A Modern Pilgrim in India
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
The Right Honorable Winston S. Churchill has been totally against freedom for India all along. As Curzon had divided Bengal, Churchill would divide India. Shamefully misguided by his sickly sentimentalism, he behaves like the little boy with the toy. "If I cannot have it, I ll wreck it." His declaration of faith, "In politics one can never afford to admit that one has made a mistake."
In January 1930, he said, "Sooner or later you will have to crush Gandhi and the Indian Congress and all they stand for." In December of the same year, he stated, "The British nation has no intention whatever of relinquishing control of Indian life and progress. . . . We have no intention of casting away that most truly bright and precious jewel in the crown of the King, which more than all our Dominions and Dependencies, constitutes the glory and strength of the British Empire". One year he professed, " . . . England, apart from her Empire in India ceases for ever to exist as a great power".
Finally, at the apex of his career, Sir Winston asserted, " . . . I have not become the King s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire".
Of Churchill s attitude and immature approach, the Viceroy Lord Irwin wrote, "I have no doubt at all that he has been more responsible than anybody else for India wishing to get ride of the British." But it began earlier, nearly forty years earlier. As Under-secretary in the Colonial Office, Mr. Churchill was then against Indians in South Africa. It was he who telegraphed the governor there on 25 January 1908. "Please tell Botha (Louis Botha, Prime Minister of the Transvaal) I am going to support his government most strongly on the Indian question (concerning The Asiatic Law Amendment Act and the Immigrants Restriction Act) as I thoroughly understand the views of white South Africa. There will be Parliamentary attacks from our side and from Opposition but the Government will be perfectly solid." It was to be the beginning of Mr. Churchill s long years of disdain for Mr. Mohandas K. Gandhi, who was then beginning his career in South Africa as a young practicing attorney.
Of Sir Winston s inability to discern the genius in a man not by the garments on the man, he spoke of Mr. Gandhi as, "the nauseating and humiliating spectacle of this one-time Inner Temple lawyer, now seditious fakir, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceroy s palace there (in New Delhi) to negotiate and parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor".
Of the man -- this man, Mohandas K. Gandhi, his self-abnegation and his love for India inspires a devotion such as causes poets to sing, martyrs to smile, patriots to die, statesmen to marvel, people to pray -- and one of the greatest empires of the world to quake. Voila un homme!
Of the Right Honorable Winston S. Churchill, history nevertheless, must accord him his rightful due and recognize him as the most brilliant Churchill of them all. As our First President, George Washington observed, "It is to be lamented that great characters are seldom without a blot."
No wonder the King s former First Minister feels so very strongly against such a foolish gesture, of independence.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
I was fortunate to have lived in India during those last days of the British Raj. The focus of my journal is, however, with the indigenous peoples of India. Not only their cultural characteristics of times past and present, but also their struggle to achieve independence and emerge, once again, as a Nation. That their goal has not wholly been fulfilled, has not lessened my hope.
Shall an Occidental mind ever understand the Orient? Perhaps the question itself is purely academic. For example, ancient India and ancient Greece were different from each other and yet they were akin, just as ancient India and ancient China had kinship in thought, in spite of great differences. We have all developed individually and as peoples, in accordance with our racial genius, influenced by natural environment. In their different ways, each has tried to express the fullness and beauty of life, though not always alertly searching for its meaning.
Nevertheless, I believe I have achieved some degree of progress, in my effort to understand the ways of the Orient. Perhaps, not as completely as Rabindranath Tagore would have wanted. He once wrote, "How I wish you had known Bengali!"
Our Earth has many rivers. But none more sacred than the Ganges of India. Our Earth has many peoples. But none more patient than the people of India. An attribute the Western World lacks--patience, India has in abundance. And too, its way of thought, character and conduct is distinctively different. As distinctly different as the tea grown on the slopes of Darjeeling. In each, a very likeable characteristic.
Of course, the Western World prides itself on having wakened the Orient to Western ideas, though not all of them have proven worthwhile.
To a large extent the blame for American ignorance of India s story, (some might call it indifference) rests upon the successful propaganda machinery of the British Raj. When a child has both hands in the cookie jar, and is rapidly filling his pockets, he doesn t want others to know of it too soon, if at all.
With this book, I sincerely wish to enlighten my fellow Americans. I wish too, to give thanks to my friends in India for their help and hospitality.
I have eaten your bread and salt.
I have drunk your water and wine.
The deaths ye died I have watched beside,
And the lives ye led were mine.
Was there aught that I did not share
In vigil or toil or ease,
One joy or woe that I did not know,
Dear hearts across the seas?
I have written the tale of our life
For a sheltered people s mirth,
In jesting guise--but ye are wise,
And ye know what the jest is worth.
Rudyard Kipling (Prelude)
To "Departmental Ditties" 1885.
John W. Wohlfarth
Cloverdale, California
February 2000
About the Author
On assignment with the Army of the United States, I lived in pre-partition India during 1945 and 1946. I observed firsthand the agony on the streets of Calcutta. Sights that appalled the stoutest of hearts went unheeded by those latter-day heirs of Baron Clive. I also saw the beauty of India: its people, its monuments, the Taj Mahal, the Himalayas, the many bazaars, the tea gardens and the cities of Agra, Delhi and the British creation New Delhi.