GANDHI, Mohandas Karamchand (1869-1948). Autograph manuscript, n.p., n.d. [c.1944-45]

GANDHI, Mohandas Karamchand (1869-1948). Autograph manuscript, n.p., n.d. [c.1944-45]

In English. Three pages, 210 x 130mm, on the back of re-used letters (small holes at folds and edges). Provenance: Thomas Lewis Horabin (1896-1956); given to the British MP Tom Horabin by Gandhi in early 1945, thence by descent.

'Independence pure & simple is essential in the first instance [...] People may accept less but I can never be party to it': Gandhi on Indian Independence. Each of the three pages apparently bears Gandhi's answer to a specific question posed by his interlocutor. The first reads: 'If you want my answer for the Press, I do not want give my views at the present moment. Independence pure & simple is essential in the first instance. The ** committee may do anything. People may accept less but I can never be party to it. I would not then hinder if it means a substantial step towards the goal'. The second answer opens: 'They can if they will only be good enough not to obstruct the path to the solution. Very few people outside Indians realise that it is the British that hinder the solution...', while the third begins: 'Friends of India to be real friends should never agree to anything the Congress does not accept. That can be determined only by the members of the C. when they are free', the meaning of which Gandhi goes on to explain.

Gandhi was the spiritual and political leader of India's struggle for independence from British colonial rule; he headed the movement from the point of his 1915 return to his homeland from South Africa, by then an internationally-renowned activist with his theory of peaceful resistance fully developed, until the unhappy Partition of 1947. In 1942, his 'Quit India' speech prompted a punitive reaction from the British government, who arrested Gandhi without trial alongside almost the entire leadership of the Indian Congress – from this point, the days of British rule in India were numbered, with Gandhi's policy of non-violent protest and vociferous criticism of the British attracting an increasingly large, sympathetic international audience during the Second World War. Gandhi's adherence to a weekly day of silence explains the existence of the present pages, which would have been passed to the British MP Tom Horabin in response to questions posed to Gandhi on the Independence movement.