how did jawaharlal nehru became famous and jawaharlal nehru the discovery of india summary
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CHAPTE R ONE
AHMADNAGA R FORT
Twent y Months
Ahmadnagar Fort, 13th April 1944
IT IS MORE THAN TWENTY MONTHS SINCE WE WERE BROUGHT HERE,
more than twenty months of my ninth term of imprisonment.
The new moon, a shimmering crescent in the darkening sky,
greeted us on our arrival here. The bright fortnight of the waxing
moon had begun. Ever since then each coming of the new moon
has been a reminder to me that another month of my imprison-
ment is over. So it was with my last term of imprisonment which
began with the new moon, just after the Deepavali, the festival of
light. The moon, ever a companion to me in prison, has grown
more friendly with closer acquaintance, a reminder of the loveli-
ness of this world, of the waxing and waning of life, of light
following darkness, of death and resurrection following each other
in interminable succession. Ever changing, yet ever the same, I
have watched it in its different phases and its many moods in the
evening, as the shadows lengthen, in the still hours of the night,
and when the breath and whisper of dawn bring promise of the
coming day. How helpful is the moon in counting the days and the
months, for the size and shape of the moon, when it is visible,
indicate the day of the month with a fair measure of exactitude.
It is an easy calendar (though it must be adjusted from time to
time), and for the peasant in the field the most-convenient one to
indicate the passage of the days and the gradual changing of the
seasons.
Three weeks we spent here cut off completely from all news
of the outside world. There were no contacts of any kind, no
interviews, no letters, no newspapers, no radio. Even our presence
here was supposed to be a state secret unknown to any except to
the officials in charge of us, a poor secret, for all India knew where
we were.
Then newspapers were allowed and, some weeks later, letters
from near relatives dealing with domestic affairs. But no interviews during these 20 months, no other contacts.
The newspapers contained heavily censored news. Yet they
gave us some idea of the war that was consuming more than half
the world, and of how it fared with our people in India. Little
we knew about these people of ours except that scores of thou-
sands lay in prison or internment camp without trial, that thou-
sands had been shot to death, that tens of thousands had been
driven out of schools and colleges, that something indistinguish-
able from martial law prevailed over the whole country, that terror
and frightfulness darkened the land. They were worse off, far
worse than us, those scores of thousands in prison, like us, without
trial, for there were not only no interviews but also no letters or
newspapers for them, and even books were seldom allowed. Many
sickened for lack of healthy food, some of our dear ones died for
lack of proper care and treatment.
There were many thousands of prisoners of war kept in India,
mostly from Italy. We compared their lot with the lot of our own
people. We were told that they were governed by the Geneva
Convention. But there was no convention or law or rule to govern
the conditions under which Indian prisoners and detenus had to
exist, except such ordinances which it pleased our British rulers to
issue from time to time.
Famin e
Famine came, ghastly, staggering, horrible beyond words. In
Malabar, in Bijapur, in Orissa, and, above all, in the rich and
fertile province of Bengal, men and women and little children
died in their thousands daily for lack of food. They dropped down
dead before the palaces of Calcutta, their corpses lay in the mud-
huts of Bengal's innumerable villages and covered the roads and
fields of its rural areas. Men were dying all over the world and
killing each other in battle; usually a quick death, often a brave
death, death for a cause, death with a purpose, death which
seemed in this mad world of ours an inexorable logic of events,
a sudden end to the life we could not mould or control. Death
was common enough everywhere.
But here death had no purpose, no logic, no necessity; it was
the result of man's incompetence and callousness, man-made, a
slow creeping thing of horror with nothing to redeem it, life
merging and fading into death, with death looking out of the
shrunken eyes and withered frame while life still lingered for a
while. And so it was not considered right or proper to mention
it; it was not good form to talk or write of unsavoury topics. To
do so was to 'dramatize' an unfortunate situation. False reports
16 were issued by those in authority in India and in England. But
corpses cannot easily be overlooked; they come in the way.
While the fires of hell were consuming the people of Bengal
and elsewhere, we were first told by high authority that owing
to wartime prosperity the peasantry in many parts of India had
too much to eat. Then it was said that the fault lay with pro-
vincial autonomy, and that the British Government in India, or
the India Office in London, sticklers for constitutional propriety,
could not interfere with provincial affairs. That constitution was
suspended, violated, ignored, or changed daily by hundreds of
decrees and ordinances issued by the Viceroy under his sole and
unlimited authority. That constitution meant ultimately the
unchecked authoritarian rule of a single individual who was
responsible to no one in India, and who had greater power than
any dictator anywhere in the world. That constitution was worked
by the permanent services, chiefly the Indian Civil Service and
the police, who were mainly responsible to the Governor, who
was the agent of the Viceroy, and who could well ignore the
ministers when such existed. The ministers, good or bad, lived on
sufferance and dared not disobey the orders from above or even
interfere with the discretion of the services supposed to be sub-
ordinate to them.
Something was done at last. Some relief was given. But a million
had died, or two millions, or three; no one knows how many
starved to death or died of disease during those months of horror.
