A candid conversation with Mahatma Gandhi – and his warning for Britain

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24-02-2025

This article is published as part of The Telegraph's Greatest Interviews series, which revisits the most significant, informative and entertaining conversations with notable figures over our 170 year history. The below interview is introduced by Christopher Howse. It appears as it was originally published.
Three days after the publication of this interview with Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), the champion of Indian self-rule made his way by train the 45 miles from Bhatni Junction to Gorakhpur in the state of Uttar Pradesh. At every station at least 15,000 people waited to see him: Nunkhar, Deoria, Gauri Bazar, Chauri Chaura. At Deoria there were 35,000; even at the jungle station of Kusmhi 10,000 turned out. To set eyes on him was darshan – the auspicious sight of a deity or a holy person.
His interviewer, Perceval Landon, 51, had made his name as a correspondent in the Boer War, starting a newspaper for the forces with Rudyard Kipling, who became a lifelong friend. With Kipling, he reported for The Telegraph in 1917 from the First World War mountain front of Britain's ally Italy. Landon had sent despatches from Lhasa, Tibet, and covered visits by two successive Princes of Wales to India in 1905 and 1921.
The Gandhi interview was printed opposite the main leading article, which called it 'the most penetrating account of Gandhi which has so far been laid before English readers'. Under the headline of a biblical quotation – 'Not peace, but a sword' – The Telegraph declared that 'the Mahatma is gentle, kindly, refined, transparently candid, a thoroughly implacable and uncontrollable idealist' but concluded that he had 'fomented a movement that can hardly end without bloodshed and very grave disorder'. – Christopher Howse
Yesterday I spent a long time in the frankest conversation with Mr. Gandhi, and at length succeeded in forming a complete, though almost incredible, estimate of his attitude io the campaign to which he has devoted every faculty and every moment of his life. 'No one understands Mr. Gandhi's crusade,' said a sage man to me in Bombay, 'who does not know Mr. Gandhi.' What I have to say, therefore, may probably seem, impossible to those who have never met this amazing and dangerous man, who in solitude bestrides the field of Indian sedition like a colossus. In truth he is alone. He does not seem to need lieutenants or councillors, who embarrass him with their practical suggestions as much as Mr. Gandhi bewilders them by his pure Utopianism. Whether they remain or desert him makes no difference; his appeal is to the lowest of the population, and his strength lies precisely in the fact that his teaching is a visionary reconstruction of the Golden Age based upon universal loving-kindness. He preaches to the heart and despises the head. And, therefore, he has no parallel in the world to-day, either in the semi-divine character of his influence or in the magnitude of the disaster which will attend his success.
Seated on the floor in a small, barely-furnished room, I found the mahatma, clad in rough, white homespun. He turned up to me, with a smile of welcome, the typical head of the idealist – the skull well formed and finely modelled; the face narrowing to the pointed chin. His eyes are deep, kindly, and entirely sane; his hair is greying a little over the forehead. He speaks gently and well, and in his voice is a note of detachment which lends uncanny force to the strange doctrines that he has given up his life to teach. One could not imagine him ruffled, hasty, or resentful; not the least part of the moral supremacy in his crusade is his universally-known willingness to turn the other cheek to the smiter. From the first it must be realised that consciously his teaching has been influenced by that of Christ, for whom his admiration has long been the almost dominating feature of his spiritual life, and probably the external character of his daily activity has been modelled also upon Him. He made a curious observation during our conversation, which throws some light upon his interpretation of the Galilean Teacher. In answer to a remark of mine that Christ strictly abstained from interfering in politics, Mr. Gandhi answered, 'I do not think so; but, if you are right, the less Christ in that was He.'
The achievement of an ideal world built upon selflessness and governed by loving-kindness alone, which has proved too much, for the Christian nations, seems to Mr. Gandhi a self-evident possibility. The danger, the very real danger, of the man lies in the fact that his belief is exactly that best calculated to appeal to the Oriental, and most certain, if adopted, to lead in India to internecine bloodshed and disintegration and – should our long patience become exhausted – to Indian servitude to some other Power more willing than ourselves to keep the sabre rattling in its sheath. It is precisely his idealism which makes him the worst enemy of his own people.
Courteous, implacable, and refined, Mr. Gandhi explained to me the faith that was in him, and as he did so my hopes of an understanding between him and the English grew less and less. The hated civilisation and rule of England must go. I suggested the unprotected state of India should our work come to an end.
If India has sufficient unity to expel the British, she can also protect herself against foreign aggression; universal love and soul force will keep our shores inviolate; It is by making armaments that war is made.
But what of the religious antagonism between Hindu and Moslem?
No trouble will come.
I thought of the transfigured face of a certain distinguished Moslem follower of Mr. Gandhi, in the Punjab, and his eager anticipation of the day when the coast would be clear, and Islam would crush Hindu opposition and re-establish India as the Sovereign Moslem State – and I renewed the question:
If trouble should ensue I shall be ready to accept it. If even all India were submerged in the struggle it would only be a proof that India was evil, and it d would be for the best.
His attitude not unnaturally made me ask what he thought about Lenin. He said he did not know enough about Lenin, but in any case he would prefer Bolshevism to British rule. Unless what has been said before is borne in mind, this answer might seem to justify much that has been charged against Mr. Gandhi, but I am convinced that idealism uncontrolled and now uncontrollable, is at the root of every extravagant view enunciated by Mr. Gandhi. We agreed that Western and Eastern-standards were irreconcilable, but I asked him if he could find no good in Englishmen and English civilisation. He said it was not against individual Englishmen that he directed his campaign. He admitted that several Englishmen had shown a willingness to work unselfishly for India, and instanced Bradlaugh, Jardine, Wedderburn, and Montagu. Asked why; then, he opposed the reforms, he said that the justice they intended had been whittled away by those to whom their application had been entrusted. He would not admit that he could have carried on his campaign inside the Chambers by sending deputies – a remark which gives food for thought. Either he believes that the intense centralisation of the non-co-operative movement would be destroyed thereby, or he wishes as yet to avoid a definite issue between himself and the moderates. In any case his famous justification of his use of such bad products of British civilisation as railways and post offices, on the ground of helping the cause, should apply here also. His policy in this matter suggests weakness in political organisation.
His bitterness against modern civilisation is at once the strength and weakness of his campaign. Presented as the protest of Hinduism against the Black Age in which we are now living, it makes a direct appeal to the country districts, whose antagonism to the large towns is one of the disregarded factors in the present Indian situation. He frankly admitted that in two matters, sanitation and organisation, he admired British methods, but he did not seem to realise that the latter covered almost the whole ground of our administration of India. Similar inconsistencies between Western and Eastern standpoints account for much in Mr. Gandhi's teaching, but he seems to forget that India has already attempted something like his Utopia and found it unpractical. Listening to Mr. Gandhi, one was again and again reminded of the beautiful vision of a world of selfless kindliness that Gaptama inculcated twenty-four centuries ago – a world that never existed, a vision which has left human nature unchanged.
Coming to essentials, I asked him directly whether he did not see that his campaign of non-violence as he conducted it must inevitably result in violence, for which he must be held responsible.
'There will be no trouble unless the Englishmen begin it.' This was so like the German contention that France began hostilities that I asked him if he had said that he believed that the Government at Bihar had recently provoked violence. He said he did not believe it, and added, with a smile, that much was alleged of him that he had never said.
Courteous and refined he remained to the end, but implacable he remained also, and I could only sum up my impression of my visit in the conviction that a pure idealist, whom the people of India reverenced as a god, must, through the very qualities which had enthroned him, end by delivering them over to bloodshed and misery.
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