GANDHI............POONA-PACT 463
would be internal strife. There are people like ... He would collect bad characters in the community and get them to attack Hindus, poison wells and do other things.” [1]
Bapuji wrote a letter to H. S. L., Polak in which he gave clear account of the circumstances leading to the fast. This is what he wrote :
“You seemed to have missed the very core of the fast. You have to go back to my speech at the Minorities Committee. It was not a prepared speech. The end of it came irresistibly. The fast was an inevitable result of that solemn declaration. I little knew how that declaration was to find fulfilment. I say that the declaration was from God and so was the fulfilment. If it was so, all argument is useless. If it was a hallucination, friends who believe it to be such are bound to drive home the truth to me with all the love and persistence they can summon to their assistance.
“Everything that happened since confirms me in the opinion that the fast was a God-given trust. Not the Premier but Sir Samuel Hoare through whom the message of the fast had necessarily to go. But if you had followed all the statements I have made and even my letter to the Premier you would have seen that the fast was addressed to the millions who had faith in me, and who had surrounded me with their undying affection whenever I went to their midst. They understood the fast with all its implications without any argument. For them, the political part of it was trivial; internal reform was everthing.
“You ask why it was not administered ten years ago. The answer is; God did not call me to. He comes to wake you up when you least expect him. His ways are not our ways. You will, of course, believe me when I say that I had then the same capacity for sacrifices that I seem to have now.” [2]
1 : Government of India, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, New Delhi, Vol. 11, Pp. 457-458.
2 : ibid, volume LI, Pp. 252-253.
All the above reprinted, Busi Dr ; Pp. 188-190.