No one knows of the many more millions of emaciated boys and
girls and little children who just escaped death then, but are
stunted and broken in body and spirit. And still the fear of wide-
spread famine and disease hovers over the land.
President Roosevelt's Four Freedoms. The Freedom from
Want. Yet rich England, and richer America, paid little heed
to the hunger of the body that was killing millions in India, as
they had paid little heed to the fiery thirst of the spirit that is
consuming the people of India. Money was not needed it was
said, and ships to carry food were scarce owing to war-time
requirements. But in spite of governmental obstruction and desire
to minimize the overwhelming tragedy of Bengal, sensitive and
warm-hearted men and women in England and America and
elsewhere came to our help. Above all, the Governments of
China and Eire, poor in their own resources, full of their own
difficulties, yet having had bitter experience themselves of famine
and misery and sensing what ailed the body and spirit of India,
gave generous help. India has a long memory, but whatever else
she remembers or forgets, she will not forget these gracious and
friendly acts.
17 The War for Democracy
In Asia and Europe and Africa, and over the vast stretches of
the Pacific and Atlantic and Indian Oceans, war has raged in all
its dreadful aspects. Nearly seven years of war in China, over
four and a half years of war in Europe and Africa, and two years
and four months of World War. War against fascism and nazism
and attempts to gain world dominion. Of these years of war I
have so far spent nearly three years in prison, here and elsewhere
in India.
I remember how I reacted to fascism and nazism in their early
days, and not I only, but many in India. How Japanese agres-
sion in China had moved India deeply and revived the age-old
friendship for China; how Italy's rape of Abyssinia had sickened
us; how the betrayal of Czechoslovakia had hurt and embittered
us; how the fall of Republican Spain, after a struggle full of heroic
endurance, had been a tragedy and a personal sorrow for me and
others.
It was not merely the physical acts of aggression in which
fascism and nazism indulged, not only the vulgarity and bruta-
lity that accompanied them, terrible as they were, that affected
us, but the principles on which they stood and which they pro-
claimed so loudly and blatantly, the theories of life on which
they tried to fashion themselves; for these went counter to what
we believed in the present, and what we had held from ages past.
And even if our racial memory had forsaken us and we had lost
our moorings, our own experiences, even though they came to
us in different garb, and somewhat disguised for the sake of decency,
were enough to teach us to what these nazi principles and theo-
ries of life and the state ultimately led. For our people had been
the victims for long of those very principles and methods of govern-
ment. So we reacted immediately and intensely against fascism
and nazism.
I remember how I refused a pressing invitation from Signor
Mussolini to see him in the early days of March, 1936. Many of
Britain's leading statesmen, who spoke harshly of the fascist Duce
in later years when Italy became a belligerent, referred to him
tenderly and admiringly in those days, and praised his regime
and methods.
Two years later, in the summer before Munich, I was invited
on behalf of the Nazi government, to visit Germany, an invita-
tion to which was added the remark that they knew my opposi-
tion to nazism and yet they wanted me to see Germany for my-
self. I could go as their guest or privately, in my own name or
incognito, as I desired, and I would have perfect freedom to go
18 where I liked. Again I declined with thanks. Instead I went to
Czechoslovakia, that 'far-away country' about which England's
then Prime Minister knew so little.
Before Munich I met some of the members of the British Cabi-
net and other prominent politicians of England, and ventured
to express my anti-fascist and anti-nazi views before them. I
found that my views were not welcomed and I was told that there
were many other considerations to be borne in mind.
During the Czechoslovak crisis, what I saw of Franco-British
statesmanship in Prague and in the Sudetenland, in London
and Paris, and in Geneva where the League Assembly was then
sitting, amazed and disgusted me. Appeasement seemed to be a
feeble word for it. There was behind it not only a fear of Hitler,
but a sneaking admiration for him.
And now, it is a curious turn of fate's wheel that I, and people
like me, should spend our days in prison while war against
fascism and nazism is raging, and many of those who used to
bow to Hitler and Mussolini, and approve of Japanese aggres-
sion in China, should hold aloft the banner of freedom and
democracy and anti-fascism.
In India the change is equally remarkable. There are those
here, as elsewhere, 'governmentarians', who hover round the
skirts of government and echo the views which they think will
be approved by those whose favour they continually seek.
There was a time, not so long ago, when they praised Hitler
and Mussolini, and held them up as models, and when they
cursed the Soviet Union with bell, book, and candle. Not so
now, for the weather has changed. They are high government
and state officials, and loudly they proclaim their anti-fascism
and anti-nazism and even talk of democracy, though with bated
breath, as something desirable but distant. I often wonder what
they would have done if events had taken a different turn, and
yet there is little reason for conjecture, for they would welcome
with garlands and addresses of welcome whoever happened to
wield authority.
