vague idealist approach
would creep into my mind, something rather akin to the Vedanta
approach. It was not a difference between mind and matter,
but rather of something that lay beyond the mind. Also there
was the background of ethics. I realised that the moral approach
is a changing one and depends upon the growing mind and an
advancing civilization; it is conditioned by the mental climate
of the age. Yet there was something more to it than that, certain
basic urges which had greater permanence. I did not like the
frequent divorce in communist, as in other, practice between
29
action and these basic urges or principles. So there was an odd
mixture in my mind which I could not rationally explain or
resolve. There was a general tendency not to think too much of
those fundamental questions which appear to be beyond reach,
but rather to concentrate on the problems of life — to understand
in the narrower and more immediate sense what should be done
and how. Whatever ultimate reality may be, and whether we
can ever grasp it in whole or in part, there certainly appear to
be vast possibilities of increasing human knowledge, even though
this may be partly or largely subjective, and of applying this to
the advancement and betterment of human living and social
organization.
There has been in the past, and there is to a lesser extent
even to-day among some people, an absorption in finding an
answer to the riddle of the universe. This leads them away from
the individual and social problems of the day, and when they
are unable to solve that riddle they despair and turn to inaction
and triviality, or find comfort in some dogmatic creed. Social
evils, most of which are certainly capable of removal, are attri-
buted to original sin, to the unalterableness of human natu-e,
or the social structure, or (in India) to the inevitable legacy
of previous births. Thus one drifts away from even the attempt
to think rationally and scientifically and takes refuge in irra-
tionalism, superstition, and unreasonable and inequitable social
prejudices and practices. It is true that even rational and scien-
tific thought does not always take us as far as we would like to
go. There is an infinite number of factors and relations all of
which influence and determine events in varying degrees. It is
impossible to grasp all of them, but we can try to pick out the
dominating forces at work and by observing external material
reality, and by experiment and practice, trial and error, grope
our way to ever-widening knowledge and truth.
For this purpose, and within these limitations, the general
Marxist approach, fitting in as it more or less does with the
present state of scientific knowledge, seemed to me to offer con-
siderable help. But even accepting that approach, the con-
sequences that flow from it and the interpretation on past and
present happenings were by no means always clear. Marx's
general analysis of social development seems to have been re-
markably correct, and yet many developments took place later
which did not fit in with his outlook for the immediate future.
Lenin successfully adapted the Marxian thesis to some of these
subsequent developments, and again since then further remark-
able changes have taken place — the rise of fascism and nazism
and all that lay behind them. The very rapid growth of techno-
logy and the practical application of vast developments in
30
scientific knowledge are now changing the world picture with an
amazing rapidity, leading to new problems.
And so while I accepted the fundamentals of the socialist
theory, I did not trouble myself about its numerous inner con-
troversies. I had little patience with leftist groups in India,
spending much of their energy in mutual conflict and recrimi-
nation over fine points of doctrine which did not interest me
at all. Life is too complicated and, as far as we can understand
it in our present state of knowledge, too illogical, for it to be
confined within the four corners of a fixed doctrine.
The real problems for me remain problems of individual and
social life, of harmonious living, of a proper balancing of an
individual's inner and outer life, of an adjustment of the rela-
tions between individuals and between groups, of a continuous
becoming something better and higher of social development,
of the ceaseless adventure of man. In the solution of these pro-
blems the way of observation and precise knowledge and deli-
berate reasoning, according to the method of science, must be
followed. This method may not always be applicable in our
quest of truth, for art and poetry and certain psychic experi-
ences seem to belong to a different order of things and to elude
the objective methods of science. Let us, therefore, not rule
out intuition and other methods of sensing truth and reality.
They are necessary even for the purposes of science. But always
we must hold to our anchor of precise objective knowledge tested
by reason, and even more so by experiment and practice, and
always we must beware of losing ourselves in a sea of specula-
tion unconnected with the day-to-day problems of life and the
needs of men and women. A living philosophy must answer
the problems of to-day.
It may be that we of this modern age, who so pride ourselves
on the achievements of our times, are prisoners of our age, just
as the ancients and the men and women of medieval times were
prisoners of their respective ages. We may delude ourselves,
as others have done before us, that our way of looking at things
is the only right way, leading to truth. We cannot escape from
that prison or get rid entirely of that illusion, if illusion it is.
Yet I am convinced that the methods and approach of science
have revolutionized human life more than anything else in the
long course of history, and have opened doors and avenues of
further and even more radical change, leading up to the very
portals of what has long been considered the unknown. The
technical achievements of science are obvious enough: its capa-
city to transform an economy of scarcity into one of abundance
is evident, its invasion of many problems which have so far
been the monopoly of philosophy is becoming more pronounced.
