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This was not altogether fair to the fair-playing, liberty-loving Britons in England. But in India the British people were no longer differentiated from the British Raj. Indian scorn included Americans as allies of the British, despite a faint hope that the U.S. might still intervene.
Power & Justice. The British case against Gandhi was based on the Western interpretation of pragmatic justice. To the British, Gandhi was guilty of calling for a civil-disobedience campaign last August which set off a mass outburst. Lord Linlithgow held Gandhi legally responsible for the deaths that had occurred, the damage done. In the Viceroy's words, Gandhi's fast was "political blackmail"; as such it was Gandhi's "sole responsibility." This was the official British view. Any weakening of this position, setting Gandhi free—and thus permitting him to break his fast —would be an admission that the British were wrong. If the British stuck to their point (and Gandhi died) the result might be an immediate cataclysm. Or it might be the slower, perhaps more disastrous culmination of hate and anger.
Convinced that the Western mind cannot or will not attempt to understand the East, India's leading political figures (excluding those in jail), industrial tycoons and Europeans met at Delhi within a stone's throw of the Maharaja's palace now occupied by William Phillips, the Boston Brahman who is President Roosevelt's personal envoy to India.* Chakravarthi Rajagopalachariar, who broke with Gandhi over the civil-disobedience issue, spoke eloquently of Gandhi's leadership, kindliness, love of freedom. Even the two Chambers of Princes and most Moslem groups (with the exception of loudmouthed Mohammed Ali Jinnah's Moslem League) joined the cry.
The Eleventh Hour. A message from the Viceroy reiterating that "if he (Gandhi) fasts while in detention, he does so solely ... at his own risk" chilled all hopes for compromise. Rajagopalachariar visited Phillips but came away convinced that the Americans can do nothing.
Between Gandhi's will and that of the Viceroy the final clash had come. Like a Greek tragedy the action moved inexorably toward the climax. A frail little bag of bones had decided he would drink only fruit juice for three weeks, and the whole British Empire quivered. A world that uses and more than half believes in force watched the struggle with divided sympathies and a strange sense of shame.
* Japan, delighted with Britain's embarrassment, declared a "Mahatma Gandhi Week" in all occupied territories in the East.