For long years before the war my mind was full of the war that
was coming. I thought of it, and spoke of it, and wrote about
it, and prepared myself mentally for it. I wanted India to take
an eager and active part in the mighty conflict, for I felt that
high principles would be at stake, and out of this conflict would
come great and revolutionary changes in India and the world. At
that time I did not envisage an immediate threat to India: any
probability of actual invasion. Yet I wanted India to take her
full share. But I was convinced that only as a free country and
an equal could she function in this way.
19 Tha t was the attitude of the National Congress, the one great
organization in India which consistently for all these years had
been anti-fascist and anti-nazi, as it had been anti-imperialist.
It had stood for Republican Spain, for Czechoslovakia, and
throughout for China.
And now for nearly two years the Congress has been declared
illegal—outlawed and prevented from functioning in any way.
Th e Congress is in prison. Its elected members of the provin-
cial parliaments, its speakers of these parliaments, its ex-minis-
ters, its mayors and presidents of municipal corporations, are
in prison.
Meanwhile the war goes on for democracy and the Atlantic
Charter and the Four Freedoms.
Tim e in Prison : The Urge to Action
Time seems to change its nature in prison. The present hardly
exists, for there is an absence of feeling and sensation which
might separate it from the dead past. Even news of the active,
living and dying world outside has a certain dream-like un-
reality, an immobility and an unchangeableness as of the past.
The outer objective time ceases to be, the inner and subjective
sense remains, but at a lower level, except when thought pulls
it out of the present and experiences a kind of reality in the past
or in the future. We live, as Auguste Comte said, dead men's
lives, encased in our pasts, but this is especially so in prison
where we try to find some sustenance for our starved and locked-
up emotions in memory of the past or fancies of the future.
There is a stillness and everlastingness about the past; it
changes not and has a touch of eternity, like a painted picture
or a statue in bronze or marble. Unaffected by the storms and
upheavals of the present, it maintains its dignity and repose and
tempts the troubled spirit and the tortured mind to seek shelter
in its vaulted catacombs. There is peace there and security, and
one may even sense a spiritual quality.
But it is not life, unless we can find the vital links between it
and the present with all its conflicts and problems. It is a kind
of art for art's sake, without the passion and the urge to action
which are the very stuff of life. Without that passion and urge,
there is a gradual oozing out of hope and vitality, a settling down
on lower levels of existence, a slow merging into non-existence.
We become prisoners of the past and some part of its immobility
sticks to us.
This passage of the mind is all the easier in prison where action
20 is denied and we become slaves to the routine of jail-life.
Yet the past is ever with us and all that we are and that we
have comes from the past. We are its products and we live im-
mersed in it. Not to understand it and feel it as something living
within us is not to understand the present. To combine it with
the present and extend it to the future, to break from it where it
cannot be so united, to make of all this the pulsating and vibrat-
ing material for thought and action—that is life.
Any vital action springs from the depths of the being. All the
long past of the individual and even of the race has prepared
the background for that psychological moment of action. All
the racial memories, influences of heredity and environment
and training, subconscious urges, thoughts and dreams and
actions from infancy and childhood onwards, in their curious
and tremendous mix-up, inevitably drive to that new action,
which again becomes yet another factor influencing the future.
Influencing the future, partly determining it, possibly even largely
determining it, and yet, surely, it is not all determinism.
Aurobindo Ghose writes somewhere of the present as 'the pure
and virgin moment,' that razor's edge of time and existence which
divides the past from the future, and is, and yet, instantaneously
is not. The phrase is attractive and yet what does it mean?
The virgin moment emerging from the veil of the future in all
its naked purity, coming into contact with us, and immediately
becoming the soiled and stale past. Is it we that soil it and violate
it? Or is the moment not so virgin after all, for it is bound up
with all the harlotry of the past?
Whether there is any such thing as human freedom in the
philosophic sense or whether there is only an automatic deter-
minism, I do not know. A very great deal appears certainly to
be determined by the past complex of events which bear down
and often overwhelm the individual. Possibly even the inner
urge that he experiences, that apparent exercise of free will, is
itself conditioned. As Schopenhauer says, 'a man can do what
he will, but not will as he will.' A belief in an absolute deter-
minism seems to me to lead inevitably to complete inaction, to
death in life. All my sense of life rebels against it, though of
course that very rebellion may itself have been conditioned by
previous events.
I do not usually burden my mind with such philosophical or
metaphysical problems, which escape solution. Sometimes they
come to me almost unawares in the long silences of prison, or
even in the midst of an intensity of action, bringing with them
a sense of detachment or consolation in the face of some painful
experience. But usually it is action and the thought of action
21 vhat fill me, and when action is denied, I imagine that I am
preparing for action.
Th e call of action has long been witn me; not action divorced
from thought, but rather flowing from it in one continuous
sequence. And when, rarely, there has been full harmony bet-
ween the two, thought leading to action and finding its fulfil-
ment in it, action leading back to thought and a fuller under-
standing—then I have sensed a certain fullness of life and a vivid
intensity in that moment of existence. But such moments are rare,
very rare, and usually one outstrips the other and there is a lack
of harmony, and vain effort to bring the two in line. There was
a time, many years ago, when I lived for considerable periods
in a state of emotional exaltation, wrapped up in the action
which absorbed me. Those days of my youth seem far away now,
not merely because of the passage of years but far more so be-
cause of the ocean of experience and painful thought that sepa-
rates them from to-day. The old exuberance is much less now,
the almost uncontrollable impulses have toned down, and passion
and feeling are more in check. The burden of thought is often
a hindrance, and in the mind where there was once certainty,
doubt creeps in. Perhaps it is just age, or the common temper of
our day.
