Lady After Saint

If St. Gandhi were a newborn babe, if James Ramsay MacDonald were his proud father, St. Gandhi could not have been treated with more tender, solicitous care than was lavished by His Majesty's Government last week.

The special apartments at the Poona jail, the special herd purchased to provide the Saint with goat's milk, the special chef hired to pamper the prisoner's taste (TIME, May 12), not even all these luxuries sufficed. Poona was deemed too warm. By means so secret that no detail leaked out, the prisoner was spirited to Purandhar Military Sanitarium at the salubrious altitude of 4,500 ft. There every day, whether he liked it or not, St. Gandhi received a tender but thorough physical examination by a corps of British physicians. As during the illness of George V, they issued frequent bulletins, but in this case to the effect that "for a man of his age" (61), St. Gandhi's health seemed as near perfect as could possibly be expected.

Meanwhile the viceregal court moved from New Delhi, the expensively erected capital of British India, to salubrious Simla, the summer capital in the cool eastern Himalayas. There potent, tremendously tall Baron Irwin (the Viceroy is fully two heads taller than scrawny little St. Gandhi) received a letter in which his prisoner accused him of employing British troops in such a way as to provoke the violence which seethed last week in India.

"Dear friend," wrote Saint to Viceroy, "I know the dangers attendant upon the method adopted by me, but my country is not likely to mistake my meaning. I say what I mean and think. The only way to conquer violence is through non violence, pure and undefiled. "If, in spite of repeated warnings, the people resort to violence, I must disown responsibility and you may condemn civil disobedience as much as you like. Will you prefer a violent revolt? "History will pronounce the verdict that the British Government, not bearing because not understanding, goaded human nature to violence, which it could understand how to deal with." Shrewd Move. Certainly there was violence enough last week in India (see map). Riots small and great broke out in the chief commercial cities of Madras, Calcutta and Bombay. At Peshawar on the northwestern frontier, in circumstances which censorship obscured, two soldiers were burned to death in an armored car ignited by natives. But most frightful of all were atrocities at Sholapur. This city -- a cotton-spinning metropolis of 12,000 -- was for a time virtually ruled by various mobs, some followers of the Saint, others a nondescript rabble out to loot while looting was good. After 50 deaths, 400 woundings, disorder continued. As a crowning horror three Mohammedan policemen were seized by Hindus, drenched with gasoline and burned. Despatches disagreed as to whether they were "burned alive."

That Mohammedan reprisals against followers of Hindu St. Gandhi did not at once break out was due to his great shrewdness. Before he was spirited off to jail he appointed as his successor that venerable Mohammedan Abbas Tyabji, onetime judge of the Baroda court. Result: at Amritsar leaders of the Sikh Mohammedans, "best fighters in India," last week declared for St. Gandhi and independence.

Lady Leader. As No. 2 leader of the Gandhi movement, Judge Tyabji at once announced that he would carry out a project which the Saint was on the verge of attempting when jailed: a great "nonviolent raid" on the salt deposits at Dharasana. How a "raid" can be "nonviolent" is hard for occidentals to understand. The British did not try, promptly clapped No. 2 leader Tyabji into jail near Navsari. Naturally smart St. Gandhi had not omitted to name a No. 3 leader. Automatically his whole vast movement for independence was turned over to her: Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, poetess and lecturer, aged 51, educated at King's College, London, mother of four, zealous social reformer, onetime president of St. Gandhi's Indian National Congress which authorized him to declare independence (TIME, Jan. 6), onetime member of the Bombay municipality. Perhaps with more guile than St. Gandhi or Judge Tyabji, Mrs. Naidu did not announce her next move last week, and thus avoided arrest.

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