August 7

Almost two hundred years had passed and the British still ruled India. But now it was only a matter of days until Aug. 7. Then the clock would tick out the minute when the will of one stubborn little man would be pitted against the Empire.

Like hens in a gathering thunderstorm, the men of good will hoped that somehow a miracle would avert a deluge of chaos, anarchy and civil war. Only the little man remained calm. U.S. Correspondent A. T. Steele, visiting his retreat at Sevagram last week, described it as "a dude ranch, a Father Divine 'heaven,' a Mennonite colony, a collective farm and an agricultural station, with everybody a vegetarian." There Mohandas K. Gandhi relaxed, listened to his inner voice, took abdominal mudbaths to husband his waning strength.

No one doubted that in Gandhi's mind the clock kept ticking: Now or never; but no one, Gandhi included, could foretell whether farce or tragedy would follow his Indian National Congress party meeting Aug. 7. It seemed inevitable that the party would approve Gandhi's plan for non-violent rebellion against British rule. Probably the non-violence would be launched in September, after the crops are harvested.

Having offered India post-war dominion status through Sir Stafford Cripps, the British were standing pat. Crusty Leopold Stennett Amery, Secretary of State for India, reiterated his Government's support of eventual Indian self-government, but warned India that the Government "will not flinch from their duty" to combat civil disobedience. There was a counter-threat that, if the British jailed all Congress leaders, the aged and frail Gandhi might die a martyr's death. Sir Stafford hinted that Gandhi's actions were treasonable.

Lawyer Gandhi promptly recalled his past claims that only a free Indian people can be galvanized into action in a larger war for freedom. In his own crosspatch way he told off the Japanese: "Our offer to let the Allies retain troops in India," he explained in a manifesto, "is to prevent you from being misled into feeling that you have but to step into this country. If you cherish any such idea, we will not fail to resist you with all the might we can muster." But in the next breath he was threatening that "hidden discontent may burst forth into welcome for the Japanese should the latter land in India." He bluntly disapproved of an unofficial suggestion that the U.S., China and Britain were prepared to underwrite India's post-war self-government. As a last resort, he revealed in his newspaper Harijan, a fast-to-the-death might be his "greatest and most effective weapon."

Gandhi knows India and Britain as intimately as his own loin cloth. He distrusts the U.S., even though Indian newspapers are continually printing such appeals as that of the pro-Congress Delhi Evening National Call: "We appeal to President Roosevelt, and through him to the freedom-loving people of America, in the name of democracy to intercede and effect a settlement before it is too late."

Most Indians do not realize that such appeals are not widely publicized in the U.S. Last week, for instance, there was a hubbub in the Indian press over a report that Wendell Willkie might visit India as the personal representative of President Roosevelt. There were other reports that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi's right-hand man and a world leader of solid stature, might be persuaded to visit Washington. Nehru has stated that no Indian should leave his homeland while the moving finger "is writing Indo-British destiny on the wall of history." But his presence in Washington could give a healthy airing to the entire problem of colonial policy (see p. 25).

But whether Willkie visited India, or Nehru visited Washington, Gandhi's course remained clear. He and Britain and India were moving toward their rendezvous.

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