The Evening Star MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1943. GANDHI'S FAST.

Evening Star, Issue 24429, 15 February 1943, Page 2

The Evening Star MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1943. GANDHI'S FAST.

Gandhi's most conspicuous characteristic is his inconsistency. According to his ' precepts be would have peace and goodwill in India, but by his acts he is a disturber of the peace, and advocates a course that would plunge the country into fierce racial and religious strife. As a mark of protest against present conditions and in furtherance of his "quit India" movement he is x now engaged on a twenty-one days' fast. The Government of India, quite reasonably, has expressed its disapproval of the weapon of fasting to achieve political euds. The truth is that Gandhi is a visionary entirely devoid of reason and common sense. " Let the -British entrust .India to God," lie is reported as saying last May. "Then all the parties will fight one another like dogs or will, when responsibility faces them, coino to a reasonable agreement," which, of course, is manifestly impossible. He praised Petain, 'Laval, and others for their "great bravery in suing for peace." The Mahatma flounders in a maze of inconsistencies—at times approving the causfc of the Allies; more often uttering pronouncements that might have come as well from Goebbels. Methods of the Indian extremists sometimes border on the ludicrous. For instance, it is said that Gandhi's son left the editorial column blank in the. ' Hindustan Times ' as a protest against the detention of his father and the censorship of the paper, a course made necessarv bv its wild extremist statements. "The Right Hon. L. S. Amery. .Secretary of State for India, recently answered questions in London about Indian claims, and refuted a statement that Mr Churchill had refused to India the right to be included in the Atlantic Charter, (jointing out that the policy to which the British Government was already pledged was entirely in harmony with the broad principle of the Charter, the desire being to make it clear beyond doubt that after the war the aim was to make India as free as Britain itself. Asked if the Indians believed that the British Government meant what they said. Mr Amery replied: " They do. It is just because they do helieve that we mean to transfer'power to them that the different elements in India are so vehemently at issue as to wlrch of them is to get that power." This explains the real difficulty in the situation. It is one of immense complexity, and Mr Amery made it clear that until a solution is found Britain remains under a moral obligation to the 400 millions of Tnclia,, to shoulder, in the Inst resort, the responsibility for'protecting them against aggression from without and against anarchv in India itself.