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Remarks on Public Figures in India
Sayajirao Gaekwar
I find it strange that they have made the Gaekwar the President of the World Conference of Faiths. Is he a Hindu?
When I knew him the Gaekwar was a free-thinker without any religion; I don’t know if he has altered his views since. Formally, he is of course a Hindu. 7 July 1936
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I read the Gaekwar’s speech at the World Conference of Faiths. It is full of commonplace ideas about brotherhood, fellowship and goodwill. These ideas seem to have become mere catch words and it is doubtful if they can be of any help in solving the problems of modern life.
One can’t expect anything more than catchwords and the most common ones from the Gaekwar on such subjects and occasions — in fact the whole affair of this Conference is likely to be little else. There are people who have a faith in words and think that with them they can sweep back the realities of life and embody effectively the realities of spirit. 9 July 1936
Mahatma Gandhi
As for Gandhi, why should you suppose that I am so tender for the faith of the Mahatma? I do not call it faith at all, but a rigid mental belief, and what he terms soul-force is only a strong vital will which has taken a religious turn. That, of course, can be a tremendous force for action, but unfortunately Gandhi spoils it by his ambition to be a man of reason, while in fact he has no reason in him at all, never was reasonable at any moment in his life and, I suppose, never will be. What he has in its place is a remarkable type of unintentionally sophistic logic. Well, what this
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reason, this amazingly, precisely unreliable logic brings about is that nobody is ever sure and, I don’t think, he is himself really sure what he will do next. He has not only two minds, but three or four minds, and all depends on which will turn up topmost at a particular moment and how it will combine with the others. There would be no harm in that, on the contrary there might be an advantage if there were a central Light somewhere choosing for him and shaping the decision to the need of the action. He thinks there is and calls it God — but it has always seemed to me that it is his own mind that decides and most of the time decides wrongly. Anyhow I cannot imagine Lenin or Mustapha Kemal not knowing their own minds or acting in this way — even their strategic retreats were steps towards an end clearly conceived and executed. But whatever it be, it is all mind-action and vital force in Gandhi. So why should he be taken as an example of the defeat of the Divine or of a spiritual Power? I quite allow that there has been something behind Gandhi greater than himself and you can call it the Divine or a Cosmic Force which has used him, but then there is that behind everybody who is used as an instrument for world ends, — behind Kemal and Lenin also, — so that is not germane to the matter. 29 July 1932
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This second fast of Mahatma Gandhi of three weeks has disquieted me a little. There seems to be no way out, for Gandhi asserts that he can break his irrevocable fast only if he is persuaded that the inner voice which enjoins the fast on him is the voice not of God but of the Devil. I wonder whose voice it is though? Can it be anything but disastrous augury?
I don’t think it was the voice of God that raged and thundered till Gandhi decided to starve himself on to the danger line — it looks as if it were the other fellow. One can only hope that he will scrape through somehow and that the doctors are wrong as they most often are when they opine in the plural; but the last experiment was not encouraging. And as this time there seems to be no reason whatever for this inspired procedure and no
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practical or practicable object set before it, there is no tangible means either of bringing it to a timely close. What an extraordinary ignorance of spiritual things to take any “inner” shout for the command of the Supreme! 5 May 1933
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Yesterday I thought how nice it would be if Gandhiji came here for the truth which he is seeking. At times he hears some “voice” he says.
I don’t think he would accept the Truth that is here. His mind is too rigid for it. 22 July 1933
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The letter to Govindbhai from Gandhiji has created a stir in the atmosphere and people are busy speculating.1 Some think it would be an event useful to the world if he could see you. I wonder if even half an hour’s interview would help our inner work or its outward manifestation. Perhaps people are excited about the possibility that the Truth that is here and is accepted by us will be accepted by a person who is called the world’s greatest man.
Gandhi has his own work, his own ideal and dharma — how can he open himself to receive anything from here? 28 December 1933
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I heard that Gandhi has written a letter expressing his desire to have an interview with Sri Aurobindo.