31
Space-time and the quantum theory utterly changed the
picture of the physical world. More recent researches into the
nature of matter, the structure of the atom, the transmutation
of the elements, and the transformation of electricity and light,
either into the other, have carried human knowledge much
further. Man no longer sees nature as something apart and dis-
tinct from himself. Human destiny appears to become a part
of nature's rhythmic energy.
All this upheaval of thought, due to the advance of science,
has led scientists into a new region, verging on the metaphysi-
cal. They draw different and often contradictory conclusions.
Some see in it a new unity, the antithesis of chance. Others, like
Bertrand Russell, say, 'Academic philosophers ever since the
time of Parmenides have believed the world is unity. The most
fundamental of my beliefs is that this is rubbish.' Or again,
'Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the
end they were achieving; his origin, his growth, his hopes and
fears, his loves and beliefs are but the outcome of accidental
collocations of atoms.' And yet the latest developments in phy-
sics have gone a long way to demonstrate a fundamental unity
in nature. 'The belief that all things are made of a single sub-
stance is as old as thought itself; but ours is the generation which,
first of all in history, is able to receive the unity of nature, not as
a baseless dogma or a hopeless aspiration, but a principle of science
based on proof as sharp and clear as anything which is known.'*
Old as this belief is in Asia and Europe, it is interesting to
compare some of the latest conclusions of science with the fun-
damental ideas underlying the Advaita Vedantic theory. These
ideas were that the universe is made of one substance whose
form is perpetually changing, and further that the sum-total of
energies remains always the same. Also that 'the explanations of
things are to be found within their own nature, and that no external
beings or existences are required to explain what is going on in the
universe,' with its corollary of a self-evolving universe.
It does not very much matter to science what these vague
speculations lead to, for meanwhile it forges ahead in a hundred
directions, in its own precise experimental way of observation,
widening the bounds of the charted region of knowledge, and
changing human life in the process. Science may be on the verge
of discovering vital mysteries, which yet may elude it. Still it
will go on along its appointed path, for there is no end to its
journeying. Ignoring for the moment the 'why?' of philosophy,
science will go on asking 'how?', and as it finds this oul it gives
greater content and meaning to life, and perhaps takes us some
way to answering the 'why?'.
*Karl K. Darrow. 'The Renaissance of Physics' (New York, 1936), p. 301.
32
Or, perhaps, we cannot cross that barrier, and the mysterious
will continue to remain the mysterious, and life with all its
changes will still remain a bundle of good and evil, a succes-
sion of conflicts, a curious combination of incompatible and
mutually hostile urges.
Or again, perhaps, the very progress of science, unconnected
with and isolated from moral discipline and ethical considera-
tions, will lead to the concentration of power and the terrible
instruments of destruction which it has made, in the hands of
evil and selfish men, seeking the domination of others — and
thus to the destruction of its own great achievements. Something
of this kind we see happening now, and behind this war there
lies this internal conflict of the spirit of man.
How amazing is this spirit of man! In spite of innumerable
failings, man, throughout the ages, has sacrificed his life and
all he held dear for an ideal, for truth, for faith, for country and
honour. That ideal may change, but that capacity for self-
sacrifice continues, and, because of that, much may be forgiven
to man, and it is impossible to lose hope for him. In the midst
of disaster, he has not lost his dignity or his faith in the values
he cherished. Plaything of nature's mighty forces, less than a
speck of dust in this vast universe, he has hurled defiance at the
elemental powers, and with his mind, cradle of revolution, sought
to master them. Whatever gods there be, there is something
godlike in man, as there is also something of the devil in him.
The future is dark, uncertain. But we can see part of the
way leading to it and can tread it with firm steps, remembering
that nothing that can happen is likely to overcome the spirit
of man which has survived so many perils; remembering also
that life, for all its ills, has joy and beauty, and that we can
always wander; if we know how to, in the enchanted woods of
nature.
'What else is wisdom? What of man's endeavour
Or God's high grace, so lovely and so great?
To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait;
To hold a hand uplifted over Hate;
And shall not Loveliness be loved for ever?*
The Burden of the Past
The twenty-first month of my imprisonment is well on its way;
the moon waxes and wanes and soon two years will have been
completed. Another birthday will come round to remind me
that I am getting older; my last four birthdays I have spent in
prison, here and in Dehra Dun Jail, and many others in the
* Chorus from 'The Bacchae of Euripides. Gilbert Murray's translation.
33
course of my previous terms of imprisonment. I have lost count
of their number.
During all these months I have often thought of writing, felt
the urge to it and at the same time a reluctance. My friends took
it for granted that I would write and produce another book, as
I had done during previous terms of imprisonment. It had almost
become a habit.
Yet I did not write. There was a certain distaste for just
throwing out a book which had no particular significance. It
was easy enough to write, but to write something that was worth
while was another matter, something that would not grow stale
while I sat in prison with my manuscript and the world went
on changing. I would not be writing for to-day or to-morrow
but for an unknown and possibly distant future. For -whom
would I write? and for when? Perhaps what I wrote would
never be published, for the years 1 would spend in prison were
likely to witness even greater convulsions and conflicts than the
years of war that are already over. India herself might be a
battle-ground or there might be civil commotion.
