Page:Fischer - A Week with Gandhi.pdf/36



It was dark when we returned to Gandhi’s house. He lay down on one of the wooden beds in the courtyard, and asked me to sit down on one near by. The Moslem woman brought him a dry chest cloth and then proceeded to wipe his feet. I expressed the view that England might have made mistakes in India and engaged in repression at times, but that a foreign dictatorship which conquered the country would be infinitely worse. In reply, he talked at length and with bitterness about the Amritsar Massacre in 1919 and other violent British acts in India. He insisted that he was more moderate than the people and that some Indians were so anti-British they would not mind the victory of Japan.

He made a move to get up, and I said it was time for me to go. He said, “No, come to prayers.”

It was now black night. I followed Gandhi to an open spot about fifty yards from his house, where the members of the ashram, about seventy in all, mostly dressed in white, squatted on the ground on three sides of a square. The women were on the left side of the square, and the men on the two other sides. Gandhi said, “Fischer, can you squat here?” and I sat down next to where he had taken his position in the center of the fourth side of the square, with his face to the congregation. The Moslem woman sat behind him and fanned him with a straw fan. Some of the worshippers had