I don’t see how I can see him — the time has not come when I
1 In December 1933, Mahatma Gandhi wrote to Govindbhai Patel, a disciple of Sri Aurobindo then living in the Ashram, asking whether it would be possible for him to meet Sri Aurobindo. Govindbhai communicated Gandhi’s request to Sri Aurobindo. On 2 January 1934, Gandhi wrote directly to Sri Aurobindo asking for a face-to-face meeting. Extracts from Govindbhai’s and Gandhi’s letters, and Sri Aurobindo’s complete replies, are published in Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest, volume 36 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO, pp. 442 44. — Ed.
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I was glad when X informed me that Gandhi is not coming here. I had an impression that his coming just before our occasion [the darshan of 21 February] would create a disturbance in the atmosphere.
It would have meant a very serious and quite unprofitable and unnecessary disturbance. 4 February 1934
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It seems some people from the town went to see Gandhi and asked him why he had cancelled his visit to the Asram. Gandhi is supposed to have said that it was because Sri Aurobindo was not willing to see him, after which he showed a copy of the notice which was put on our notice board — the one prohibiting members of the Asram from attending Gandhi’s arrival procession, etc.3 I don’t believe Gandhi actually had a copy of the notice but some people in town must have known of it.
That is all nonsense. Gandhi’s decision not to come here was made before the notice was put on the board. My decision to issue the notice and his decision not to come may have coincided — but how could he know it except by telepathy?
In one of his letters to Govindbhai, Gandhi said that he would be much disappointed if he did not see Sri Aurobindo. If that was the case, I wonder why he couldn’t wait till the 21st to have Darshan.
I suppose the disappointment was nothing more than a phrase — meaning, I would so much have liked to see what kind of a person you are. If I have read his last letter to Govindbhai aright, his request was dictated by curiosity rather than anything else.
2 After November 1926, Sri Aurobindo made it a rule not to meet with anyone, not even his disciples. — Ed. 3 See Notice of 3 February 1934, in Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest, p. 536. — Ed.
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If anybody expected him to come here seeking for Truth, it was absurd — he has his own fixed way of seeing things and is not likely to change it. 9 February 1934
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Yesterday Gandhi asked permission to see the Mother. I heard that Mother asked Govindbhai to meet him and explain her inability to see him.
Gandhi wrote to Govindbhai and from his letter it seemed as if he were still expecting to see the Mother and the Asram or at least expecting an answer. In view of this persistence we sent Govindbhai to explain to him that it was impossible for the Mother to receive his visit. 23 February 1934
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It is curious that mosquitoes do not bite me. Perhaps they do not like my blood or they do not bite me because I don’t kill them. Here is an example of the efficacy of the truth of Ahimsa. But if this is true, why with all the Ahimsa Gandhi practises has the government not given up their enmity towards him? Of course, the meaning of Ahimsa can be extended to All-love, and, as it says in one Upanishad, everything that is not compatible with the Higher Self is Himsa.
Mosquitoes do have strong preferences (and dislikes) in the matter of blood. One person is sleeping in a room, no mosquitoes — another enters, immediately there is a cloud of mosquitoes. Also as between two persons in a room, they will swarm round one and leave the other. I don’t think the Ahimsa principle works like that with Governments — after all Gandhi is trying to do to them or their interests immense harm and you can’t expect his mere non-violence to make them love him for that or leave him alone. On the other hand Ahimsa does work (though not invariably) with animals — if you don’t kill them, they don’t as a rule go out of their way to kill you — unless they are frightened or mad or otherwise abnormal or unless it is their rule to kill. I don’t know what effect it can have on mosquitoes.
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All-love is a different matter — it has sometimes a powerful effect, very powerful, in conciliating automatically men, animals, Nature itself. The only beings who do not respond are the Asuras and Rakshasas. 11 March 1934
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Someone was speaking to me about Gandhi’s seven-day fast. I said: “Is it to create an earthquake for the sake of the Harijans? At least his own earth (body) will quake.”
It seems to be very foolish, these fasts — as if they could alter anything at all. A fast can at most affect one’s own condition, but how can it “atone” for the doings of others or change their nature? 12 July 1934
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In a recent statement, Gandhi criticises the attitude taken by Dr. Ambedkar and his followers at the Bombay Presidency Depressed Classes Conference. They passed a resolution recommending the “complete severance of the Depressed Classes from the Hindu fold and their embracing any other religion which guaranteed them equal status and treatment”. About this Gandhi says: “But religion is not like a house or a cloak, which can be changed at will. It is more an integral part of one’s self than of one’s body. Religion is the tie that binds one to one’s Creator and whilst the body perishes, as it has to, religion persists even after death.”4 Is there any truth in what Gandhi says? Why should a particular religion persist after death? Why should one be bound to one form of religion if one feels the necessity of a different approach to Truth?