And, even if we escaped all these possible developments, it
was a risky adventure to write now for a future date, when the
problems of to-day might be dead and buried and new problems
arisen in their place. I could not think of this World War as
just another war, only bigger and greater. From the day it broke
out, and even earlier, I was full of premonitions of vast and
cataclysmic changes, of a new world arising for better or for
worse. What would my poor writing of a past and vanished age
be worth then?
All these thoughts troubled and restrained me, and behind
them lay deeper questions in the recesses of my mind, to which
I could find no easy answer.
Similar thoughts and difficulties came to me during my last
term of imprisonment, from October, 1940, to December, 1941,
mostly spent in my old cell of Dehra Dun Jail, where six years
earlier I had begun writing my autobiography. For ten months
there I could not develop the mood for writing, and, I spent"
my time in reading or in digging and playing about with soil
and flowers. Ultimately I did write: it was meant to be a con-
tinuation of my autobiography. For a few weeks I wrote rapidly
and continuously, but before my task was finished I was sud-
denly discharged, long before the end of my four-year term of
imprisonment.
It was fortunate that I had not finished what I had under-
taken, for if I had done so I might have been induced to send
it to a publisher. Looking at it now, I realise its little worth;
34
how stale and uninteresting much of it seems. The incidents it
deals with have lost all importance and have become the debris
of a half-forgotten past, covered over by the lava of subsequent
volcanic eruptions. I have lost interest in them. What stand out
in my mind are personal experiences which had left their impress
upon me; contacts with certain individuals and certain events;
contacts with the crowd — the mass of the Indian people, in their
infinite diversity and yet their amazing unity; some adventures
of the mind; waves of unhappiness and the relief and joy that
came from overcoming them; the exhilaration of the moment
of action. About much of this one may not write. There is an
intimacy about one's inner life, one's feelings and thoughts,
which may not and cannot be conveyed to others. Yet those
contacts, personal and impersonal, mean much; they affect the
individual and mould him and change his reactions to life, to
his own country, to other nations.
As in other prisons, here also in Ahmadnager Fort, I took to
gardening and spent many hours daily, even when the sun was
hot, in digging and preparing beds for flowers. The soil was
very bad, stony, full of debris and remains of previous building
operations, and even the ruins of ancient monuments. For this
is a place of history, of many a battle and palace intrigue in the
past. That history is not very old, as Indian history goes, nor
is it very important in the larger scheme of things. But one
incident stands out and is still remembered: the courage of a
beautiful woman, Chand Bibi, who defended this fort and led
her forces, sword in hand, against the imperial armies of Akbar.
She was murdered by one of her own men.
Digging in this unfortunate soil, we have come across parts
of ancient walls and the tops of domes and buildings buried far
underneath the surface of the ground. We could not go far,
as deep digging and archaeological explorations were not approv-
ed by authority, nor did we have the wherewithal to carry this
on. Once we came across a lovely lotus carved in stone on the
side of a wall, probably over a doorway.
I remembered another and a less happy discovery in Dehra
Dun Jail. In the course of digging in my little yard, three years
ago, I came across a curious relic of past days. Deep under the
surface of the ground, the remains of two ancient piles were
uncovered and we viewed them with some excitement. They
were part of the old gallows that had functioned there thirty
or forty years earlier. The jail had long ceased to be a place of
execution and all visible signs of the old gallows-tree had been
removed. We had discovered and uprooted its foundations, and
all my fellow-prisoners, who had helped in this process, rejoiced
that we had put away at last this thing of ill omen.
35
Now I have put away my spade and taken to the pen instead.
Possibly what I write now will meet the same fate as my un-
finished manuscript of Dehra Dun Jail. I cannot write about the
present so long as I am not free to experience it through action.
It is the need for action in the present that brings it vividly
to me, and then I can write about it with ease and a certain
facility. In prison it is something vague, shadowy, something
I cannot come to grips with, or experience as the sensation of
the moment. It ceases to be the present for me in any real sense
of the word, and yet it is not the past either, with the past's
immobility and statuesque calm.
Nor can I assume the role of a prophet and write about the
future. My mind often thinks of it and tries to pierce its veil
and clothe it in the garments of my choice. But these are vain
imaginings and the future remains uncertain, unknown, and
there is no assurance that it will not betray again our hopes and
prove false to humanity's dreams.
The past remains; but I cannot write academically of past
events in the manner of a historian or scholar. I have not that
knowledge or equipment or training; nor do I possess the mood
for that kind of work. The past oppresses me or fills me some-
times with its warmth when it touches on the present, and be-
comes, as it were, an aspect of that living present. If it does not
do so, then it is cold, barren, lifeless, uninteresting. I can only
write about it, as I have previously done, by bringing it in some
relation to my present-day thoughts and activities, and then this
writing of history, as Goethe once said, brings some relief from
the weight and burden of the past. It is, I suppose, a process
similar to that of psychoanalysis, but applied to a race or to
humanity itself instead of to an individual.
