2 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
name,” Gandhi said, “is one to conjure with. His pa tri ot ism is second to
none.” “The lesson that Netaji and his army brings to us,” the Mahatma
wrote in Harijan on February 12, 1946, “is one of self- sac ri fice, unity—
irrespective of class and community—and discipline.”^3
With World War II raging across Europe and Asia, an American
journalist named Louis Fi scher had come to see Mahatma Gandhi in
early June 1942. The young American was puzzled by the Indian reluc-
tance to line up unambiguously on the side of the Allies against the
Axis powers. Hosted for a week in Gandhi’s guest house—“a one- room
mud hut with earthen floor and bamboo roof ”—in the village of Seva-
gram in western India, Fi scher had a series of candid conversations
with the Mahatma. There were “powerful elements of Fascism in Brit-
ish rule,” Gandhi told his interlocutor, and these were the elements In-
dians encountered on a daily basis. “Your President,” Gandhi contin-
ued, “talks about the Four Freedoms. Do they include the freedom to
be free? We are asked to fight for democracy in Germany, Italy, and Ja-
pan. How can we when we haven’t got it ourselves?” If these were
points Gandhi gently raised in a low voice during conversation, he
struck a harsher tone in written replies to Fi scher’s questions. “I see
no difference between the Fascist or Nazi powers and the Allies,” he
declared. “All are exploiters, all resort to ruthlessness to the extent
required to compass their end. America and Britain are very great
nations but their greatness will count as dust before the bar of dumb
humanity, whether African or Asiatic.” Although the United States and
Britain may have been focused on the war against Germany and Japan,
Gandhi made it clear that his priority was the battle to free the colo-
nized.^4
Two months later, on August 8, 1942, the Indian National Congress
under Gandhi’s leadership formally passed a resolution calling upon
the British to “quit India.” The Mahatma asked his followers to “do or
die” in their quest for in de pen dence. The British arrested all the top-
ranking Congress leaders and cracked down hard on the movement in
urban and rural areas alike. Wartime imperatives ensured that British
policies were hardly benign. To severe po lit i cal repression was added
in ten si fied economic exploitation of India’s resources. By the spring of