Page:Fischer - A Week with Gandhi.pdf/107



“Isn’t it,” I suggested, “that when you advocate independence you strike a chord in many Indians? A musician does something to the members of his audience. You play a note which Indians are waiting to hear. I have noticed that people applaud most the arias they have heard often and liked. A lecture audience applauds views it agrees with. Is it that you say and do what your people want you to say and do?”

“Yes,” he said, “maybe that is it. I was a loyalist in respect to the British, and then I became a rebel. I was a loyalist until 1896.”

“Weren’t you also a loyalist between 1914 and 1918?”

“Yes, in a way,” he affirmed, “but not really. By 1918 I had already said that British rule in India is an alien rule and must end.” He remained silent as we trudged along. Finally he said, “I will tell you how it happened that I decided to urge the departure of the British. It was in 1916. I was in Lucknow working for Congress. A peasant came up to me looking like any other peasant of India, poor and emaciated. He said, ‘My name is Rajkumar Shukla. I am from Champaran, and I want you to come to my district. He described the misery of his fellow agriculturists and prayed me to let him take me to Champaran, which was hundreds of miles from Lucknow. He begged so insistently and persuasively that I promised. But he wanted me to fix the date. I could not do that. For