Louis Fischer’s first book on the Mahatma, A Week with Gandhi was published in the United States in 1943. I read the book in my mid-teens.
by K Natwar Singh
Among the outstanding biographies of Mahatma Gandhi are Mohandas by his grandson (and my close friend) Rajmohan Gandhi, Louis Fischer’s The Life of Mahatma Gandhi and Ramchandra Guha’s Gandhi. The Years That Changed the World.
Louis Fischer’s first book on the Mahatma, A Week with Gandhi was published in the United States in 1943. In June 1942, Fischer spent a week in Wardha. He used a tonga twice a day to arrive at Sevagram where Gandhiji lived. Louis Fischer was among the outstanding and widely read journalists of his time. He was born in Philadelphia in 1896. He took to journalism in 1921 and travelled all over the world. He spent 14 years in Moscow. Met Lenin, whose biography he wrote in 1964. He spent the final decades of his life at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton. He died in 1970. I met him once in Princeton in 1964. I read A Week with Gandhi in my mid-teens.
Fischer writes in his diary on 4 June 1942, “The tonga stopped. I jumped out and there stood a brown-and-white figure—Gandhi. I walked towards him with long, quick steps. He held his hands on the shoulders of two women who walked on either side of him. His thin brown legs were bare up to his loincloth. Leather sandals on his feet, a cope of cheese cloth around his shoulders, a folded kerchief on his head. He said, ‘Mr. Fischer’…we shook hands… He sat down on a board resting on two metal trestles. ‘Jawaharlal has told me about your book and the type of person you are, and we are glad to have you here. How long would you stay?’” Fischer told Gandhi that he could stay a few days. “Oh”, he exclaimed, “then we will be able to talk much.”
During dinner (all sitting on the floor) he said to Fischer, “You have lived in Russia for fourteen years. What is your opinion of Stalin?” Fischer replied, “Very able and very ruthless.” “As ruthless as Hitler?” Gandhi asked Fischer. “At least”, Fischer replied.
Fischer: “You helped to recruit soldiers for the British Army in the First World War When this war started, you said you wished to do nothing to embarrass the British government. Now, obviously, your attitude has changed. What has happened?” “In the first world war I had just returned from South Africa. I hadn’t yet found my feet. I wasn’t sure of my ground. This did not imply any lack of faith in no-violence. But it had to develop according to circumstances, and I was not sufficiently sure of my ground. There were many experiences between the two wars. Nevertheless, I announced after some talks with the Viceroy in September 1939, that the Congress movement would not obstruct the war. I am not the Congress. In fact, I am not in the Congress. I am neither a member nor an officer of the Party. Congress is more anti-British and anti-war than I am, and I have had to curb its desire to interfere with the war effort. Now I have reached certain conclusions. I do not wish to humiliate the British. But the British must go.”
Gandhi and Fischer had extensive discussion on India’s freedom movement, the Axis and the Allies, America’s attitude to India, Japan, China, Churchill, Lloyd George, Roosevelt, Hinduism, the Hindu-Muslim problem, the plight of the Negroes, untouchability, socialism, the soul of man, immortality.
Jawaharlal Nehru came to Wardha during Fischer’s stay. Fischer urged Nehru to go to America to talk with President Roosevelt. The two also discussed Hinduism. “Nehru said that Hinduism had no fundamentalism and no Hindu therefore can be punished or ex-communicated for being unorthodox.” “You can be a Hindu and an atheist”, one could be a religious Hindu even if he hangs Christ’s picture on his wall.
The book has non-political gems. Fischer asked Gandhi what was the theory behind his weekly day of silence. Gandhiji asked Fischer what he meant by theory. His answer was, “I mean the principle, the motivation.” Gandhiji’s answer was, for me, very original. He said, “It happened when I was being torn to pieces. I was working very hard, travelling in hot trains incessantly, speaking at many meetings, and being approached in trains and elsewhere by thousands of people who asked questions, made pleas, and wished to pray with me. I wanted to rest for one day a week. So I instituted the day of silence. Later of course I clothed it with all kinds of virtues and gave it a spiritual cloak. But the motivation was really nothing more than that I wanted to have a day off.”
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