The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi (The Robert Payne Library)

by Robert Payne

  On his last evening in Switzerland Gandhi asked his host to play him something from Beethoven. Accordingly Romain Rolland sat down at the piano and played the tender, dream-like andante of the Fifth Symphony, following it with the Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice. These were admirable selections, for they convey a sense of heavenly mysteries and the divine presence, but Gandhi, immersed in the rhythms of Indian music, remained unmoved and detached. “He does not understand Beethoven, but he knows that Beethoven has been the intermediary between Mira and me, and consequently between Mira and himself,” Romain Rolland wrote a few days later.

  On the following day, December 11, they set out early for the railroad station. For the first time since Gandhi had arrived in Switzerland the sun was shining over the lake and the snow mountains shone against clear blue skies. Huddled in scarves, Romain Rolland accompanied the small party to the station.

  “What would you like me to do in grateful memory of your visit?” he asked.

  “Come and meet India,” Gandhi replied, and then they embraced for the last time.

  The journey through Italy was like a holiday after the strenuous activities in Paris and Switzerland. The sun shone, there were no crowds of gaping people, no speeches to deliver. The Villa Moris on Monte Mario was placed at their disposal throughout their stay in Rome, and the Italian government was especially solicitous of their comfort. Gandhi was under the impression that he would be received in audience by Pope Pius XI, but the Pope refused to see him. Mussolini asked to see him, and accordingly a small procession consisting of Gandhi, Mirabehn, Mahadev Desai and General Moris, the owner of the villa and a close friend of Romain Rolland, set out for the Duce’s office in the Palazzo Venezia, that office which was nearly as large as a railroad station with a single desk arranged at the farthest possible distance from the guarded doorway.

  The usual custom was for visitors to walk straight up to the desk in a dreadful silence broken only by the clatter of their boots on the marble floor. When the visitor had successfully accomplished this long journey, he would find himself waiting by the desk until the Duce, taking his own time, raised his head slowly and dramatically in order to transfix his visitor with a dark and baleful stare. But for great dignitaries of state and important religious leaders the ritual was relaxed. Gandhi was kept waiting for a few minutes in an anteroom decorated with medieval halberds, battleaxes and suits of armor, and Mirabehn found herself wondering idly at the contrast between the small dark shrouded figure sitting humbly on a bench and the military panoply surrounding him on all sides. A bell rang; an usher strode quickly across the anteroom; the huge doors opened; and the Duce, instead of waiting at his desk, began to walk toward them. They met halfway, with the Duce escorting them to his massive desk and to the two chairs which were reserved for Gandhi and Mirabehn. General Moris and Mahadev Desai were left standing there with nothing to do, and the Duce scarcely acknowledged their existence.

  They spoke about India, but desultorily, without coming to any conclusions. The Duce seemed to be wondering why Gandhi had come to him, and Gandhi was wondering how any man could look so menacing even when he smiled. They stood at poles apart, the Fascist chieftain and the leader of a guerrilla army of devotees of non-violence. The Duce asked him what he had seen of Rome, and then turned to General Moris and said it was necessary that Gandhi should see the maternity and children’s welfare centers, and since he was known to be happy in the presence of children he should be shown young Italians at their military exercises. The general took careful note of his instructions and with some dismay Gandhi realized there was no escape from attending a military parade, in which he would be expected to take the salute. In an unusual gesture the Duce accompanied his visitors to the door. The meeting had lasted perhaps ten minutes.

  Some time later, when asked what impression Mussolini had made on him, Gandhi answered: “He looked like a butcher.”

  Mussolini’s instructions were carried out to the letter. With an escort of Fascist officials armed with the ceremonial daggers which were part of their uniform, Gandhi visited a maternity home and a children’s home. The military parade consisted of some wearisome processions of well-drilled Balilla, the military organization of Fascist youth, now marching, now running like the Bersaglieri, now standing at ease and gazing upon their strange visitor with awe and respectful admiration. A Fascist official in a resplendent uniform called upon Gandhi to address them. “I am glad to see you all hale and hearty,” Gandhi said, and these words were then translated for the benefit of the armed youths. It was expected that he would make a long speech on the glorious destiny awaiting the youth of Italy, but there was an uncomfortable pause. “Please say more,” the official said. “Quite enough,” Gandhi replied grimly, and turned away. He had seen more than he wanted to see, and he was unable to conceal a look of dismay and disgust. What especially horrified him was the sight of a gun carriage being dragged along by boys ten or eleven years old.

  But there were compensating pleasures at the Villa Moris, where Gandhi sat quietly spinning on a marble floor, while one after another distinguished visitors were announced by General Artuzzi, who played the role of gentleman-usher. Like General Moris, his lifelong friend, he was a well-known aviator with a commendable war record. Tall, erect, monocled, in a blue uniform, he presided with military precision over the audiences granted by Gandhi. The seventeen-year-old Princess Maria of Savoy, the youngest daughter of King Victor Emmanuel, came with an offering of figs. Sitting down beside Gandhi, she explained that they were Indian figs— Fichi d’India—and they had been carefully wrapped and placed in the basket by the Queen of Italy. Gandhi examined the figs closely, coming to the conclusion that they were Italian figs and quite unlike those he had known in India.

