To India, thus seething with bitterness over the Punjab disturbances,
there was added the Moslem resentment over the fate of Turkey. I was
myself in London and Paris in a humble capacity at the Peace Conference,
and I know that our leading statesmen were fully informed of the Moslem
attitude and the dangers of unsympathetic and dilatory action in this
matter. But an arrogant diplomacy swept all warnings aside and scorned
the Moslem menace as a bogey. What was the result? Troubles in Egypt, in
Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, and the Khilifat movement in India.
Hindu agitators were not slow to exploit Moslem bitterness, and for the
first time there was a genuine, if very ephemeral, _entente_ between the
two great rival creeds.
It was in this electric atmosphere that Ghandi, emerging from his
ascetic retirement, found himself an unchallenged leader. Short of
stature, frail, with large ears, and a gap in his front teeth, he had
none of the outward appearance of dominance. His appeal lay in the
simplicity of his life and character, for asceticism is still revered in
the East. But his intellectual equipment was mediocre, his political
ideas nebulous and impracticable to a degree, his programme archaic and
visionary; and from the start he was doomed to fail. The _Hijrat_
movement which he advocated brought ruin to thousands of Moslem homes;
his attack on Government educational establishments brought disaster to
many youthful careers; non-co-operation fizzled out. Government servants
would not resign their appointments, lawyers would not cease to
practise, and title-holders, with a few insignificant exceptions, would
not surrender their titles; the "back to the spinning-wheel" call did
not attract, and the continual failure of Ghandi's predictions of the
immediate attainment of complete _Swaraj_ or self-government, which he
was careful never to define, like hope deferred turned the heart sick.
From being a demi-god Ghandi gradually became a bore, and when he was at
last arrested, tragic to relate, there was hardly a tremor of resentment
through the tired political nerves of India. The arrest was indeed a
triumph of wise timing that does credit to the sagacity of the
Government of India. Had the arrest been effected when the name of
Ghandi was at its zenith, there would have been widespread trouble and
bloodshed. As it was, people were only too glad to be rid of a gadfly
that merely goaded them into infructuous bogs.
I apologise for this long excursus on the somewhat threadbare subject of
the causes of unrest in India. But I want those here present to realise
what potent forces have been at work and to believe that the Indian
generally is not the ungrateful, black-hearted seditionist he is painted
by the reactionary press. India is going through an inevitable stage of
political transition, and we must not hastily judge her peoples--for the
most part so gallant, so kindly, so law-abiding, so lovable--by the
passing tantrums of political puberty.