Pinch of Salt

(See front cover*)

Secretary Stimson is just two years older than Mahatma Gandhi, 61, and far more robust. Yet if Mr. Stimson had taken off all except a loin cloth when he landed at Southampton (TIME, Jan. 20, et seq.) and had walked barefoot the 80 miles to London, seeking thus to impress the World with his holy resolve to make the Naval Conference a success, Englishmen would have thought him mad.

In India, however, such is the way a statesman practices his profession. Nobody thought Mahatma Gandhi mad, fortnight ago, when he started to walk 200 miles from Ahmedabad to the sea (TIME, March 24). As he trudged along last week, at an average speed of 10 miles per day, Englishmen were not amused but desperately anxious.

Englishmen do their best not to be afraid of St. Gandhi, and English correspondents spend thousands of pounds every year cabling from India that his influence is "waning." But in 1922, the last time he placidly rampaged, the Englishmen at the top in India had the scare of their lives.

Anyone who doubts this should have a confidential Scotch & soda before the hearth with Baron Lloyd of Dolobran, who was Governor of Bombay (a major Gandhi bailiwick) from 1918 through 1923, and was later famed in Egypt for the iron, ruthless hand with which he ruled that "Independent" kingdom as British High Commissioner (TIME, Aug. 5).

"Gandhi gave us a scare," Lord Lloyd has confessed. "His was the most colossal experiment in world history, and it came within an inch of succeeding. But he couldn't control men's passions. They became violent, and he called off his program. You know the rest. We put him in jail."

At the time, wild horses could not have dragged such words from beneath the stiff upper lips of the English rulers of India. And last week upper lips were stiffening again. In Manhattan the chief executive of one of the two largest U. S. press services ruefully expressed his doubt that the Gandhi story can be covered now, while it is a story.

Correspondents must write their news in such form that it can pass over British wires. With the story just warming up last week, and while censorship was comparatively lax, they cabled that the showing of newsreels taken as St. Gandhi set out on his march is barred in all theatres in the Bombay Presidency. Soon the news gate too will slam shut--that is, if there is any trouble.

"Sell All Thou Hast!" The first axiom of western statecraft is that religion has no place in politics. "But if religion is not needed in politics," blinks Mr. Gandhi, "then where on earth is it needed?" Perfectly infuriating to Englishmen is this sort of thing, which they call "sickening cant."

"Shame upon you, Christians!" the mute nakedness of the Mahatma cries louder than words--for Englishmen know that they as individuals have not, and that he as an individual has, obeyed the command: "Sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor." He built up as a young man one of the most lucrative legal practices in India, then devoted all his possessions except the last wad or two of rags to succoring the needy. During the Boer war he turned the other cheek to Great Britain by organizing Indian Red Cross units, served with such passive, non-violent gallantry at the front that he wrung a medal for bravery from the Empire. For his pro-British speeches during the World War he drew another medal.

"Mother India." The pagan of so many Christlike virtues is not however a Christian. His followers have gone to the extraordinary length of setting up their country as their goddess. She, the actual land and map of India, is frequently represented today by paintings which show the goddess superimposed upon the map, her head always depicted among the Himalayan Mountains, her arms stretched out to embrace the east and west extremities of the map, her feet always close together resting upon Cape Comorin.

The name of this astonishing goddess-- at once political and religious--is of course "Mother India." The political anthem and the religious chant of her devotees is Bande Mataram ("Hail Mother").

Taboo and Spinning. Up to the time Alfred Emanuel Smith ran for President, U. S. journalists were prevented by taboo from writing religious facts into political despatches, even if they thought them paramount. Taboo keeps off the front page Mr. Gandhi's use of Christian acts as a weapon against men with Christian beliefs. Only in exceptional publications like Asia (U. S. monthly) has the religious side of India's passive battle with England been described at graphic length by men like "Upton Close" (pseudonym of Joseph Washington Hall, probably the greatest historian of contemporary Asia, certainly the one closest in tune with Asians), and C. F. Andrews, an Englishman who used to be St. Gandhi's secretary. In the daily press, taboo keeps Gandhi to the fore as a sort of quaint fool with spinning wheel, who for no good Anglo-Saxon reason is followed with blind fanaticism by gibbering millions. The wheel (every one of the saint's followers and he himself must spin at least 6,000 ft. of cotton thread per month, 200 ft. per day) is indeed a strange weapon.

