Gandhi Claims That Churchill Rendered Disservice to Britain

Wanganui Chronicle, 30 September 1947, Page 5

Gandhi Claims That Churchill Rendered Disservice to Britain

Recd. 11 p.m. New Delhi, Sept. 29. Gandhi, in a statement at a prayer meeting, said that Mr. Churchill, by his references to India in his London speech, had rendered a disservice to Britain.

The public relations officer at India House says that the message from New Delhi in which Mr. Gandhi was quoted as saying: “If there is no other way of securing justice, India would have to go to war with Pakistan,”’ was “shockingly misleading.” It was nonsense to suggest that the great soul, who had devoted his life: to the promotion of non-violence, would threaten Pakistan with war. He gives what he claims to be the text of Mr. Gandhi’s statement: “If there is no other way of securing justice from Pakistan, and if Pakistan persistently refuses to see its proved error and continues to minimise it, the Indian Union Government would have to go to war against it. As for myself, my way is different. 1 worship God, which is Truth and nonviolence. There was a time when India listened to me. Today I am a back number. I have no place in the new order, where they wane an army, navy, air force, and what not. 1 can never be a party to all that.”