And yet, even now, the call of action stirs strange depths within
me, and often a brief tussle with thought. I want to experience
again 'that lonely impulse of delight' which turns to risk and
danger and faces and mocks at death. I am not enamoured of
death, though I do not think it frightens me. I do not believe in
the negation of or abstention from life. I have loved life and it
attracts me still and, in my own way, I seek to experience it,
though many invisible barriers have grown up which surround
me; but that very desire leads me to play with life, to peep over
its edges, not to be a slave to it, so that we may value each other
all the more. Perhaps I ought to have been an aviator, so that
when the slowness and dullness of life overcame me I could have
rushed into the tumult of the clouds and said to myself:
'/ balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind,
In balance with this life, this death.''
Th e Past in its Relation to the Present
This urge to action, this desire to experience life through action,
has influenced all my thought and activity. Even sustained think-
22 ing, apart from being itself a kind of action, becomes part of the
action to come. It is not something entirely abstract, in the void,
unrelated to action and life. The past becomes something that
leads up to the present, the moment of action, the future some-
thing that flows from it; and all three are inextricably inter-
twined and interrelated.
Even my seemingly actionless life in prison is tacked on some-
how, by some process of thought and feeling, to coming or ima-
gined action, and so it gains for me a certain content without
which it would be a vacuum in which existence would become
intolerable. When actual action has been denied me I have sought
some such approach to the past and to history. Because my own
personal experiences have often touched historic events and some-
times I have even had something to do with the influencing of
such events in my own sphere, it has not been difficult for me
to envisage history as a living process with which I could identify
myself to some extent.
I came late to history and, even then, not through the usual
direct road of learning a mass of facts and dates and drawing
conclusions and inferences from them, unrelated to my life's
course. So long as I did this, history had little significance for
me. I was still less interested in the supernatural or problems of
a future life. Science and the problems of to-day and of our pre-
sent life attracted me far more.
Some mixture of thought and emotion and urges, of which I
was only dimly conscious, led me to action, and action, in its turn,
sent me back to thought and a desire to understand the present.
Th e roots of that present lay in the past and so I made voyages
of discovery into the past, ever seeking a clue in it, if any such
existed, to the understanding of the present. The domination of
the present never left me even when I lost myself in musings of
past, events and of persons far away and long ago, forgetting
where or what I was. If I felt occasionally that I belonged to the
past. I felt also that the whole of the past belonged to me in the
present. Past history merged into contemporary history: it be-
came a living reality tied up with sensations of pain and pleasure.
If the past had a tendency to become the present, the present
also sometimes receded into the distant past and assumed its
immobile, statuesque appearance. In the midst of an intensity of
action itself, there would suddenly come a feeling as if it was
some past event and one was looking at it, as it were, in retrospect.
It was this attempt to -discover the past in its relation to the
present that led me twelve years ago to write Glimpses of World
History in the form of letters to my daughter. I wrote rather
superficially and as simply as I could, for I was writing for a girl
23 in her early teens, but behind that writing lay that quest and
voyage of discovery. A sense of adventure filled me and I lived
successively different ages and periods and had for companions
men and women who had lived long ago. I had leisure in jail,
there was no sense of hurry or of completing a task within an
allotted period of time, so I let my mind wander or take root for
a while, keeping in tune with my mood, allowing impression to
sink in and fill the dry bones of the past with flesh and blood.
It was a similar quest, though limited to recent and more
intimate times and persons, that led me later to write my auto-
biography.
I suppose I have changed a good deal during these twelve
years. I have grown more contemplative. There is perhaps a
little more poise and equilibrium, some sense of detachment, a
greater calmness of spirit. I am not overcome now to the same
extent as I used to be by tragedy or what I conceived to be
tragedy. The turmoil and disturbance are less and are more
temporary, even though the tragedies have been on a far greater
scale.
Is this, I have wondered, the growth of a spirit of resignation,
or is it a toughening of the texture ? Is it just age and a lessening
of vitality and of the passion of life? Or is it due to long periods
in prison and life slowly ebbing away, and the thoughts that fill
the mind passing through, after a brief stay, leaving only ripples
behind ? The tortured mind seeks some mechanism of escape,
the senses get dulled from repeated shocks, and a feeling comes
over one that so much evil and misfortune shadow the world
that a little more or less does not make much difference. There
is only one thing that remains to us that cannot be taken awa/:
to act with courage and dignity and to stick to the ideals that
have given meaning to life; but that is not the politician's way.
