Mahatma Gandhi

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 451, 13 February 1948, Page 5

Mahatma Gandhi

N j ps years will have to pass before Gandhi takes his abiding place in world history. At present no one asks any of the questions about him that so many asked even two or three years ago; but that phase will pass too. Voices which are silent now will be heard again, and even centuries hence historians may still be asking whether he was an inspired leader or a misguided saint. But no one again will call him a charlatan. If he had died before the partition, or lived long enough-to see India at peace again, it would have been easier to estimate his work for his own people. But the effect of that work has yet to be seen. It is beyond question that he liberated India; but we shall not know to what he also committed India until Moslem and Hindu have shown that they can live together in harmony and maintain their liberty in a predatory world. It will not be known this year or next, and may not be known this century. But it is not necessary to wait for the verdict of time before we _ estimate Gandhi’s contemporary stature. By whatever standards we measure greatness, he was one of the three or four great figures of his day; and if we consider not merely what he did but the level on which he worked he was without a peer during the last few years of his life. We must in fact go further and say that greatness will remain with him even if time brings confusion to his cause. Time has brought confusion to many causes, including Christianity. It is however a melancholy thought that neither saintliness nor wisdom, nor the two combined, keep a man safe while he lives or his fame safe afterwards.