F OR GANDHI the call to action proved a tonic.

By mid-January of
1929 he resolved to cancel a tentatively planned tour of Europe that
would potentially have included a visit to America. Though he had
barely had time for sleep in Calcutta, he had lost only one pound there. His
health was suddenly better than it had been for seven years, since last he led
a national struggle. Work had always agreed with him; work with the prospect
of national liberation, Swaraj, proved to be his best medicine.
He drew up a scheme for reactivating the Congress and mobilizing its
local committees to serve as volunteers going "from door to door in every
town and village" to collect foreign cloth that was to be "publicly burnt"
and to take orders for handwoven cloth from every householder. "Picketing
foreign cloth shops may be undertaken wherever possible. . . . All units
should from day to day report to the Central Office details of work done.
. . . Help of patriotic ladies should be enlisted. ... A small Foreign Cloth
Boycott Committee should be formed and entrusted with an initial fund
with power to collect more funds."1 He was in his element, organizing, ordering,
and auditing, all his inherited Vania (merchant caste) virtues brilliantly
sparking his Mahatmaic spirit to practical action.
Gandhi toured Sind, collecting money and gathering new disciples for
the struggle he would soon lead, which all believed would be the final push
to achieve national independence. Even when he learned that his grandson,
seventeen-year-old Rasik, Harilal's boy, lay dying in Delhi, he continued to
work. Ba and the boy's mother and his uncle Devdas were at Rasik's bedside
for the last painful days and nights, but not Gandhi, who was in Larkana
when he received news of his grandson's death. Gandhi recalled, after
[ 135 ]
Gandhi's Passion
reading Devdas's wire, that "I took my meal as usual and kept on working."
2 His karma yogic indifference to pleasure and pain alike helped sustain
him, as did his faith that Rasik's soul (atmari) was liberated to a
"better state," closer to Lord Rama, whose devotee he, like Gandhi, had
been. True Hindu that he was, Gandhi never shed any tears over the death
of a loved one, for such grief would only inhibit the soul's release from karmic
snares of mortal name and form and the delusions of earthly existence.
"The cage had become old, was decaying and the swan flew away," he
wrote of Rasik's death, "no cause in this for mourning."3
While in Delhi in mid-February, Gandhi had tea with the viceroy at
Legislative Assembly Speaker Viththalbhai Patel's house. Of the meeting,
Gandhi wrote, "nothing" happened. "Our salvation lies in our own hands.
A fruitful meeting can only take place when we have gathered strength and
become conscious of it."4 He also met with the Congress Working Committee,
including Motilal and Jawaharlal, who were planning the next
move, not optimistic enough to expect the British to surrender India without
a fight to a Congress Raj at year's end.
In early March he left by train for Calcutta en route to Burma, his
party given a third-class carriage all to themselves, making him feel so pampered
by authorities that he confessed to fearing he was "becoming a
fraud."5 In Calcutta he addressed a large crowd, urging them to burn all
foreign cloth. "I want you to pledge yourselves," he told his receptive audience,
"that you will burn them even as you burn rags . . . even as a drunkard
suddenly become teetotaller empties his cupboard and destroys every
bottle of brandy and whiskey. . . . You will count no cost too great against

1
the . . . liberty and honour of your country."6 He was almost back in his
stride, broken seven years ago, when standing on the platform in Shraddhanand
Park, staring down at the ocean of adoring eyes. The Calcutta police,
however, served notice against any public bonfires, which made him
hesitate to call for the burning of British cloth, for since his first jail term he
was no longer permitted to practice law and was anxious not to provoke
any violence. But the police moved in around the distant fringes of the
crowd, using their loaded lathis, claiming that hoodlum-tossed brickbats
had provoked them. Gandhi was charged with provoking an illegal demonstration,
but the commissioner agreed to postpone his trial until Gandhi
returned from Burma. He now urged his followers immediately to boycott
all foreign cloth "charged as it is with such poisonous germs," removing all
of it from Bengal, to be consigned to "flames."
That April, after several Hindu terrorists had thrown bombs into the
Delhi Assembly and a Muslim assassin had knifed a Sikh to death in Punjab,
Gandhi wrote forcefully against such "mad deeds." He urged Congressmen
not to give "secret approval" to the bombers and Muslims to abstain
from supporting the dagger-assassin. But then he wisely noted that
[ 136 ]
The Road Back to Satyagraha
bombs and knives really derived "their lease of life from the world's belief
in violence as a remedy for securing supposed justice. . . . The insensate
speed with which the nations of the West are hourly forging new weapons
of destruction for purposes of war is suffocating the world with the spirit of
violence. . . . The bomb-thrower and the assassin will live on so long as
public opinion of the world tolerates war."7 Whenever questioned about
his earlier assistance during World War I and the wars in South Africa,
Gandhi explained that he no longer felt as he had when he was so much
younger and had viewed war in a less negative light. He would never revert
to his previous position.