If it is meant by the statement that the form of religion is something permanent and unchangeable, then that cannot be accepted. But if religion here means one’s way of communion with the Divine, then it is true that that is something belonging to the inner being and cannot be changed like a house or a cloak
4 M. K. Gandhi, “Statement to the Press” (15 October 1935), in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 62 (New Delhi: The Publications Division, 1975), p. 37.
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for the sake of some personal, social or worldly convenience. If a change is to be made, it can only be for an inner spiritual reason, because of some development from within. No one can be bound to any form of religion or any particular creed or system, but if he changes the one he has accepted for another, for external reasons, that means he has inwardly no religion at all and both his old and his new religion are only an empty formula. At bottom that is, I suppose, what the statement drives at. Preference for a different approach to the Truth or the desire of inner spiritual self-expression are not the motives of the recommendation of change to which objection is made by the Mahatma here; the object proposed is an enhancement of social status and consideration which is no more a spiritual motive than conversion for the sake of money or marriage. If a man has no religion in himself, he can change his credal profession for any motive; if he has, he cannot; he can only change it in response to an inner spiritual need. If a man has a bhakti for the Divine in the form of Krishna, he can’t very well say “I will swap Krishna for Christ so that I may become socially respectable.” 19 October 1935
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Gandhi says the following in a recent article: “I hold that complete realization is impossible in this embodied life. Nor is it necessary. A living immovable faith is all that is required for reaching the full spiritual height attainable by human beings.”5 Your opinion on the matter?
I do not know what Mahatma Gandhi means by complete realisation. If he means a realisation with nothing more to realise, no farther development possible, then I agree — I have myself spoken of farther divine progression, an infinite development. But the question is not that; the question is whether the Ignorance can be transcended, whether a complete essential realisation turning the consciousness from darkness to light, from
5 M. K. Gandhi, “Where Is the Living God?” (13 June 1936), in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 63 (New Delhi: The Publications Division, 1976), p. 58.
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an instrument of the Ignorance seeking for Knowledge into an instrument or rather a manifestation of Knowledge proceeding to greater Knowledge, Light enlarging, heightening into greater Light, is or is not possible. My view is that this conversion is not only possible, but inevitable in the spiritual evolution of the being here. The embodiment of life has nothing to do with it. This embodiment is not of life, but of consciousness and its energy, of which life is only one phase or force. As life has developed mind, and the embodiment has modified itself to suit this development (mind is precisely the main instrument of ignorance seeking for knowledge), so mind can develop supermind which is in its nature knowledge not seeking for itself, but manifesting itself by its own automatic power, and the embodiment can again modify itself or be modified from above so as to suit this development. Faith is a necessary means for arriving at realisation because we are ignorant and do not yet know that which we are seeking to realise; faith is indeed knowledge giving the ignorance an intimation of itself previous to its own manifestation, it is the gleam sent before by the yet unrisen Sun. When the Sun shall rise there will be no longer any need of the gleam. The supramental knowledge supports itself, it does not need to be supported by faith; it lives by its own certitude. You may say that farther progression, farther development will need faith. No, for the farther development will proceed on a basis of knowledge, not of Ignorance. We shall walk in the light of knowledge towards its own wider vistas of self-fulfilment. 7 July 1936
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I would prefer to avoid all public controversy especially if it touches in the least on politics. Gandhi’s theories are like other mental theories built on a basis of one-sided reasoning and claiming for a limited truth (that of non-violence and of passive resistance) a universality which it cannot have. Such theories will always exist so long as the mind is the main instrument of human truth seeking. To spend energy trying to destroy such theories is of little use; if destroyed they are replaced by others equally limited and partial.
