Mahatma Gandhi - The Last Phase II. [antikvár]

PREFACE It is with a feeling of relief and thanksgiving, not unmixed with a certLiin regret, that with this volume I bring my labour on Mahatma Gandhi—The Last Phase, extending over nearly eight years, to a close. It was no mean solace and privilege to live through over again what is recorded in these pages. The first twenty chapters of this volume were printed and the rest of the manuscript was ready in draft before the close of 1956. I had intended to devote only a short chapter to the subject matter dealt with in chapters 21 and 22. But when I sat down to analyse and explain the significance of what filled the last days of Gandhiji's life, I found that a perfunctory treatment would not do. The alternative was to leave out and reserve for full treatment separately the exposition embodied in these chapters. But then I found that I had, in the portion that had been printed already, committed myself to a full discussion of the subject in the pages to fbllow. There was, therefore, no other go but to do it. Turning over these pages, however, I feel that this was perhaps as well. To send out the concluding volume of The Last Phase without these chapters would have been like presenting Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. Gandhiji disliked heartily being placed on what he used sardonically to call the "icey heights of the Himalayas", to be worshipped from afar, admired from a distance, but not to be followed or lived with. He was not in the habit of indulging in abstract thinking. His was essentially a philosophy in action. It becomes a meaningless fetish to pay homage to the personality of such a man leaving out his practice. To treat Gandhiji's economic, social and political outlook and activities as a matter of mere detail, to dismiss them as something ephemeral that has ceased to have any validity for us after the attainment of Independence, is to make nonsense of all that he wore his soul out to realise. His economic, political and social activities were an expression and an integral part of what was fundamental in him. One cannot accept the one and reject the other. He left no doubt as to what he wanted India to realise, and through India the world. To the last he continued to proclaim his faith in Khadi and Charkha, manual crafts, the village way of life, and the values these stand for, in short the ideal of Sarvodaya — "unto this last" — i.e. denying oneself what could not be shared with