Someone said the other day: death is the birthright of every
person born—a curious way of putting an obvious thing. It is a
birthright which nobody has denied or can deny, and which all
of us seek to forget and escape so long as we may. And yet there
was something novel and attractive about the phrase. Those who
complain so bitterly of life have always a way out of it, if they
so choose. That is always in our power to achieve. If we cannot
master life we can at least master death. A pleasing thought
lessening the feeling of helplessness.
Life's Philosophy
Six or seven years ago an American publisher asked me to write
an essay on my philosophy of life for a symposium he was prepar-
ing. I was attracted to the idea but I hesitated, and the more
24 I thought over it, the more reluctant I grew. Ultimately, I did
not write that essay.
What was my philosophy of life? I did not know. Some years
earlier I would not have been so hesitant. There was a definite-
ness about my thinking and objectives then which has faded
away since. The events of the past few years in India, China,
Europe, and all over the world have been confusing, upsetting
and distressing, and the future has become vague and shadowy
and has lost that clearness of outline which it once possessed in
my mind.
This doubt and difficulty about fundamental matters did not
come in my way in regard to immediate action, except that it
blunted somewhat the sharp edge of that activity. No longer
could I function, as I did in my younger days, as an arrow flying
automatically to the target of my choice ignoring all else but
that target. Yet I functioned, for the urge to action was there and
a real or imagined co-ordination of that action with the ideals I
held. But a growing distaste for politics as I saw them seized me
and gradually my whole attitude to life seemed to undergo a
transformation.
The ideals and objectives of yesterday were still the ideals of
to-day, but they had lost some of their lustre and, even as one
seemed to go towards them, they lost the shining beauty which
had warmed the heart and vitalized the body. Evil triumphed
often enough, but what was far worse was the coarsening and
distortion of what had seemed so right. Was human nature so
essentially bad that it would take ages of training, through
suffering and misfortune, before it could behave reasonably and
raise man above that creature of lust and violence and deceit
that he now was? And, meanwhile, was every effort to change
it radically in the present or the near future doomed to failure?
Ends and means: were they tied up inseparably, acting and
reacting on each other, the wrong means distorting and some-
times even destroying the end in view? But the right means
might well be beyond the capacity of infirm and selfish human
nature.
What then was one to do? Not to act was a complete con-
fession of failure and a submission to evil; to act meant often
enough a compromise with some form of that evil, with all the
untoward consequences that such compromises result in.
My early approach to life's problems had been more or less
scientific, with something of the easy optimism of the science
of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. A secure and
comfortable existence and the energy and self-confidence I
possessed increased that feeling of optimism. A kind of vague
humanism appealed to me.
25 Religion, as I saw it practised, and accepted even by thinking
minds, whether it was Hinduism or Islam or Buddhism or Chris-
tianity, did not attract me. It seemed to be closely associated
with superstitious practices and dogmatic beliefs, and behind it
lay a method of approach to life's problems which was certainly
not that of science. There was an element of magic about it, an
uncritical credulousness, a reliance on the supernatural.
Yet it was obvious that religion had supplied some deeply felt
inner need of human nature, and that the vast majority of
people all over the world could not do without some form of
religious belief. It had produced many fine types of men and
women, as well as bigoted, narrow-minded, cruel tyrants. It had
given a set of values to humar life, and though some of these
values had no application to-day, or were even harmful, others
were still the foundation of morality and ethics.
In the wider sense of the word, religion dealt with the un-
charted regions of human experience, uncharted, that is, by the
scientific positive knowledge of the day. In a sense it might be
considered an extension of the known and charted region, though
the methods of science and religion were utterly unlike each
other, and to a large extent they had to deal with different kinds
of media. It was obvious that there was a vast unknown region
all around us, and sciencc, with its magnificent achievements,
knew Httlc enough about it, though it was making tentative
approaches in that direction. Probably also, the normal methods
of sciencc, its dealings with the visible world and the processes
of life, were not wholly adapted to the physical, the artistic, the
spiritual, and other elements of the invisible world. Life does
not consist entirely of what we see and hear and feel, the visible
world which is undergoing change in time and space; it is con-
tinually touching an invisible world of other, and possibly more
stable or equally changeable elements, and no thinking person
can ignore this invisible world.
Science does not tell us much, or for the matter of that any-
thing about the purpose of life. It is now widening its boun-
daries and it may invade the so-called invisible world before
long and help us to understand this purpose of life in its widest
sense, or at least give us some glimpses which illumine the pro-
blem of human existence. The old controversy between science
and religion takes a new form—the application of the scientific
method to emotional and religious experiences.
Religion merges into mysticism and metaphysics and philo-
sophy. There have been great mystics, attractive figures, who
cannot easily be disposed of as self-deluded fools. Yet mysticism
(in the narrow sense of the word) irritates me; it appears to be
26 vague and soft and flabby, not a rigorous discipline of the mind
but a surrender of mental faculties and a living in a sea of
emotional experience. • The experience may lead occasionally
to some insight into inner and less obvious processes, but it is
also likely to lead to self-delusion.