The burden of the past, the burden of both good and ill, is
over-powering, and sometimes suffocating, more especially for
those of us who belong to ve.ry ancient civilizations like those
of India and China. As Nietzsche says: 'Not only the wisdom of
centuries — also their madness breaketh out in us. Dangerous
is it to be an heir.'
What is my inheritance? To what am I an heir? To all that
humanity has achieved during tens of thousands of years, to all
that it has thought and felt and suffered and taken pleasure in,
to its cries of triumph and its bitter agony of defeat, to that
astonishing adventure of man which began so long ago and yet
continues and beckons to us. To all this and more, in common
with all men. But there is a special heritage for those of us of
India, not an exclusive one, for none is exclusive and all are
common to the race of man, one more especially applicable to
36
us, something that is in our flesh and blood and bones, that has
gone to make us what we are and what we are likely to be.
It is the thought of this particular heritage and its applica-
tion to the present that has long filled my mind, and it is about
this that I should like to write, though the difficulty and com-
plexity of the subject appal me and I can only touch the surface
of it. I cannot do justice to it, but in attempting it I might be
able to do some justice to myself by clearing my own mind and
preparing it for the next stages of thought and action.
Inevitably, my approach will often be a personal one; how
the idea grew in my mind, what shapes it took, how it influenced
me and affected my action. There will also be some entirely
personal experiences which have nothing to do with the subject
in its wider aspects, but which coloured my mind and influ-
enced my approach to the whole problem. Our judgments of
countries and peoples are based on many factors; among them
our personal contacts, if there have been any, have a marked
influence. If we do not personally know the people of a country
we are apt to misjudge them even more than otherwise, and to
consider them entirely alien and different.
In the case of our own country our personal contacts are
innumerable, and through such contacts many pictures or some
kind of composite picture of our countrymen form in our mind.
So I have filled the picture gallery of my mind. There are some
portraits, vivid, life-like, looking down upon me and reminding
me of some of life's high points — and yet it all seems so long
ago and like some story I have read. There are many other
pictures round which are wrapped memories of old comradeship
and the friendship that sweetens life. And there are innumer-
able pictures of the mass — Indian men and women and children,
all crowded together, looking up at me, and I trying to fathom
what lie behind those thousands of eyes of theirs.
I shall begin this story with an entirely personal chapter, for
this gives the clue to my mood in the month immediately fol-
lowing the period I have written about towards the end of my
autobiography. But this is not going to be another autobiogra-
phy, though I am afraid the personal element will often be present.
The World War goes on. Sitting here in Ahmadnagar Fort, a
prisoner perforce inactive when a fierce activity consumes the
world, I fret a little sometimes and I think of the big things and
brave ventures which have filled my mind these many years. I
try to view the war impersonally as one would look at some ele-
mental phenomenon, some catastrophe of nature, a great earth-
quake or a flood. I do not succeed of course. But there seems
no other way if I am to protect myself from too much hurt and
hatred and excitement. And in this mighty manifestation of
37
savage and destructive nature my own troubles and self sink into
insignificance.
I remember the words that Gandhiji said on that fateful evening
of August 8th, 1942: 'We must look the world in the face with
calm and clear eyes even though the eyes of the world are blood-
shot to-day.'
38
CHAPTER TWO
BADENWEILER, LAUSANNE
Kamala
ON SEPTEMBER 4tH, 1935, I WAS SUDDENLY RELEASED FROM THE
mountain jail of Almora, for news had come that my wife was
in a critical condition. She was far away in a sanatorium at
Badenweiler in the Black Forest of Germany. I hurried by
automobile and train to Allahabad, reaching there the next day,
and the same afternoon I started on the air journey to Europe.
The air liner took me to Karachi and Baghdad and Cairo, and
from Alexandria a seaplane carried me to Brindisi. From Brindisi
I went by train to Basle in Switzerland. I reached Badenweiler
on the evening of September 9th, four days after I had left Allaha-
bad and five days after my release from Almora jail.
There was the same old brave smile on Kamala's face when I
saw her, but she was too weak and too much in the grip of pain
to say much. Perhaps my arrival made a difference, for she was
a little better the next day and for some days after. But the crisis
continued and slowly drained the life out of her. Unable to
accustom myself to the thought of her death, I imagined that
she was improving and that if she could only survive that crisis
she might get well. The doctors, as is their way, gave me hope.
The immediate crisis seemed to pass and she held her ground.
She was never well enough for a long conversation. We talked
briefly and I would stop as soon as I noticed that she was getting
tired. Sometimes I read to her. Qne of the books I remember
reading out to her in this way was Pearl Buck's 'The Good Earth*.
