IMPUDENT RITUAL

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 47, 17 October 1931, Page 8

IMPUDENT RITUAL

attack on gandhi SYDNEY PAPER STATES THAT GANDHI IS A PUTTY SAINT. BLOODSHED AND TREACHERY. Neniesis is 'near Mahatma Gandhi. England is seeing him for the first time as he really is — stripped of his impudence, his humbug, his cunning

subterfuge, and his Uriah Heep humility — the greatest bluff in history. England is discovering by insight what 60,000,000 of India's masses found only through bloodshed and his treachery — that "Great Soul" Gandhi is a sham, a putty saint. Gandhi is now fighting desperately in London to maintain his pose of mysticism and prophecy, so laboriously built up over a lifetime. It is the fashion to call Gandhi a saint. Doutbless he is, if self-imposed hardship, denial, and asceticism can induce sanctity. But he was once a politician, and the taint and odour of speciousness and insincerity are all around him, says the Sydney Sun. The viceroys and administrators of India, as well as 60,000,000 "Untouchables," found him out, but the rest of the 300,000,000 -still had faith. That is why Gandhi still rides the crest of Indian emotionalism, and cunningly knows himself safe there at least. But he is conscious of failure in Britain. To receive distinguished statesmen and diplomats, Gandhi sat on a hay mattress, half naked, with his lean legs criss-crossed underneath him, his fingers alternately toying with . a spinning wheel, and picking his toes. With his lean, bronze-lilte body, shaven head, ascetic features, toothless mouth, deeply melancholy eyes, and spiritual mien he was playing the role of a living Buddha, or a reincarnation of Rama, 'Hindu God of Gods. But once the laborious bluff was called. The British sense of the ludicrous found him out. The banality of his remarks, the emptiness of his platitudes, the impudence of his rituals, soon brought a revulsion. Among the London colony of educated, polished, intelleetual Indians no less loyal than he, and just as glowing with zeal in the cause of India's freedom, Gandhi seemed a coolie. London grew frankly tired of him. The bubble of his mysticism once pricked, he remained a bore. The pose had failed. Gandhi came to England in a blaze of publicity, preceded by strange stories of his piety and steadfastness. Curiosity was piqued by this gaunt, fakir-like man, who strode through cold and wet and fog in his loin cloth and blanket. Gandhi usually maintains his pose ! ! so well that his insincerity and speciousness do not betray him at the mo- c

ment, but the pitiless logic of events finds him out. He awakens f orces too big for him. This is what he has done in India — stirred a seething fury of revolt, then found it too much for him. The pretended Hindu-Moslem peace dissolves at intervals in a torrent of blood. Por those of a pretended spiritual pacifist, Gandhi's poltical methods have been singularly provocative and i irresponsible. Nothing stamps Gandhi more plainly as the commonest bluff than his trickery with the 60,000,000 Un-. touchables, India's doomed children

under the caste system. "Hindus must hang their heads in shame as long as the curse of Untouchability ' persists," said Gandhi, the "deliverer of India." "Untouchability is for one more insufferable than British rule." The unscrupulous, cunning politician in him shows up, as in 1922, when he made frenzied and bloody efforts ! to prevent the UntoUchables' spectacular mass outbreaks of devotions at the feet of the Prince of Wales. And so for many years — alternately humbugging, wheedling, spurning,

and victimismg these lost millions. But even the Untouchables have at last found him out — and despise him. One Untouchable union said: — "We know Mr. Gandhi is against us. But we don't care." His public bluff is that he would "deliver" India, but what he would do is set down in his remarkable "Confession of Faith" (his considered judgment of the things necessary for India's salvation) . Some of the statements he made were: — Medical science is the concentrated essence of black magic. Hospitals are the instruments that the Devil has been using for his own purpose . . . they perpetuate vice, misery, degradation, and real slavery. India's salvation lies in unlearning what she has learnt during the past fifty years. The railways, telegraphs, hospitals, lawyers, doctors and such ! like have all to go, and the so-called ' upper classes have to learn to live eonsciously, religiously, and deliberately the simple peasant life. So much for his "profound" wisdom. J Gandhi, the man, is the product of Gandhi, the youth — awkward, uncouth, morbid, unhappy, and bewildered. As a barrister, he was a dismal failure. His rise to fame has been j through the strangest association of J accident and opportunism, for he never attained intelleetual or scholastic brilliance. Out of this pat'nological stage he was driven irresistibly to bluff — to pretend to be what he is not, to do what he cannot do. But Gandhi has a liaison with the Indian ryot masses that no other man in the world can rival. This wizened Hindu has built up a contact with every caste. His bluff almost wins. "I am simply a humble aspirant for perfection," he says. "For such leadership as India so lesperately needs, Gandhi is tragically

unfitted," says Professor W. H. Roberts, an authority upon Indian affairs. "Gandhi refused to attend the Round Table Conference," says another noted authority, "for he would have had to meet other Indians, 'dareful, beard to beard,' as Maebeth said. He is afraid they yrould /beat him backward home.' "Even Hindu opinion outside In- ! dian Congress circles is hardening against him. "Congress is internally divided. It is the object of intense Moslem hate. It is loathed and feared by all the other minorities because it stands for Hindu domination of the rest. "In an India endowed with selfgovernment, where would Hindus be? "Gandhi has led and inspired them in all they have done. He has lande'd them in a mess, and he cannot get them out of it, because he is on the horns of a dilemma." The greatest peril to Gandhi's" reputation is that his life should be long. Every day new millions find him out. Every day the squatting saint loses some of his impressiveness. Not far off, perhaps, is the gale of world-laughter that will blow Gandhi down from his perch.