Nagar was gone. As Dicky conned all this, he began to wonder if he
would see his friend again. All the days before this in Amritsar, he
had been waiting for things to get quiet so that he and Nagar might
really begin to get together.... “India’s messenger,” he muttered, as
he fell asleep.
XLIX
PIDGE TRIES GRAMERCY PARK
THE second part of Dicky Cobden’s letter about Gandhi written after his
three interviews in Bombay, reached Pidge fully a fortnight after the
first. Of course, it interested her, as it could no one else.
... From several angles I placed before Mahatma-ji, the concept of
dreamers of all countries--the dream of the mating of the East and
West, that the New Race is to be born of this mating; that globe
means globe, and a world citizen must belong to all; that as Goethe
says, “above the nations is Humanity.” This thing, you understand,
has attracted me merely as a concept, not with the dreamer’s fire at
all. Short work Gandhi made of the mating of the East and West. The
damsel, New India, is not ready for marriage. She is not clean. She
has not found herself, therefore has not herself to give. (These are
not his words, but the idea.) She must become free, before she has
anything to bestow. She is just a perfumed body, which the West has
already desecrated and begun to despise--merely an offering now, not
a wife. What Gandhi arrays himself against to-day is the fact that
India has already fallen under the lure of the West. She has felt the
fascination of his big toys, the glamour of his mighty works. The
Little Man has made me see that a woman who “falls for” a man, can
never become the man-maker which a wife must be, maker of her husband
as well as child. Queer, how it came to me that way first, before
I saw the man’s side of it--the great thing you have done, pushing
me back, forever pushing me back into myself, until that day when I
shall be able to _stand_, not “fall for” you. I am learning--learning
so slowly what I bargained for that night at the Punjabi Fireplace.
“... Go back into your house!” Gandhi cries to India. (Not his words,
you know; merely my picture of him.) “Fast and pray. That is safe.
Fast and pray and spin! Pray to the hum of the _charka_. Forget your
lover. Find yourself. You are the East, the inner. Already you have
been lured by his brutal boyish games. You have flattered him, but
already he despises you. What does he bring now, but a bloody carcass
to your hearth, saying, ‘Arise. Gut and skin.’”... Mahatma-ji is on
the ground. Now, To-day, seeing but one step--the next step--crying,
“Go Back!” This is the most extraordinary part to me, that his very
limitations appear to be in use!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account