Great Mystic: Great Viceroy

When St. Gandhi entered New Delhi to do verbal battle with Viceroy Baron Irwin (TIME, March 2) at least 80,000 Indians mobbed him with acclaim. Affectionate pressure stove in a window of the Mahatma's automobile, showered his blanket with splintered glass. But last week the skinny little champion managed to leave New Delhi amid a demonstration twice as orderly, half as large. He had only signed a truce.

Terms. Great Britain's major concessions to Indian Nationalism were made indirectly at the Indian Round Table Conference in London (TIME, Nov. 24, et seq.), not to St. Gandhi last week. He obtained directly only two things:

1) Immediate modification by executive decree, effective last week, of the laws constituting the British salt monopoly in India.

During the Irwin-Gandhi conversations, it was revealed last week, the Mahatma refused tea, drank hot lemonade containing a few grains of ILLEGALLY MANUFACTURED SALT. Thus the Viceroy became accessory to a crime. But under the truce signed last week any Indian may quarry salt or evaporate it from seawater for the use of himself or cattle, or even sell it within his village. Otherwise the salt trade remains a British prerogative.

2) St. Gandhi secured the Government of India's promise to release from jail some 25,000 of his followers, and about 3,000 were actually set free last week.

In contrast to the Mahatma's moral winnings the Viceroy won substantial prizes:

1) St. Gandhi pledged the Indian National Congress to call off "civil disobedience," which means no more mass demonstrations, means also that Indians who have refused to pay their taxes will now pay them.

2) St. Gandhi pledged the Congress to call off the boycott on British goods.

3) St. Gandhi waived his demands for investigation of "police atrocities," for remission of fines collected by the Government in connection with "civil disobedience" and for the release of native soldiers and policemen jailed for mutiny or disobedience to their British superiors.

4) Finally St. Gandhi yielded even to the British demand that Nationalists stop "illegal picketing" of every sort, and in India all "aggressive picketing" is illegal.

Candid Gandhi. With utmost candor St. Gandhi admitted that the truce he signed can and may be rejected by the Indian National Congress, summoned last week for March 24 at New Delhi.

Before the Congress meets St. Gandhi will tour Bombay Province advocating the truce. "I will strain every nerve," he said. If adopted the Gandhi-Irwin agreement will form the basis for further negotiations at a Second Round Table Conference with St. Gandhi present.

Purna Swaraj. With equal frankness the Mahatma said that he, like the British Government, was taken completely by surprise when the Indian princes offered at London to federate their realms with the rest of India (TIME, Dec. 1). This put a new face on the entire Indian question, disposed St. Gandhi to think of modifying the original Nationalist Congress demand for purna swaraj.

What is that? The phrase has always been officially translated "complete independence," but last week St. Gandhi (as a saint may) took a certain liberty with puma swaraj, first stating that it is untranslatable.

"Purna swaraj" postulated the Great Mystic, "only implies complete independence, because popular imagination in this country can never reconcile itself to the idea of a British statesman making a bona fide offer of equality. I hold differently. The British people are a practical race who love liberty for themselves. It is only a step further to love liberty for other people.

"When we achieve independence it will not be under the British flag but under a common flag. . . . Purna swaraj does not exclude association with any nation, far less with England. But this association must be of free will and for mutual benefit."

Great Viceroy. Obviously Lord Irwin has drawn St. Gandhi very close to acceptance of the so-called "Reserved Dominion Status" which Scot MacDonald has offered India in lieu of absolute freedom (TIME, Jan. 26). Said the Nationalist (i. e., Gandhite) Hindustan Times, amazingly last week, "If Lord Irwin has earned an immortal place in the history of India, it is not only for showing himself a strong Viceroy, although even there he has had few rivals among his predecessors, but it is also for having shown an outstanding capacity for statesmanship and for having saved India for the Empire."

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