7 JANUARY 1944, Page 14

Meeting the Man

A Week With Gandhi. By Louis Fischer. (Allen and Unwin. 6s.) MR. FISCHER did a plucky thing when he went to spend a week at Gandhi's Ashram in the height of the hot weather of 1942. Condi- tions were primitive in the extreme ; the guest house consisted of a one loom mud but with an earthen floor and bamboo roof, and the temperature averaged to* F. The meals were an unappetising mess of pottage, eaten with the fingers, and punkahs or electric light were unheard of. Mr. Fischer found that he could only work sitting in his tin bath, half full of tepid water! The conversations are interesting for the light which they throw .on the outlook of the Mahatma. Mr. Fischer says that Gandhi has a one-track mind. His one idea is to rid India of British rule ; what ensues afterwards is of minor concern. India must be left to " God or anarchy." Gandhi is, in fact, an anarchist. He has no interest in forms of government, which appear to him to be merely instruments of oppression. He would take the lands out of the hands of the land- lords and distribute them among the peasants—the former owners, needless to say, would receive no compensation whatever. The money in the Imperial Bank of India would be shared round to everyone. It would be interesting to know how far these singular views are shared by Nehru and other members of Congress ; Rajagopalachari was expelled for opposing them. The surprising thing is that, as Gandhi naively confesses, Congress is entirely dependent for its funds upon Indian big business.

Mr. Fischer says that, according to Maulana A. K. Azad, Cripps had definitely promised India responsible Cabinet government at the outset of his mission, and on this assumption negotiations had Pro- ceeded. Then, on April 9th, Cripps told him that the British Government refused to terminate the Viceroy's veto power ; Cripps had made a promise which London would not allow him to keep, and that was why negotiations broke down. Mr. Fischer might have added that when this story was repeated in The Nation in the follow- ing September, it was categorically denied by Mr. Graham Spry, who was present, and Lord Halifax. Actually it was Congress which suddenly sprang a totally new demand for a Cabinet responsible to no one, and Sir Stafford Cripps turned it down on the ground that it involved constitutional changes quite impossible to make in