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As for imperialism, that is no new thing — it is as old as the human vital; there was never a time in known human history when it was not in existence. To get rid of it means to change human nature or at least to curb it by a superior power. Our work is not to fight these things but to bring down a higher nature and a Truth-creation which will make spiritual Light and Power the chief force in terrestrial existence. 10 October 1936
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Mahatma Gandhi is reported to have said: “To be born as a `Bhangi’ was the result of great punya in previous birth. He [Gandhi] did not know what qualifications determined the birth of one man as Bhangi and another as Brahmin, but from the point of view of benefit to society the one was no whit lower than the other.”6 This seems like nonsense to me. How can he say that through punya (righteous acts) in previous births people go to a life in the lowest order of human society?
The view taken by the Mahatma in these matters is Christian rather than Hindu — for the Christian self-abasement, humility, the acceptance of a low status to serve humanity or the Divine are things which are highly spiritual and the noblest privilege of the soul. This view does not admit any hierarchy of castes; the Mahatma accepts castes but on the basis that all are equal before the Divine, a bhangi doing his dharma is as good as the Brahmin doing his, there is division of function but no hierarchy of functions. That is one view of things and the hierarchic view is another, both having a standpoint and logic of their own which the mind takes as wholly valid but which only corresponds to a part of the reality. All kinds of work are equal before the Divine and all men have the same Brahman within them, is one truth, but that development is not equal in all is another. The idea that it needs special punya to be born as a bhangi is of course one of those forceful exaggerations of an idea which are common
6 M. K. Gandhi, “Address to Congress Volunteers” (21 December 1936). Reported in the Hindu and other newspapers, and reproduced in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 64 (New Delhi: The Publications Division, 1976), pp. 162 63.
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with the Mahatma and impress greatly the mind of his hearers. The idea behind is that his function is an indispensable service to the society, quite as much as the Brahmin’s, but that being disagreeable it would need a special moral heroism to choose it voluntarily and he thinks as if the soul freely chose it as such a heroic service and as a reward of righteous acts — that is hardly likely. The service of the scavenger is indispensable under certain conditions of society, it is one of those primary necessities with out which society can hardly exist and the cultural development of which the Brahmin life is part could not have taken place. But obviously the cultural development is more valuable than the service of the physical needs for the progress of humanity as opposed to its first static condition and that development can even lead to the minimising and perhaps the eventual disappearance by scientific inventions of the need for the functions of the scavenger. But that I suppose the Mahatma would not approve of as it is machinery and a departure from the simple life. In any case it is not true that the bhangi life is superior to the Brahmin life and the reward of especial righteousness. On the other hand the traditional conception that a man is superior to others because he is born a Brahmin is not rational or justifiable. A spiritual or cultured man of Pariah birth is superior in the divine values to an unspiritual and worldly-minded or a crude and uncultured Brahmin. Birth counts, but the basic value is in the man himself, the soul behind and the degree to which it manifests itself in his nature. 23 December 1936
Jawaharlal Nehru
I have just finished Jawaharlal’s autobiography. I send you some citations which moved me deeply. I caught myself today praying for him that he may have peace. How I wish he could do yoga for a year at least, if only to realise the divine harmony within him — even in this age when times are so grievously “out of joint”.
I have not read Jawaharlal’s book and know nothing of his life except what is public; now of course I have no time for reading.
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But he bears on himself the stamp of a very fine character, a nature of the highest sattwic kind, full of rectitude and a high sense of honour: a man of the finest Brahmin type with what is best in European education added — that is the impression he gives. I must say that Mother was struck by his photograph when she first saw it in the papers, singling it out from the mass of ordinary eminent people. But peace? Peace is never easy to get in the life of the world and never constant, unless one lives deep within and bears the external activities as only a surface front of our being. And the work he has to do is the least peaceful of all. If Buddha had to lead the Indian National Congress, well! For the spiritual life there is perhaps no immediate possibility: his mind stands in between, for it has seized strongly the Socialist dream of social perfection by outward change as the thing to be striven for and has made that into a sort of religion. The best possible on earth has been made by his mind its credo: the something beyond he does not believe in, the something more here would seem to him a dream without basis, I suppose. But pray for him, of course. He is a man with a strong psychic element and in this life or another that must go beyond the mind to find its source. 13 September 1936
Subhas Chandra Bose
I have read your correspondence with Subhas Bose.7 Your main point is of course quite the right thing to answer; all this insistence upon action is absurd if one has not the light by which to act. Yoga must include life and not exclude it does not mean that we are bound to accept life as it is with all its stumbling ignorance and misery and the obscure confusion of human will and reason and impulse and instinct which it expresses. The advocates of action think that by human intellect and energy making an always new rush everything can be put right; the
7 All the letters in this group except the one dated 2 July 1938 were written to Dilip Kumar Roy, who was a close friend of Subhas Chandra Bose. — Ed.