  “Whether they are figs or not,” he said gently, “they will taste just as sweet.”

  The princess knew little English; the black-robed lady-in-waiting translated the words; there were smiles and salutes, and the princess made her way out of the Villa Moris past the marble pillars and the blue-cloaked carabinieri guarding the villa, which resembled a renaissance palazzo. There were huge monumental fireplaces, tapestries, sculptures, liveried servants. Once more Gandhi found himself in surroundings of pomp and luxury, for Romain Rolland had forgotten to inform him that General Moris belonged to the Roman aristocracy.

  There were visits to Madame Montessori’s school for defective and disordered children, and to building projects for poor workmen, and to the Forum. On a day when all other visitors were excluded he was taken to the Vatican galleries, walking quickly through huge colonnaded halls until he came at last to the Sistine Chapel, which amazed and delighted him not so much for the frescoes of Michelangelo as for the presence of a tall Crucifix on the high altar. He examined it from all sides, for the first time contemplating in detail the shape and color of the dying Christ “That was a wonderful Crucifix,” he said, as he walked away, and for a long time he fell into silence. “I saw a figure of Christ there,” he repeated when he returned to the Villa Moris. “It was wonderful. I could not tear myself away. The tears sprang to my eyes as I gazed.”

  Then in the evening there were prayers chanted in the great hall of the villa, with the electric lights turned out, the only light coming from the roaring wood fire in the ornamental fireplace. At such times the great hall had a ghostly air, the statues flickering in the firelight. Somewhere in the room there was a lifesize marble tomb figure lying on the level of the floor, and some of those who were with Gandhi found themselves gazing distractedly at this reminder of mortality. Gandhi was chanting vigorously from the Bhagavad Gita, at home in a world where mortality never entered and where the Renaissance splendors had no meaning. As he sat there in the firelight, he seemed to have brought India into a palazzo in Rome.

  Most of his visitors left little impression, but there was one he remembered with gratitude. She was an elderly lady who was known in Roman society as Signora Albertini, the wife
of a newspaper editor, who was her second husband. Previously she had been known as Tatiana Soukhotine, and still earlier she had been known as Tatiana Tolstoy. She was the gayest, most audacious arid most talented of Tolstoy’s daughters, and when she married the elderly Mikhail Soukhotine the lightning and thunder raged around her. Tolstoy regarded the marriage as an abomination and refused ever to see her again. Happily, he changed his mind, and she remained his dutiful daughter to the end.

  They had a long talk about Tolstoy. “My father thought so much of you,” Signora Albertini said. “He used to say the only people he could not understand were the Tolstoyans. He did not want the people to follow him; he wanted them to practice non-violence. Queer that such a practical program as yours and his should earn for both of you the epithets of dreamer, simpleton, fool.”

  Before leaving, she presented him with a sketch she had made of her father during the last year of his life. The sketch was signed: Cordially, affectionately and respectfully, Yours T. Soukhotine Tolstoy. It shows Tolstoy bent over his writing-board, all forehead and hunched shoulders, with a look of perplexity, as though he were waiting for the word that never came.

  When Gandhi looked back on his journey to Italy, he would remember Signora Albertini and the cross in the Vatican, and sometimes he would remember the heavy face of Mussolini, “the butcher with the cat’s eyes,” but otherwise Italy made almost no impression on him. Romain Rolland had thought he might capture something of the essence of European civilization, but instead he found only a hollow shell. In his eyes the workers in the East End of London were more civilized than the Italians. On the night of December 14 he stepped on board the S.S. Pilsna at Brindisi He never saw Europe again and spent the rest of his life in India.

  The Years of the Locust

  When my heart is dry and parched, come

  with a merciful shower,

  When grace has departed from life, come

  with a burst of song.

  A Fast Unto Death

  THROUGHOUT HIS JOURNEY to England Gandhi had been the popular hero, the “little dark man in the funny clothes,” genuinely beloved by the people who acclaimed him in the streets. London and Lancashire had greeted him with open arms. But the policy of the British government did not reflect the same affection toward him. In the eyes of Lord Willingdon, the new Viceroy, he was merely a dangerous and unscrupulous agitator, to be put behind bars at the first opportunity and if possible banished to the Andaman Islands. In the Viceregal Lodge the question of banishment to the islands was being quite seriously debated. At all costs he must be destroyed.

  Lord Willingdon was an experienced administrator with a profound understanding of the uses of punishment. A tall, precise, obdurate man, with a penchant for neat solutions, he had come to the conclusion that disaffection in India must be suppressed and the security of the Raj must be maintained even at the cost of imprisoning all the leaders of Congress and transforming India into a police state. He could not be argued with even by Sir Samuel Hoare, the Secretary of State for India, who genuinely liked Gandhi, recognized the subtlety of his mind, and realized that more subtle weapons were more likely to bring about the desired results. The Viceroy, however, was a law unto himself. His firm conclusion was that he must act with exemplary force, and if necessary go above the head of the Secretary of State and appeal directly to the Prime Minister and the King. He had changed a good deal since the days when he was Governor of Bombay.