She liked my doing this, but our progress was slow.
Morning and afternoon I trudged from my ptnsiort in the
little town to the sanatorium and spent a few hours with her.
I was full of the many things I wanted to tell her and yet I had
to restrain myself. Sometimes we talked a little of old times,
old memories, of common friends in India; sometimes, a little
wistfully, of the future and what we would do then. In spite
of her serious condition she clung to the future. Her eyes were
bright and vital, her face usually cheerful. Odd friends who
came to visit her were pleasantly surprised to find her looking
39
better than they had imagined. They were misled by those
bright eyes and that smiling face.
In the long autumn evenings I sat by myself in my room in
the penfwn, where I was staying, or sometimes went out for a walk
across the fields or through the forest. A hundred pictures of
Kamala succeeded each other in my mind, a hundred aspects
of her rich and deep personality. We had been married for nearly
twenty years, and yet how many times she had surprised me by
something new in her mental or spiritual make-up. I had known
her in so many ways and, in later years, I had tried my utmost
to understand her. That understanding had not been denied
to me, but I often wondered if I really knew her or understood
her. There was something elusive about her, something fay-like,
real but unsubstantial, difficult to grasp. Sometimes, looking
into her eyes, I would find a stranger peeping out at me.
Except for a little schooling, she had had no formal education;
her mind had not gone through the educational process. She
came to us as an unsophisticated girl, apparently with hardly
any of the complexes which are said to be so common now. She
never entirely lost that girlish look, but as she grew into a woman
her eyes acquired a depth and a fire, giving the impression of still
pools behind which storms raged. She was not the type of modern
girl, with the modern girl's habits and lack of poise; yet she took
easily enough to modern ways. But essentially she was an Indian
girl and, more particularly, a Kashmiri girl, sensitive and proud,
childlike and grown-up, foolish and wise. She was reserved to those
she did not know or did not like, but bubbling over with gaiety
and frankness before those she knew and liked. She was quick in
her judgment and not always fair or right, but she stuck to her
instinctive likes and dislikes. There was no guile in her. If she
disliked a person, it was obvious, and she made no attempt to hide
the fact. Even if she had tried to do so, she would probably not
have succeeded. I have come across few persons who have pro-
duced such an impression of sincerity upon me as she did.
Our Marriage and After
I thought of the early years of our marriage when, with all my
tremendous liking for Kamala, I almost forgot her and denied
her, in so many ways, that comradeship which was her due.
For I was then like a person possessed, giving myself utterly to
the cause I had espoused, living in a dream-world of my own,
and looking at the real people who surrounded me as unsub-
stantial shadows. I worked to the utmost of my capacity and my
mind was filled to the brim with the subject that engrossed me.
I gave all my energy to that cause and had little left to spare.
40
And yet I was very far from forgetting her, and I came back
to her again and again as to a sure haven. If I was away for a
number of days the thought of her cooled my mind, and I looked
forward eagerly to my return home. What indeed could I hav£
done if she had not been there to comfort me and give me
strength, and thus enable me to re-charge the exhausted battery
of my mind and body?
I had taken from her what she gave me. What had I given to
her in exchange during these early years ? I had failed evidently
and, possibly, she carried the deep impress of those days upon
her. With her inordinate pride and sensitiveness she did not want
to come to me to ask for help, although I could have given her
that help more than anyone else. She wanted to play her own
part in the national struggle and not be merely a hanger-on and
a shadow of her husband. She wanted to justify herself to her own
self as well as to the world. Nothing in the world could have pleased
me more than this, but I was far too busy to sec beneath the
surface, and I was blind to what she looked for and so ardently
desired. And then prison claimed me so often and I was away
from her, or else she was ill. Like Chitra in Tagore's play, she
seemed to say to me: 'I am Chitra. No goddess to be worshipped,
nor yet the object of common pity to be brushed aside like a moth
with indifference. Ifyou deign to keep me by your side in the path
of danger and daring, ifyou allow me to share the great duties of
your life, then you will know my true self
But she did not say this to me in words and it was only gradu-
ally that I read the message of her eyes.
In the early months of 1930 I sensed her desire and we worked
together, and I found in this experience a new delight. We lived
for a while on the edge of life, as it were, for the clouds were
gathering and a national upheaval was coming. Those were
pleasant months for us, but they ended too soon, and, early in
April, the country was in the grip of civil disobedience and govern-
mental repression, and I was in prison again.
Most of us menfolk were in prison. And then a remarkable
thing happened. Our women came to the front and took charge
of the struggle. Women had always been there of course, but
now there was an avalanche of them, which took not only the
British Government but their own menfolk by surprise. Here
were these women, women of the upper or middle classes, lead-
ing sheltered lives in their homes — peasant women, working-
class women, rich women — pouring out in their tens of thou-
sands in defiance of government order and police lathi. It was
not only that display of courage and daring, but what was even
more surprising was the organizational power they showed.
