Originally published in the Observer on 1 February 1948
It is the violence of Gandhi's death, this complete and contemptuous negation of everything he lived for, which is the shocking thing. Yet paradoxically, this is the aesthetic end to a life of non-violence, the end which, one imagines, the old man would have chosen for himself.
I remember, in the very middle of the war, I went as a war correspondent to interview him in Delhi. It was an excessively hot afternoon and I sat cross-legged on the floor sweating through my army uniform. Gandhi leaned back on a white bolster, wearing nothing but a loincloth, and he said amiably: "What is the good of our talking? You and the people you represent are committed to violence. I am interested only in non-violence. We have nothing to say to one another."
I asked him if he was prepared to see the Japanese invade India (they were then very close in Burma) "Why not?" he said. "They can't kill us all." He went on to propound his famous doctrine: never oppose violence with violence. "Non-violence," he said, "requires an even higher kind of courage than violence. You must be just as prepared to lay down your life - even more so." I remember how cheerful he was that afternoon, how healthy with his great brown barrel of a chest, and how wittily he talked.
Nor was he much changed when I went to one or two of his prayer meetings in Delhi this winter. He was still getting up at four in the morning to exercise, he was still the nimblest (and I think the gayest) good brain in India, and he was still talking in parables on precisely the same theme.
Of course he becomes a martyr now; more than that - a mystical legend and a god. It is probably a waste of time trying to assess him in western terms. Inevitably, the mysticism and the fatalism intervene, blocking out all logic. I do not think Jawaharlal Nehru and the others ever expected practical politics from Gandhi, but they were inspired by him just the same. They loved him passionately.
I never met anyone in India who came away from a meeting with the old man without being captivated and in a slightly elevated condition of mind. He had an overpowering charm under that humility. He talked hard common sense as a rule and the mysticism ran between the lines.
What happens now? It seems almost impossible to be optimistic. The country has lost its figurehead, its living public conscience. Who is to speak against racial hatred now with that authority? The British kept the peace with police and prestige and Gandhi did it with love. Now, within six short months, both police and love have vanished together. Perhaps enough of his followers will obey his creed of non-violence. Whatever the immediate effect may be, at least his influence in the long run can only be for the good.
This is an edited extract