Metaphysics and philosophy, or a metaphysical philosophy,
have a greater appeal to the mind. They require hard thinking
and the application of logic and reasoning, though all this is
necessarily based on some premises, which are presumed to be
self-evident, and yet which may or may not be true. All think-
ing persons, to a greater or less degree, dabble in metaphysics
and philosophy, for not to do so is to ignore many of the aspects
of this universe of ours. Some may feel more attracted to them
than others, and the emphasis on them may vary in different
ages. In the ancient world, both in Asia and Europe, all the
emphasis was laid on the supremacy of the inward life over
things external, and this inevitably led to metaphysics and
philosophy. The modern man is wrapped up much more in
these things external, and yet even be, in moments of crisis and
mental trouble often turn.0 to philosophy and metaphysical
speculations.
Some vague or more precise philosophy of life we all have,
though most of us accept unthinkingly the general attitude which
is characteristic of our generation and environment. Most of
us accept also certain metaphysical conceptions as part of the
faith in which we have grown up. I have not been attracted
towards metaphysics; in fact, I have had a certain distaste for
vague speculation. And yet I have sometimes found a certain
intellectual fascination in trying to follow the rigid lines of
metaphysical and philosophic thought of the ancients or the
moderns. But I have never felt at case there and have escaped
from their spell with a feeling of relief.
Essentially, I am interested in this world, in this life, not in
some other world or a future life. Whether there is such a thing
as a soul, or whether there is a survival after death or not, I do
not know; and, important as these questions are, they do not
trouble me in the least. The environment in which I have
grown up takes the soul (or rather the alma) and a future life,
the Karma theory of cause and effect, and reincarnation for
granted. I have been affected by this and so, in a sense, I am
favourably disposed towards these assumptions. There might be
a soul which survives the physical death of the body, and a theory
of cause and effect governing life's actions seems reasonable,
though it leads to obvious difficulties when one thinks of the
ultimate cause. Presuming a soul, there appears to be some logic
also in the theory of reincarnation.
27 But I do not believe in any of these or other theories and
assumptions as a matter of religious faith. They are just intel-
lectual speculations in an unknown region about which we know
next to nothing. They do not affect my life, and whether they
were proved right or wrong subsequently, they would make little
difference to me.
Spiritualism with its seances and its so-called manifestations
of spirits and the like has always seemed to me a rather absurd
and impertinent way of investigating psychic phenomena and
the mysteries of the after-life. Usually it is something worse,
and is an exploitation of the emotions of some over-credulous
people who seek relief or escape from mental trouble. I do not
deny the possibility of some of these psychic phenomena having
a basis of truth, but the approach appears to me to be all wrong
and the conclusions drawn from scraps and odd bits of evidence
to be unjustified.
Often, as I look at this world, I have a sense of mysteries, of
unknown depths. The urge to understand it, in so far as I can,
comes to me: to be in tune with it and to experience it in its
fullness. But the way to that understanding seems to me essen-
tially the way of science, the way of objective approach, though
I realise that there can be no such thing as true objectiveness.
If the subjective element is unavoidable and inevitable, it should
be conditioned as far as possible by the scientific method.
What the mysterious is I do not know. I do not call it God
because God has come to mean much that I do not believe in.
I find myself incapable of thinking of a deity or of any unknown
supreme power in anthropomorphic terms, and the fact that
many people think so is continually a source of surprise to me.
Any idea of a personal God seems very odd to me. Intellectually,
I can appreciate to some extent the conception of monism, and
I have been attracted towards the Advaita (non-dualist) philo-
sophy of the Vedanta, though I do not presume to understand
it in all its depth and intricacy, and I realise that merely an
intellectual appreciation of such matters does not carry one
far. At the same time the Vedanta, as well as other similar
approaches, rather frighten me with their vague, formless incur-
sions into infinity. The diversity and fullness of nature stir me
and produce a harmony of the spirit, and I can imagine myself
feeling at home in the old Indian or Greek pagan and pantheis
tic atmosphere, but minus the conception of God or Gods that
was attached to it.
Some kind of ethical approach to life has a strong appeal for
me, though it would be difficult for me to justify it logically.
I have been attracted by Gandhiji's stress on right means and
I think one of his greatest contributions to our public life has
28 been, this emphasis. The idea is by no means new, but this
application of an ethical doctrine to large-scale public activity
was certainly novel. It is full of difficulty, and perhaps ends and
means are not really separable but form together one organic
whole. In a world which thinks almost exclusively of ends and
ignores means, this emphasis on means seems odd and remark-
able. How far it has succeeded in India I cannot say. But there
is no doubt that it has created a deep and abiding impression
on the minds of large numbers of people.
