4 SEPTEMBER 1942, Page 13

SIR,—Mr. A. R. Barbour repeats your remark as to Mr.

Gandhi not being the " uncrowned king of India." I never suggested that he was. But he is the leader of a political party that was recently in control of two out of every three of the Indian Provincial Governments. That is a political fact which it is surely unwise to ignore the meaning of. What is even more unwise, and to many of us strangely, .n-Christian, is the traducing of Mr. Gandhi's personal character and purposes, at a time when he has taken a political line we arc strongly opposed to. Those who do, like Dr. Lofthouse and Mr. Barbour, should study General Smuts's account of him in the symposium Mahatma Gandhi. General Smuts is a soldier and a statesman who doubtless supports the Govern- ment's present repressive action as unavoidable. But he knows Mr. Gandhi as they do not.

The purpose of my letter, however, was simply to urge support for the courageous action of the Metropolitan of India, Dr. Foss Westcott, and of others, notably the All-India Christian Council Executive. I am "{prised at Dr. Lofthouse's conception of the working of the Christian etli - • such a circumstance of antagonism as now exists. He will not help tereby the Christian cause in India, nor will his description of ftl. K. Gandhi as a "Fuehrer," or the travesty he presents of Gandhi's well-known attitude to the depressed classes.—Yours, &c.