Page:Fischer - A Week with Gandhi.pdf/9



This little volume is published through no fault of mine. I kept a careful diary during the week I spent with Gandhi. Lest those notes be lost or destroyed I wrote them out after I returned to America. A number of friends saw the manuscript and urged me to let it be published in full. I argued that it would be a very incomplete account of my visit to India. I had had many other talks in India which were important but off the record, I said. A book on Gandhi alone would not be a comprehensive book on India. “That’s all right,” my friends replied, “say so in a foreword.” I am saying so now.

My talks with Gandhi were a rich, stimulating experience. Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy at New Delhi, said to me, “Gandhi is the biggest thing in India.” That is correct. Gandhi is a unique phenomenon. Contact with his personality and mind is exciting. I made an almost stenographic record of everything he said to me. I reproduce it in the following pages. My own comments on Gandhi will be found in a short last chapter.