Everyone vaguely understands that textiles are one of England's key industries, that India is this industry's key customer, and that if Mr. Gandhi could fire his countrymen with a sufficient resolve to buy not one snippet more of English cloth but to spin and weave their own, the result would be even more poverty-pinched faces in Lancashire than one sees there already (TIME, Aug. 12, et seq.).

But many a U. S. citizen assumes that, supposing England could be laid low by this stab in her economic vitals, Mr. Gandhi would then stop spinning and buy a decent suit of clothes from his Asiatic fellowmen, the Japanese. Not at all: a mistaken idea. Well, then, surely he would stop if he could put a wall around India, behind which Indians could set up their own efficient textile mills and produce cloth cheaper than it can ever be made by hand. By no means! The spinning crusade is an economic war, first against England, second against Japan, third against Indian textile men, and the final victory is to be the destruction of the Machine Age.

With compassion and bitter sorrow, St. Gandhi imagines he has seen the Christian world brutalized and its morals stultified by the Machine. He knows that in Japan (the sole Asiatic nation which has mechanized itself) women now work all night in the textile mills (a scandal against which Lancashire bitterly protests), and in India itself Mr. Gandhi has seen enough of the Machine Age and Big Business to convince him that these things must be destroyed if mankind would save its immortal soul. Yet Historian Upton Close, sympathetic though he is with Asians, acutely as he realizes the difficulty of their adjustment to mechanization, believes that upon this point St. Gandhi is butting against a stone wall which may smash him if he butts too hard.

Of paramount significance ard: these facts, in the last 13 years Japan has risen from supplying 3% of India's imported textiles to 13.6%; Great Britain has declined from 97.1% to 82%. Indian textile mills--anathema to St. Gandhi--now produce 45.2% of the national consumption.

"Recpolism." As an economic weapon the spinning wheel may be mere butting against a wall, but it is also the symbol of Statesman Gandhi's political program of "non-cooperation." The man is in fact a triple personality: Saint, Anti-Machinist, Statesman. He insists upon mixing up Religion, Economics and Politics into something before which the Anglo-Saxon stands puzzled and aghast, unwilling and unable to give it an English name. If Englishmen were Germans they would call what Mr. Gandhi is driving at "recpolism" (R--eligion, EC--onomics, Pol--itics).

As a "recpolman," Mr. Gandhi is driving at something which can best be illustrated by stating an extreme case. A naked Indian steps up to an English policeman and says: "Either get out of my country or kill me." The policeman kills him. Another Indian steps up and the process is repeated, another and another and another and another and another. After several Indians, the English policeman perhaps suddenly realizes that he is a murderer, remembers the Divine command ''Thou shalt not kill!" He throws away his pistol, bursts into sobs of penitence, scuttles out of India. Or perhaps he goes on coolly shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting--but Mr. Gandhi does not believe that possible.

It was with his large mind obsessed by this strange ideology that Mahatma Gandhi made to Indians his recent terrible, mystic appeal (TIME, March 24): "Money alone will not win self-government. If money could win, I should have obtained it long ago. What is required, therefore, is your blood."