  When the ship docked in Bombay on the morning of December 28, Gandhi received a hero’s welcome. Kasturbai was waiting for him, a small, shy, nervous woman who had aged considerably during these last years. She had reason to be nervous, for as she watched Gandhi and Mirabehn coming down the gangway she could not help wondering how long they would all be permitted to remain in freedom. Delhi was already using its emergency powers in the Northwest Frontier Province, the United Provinces and Bengal, and soon enough they would be used in the Bombay Presidency. Jawaharlal Nehru had already been arrested; so had Abdul Ghaffar Khan; Gandhi could expect to be arrested a few hours after setting foot on Indian soil. He was all the more likely to be arrested because the Giornale d’Italia had published a fake interview with him in which he was said to have announced the immediate resumption of the struggle for independence and his determination to throw the British out of India. As soon as he heard of the interview, he cabled a categorical denial. But the harm had been done. Orders for his arrest had already been prepared, and it was merely a question of finding a suitable opportunity.

  The car driving him through the Bombay streets carried an enormous Congress flag, and the same flag flew from the buildings. The crowd roared, and sometimes the car had to slow down because the people kept breaking through the cordons set up by the Congress Volunteers. He sat in the back of the car, waving gently, and a little sadly, as though he knew that his hero’s welcome was undeserved. He had brought back nothing, only the promise of future harassments, the battle nearly lost, the long misery of prison in front of him. He had no illusions about the difficulties ahead. That same evening he spoke at a mass meeting about the government’s attempt to “unman a whole race.” From Lord Willingdon no mercy could be expected. “In the last fight the people had to expect lathis, but this time they will have to face bullets,” he declared through loudspeakers which carried his voice across the length and breadth of an immense square where nearly a quarter of a million people were listening to him. “I would not flinch from sacrificing a million lives for India’s liberty,” he went on, for now his anger rose above clear calculations of probabilities and he could no longer conceal his sense of outrage.

  Although he was in no mood for compromise, he was determined to continue his dialogue with the government. At all costs the lines of communication must be kept open. With the aid of the Congress Working Committee, he worked on an appropriate telegram to the Viceroy. Speaking of the new repressive ordinances, he wrote: “I do not know whether I am to regard these as an indication that friendly relations between us are closed, or whether you expect me still to see you and receive guidance from you as to the course I am to pursue in advising the Congress. I would esteem a wire in reply.”

  The Working Committee did not entirely approve of the telegram, and it especially disapproved of the word “guidance.” Gandhi insisted that he meant precisely what he said, and the telegram was dispatched unchanged.

  Lord Willingdon’s reply showed that he had no intention of discussing the new repressive measures, and he suggested that there was very little to discuss. Nevertheless, if Gandhi insisted on a meeting, he was prepared to give his views “as to the way in which you can best exert your influence to maintain the spirit of cooperation, which animated the proceedings of the Round Table Conference.” He was promising the utmost cooperation only if the Congress became the submissive and obedient pupil of the government. Gandhi replied characteristically with the threat of a far more massive non-cooperation campaign than any previously envisaged, while claiming that he was merely following the dictates of his non-violent creed. “I believe that civil disobedience is not only the natural right of a people, especially when they have no effective voice in their own Government, but that it is also a substitute for violence or armed rebellion.” Lord Willingdon felt that there was little discernible difference between armed rebellion and its substitute, and expressed his regret that the Congress Working Committee had passed a resolution calling for the general revival of the civil-disobedience campaign. In their exchange of telegrams both Gandhi and the Viceroy, although writing with studied courtesy, seemed to be deliberately heaping fuel on the flames. Veiled threats and counterthreats followed one another in an orderly progression. The Viceroy could see no reason why he should trouble to give Gandhi any further guidance, and Gandhi could see no reason why the Viceroy should not continue to negotiate under the threat of a civil-disobedience campaign. Had not Lord Irwin negotiated under a similar threat? But Willingdon was not Irwin, there was no longer a Labour govern
ment in power in London, and the times had changed. On January 3, 1932, Gandhi wrote grimly to Tagore: “As I try to steal a wink of sleep I think of you. I want you to give your best to the sacrificial fire that is being lighted.” During the following night he was arrested.

  He was sleeping in a tent when Devadas came with the news that two police cars were waiting outside. Gandhi smiled, but said nothing. Another Monday had come, another day of silence. Mirabehn collected the belongings he would need in prison—a pair of sandals, a mattress, a portable spinning wheel, some warm clothing. The two police cars drove away into the night, and once more he vanished behind the walls of Yeravda Jail.

  He was arrested under the famous Regulation XXV which permitted him to be detained during the pleasure of the government. During the following days the government carried out its long-threatened plan of making a clean sweep of the Congress leaders and all the other undesirable elements in India. That month some 15,000 people were thrown into jail for political reasons and without any prospect of a trial; in the following month nearly 18,000 were arrested. Civil liberty had ceased to exist, and any police officer could arrest anyone. The sacrificial fires were burning furiously.