The Viceroy and Mahatma Gandhi

THE Italian journal, La Stampa, contained in a recent issue a report of an interview with Lord Reading. The following is an extract:-- “Gandhi is serving a sentence imposed upon him after a fair trial. His prophecies have not come true, and the popularity he enjoyed is rapidly waning. It is an error to imagine that he was successful everywhere, even when he was at liberty. For example, in the Punjab, one of the most ticklish provinces in India, he was almost a laughing stock. The Sikhs said that he spoke Urdu, the lingua franca of India, worse than an Englishman. His humble carriage and poor physique made him an object of contempt in a province where most of the natives are magnificent specimens of humanity. They expected a god and received instead a scrawny, shrinking little fellow, who advocated passive resistance instead of force and who then departed on one of the railways that he bitterly denounced in his exhortation.” We do not know if the words and sentiments attributed to His Excellency were really uttered by him. If they were not, His Excellency will , we hope, for his own good name no less than in the interests of the Government of which he is the head, contradict the report. It is not chivalrous to attack an opponent who has been rendered incapable of defence, and the opponent in this case is a man who is held in universal esteem and reverence by all classes of people of India, and is literally idolised by her teeming millions. Such an attack made upon such a man by the responsible head of the Government in this country could not fail to further embitter the feelings that exist in the country and, therefore, if the attack was not made, it is necessary that the public should know the truth.