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present state of the world after a development of the intellect and a stupendous output of energy for which there is no historical parallel is a signal proof of the illusion under which they labour. Yoga takes the stand that it is only by a change of consciousness that the true basis of life can be discovered; from within outward is indeed the rule. But within does not mean some quarter inch behind the surface. One must go deep and find the soul, the self, the Divine Reality within us and only then can life become a true expression of what we can be instead of a blind and always repeated confused blur of the inadequate and imperfect thing we were. The choice is between remaining in the old jumble and groping about in the hope of stumbling on some discovery or standing back and seeking the Light within till we discover and can build the godhead within and without us. 16 June 1932
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I want to send Chapter 1 of “The Yoga of Divine Works” to Subhas. It will, I am sure, be just the aliment for his soul and may work a sort of miracle as it did in me. So unless you have a particular reason, could you see your way to allowing me to send him this chapter by tomorrow’s post?
I am not sure that Subhas is prepared to receive any effect from it — it is only because your inner preparation had proceeded to a point at which you could feel something of what was behind the words that it had an effect upon you. All the same — you can send it, if you like. 26 December 1932
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I received this post-card from Subhas in the last mail. He had written it before starting for Calcutta by aeroplane. Now he is practically a prisoner — a home-internee really — at his residence. I wonder what work he will be doing now. . . . He used once to meditate and see light and had a real bhakti — had even turned a sannyasi once. And now he says that seeking the Divine is useless inactive work!
I had never a very great confidence in Subhas’s yoga-turn getting the better of his activism — he has two strong ties that prevent
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it, ambition and need to act and lead in the vital and in the mind a mental idealism — these two things are the great fosterers of illusion. The spiritual path needs a certain amount of realism — one has to see the real value of the things that are — which is very little, except as steps in evolution. Then one can either follow the spiritual static path of rest and release or the spiritual dynamic path of a greater truth to be brought down into life. But otherwise — 12 December 1934
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I wrote a letter to Subhas this morning in reply to his exhorting me to come away, assuring me that all my friends want me back and that nobody is cross with me etc. etc. I wrote that I must be faithful to the call of my soul and to my Guru whom I do believe to be the Divine incarnate. Perhaps he will smile the well-known “the old old story” smile of our up-to-date rationalism.
Well, his also is the old old story repeated without any satisfactory result or liberating end. 20 August 1935
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Here is Subhas the despairer: “It is no use trying to argue with you. You are quite blind. Reason is but the slave of your faith. When I think how a person of your calibre can surrender his reasoning in this way, I feel like despairing of my country. Everywhere we find the same thing. You regard Sri Aurobindo as God Incarnate. So many regard Mahatma Gandhi in the same light. My own mother — whose sincerity I cannot doubt — has a guru whom she regards as God incarnate." — Extract from a letter of Subhas Chandra Bose to Dilip Kumar Roy, dated Vienna, 23 December 1935.
As for the desperate Subhas, why the deuce does he want every body to agree with him and follow his line of conduct or belief? That is the never realised dream of the politician; we, incarnate Gods, Gurus, spiritual men, are more modest in our hopes and are satisfied with a handful or, if you like, an Asramful of disciples, and even we don’t ask for that, — they come, they come.