Never can I forget the thrill that came to us in Naini Prison
41
when news of this reached us, the enormous pride in the women
of India that filled us. We could hardly talk about all this among
ourselves, for our hearts were full and our eyes were dim with
tears.
My father had joined us later in Naini Prison, and he told us
much that we did not know. He had been functioning outside as
the leader of the civil disobedience movement, and he had en-
couraged in no way these aggressive activities of the women all
over the country. He disliked, in his paternal and somewhat old-
fashioned way, young women and old messing about in the streets
under the hot sun of summer and coming into conflict with the
police. But he realised the temper of the people and did not dis-
courage any one, not even his wife and daughters and daughter-
in-law. He told us how he had been agreeably surprised to see
the energy, courage, and ability displayed by women all over the
country; of the girls of his own household he spoke with affec-
tionate pride.
At father's instance, a 'Resolution of Remembrance' was passed
at thousands of public meetings all over India on January 26th,
1931, the anniversary of India's Independence Day. These meet-
ings were banned by the police and many of them were forcibly
broken up. Father had organized this from his sickbed and it
was a triumph of organization, for we could not use the news-
papers, or the mails, or the telegraph, or the telephone, or any
of the established printing presses. And yet at a fixed time on an
identical day all over this vast country, even in remote villages,
the resolution was read out in the language of the province and
adopted. Ten days after the resolution was so adopted, father died.
The resolution was a long one. But a part of it related to the
women of India: 'We record our homage and deep admiration
for the womanhood of India, who, in the hour of peril for the
motherland, forsook the shelter of their homes and, with unfailing
courage and endurance, stood shoulder to shoulder with their
menfolk in the front line of India's national army to share with
them the sacrifices and triumphs of the struggle....'
In this upheaval Kamala had played a brave and notable part
and on her inexperienced shoulders fell the task of organizing
our work in the city of Allahabad when every known worker
was in prison. She made up for that inexperience by her fire
and energy and, within a few months, she became the pride of
Allahabad.
We met again under the shadow of my father's last illness and
his death. We met on a new footing of comradeship and under-
standing. A few months later when we went with our daughter to
Ceylon for our first brief holiday, and our last, we seemed to have
discovered each other anew. All the past years that we had passed
42
together had been but a preparation for this new and more inti-
mate relationship.
We came back all too soon and work claimed me and, later,
prison. There was to be no more holidaying, no working toge-
ther, not even being together, except for a brief while between
two long prison terms of two years each which followed each
other. Before the second of these was over, Kamala lay dying.
When I was arrested in February, 1934, on a Calcutta warrant,
Kamala went up to our rooms to collect some clothes for me. I
followed her to say good-bye to her. Suddenly she clung to me
and, fainting, collapsed. This was unusual for her as we had
trained ourselves to take this jail-going lightly and cheerfully
and to make as little fuss about it as possible. Was it some pre-
monition she had that this was our last more or less normal meeting?
Two long prison terms of two years each had come between
me and her just when our need for each other was greatest, just
when we had come so near to each other. I thought of this during
the long days in jail, and yet I hoped that the time would surely
come when we would be together again. How did she fare during
these years? I can guess but even I do not know, for during jail
interviews, or during a brief interval outside there was little
normality. We had to be always on our best behaviour lest we
might cause pain to the other by showing our own distress. But
it was obvious that she was greatly troubled and distressed over
many things and there was no peace in her mind. I might have
been of some help, but not from jail.
The Problem of Human Relationships
All these and many other thoughts came to my mind during my
long solitary hours in Badenweiler. I did not shed the atmos-
phere ofjail easily; I had long got used to it and the new envi-
ronment did not make any great change. I was living in the nazi
domain with all its strange happenings which I disliked so much,
but nazism did not interfere with me. There were few evidences
of it in that quiet village in a corner of the Black Forest.
Or perhaps my mind was full of other matters. My past life
unrolled itself before me and there was always Kamala standing
by. She became a symbol of Indian women, or of woman herself.
Sometimes she grew curiously mixed up with my ideas of India,
that land of ours so dear to us, with all her faults and weak-
nesses, so elusive and so full of mystery. What was Kamala?
Did I know her? understand her real self? Did she know or under-
stand me? For I too was an abnormal person with mystery and
unplumbed depths within me, which I could not myself fathom.
43
Sometimes I had thought thai she was a little frightened of me
because of this. I had been, and was, a most unsatisfactory person
to marry. Kamala and I were unlike each other in some ways,
and yet in some other ways very alike; we did not complement
each other. Our very strength became a weakness in our relations
to each other. There could either be complete understanding,
a perfect union of minds, or difficulties. Neither of us could live
a humdrum domestic life, accepting things as they were.
