E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesgovernment cannot declare India free without jeopardizing the war effort, Ishould like to hear the argument.''If you were convinced,' Steele asked, 'would you call off the campaign?''Of course,' Gandhi replied. 'My complaint is that all these good people talk atme, swear at me, but never condescend to talk to me.'Linlithgow had talked to him in 1939 and 1940, but not thereafter.Several hundred Congress leaders assembled for the A.I.C.C. session on August7, and after deliberating all day of the 7th and 8th they adopted a slightlymodified version of the Wardha resolution; they adopted one by declaring thatan Indian government would resist aggression 'with all the armed as well as thenon-violent forces at its command'-this was an un-Gandhian touch inserted bythe Nehru-Azad school —and crossed one bridge before they reached it bycautioning the Congress rank and file that if their leaders were arrested andprevented from issuing instructions they must obey the general instructionswhich read, 'non-violence is the basis of this movement.'Shortly after midnight of August 8, Gandhi addressed the A.I.C.C. delegates.The actual struggle does not commence this very moment,' he emphasized. Youhave merely placed certain powers in my hands. My first act will be to waitupon His Excellency the Viceroy and plead with him for the acceptance of theCongress demand. This may take two or three weeks. What are you to do in themeanwhile? I will tell you. There is the spinning wheel... But there is somethingmore you have to do... Every one of you should, from this very moment,consider himself a free man or woman and even act as if you are free and nolonger under the heel of this imperialism...' He was reversing the materialisticconcept that conditions determine psychology. No, psychology could shapeconditions. What you think, you become,' he once said.The delegates went home to sleep. Gandhi, Nehru and scores of others wereawakened by the police a few hours later—before sunrise—and carried off toprison. Gandhi was sent into a palace of the Aga Khan at Yeravda, near Poona.Mrs. Naidu, Mirabehn, Mahadev Desai and Pyarelal Nayyar, arrested at the samewww.mkgandhi.org Page 436