Page – 196 So are we not nearer to reason and wisdom than the political leaders? Unless of course we make the mistake of founding a universal religion, but that is not our case. Moreover, Subhas upbraids you for losing your reason in blind faith, but what is his view of things except a reasoned faith; you believe according to your faith, which is quite natural, he believes according to his opinion, which is natural also but no better so far as the likelihood of getting at the true truth of things is in question. His opinion is according to his reason? So is the opinion of his political opponents according to their reason, yet they affirm the very opposite idea to his. How is reason going to show which is right? The opposite parties can argue till they are blue in the face, they won’t be anywhere nearer a decision. In the end he prevails whom the greater force or whom the trend of things favours. But who can look at the world and say that the trend of things is always (or ever) according to right reason — whatever this thing called right reason may be? As a matter of fact there is no universal infallible reason which can decide and be the umpire between conflicting opinions, there is only my reason, your reason, x’s, y’s, z’s reason multiplied up to the discordant innumerable. Each reasons according to his view of things, his opinion, that is, his mental constitution and mental preference. So what’s the use of running down faith which after all gives something to hold on to amidst the contradictions of an enigmatic universe? If one can get at a knowledge that knows, it is another matter; but so long as we have only an ignorance that argues, well, there is a place still left for faith — even, faith may be a glint from the knowledge that knows, however far off, and meanwhile there is not the slightest doubt that it helps to get things done. There’s a bit of reasoning for you! just like all other reasoning too, convincing to the convinced, but not to the unconvincible, i.e., who don’t agree with the ground upon which the reasoning dances. Logic after all is only a measured dance of the mind, nothing else.
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The day before yesterday I was telling someone how Bertrand Russell, in his In Praise of Idleness, predicted with almost irrefutable logic the coming collapse of war-mad Europe seized with lunacy born of horror on the one hand and greed on the other. Just listen: “We are all more aware of our fellow-citizens than we used to be, more anxious, if we are virtuous, to do them good,” — like Dr. Stanley Jones, what? — “and in any case to make them do us good. We do not like to think of anyone lazily enjoying life, however refined may be the quality of his enjoyment. We feel that everybody ought to be doing something to help on the great cause (whatever it may be), the more so as so many bad men are working against it and ought to be stopped. We have not leisure of mind, therefore, to acquire any knowledge except such as will help us in the fight for whatever it may happen to be that we think important.”8 What would the rational Subhas, himself a worshipper of Russell’s keen logic, say to this cynicism?
Poor Subhas! But he is a politician and the rationality of politicians has perforce to move within limits; if they were to allow themselves to be as clear-minded as that, their occupation would be gone. It is not everybody who can be as cynical as Birkenhead or as philosophical as C. R. Das and go on with political reason or political humbug in spite of knowing what it all came to — from arrivisme in the one and from patriotism in the other case.
In another essay, Russell writes: “When the indemnities were imposed, the Allies regarded themselves as consumers: they considered that it would be pleasant to have the Germans work for them as temporary slaves, and to be able themselves to consume, without labour, what the Germans had produced. Then, after the Treaty of Versailles had been concluded, they suddenly remembered that they were also producers, and that the influx of German goods which they had been demanding would ruin their industries. . . . The plain fact is that the governing classes of the world are too ignorant and stupid to be able to think through such a problem, and too conceited
8 Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1935), pp. 35 36.
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to ask advice of those who might help them” [pp. 66 67]. Well, what would Subhas as a ruling patriot say to this? How support his reason? All these meeting-makers are reasonable people, aren’t they?
Yes, but human reason is a very convenient and accommodating instrument and works only in the circle set for it by interest, partiality and prejudice. The politicians reason wrongly or insincerely and have power to enforce the results of their reasoning, so make a mess of the world’s affairs, — the intellectuals reason and see what their minds show them, which is far from being always the truth, for it is generally decided by intellectual preference and the mind’s inborn or education-inculcated angle of vision, — but even when they see it, they have no power to enforce it. So between blind power and seeing impotence the world moves, achieving destiny through a mental muddle.
To conclude, Russell writes in the same essay: “When a nation, instead of an individual, is seized with lunacy, it is thought to be displaying remarkable industrial wisdom” [p. 67]. Qu’en dites-vous?
Seized with lunacy? But that implies the nation is ordinarily led by reason? Is it so? Or even by common sense? Masses of men act upon their vital push, not according to reason — individuals too mostly, though they frequently call in their reason as a lawyer to plead the vital’s case. 30 January 1936
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Sarojini Naidu’s daughter Padmaja told me today that when Subhas issued his manifesto from Europe to the effect that he and Jawaharlal were great friends and at one on every point, he actually had been scheming from Europe to bring J. down in the public eye. I could not believe this, I told her point blank. She averred it was absolutely true. I am very pained to hear it. For though I feel there is not a little exaggeration in this business, I fear there may be substance of truth somewhere in this dirty story.
