Page:The Trial of Gandhi.djvu/15

 The following is taken from the New York World of April 23, 1922:

BOMBAY, April 22—The treatment being accorded Mohandas K. Gandhi, Indian Nationalist leader imprisoned for sedition in Yeroda jail, is just in that it is the same given all other prisoners, but it is hardly generous.

Bombay, unlike the Punjab, does not recognize political prisoners as a special class. Therefore Gandhi receives the ordinary prison treatment.

He sleeps on the floor, is allowed no papers or books except a few devotional manuals and sees visitors only once every three months. He is always forced to stand in the presence of the jailer, although he is physically scarcely able to stand at all. Two separate cells have been assigned to him and he is practically in solitary confinement.

Neither Gandhi nor his followers will ask for special privileges. In addition to the rigorous prison regime, the native press asserts, their leader is flogged. That is not true, but it is felt here that some preferential treatment in the way of bedding, books, newspapers and intercourse with other political prisoners could do no harm.