A study of Marx and Lenin produced a powerful effect on
my mind and helped me to see history and current affairs in
a new light. The long chain of history and of social develop-
ment appeared to have some meaning, some sequence, and the
future lost some of its obscurity. The practical achievements
of the Soviet Union were also tremendously impressive. Often
I disliked or did not understand some development there and
it seemed to me to be too closely concerned with the oppor-
tunism of the moment or the power politics of the day. But
despite all these developments and possible distortions of the
original passion for human betterment, I had no doubt that the
Soviet Revolution had advanced human society by a great leap
and had lit a bright flame which could not be smothered, and
that it had laid the foundations for that new civilization towards
which the world could advance. I am too much of an indivi-
dualist and believer in personal freedom to like overmuch regi-
mentation. Yet it seemed to me obvious that in a complex social
structure individual freedom had to be limited, and perhaps
the only way to read personal freedom was through some such
limitation in the social sphere. The lesser liberties may often
need limitation in the interest of the larger freedom.
Much in the Marxist philosophical outlook I could accept
without difficulty: its monism and non-duality of mind and
matter, the dynamics of matter and the dialectic of continuous
change by evolution as well as leap, through action and inter-
action, cause and effect, thesis, antithesis and synthesis. It did
not satisfy me completely, nor did it answer all the questions
in my mind, and, almost unawares, a vague idealist approach
would creep into my mind, something rather akin to the Vedanta
approach. It was not a difference between mind and matter,
but rather of something that lay beyond the mind. Also there
was the background of ethics. I realised that the moral approach
is a changing one and depends upon the growing mind and an
advancing civilization; it is conditioned by the mental climate
of the age. Yet there was something more to it than that, certain
basic urges which had greater permanence. I did not like the
frequent divorce in communist, as in other, practice between
29 action and these basic urges or principles. So there was an odd
mixture in my mind which I could not rationally explain or
resolve. There was a general tendency not to think too much of
those fundamental questions which appear to be beyond reach,
but rather to concentrate on the problems of life—to understand
in the narrower and more immediate sense what should be done
and how. Whatever ultimate reality may be, and whether we
can ever grasp it in whole or in part, there certainly appear to
be vast possibilities of increasing human knowledge, even though
this may be partly or largely subjective, and of applying this to
the advancement and betterment of human living and social
organization.
There has been in the past, and there is to a lesser extent
even to-day among some people, an absorption in finding an
answer to the riddle of the universe. This leads them away from
the individual and social problems of the day, and when they
are unable to solve that riddle they despair and turn to inaction
and triviality, or find comfort in some dogmatic creed. Social
evils, most of which are certainly capable of removal, are attri-
buted to original sin, to the unalterableness of human natu-e,
or the social structure, or (in India) to the inevitable legacy
of previous births. Thus one drifts away from even the attempt
to think rationally and scientifically and takes refuge in irra-
tionalism, superstition, and unreasonable and inequitable social
prejudices and practices. It is true that even rational and scien-
tific thought does not always take us as far as we would like to
go. There is an infinite number of factors and relations all of
which influence and determine events in varying degrees. It is
impossible to grasp all of them, but we can try to pick out the
dominating forces at work and by observing external material
reality, and by experiment and practice, trial and error, grope
our way to ever-widening knowledge and truth.
For this purpose, and within these limitations, the general
Marxist approach, fitting in as it more or less does with the
present state of scientific knowledge, seemed to me to offer con-
siderable help. But even accepting that approach, the con-
sequences that flow from it and the interpretation on past and
present happenings were by no means always clear. Marx's
general analysis of social development seems to have been re-
markably correct, and yet many developments took place later
which did not fit in with his outlook for the immediate future.
Lenin successfully adapted the Marxian thesis to some of these
subsequent developments, and again since then further remark-
able changes have taken place—the rise of fascism and nazism
and all that lay behind them. The very rapid growth of techno-
logy and the practical application of vast developments in
30 scientific knowledge are now changing the world picture with an
amazing rapidity, leading to new problems.
And so while I accepted the fundamentals of the socialist
theory, I did not trouble myself about its numerous inner con-
troversies. I had little patience with leftist groups in India,
spending much of their energy in mutual conflict and recrimi-
nation over fine points of doctrine which did not interest me
at all. Life is too complicated and, as far as we can understand
it in our present state of knowledge, too illogical, for it to be
confined within the four corners of a fixed doctrine.
Th e real problems for me remain problems of individual and
social life, of harmonious living, of a proper balancing of an
individual's inner and outer life, of an adjustment of the rela-
tions between individuals and between groups, of a continuous
becoming something better and higher of social development,
of the ceaseless adventure of man. In the solution of these pro-
blems the way of observation and precise knowledge and deli-
berate reasoning, according to the method of science, must be
followed. This method may not always be applicable in our
quest of truth, for art and poetry and certain psychic experi-
ences seem to belong to a different order of things and to elude
the objective methods of science. Let us, therefore, not rule
out intuition and other methods of sensing truth and reality.
They are necessary even for the purposes of science. But always
we must hold to our anchor of precise objective knowledge tested
by reason, and even more so by experiment and practice, and
always we must beware of losing ourselves in a sea of specula-
tion unconnected with the day-to-day problems of life and the
needs of men and women. A living philosophy must answer
the problems of to-day.
