The Times Great Lives. Anna Temkin

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ attempts at bargaining with Government in which the Mahatma was such an adept. Gandhi then retired with his considerable entourage to a remote village near Wardha, in the Central Provinces, and it became known as Sevagram (the village of service). Gandhi showed an unexpected gift for realism by encouraging Ministers in paths of administrative orthodoxy, while pressing forward his ideals, such as a policy of prohibition by instalments, and what is known as the Wardha plan of primary education.

      Though he had upheld for years a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ that the Congress would not come between the Princes and their subjects, he did intervene early in March, 1939, in Rajkote, a small Kathiawar State, on the ground that the Thakore Saheb had gone back on his word as to constitutional advances. He issued a 24 hours’ ultimatum, and as it was not accepted he began a ‘fast unto death’, but the Viceroy (Lord Linlithgow) suggested a solution of the immediate question, and Gandhi abandoned his fast at the beginning of the fifth day. The Mahatma’s hold on Nationalist reverence was increased, rather than diminished, by his public apology and expression of contrition for having resorted to a coercive method not consistent with his non-violent principles. Yet he was to resort to it on future occasions. He was not free from ‘the last infirmity of noble minds’, and was skilful in exhibitionism.

      When war broke out in September, 1939, it seemed for a short time that Gandhi would invite the Congress Party to give moral support to the nations seeking to prevent, though by armed force, the enslavement of the world by brutal aggressors. But he became convinced that only a ‘free India’ could give effective moral support to Britain; and his demand for ‘complete independence’ became more and more urgent. When Japan struck down Malaya and invaded Burma Gandhi became seriously perturbed at the defence measures which the Government of India initiated. In the spring of 1942, when the discussions between Sir Stafford Cripps (then Lord Privy Seal in Mr Churchill’s Government) and the party leaders had reached a hopeful stage, Gandhi advised against settlement and the negotiations with the Congress leaders broke down. The war situation was then unfavourable, and Gandhi was commonly alleged to have talked contemptuously of the draft Declaration whereby India was to secure complete self-government after the war as a ‘post-dated cheque on a crashing bank’. He demanded that the British should ‘quit India’ (a slogan which had wide currency), that the Indian Army should be disbanded, and that Japan should be free to come to the country and arrange terms with a non-resisting people.

      In August, 1942, he concurred in the decision to strike the blow of mass obstruction against the war effort – ‘open rebellion’, as he calmly called it. This led to his arrest and that of other Congress leaders and to widespread disorder and bloodshed. Gandhi was interned in the Aga Khan’s palace at Poona and was barred from political contacts, though he was allowed the companionship of Mrs Gandhi, who died in February, 1944. Gandhi continued in detention until May 6, 1944, when he was released unconditionally on medical grounds. Later all the leaders were released to share in the prolonged discussions arising from attempts to bring an end to the increasing strife between Hindus and Muslims over the Pakistan issue.

      A long prepared and carefully staged series of discussions between the Mahatma and Mr Jinnah, at the house of the latter in Bombay, yielded no tangible result, for Mr Gandhi stated that he spoke only for himself and had no commission from the working committee of the Congress. Indeed, for many years he had withdrawn from actual membership of the party, only to dominate it from without. The explosive possibilities of the situation developed with the end of the war. The historic Cabinet Mission, headed by Lord Pethick-Lawrence, went out in the spring of 1946 and spent three anxious months of incessant conference and negotiation in the heat at Delhi. The Mahatma took a large share in the negotiations chiefly behind the scenes, and in his inscrutable way was at times helpful and at times the reverse. When at long last and amid most serious outbreaks of communal violence the short-term and long-term plans of the Cabinet Mission led to the formation at Delhi of an interim National Government, with Mr Nehru as Vice-President of the Council, Gandhi remained outside the Cabinet, much to the relief of its members. But no major decision could be taken either at the Centre or in the Provincial Congress Governments without full consideration of the views and wishes of the Mahatma, the idol of the Hindu masses.

      The announcement made by Mr Attlee in February, 1947, that complete British withdrawal would not be later than June, 1948, had the effect of accentuating the conflict between the two main parties, and the subsequent antedating of the time limit and decision to set up two Dominions, India and Pakistan, quickened savage outbreaks in the Punjab between Hindu and Sikh on the one side and Muslims on the other. Moreover, when Independence Day came the sanguinary unrest in Calcutta led to fears that the division of Bengal would have untoward consequences. ‘Bapu’, who had been travelling from place to place in Eastern Bengal and in Bihar preaching brotherhood, went to Calcutta, and at the beginning of September undertook another fast not to be ended until normal conditions were restored. The party leaders exerted themselves in exhortations to the people, and on the fourth day the Mahatma was able to end his ordeal. Thus he succeeded where armed force had failed. The miracle encouraged him to stage in Delhi early this month his fifteenth fast in the effort to bring harmony between India and Pakistan. He had shown himself acutely conscious that in the lust for communal reprisals his word did not carry the weight of former years. The fast began as the Security Council at Lake Success was considering the controversy on Kashmir and related problems between the two Dominions. One effect of the fast and leading to its cessation on the fifth day was the decision pressed on the Cabinet at New Delhi by the Mahatma no longer to withhold from the Karachi Government payment of the whole of the £41m, due from the undivided cash balances at the time of the British withdrawal.

      George Orwell

      Criticism and allegory

      21 January 1950

      Mr George Orwell, a writer of acute and penetrating temper and of conspicuous honesty of mind, died on Friday in hospital in London at the age of 46. He had been a sick man for a considerable time.

      Though he made his widest appeal in the form of fiction, Orwell had a critical rather than imaginative endowment of mind and he has left a large number of finely executed essays. In a less troubled, less revolutionary period of history he might perhaps have discovered within himself a richer and more creative power of imagination, a deeper philosophy of acceptance. As it was he was essentially the analyst, by turns indignant, satirical, and prophetic, of an order of life and society in rapid dissolution. The analysis is presented, to a large extent, in autobiographical terms; Orwell, it might fairly be said, lived his convictions. Much of his early work is a direct transcription of personal experience, while the later volumes record, in expository or allegorical form, the progressive phases of his disenchantment with current social and political ideals. The death of so searching and sincere a writer is a very real loss.

      George Orwell, which was the name adopted by Eric Arthur Blair, was born in India in 1903 of a Scottish family, the son of Mr R. W. Blair, who served in the opium department of the Government of Bengal. He was a King’s Scholar at Eton, which he left in 1921, and then, at the persuasion of his father, entered the Imperial Police in Burma, where he remained for five years. After that he was, by turns, dish-washer, schoolmaster, and book-seller’s assistant. The name he adopted comes from the river Orwell – his parents were settled at Southwold, in Suffolk, at the time he decided upon it. Orwell preferred to suppress his earlier novels. Down and Out in Paris and London, his first book, published in 1933, is a plain, observant and, for the most part, dispassionate piece of reporting, which achieves without faltering precisely what it sets out to do. Orwell had strived in a Paris slum and in England had tramped from one casual ward to another, and the lessons of this first-hand acquaintance with poverty and destitution were never afterwards lost on him. Although in time he grew fearful of a theoretical egalitarianism, he made no bones about the primary need of securing social justice. In The Road to Wigan Pier, which appeared in 1937, he described the lives of those on unemployment pay or public assistance and made his own contribution to Socialist propaganda.

      Next СКАЧАТЬ