Page:Fischer - A Week with Gandhi.pdf/95



“I cannot give you a concrete plan,” Gandhi said. “I cannot work it out today. It is all theoretical. It has to come out as a plan drafted by a body of representatives and not out of the brain of one whom many label a dreamer.”

“Well,” I said, “I am not so completely cast-iron as not to understand homespun cotton.”

“But you do not do not understand vegetables,” Gandhi said.

“I do not like the same vegetables every day for lunch and dinner.” He laughed and we all laughed and I got up and left.

For three hours this afternoon Nehru and I sat in the one room of the guest house, he squatting on the bed, I on our single chair, and discussed human happiness, culture, how society could be improved so that men might lead honest lives, America, Russia, India, and so on. He is not as pro-Soviet as he used to be. But he is very pro-Chinese and has been talking to Gandhi today about China. There will be a give and take between them, and Gandhi will win Nehru over to the idea of a civil disobedience movement. Nehru had doubts when he came here. He was waiting for President Roosevelt to intervene again in the Indian situation and induce the British to compromise. But with the British adamantly refusing to negotiate for a war time settlement of urgent Indian problems, Gandhi’s logic of compulsion through non-violence be-