"Raging Breast." In 1921 Mr. Gandhi was launched, as he was last week, upon a "recpolic" struggle of this kind: Shame the Christians! Refuse to buy their cloth! Die unresisting at their hands! Nauseate them and drive them mad! However in 1922 the Indian followers of Mr. Gandhi were not as thoroughly saturated as he believed with his mass-martyr ideology. They began to riot at Assam, to strike in Bengal, to massacre at Malabar. The nation was unquestionably roused to such a pitch of fervor that, at one word from "Recpolman" Gandhi, the most terrible grapple and insurrection of modern times would have begun. George V knows how many of his subjects' lives Mr. Gandhi saved by dramatically withdrawing the seven-day ultimatum he had sent to the Viceroy, Lord Reading, demanding independence for India within that time. Mr. Gandhi chose to rebuke Indians for what he called their folly and breakdown of discipline, canceled his whole movement, became temporarily unpopular and, as Baron Lloyd says: "Then we put him in jail. You know the rest."

As he stood in the dock Mr. Gandhi-- like Socrates with the bowl of hemlock-- delivered perhaps his greatest oration.* At his British judge the saint thundered:

"The only course open to you, the Judge, is ... either to resign your post or inflict on me the severest penalty . . . for [doing] what in law is a deliberate crime, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen. ... I do not expect [acquittal and the judge's resignation] but by the time I have finished with my statement, you will perhaps have a glimpse of what is raging within my breast!"

Salt & Opium. As he painfully kept up his 200-mile walk, last week--not like an imaginary Statesman Stimson trudging to London--but as the unique "Recpolman" Gandhi, breathless spectators watched.

When Mr. Gandhi should reach the sea, when he should defy the British salt monopoly,* when he should break British law by scooping up a little sea water and publicly evaporating it to recover a mere pinch of salt--what then? Would enough Indians respond to this, the agreed signal for nonviolent, mass civil disobedience? Would they obey the Mahatma, abstain from paying taxes, abstain from all obedience to British employers or superiors,/- buy no British cloth, and pray that they may meet Death all innocent and nonresisting at British hands?

In London the stock exchange was steady at zero hour last week, though Indian securities have gradually declined during the past three months (TIME, Jan. 13 et seq.).

Because he made a "seditious utterance" in praise of Mahatma Gandhi, the Mayor of Calcutta, Mr. J. M. Sengupta was sentenced to ten days' imprisonment last week, while he sat mute and motionless in court, refusing to make any defense. When the Mahatma came to the village of Ankhi on his walk he rebuked the inhabitants for their passive refusal to allow the local British police to buy food. "It is against religious principles to starve anyone," said the saint. "I would suck snake's poison even from General Dyer, should he be bitten."**

Trudging along with Mr. Gandhi, trying their best to follow him in act, word and thought, ten disciples were stricken with fever.

Typical moments in Gandhi's life:

Meat: Seeing that the English rulers of India were great, strapping John Bulls, guessing that this physique was due to meat, Mr. Gandhi resolved to violate the most sacred religious tenet of Hinduism: he ate a steak. His stomach, his mind and his soul quickly experienced a most excruciating triple torture. Thereafter the poor great man--the much-to-be-sympathized-with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi--resolved that even to free Mother India, dearer to him than life, he could not pollute himself with meat.

Women: Aged 12, he was married to the present Mrs. Gandhi, then also aged 12 but in the bud of womanhood which blows so early in India. Mr. Gandhi, who at 12 enjoyed the prospect rather than the substance of manhood, became troubled and ashamed when his child-wife openly mocked him for his immaturity.

Time set all this right, but one night, years later. Mr. Gandhi who wished to sit up with his sick father, was persuaded by Mrs. Gandhi to come to bed. The remorse of the Mahatma, when a servant knocked on the bedroom door and announced his father's death, prostrated him for two days. Not until Mrs. Gandhi passed middle age could he regard her as an intellectual helpmate.

*Drawn for TIME by Artist Vladimir Perfilieff of Philadelphia and Manhattan.

*See Mahatma Gandhi's Ideas, by C. F. Andrews (Macmillan, 1930, $3), pp. 290-99.

*Opium is also a British monopoly in India.

/-Placid inaction by an Indian native soldier, after his British officer has commanded him to act, is of course the death-punishable crime of mutiny.

**General Dyer was promoted and retired from the British Army after his order to British troops in 1919 to fire on Indians had resulted in the death of 400 natives, the wounding of 1,200.

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