Among the many pictures that were displayed in the bazaars
in India, there was one containing two separate pictures of Kamala
and me, side by side, with the inscription at the top, adarsha jori,
the model or ideal couple, as so many people imagined us to be.
But the ideal is terribly difficult to grasp or to hold. Yet I remem-
ber telling Kamala, during our holiday in Ceylon, how fortunate
we had been in spite of difficulties and differences, in spite of all
the tricks life had played upon us, that marriage was an odd affair,
and it had not ceased to be so even after thousands of years of
experience. We saw around us the wrecks of many a marriage or,
what was no better, the conversion ofwhat was bright and golden
into dross. How fortunate we were, I told her, and she agreed, for
though we had sometimes quarrelled and grown angry with each
other we kept that vital spark alight, and for each one of us life was
always unfolding new adventure and giving fresh insight into
each other.
The problem of human relationships, how fundamental it is,
and how often ignored in our fierce arguments about politics
and economics. It was not so ignored in the old and wise civi-
lizations of India and China, where they developed patterns of
social behaviour which, with all their faults, certainly gave poise
to the individual. That poise is not in evidence in India to-day.
But where is it in the countries of the West which have progressed
so much in other directions ? Or is poise essentially static and
opposed to progressive change ? Must we sacrifice one for the other ?
Surely it should be possible to have a union of poise and inner
and outer progress, of the wisdom of the old with the science and
the vigour of the new. Indeed we appear to have arrived at a stage
in the world's history when the only alternative to such a union is
likely to be the destruction and undoing of both.
Christmas 1935
Kamala's condition took a turn for the better. It was not very
marked, but after the strain of the past weeks we experienced
great relief. She had got over that crisis and stabilized her con-
dition, and that in itself was a gain. This continued for another
month and I took advantage of it to pay a brief visit to England
44
with our daughter, Indira. I had not been there for eight years
and many friends pressed me to visit them.
I came back to Badenweiler and resumed the old routine.
Winter had come and the landscape was white with snow. As
Christmas approached there was a marked deterioration in
Kamala's condition. Another crisis had come, and it seemed
that her life hung by a mere thread. During those last days of
1935 I ploughed my way through snow and slush not knowing
how many days or hours she would live. The calm winter scene
with its mantle of white snow seemed so like the peace of cold
death to me, and I lost all my past hopeful optimism.
But Kamala fought this crisis also and with amazing vitality
survived it. She grew better and more cheerful and wanted us to
take her away from Badenweiler. She was weary of the place, and
another factor which made a difference was the death of another
patient in the sanatorium, who had sometimes sent flowers to
her, and once or twice visited her. That patient — he was an Irish
boy — had been much better than Kamala and was even allowed
to go out for walks. We tried to keep the news of his sudden death
from her, but we did not succeed. Those who are ill, and especially
those who have the misfortune to stay in a sanatorium, seem to
develop a sixth sense which tells them much that is sought to be
hid from them.
In January I went to Paris for a few days and paid another
brief visit to London. Life was pulling at me again and news
reached me, in London, that I had been elected for a second time
president of the Indian National Congress, which was to meet
in April. I had been expecting this as friends had forewarned
me, and I had even discussed it with Kamala. It was a dilemma
for me: to leave her as she was or to resign from the presidentship.
She would not have me resign. She was just a little better and
we thought that I could come back to her later.
At the end of January, 1936, Kamala left Badenweiler and
was taken to a sanatorium near Lausanne in Switzerland.
Death
Both Kamala and I liked the change to Switzerland. She was
more cheerful and I felt a little more at home in that part of
Switzerland which I knew fairly well. There was no marked
change in her condition and it seemed that there was no crisis
ahead. She was likely to continue as she was for a considerable
period, making perhaps slow progress.
Meanwhile the call of India was insistent and friends there
were pressing me to return. My mind grew restless and ever more
occupied with the problems of my country. For some years I had
45
been cut off by prison or otherwise from active participation in
public affairs, and I was straining at the leash. My visits to Lon-
don and Paris and news from India had drawn me out of my shell
and I could not go back into it.
I discussed the matter with Kamala and consulted the doctor.
They agreed that I should return to India and I booked my
passage by the Dutch K.L.M. air line. I was to leave Lausanne
on February 28th. After all this had been fixed up, I found that
Kamala did not at all like the idea of my leaving her. And yet
she would not ask me to change my plans. I told her that I would
not make a long stay in India and hoped to return after two or
three months. I could return even earlier if she wanted me to.
A cable would bring me by air to her within a week.
Four or five days remained before the date fixed for my depar-
ture. Indira, who was at school at Bex nearby, was coming over
to spend those last days with us. The doctor came to me and
suggested that I should postpone my return by a week or ten days.
More he would not say. I agreed immediately and made another
reservation in a subsequent K.L.M. plane.