It may be that we of this modern age, who so pride ourselves
on the achievements of our times, are prisoners of our age, just
as the ancients and the men and women of medieval times were
prisoners of their respective ages. We may delude ourselves,
as others have done before us, that our way of looking at things
is the only right way, leading to truth. We cannot escape from
that prison or get rid entirely of that illusion, if illusion it is.
Yet I am convinced that the methods and approach of science
have revolutionized human life more than anything else in the
long course of history, and have opened doors and avenues of
further and even more radical change, leading up to the very
portals of what has long been considered the unknown. The
technical achievements of science are obvious enough: its capa-
city to transform an economy of scarcity into one of abundance
is evident, its invasion of many problems which have so far
been the monopoly of philosophy is becoming more pronounced.
31 Space-time and the quantum theory utterly changed the
picture of the physical world. More recent researches into the
nature of matter, the structure of the atom, the transmutation
of the elements, and the transformation of electricity and light,
either into the other, have carried human knowledge much
further. Man no longer sees nature as something apart and dis-
tinct from himself. Human destiny appears to become a part
of nature's rhythmic energy.
All this upheaval of thought, due to the advance of science,
has led scientists into a new region, verging on the metaphysi-
cal. They draw different and often contradictory conclusions.
Some see in it a new unity, the antithesis of chance. Others, like
Bertrand Russell, say, 'Academic philosophers ever since the
time of Parmenides have believed the world is unity. The most
fundamental of my beliefs is that this is rubbish.' Or again,
'Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the
end they were achieving; his origin, his growth, his hopes and
fears, his loves and beliefs are but the outcome of accidental
collocations of atoms.' And yet the latest developments in phy-
sics have gone a long way to demonstrate a fundamental unity
in nature. 'The belief that all things are made of a single sub-
stance is as old as thought itself; but ours is the generation which,
first of all in history, is able to receive the unity of nature, not as
a baseless dogma or a hopeless aspiration, but a principle of science
based on proof as sharp and clear as anything which is known.'
Old as this belief is in Asia and Europe, it is interesting to
compare some of the latest conclusions of science with the fun-
damental ideas underlying the Advaita Vedantic theory. These
ideas were that the universe is made of one substance whose
form is perpetually changing, and further that the sum-total of
energies remains always the same. Also that 'the explanations of
things are to be found within their own nature, and that no external
beings or existences are required to explain what is going on in the
universe,' with its corollary of a self-evolving universe.
It does not very much matter to science what these vague
speculations lead to, for meanwhile it forges ahead in a hundred
directions, in its own precise experimental way of observation,
widening the bounds of the charted region of knowledge, and
changing human life in the process. Science may be on the verge
of discovering vital mysteries, which yet may elude it. Still it
will go on along its appointed path, for there is no end to its
journeying. Ignoring for the moment the 'why?' of philosophy,
science will go on asking 'how?', and as it finds this oul it gives
greater content and meaning to life, and perhaps takes us some
way to answering the 'why?'.
Karl K. Darrow. 'The Renaissance of Physics' (New York, 1936), p. 301.
32 Or , perhaps, we cannot cross that barrier, and the mysterious
will continue to remain the mysterious, and life with all its
changes will still remain a bundle of good and evil, a succes-
sion of conflicts, a curious combination of incompatible and
mutually hostile urges.
Or again, perhaps, the very progress of science, unconnected
with and isolated from moral discipline and ethical considera-
tions, will lead to the concentration of power and the terrible
instruments of destruction which it has made, in the hands of
evil and selfish men, seeking the domination of others—and
thus to the destruction of its own great achievements. Something
of this kind we see happening now, and behind this war there
lies this internal conflict of the spirit of man.
How amazing is this spirit of man In spite of innumerable
failings, man, throughout the ages, has sacrificed his life and
all he held dear for an ideal, for truth, for faith, for country and
honour. That ideal may change, but that capacity for self-
sacrifice continues, and, because of that, much may be forgiven
to man, and it is impossible to lose hope for him. In the midst
of disaster, he has not lost his dignity or his faith in the values
he cherished. Plaything of nature's mighty forces, less than a
speck of dust in this vast universe, he has hurled defiance at the
elemental powers, and with his mind, cradle of revolution, sought
to master them. Whatever gods there be, there is something
godlike in man, as there is also something of the devil in him.
The future is dark, uncertain. But we can see part of the
way leading to it and can tread it with firm steps, remembering
that nothing that can happen is likely to overcome the spirit
of man which has survived so many perils; remembering also
that life, for all its ills, has joy and beauty, and that we can
always wander; if we know how to, in the enchanted woods of
nature.
' What else is wisdom? What of man's endeavour
Or God's high grace, so lovely and so great?
To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait;
To hold a hand uplifted over Hate;
And shall not Loveliness be loved for ever?
Th e Burden of the Past
The twenty-first month of my imprisonment is well on its way;
the moon waxes and wanes and soon two years will have been
completed. Another birthday will come round to remind me
that I am getting older; my last four birthdays I have spent in
prison, here and in Dehra Dun Jail, and many others in the
Chorus from 'The Bacchae of Euripides. Gilbert Murray's translation.
33
