Page:Fischer - A Week with Gandhi.pdf/81

 tion in India was less inclined to make a distinction between high-caste Hindus and Untouchables, or between Hindus and Moslems, and that they were not much interested in religion.

“The first is correct,” he agreed. “But Hinduism is not a religion. The students do not perform religious ceremonies. But Hinduism is life. It is a way of life. Many who do not practice formal religion are nearer to this way of life than some who do.” He added that untouchability pained him deeply and he hoped that India’s freedom would hasten the solution of the problem of untouchability. This brought him back to his favorite subject. He spoke of “the challenge, for it is a challenge, which I have flung to the British to go. They will be purified if they go and better equipped for the task of making a new world. Otherwise all their professions are a cloak of hypocrisy.” By this time we had returned to Gandhi’s hut and I bade him farewell.

Narendra Dev, the Socialist leader who lives in an alcove next to Gandhi’s room, and Aryanaikam, the huge Ceylonese, came to the guest house again this morning and stayed for a long, heated discussion on Fascism and imperialism. They said they continually encountered British Fascism in India, but had not felt and didn’t know much about German Fascism. Yes, the intellectuals knew how dreadful the Nazis were, but the people knew