As these last days went by a subtle change seemed to come
over Kamala. The physical condition was much the same, so far
as we could see, but her mind appeared to pay less attention to
her physical environment. She would tell me that someone was
calling her, or that she saw some figure or shape enter the room
when I saw none.
Early on the morning of February 28th, she breathed her last.
Indira was there, and so was our faithful friend and constant
companion during these months, Dr. M. Atal.
A few other friends came from neighbouring towns in Swit-
zerland, and we took her to the crematorium in Lausanne.
Within a few minutes that fair body and that lovely face, which
used to smile so often and so well, were reduced to ashes. A small
-urn contained the mortal remains of one who had been vital, so
bright and so full of life.
Mussolini Return
The bond that kept me in Lausanne and Europe was broken and
there was no need for me to remain there any longer. Indeed,
something else within me was also broken, the realization ofwhich
only came gradually to me, for those days were black days for me
and my mind did not function properly. Indira and I went to
Montreux to spend a few quiet days together.
During our stay at Montreux I had a visit from the Italian
Consul at Lausanne, who came over especially to convey to me
Signor Mussolini's deep sympathy at my loss. I was a little sur-
46
prised, for I had not met Signor Mussolini or had any other con-
tacts with him. I asked the Consul to convey my gratitude to him.
Some weeks earlier a friend in Rome had written to me to say
that Signor Mussolini would like to meet me. There was no
question of my going to Rome then, and I said so. Later, when
I was thinking of returning to India by air, that message was
repeated and there was a touch of eagerness and insistence about
it. I wanted to avoid this interview and yet I had no desire to
be discourteous. Normally I might have got over my distaste for
meeting him, for I was curious also to know what kind of man
the Duce was. But the Abyssinian campaign was being carried
on then and my meeting him would inevitably have led to all
manner of inferences, and would be used for fascist propaganda.
No denial from me would go far. I knew of several recent in-
stances when Indian students and others visiting Italy had been
utilized, against their wishes and sometimes even without their
knowledge, for fascist propaganda. And then there had been
the bogus interview with Mr. Gandhi which the Giornale d'ltalia
had published in 1931.
I conveyed my regrets, therefore, to my friend, and later wrote
again and telephoned to him to avoid any possibility of mis-
understanding. All this was before Kamala's death. After her
death I sent another message pointing out that, even apart from
other reasons, I was in no mood then for an interview with
anyone.
All this insistence on my part became necessary, as I was
passing through Rome by the K.L.M. and would have to spend
an evening and night there. I could not avoid this passing visit
and brief stay.
After a few days at Montreux I proceeded to Geneva and
Marseilles, where I boarded the K.L.M. air liner for the East.
On arrival in Rome in the late afternoon, I was met by a high
official who handed me a letter from the Chef de Cabinet of Signor
Mussolini. The Duce, it stated, would be glad to meet me and
he had fixed six o'clock that evening for the interview. I was
surprised and reminded him of my previous messages. But he
insisted that it had now all been fixed up and the arrangement
could not be upset. Indeed if the interview did not take place
there was every likelihood of his being dismissed from his office.
I was assured that nothing would appear in the press, and that
I need only see the Duce, for a few minutes. All that he wanted
to do was to shake hands with me and to convey personally his
condolences at my wife's death. So we argued for a full hour with
all courtesy on both sides but with increasing strain; it was a most
exhausting hour for me and probably more so for the other party.
The time fixed for the interview was at last upon us and I had my
47
way. A telephone message was sent to the Duce's palace that
I could not come.
That evening I sent a letter to Signor Mussolini expressing
my regret that I could not take advantage of his kind invitation
to me to see him and thanking him for his message of sympathy.
I continued my journey. At Cairo there were some old friends
to meet me, and then further east, over the deserts of Western
Asia. Various incidents, and the arrangements necessary for my
journey, had so far kept my mind occupied. But after leaving
Cairo and flying, hour after hour, over this desolate desert area,
a terrible loneliness gripped me and I felt empty and purpose-
less. I was going back alone to my home, which was no longer'
home for me, and there by my side was a basket and that basket
contained an urn. That was all that remained of Kamala, and all
our bright dreams were also dead and turned to ashes. She is no
more, Kamala is no more, my mind kept on repeating.
I thought of my autobiography, that record of my life, which
I had discussed with her as she lay in Bhowali Sanatorium. And,
as I was writing it, sometimes I would take a chapter or two and
read it out to her. She had only seen or heard a part of it: she
would never see the rest; nor would we write any more chap-
ters together in the book of life.
When I reached Baghdad I sent a cable to my publishers in
London, who were bringing out my autobiography, giving them
the dedication for the book: 'To Kamala, who is no more.'
Karachi came, and crowds and many familiar faces. And then
Allahabad, where we carried the precious urn to the swift-
flowing Ganges and poured the ashes into the bosom of that
noble river. How many of our forebears she had carried thus
to the sea, how many of those who follow us will take that last
journey in the embrace of her water.
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