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I would certainly not hang anybody on the testimony of Padmaja: she has too much of a delight in scandal-mongering of the worst kind; but I suppose she would not cite Jawaharlal as a witness if there were nothing in it. The question is: how much exaggeration? I am afraid it is not at all impossible that Subhas should say one thing to Jawaharlal and quite another to somebody else. Politics is like that, a dirty and corrupting business full of “policy”, “strategy”, “tactics”, “diplomacy”: in other words, lying, tricking, manoeuvring of all kinds. A few escape the corruption but most don’t. It has after all always been a trade or art of Kautilya from the beginning, and to touch it and not be corrupted is far from easy. For it is a field in which people fix their eyes on the thing to be achieved and soon become careless about the character of the means, while ambition, ego and self-interest come pouring in to aid the process. Human nature is prone enough to crookedness as it is, but here the ordinary restraints put upon it fail to be at all effective. That however is general: in a particular case one can’t pronounce without knowing the circumstances more at first hand or before having seen the documents cited. 20 October 1936
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For Subhas Bose, country is the one thing that matters and nothing else.
Excuse me — country is not the only thing for Subhas Bose — there is also Subhas Bose and he looms very large. You have illusions about these political heroes — I have seen them close and have none. 2 July 1938
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I am not responsible for anything that may have been said by any sadhak in the Asram. I have not said that Subhas was my enemy and that anybody sympathising with him ought to leave the Asram. If this statement was made, it certainly did not have my authority. There is absolutely no reason why you should say anything contrary to your feelings or to what you believe to be
Page – 200 the truth, or feel that in not doing so you were going contrary to what was expected of you and think of leaving the Asram. The question you put me as to what you should do, does not really arise, for I would never make any such demand on anybody. I hope that will clear your mind and restore your peace. 30 March 1942
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In all this imbroglio about the book on Subhas9 one thing is positive that I never gave any such order and it ought to have been evident to everybody that I could not have done it since I permitted the publication of your book and the prohibition of it would have been too outrageous a self-contradiction to be even thinkable. . . . Behind all that is an old story which may account for every thing. You will remember that both the Mother and I were very angry against Subhas for having brought the Japanese into India and reproached him with it as a treason and crime against the Motherland. For if they had got in, it would have been almost impossible to get them out. The Mother knows the Japanese nation well and was positive about that. Okawa, the leader of the Black Dragon (the one who shammed mad and got off at the Tokyo trial) told her that if India revolted against the British, Japan would send her Navy to help, but he said that he would not like the Japanese to land because if they once got hold of Indian soil they would never leave it, and it was true enough. If the Japanese had overrun India, and they would have done it if a powerful Divine intervention had not prevented it and turned the tables on them, they would have joined the Germans in Mesopotamia and the Caucasus and nothing could have saved Europe and Asia from being overrun. This would have meant the destruction of our work and a horrible fate for this country and for the world. You can understand therefore the bitterness of our feelings at that time against Subhas and his association with the Axis and the disaster to his country for which he would have
9 The Subhash I Knew, by Dilip Kumar Roy (Bombay, Nalanda Publications, 1946).
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been responsible. Incidentally, instead of being liberated in 1948, India would have had to spend a century or several centuries in a renewed servitude. When therefore the Mother heard that you were writing a book eulogising Subhas, she disapproved strongly of any such thing issuing out of the Ashram and she wanted that you should be asked not to publish it. . . . . . . Subsequently she met one of the chief lieutenants of Subhas, a man from Hyderabad who had been his secretary and companion in the submarine by which he came from Germany to Japan, and he recounted his daily talks in the submarine and strongly defended his action. From what he said it was evident although we still regarded Subhas’s action as a reckless and dangerous folly, that the aspect of a crime against the country disappeared from it. Since then Mother modified her attitude towards Subhas; moreover, the war was receding into the past and there was no longer any room for the poignancy of the feeling it had raised and it was better that all that should be forgotten. But although almost a year had passed, the impressions made at that time have remained in the minds of many and account for the attitude of X and Y to your book and must also be the psychological source of X‘s misunderstanding about the supposed order. We regret that a blow should have fallen on you and the pain accompanying it when no blow was really given or intended. Anyhow, the matter has been rectified; the library has been informed that there has been a misunderstanding, no prohibition was actually made and the book must be issued to sadhaks. 5 April 1947
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