14 SOCIAL SCIENTIST whole question is whether a temporary advantage for India was to guide the National Movement or the future of the world as a whole. These two opposite strategies were in conflict. Today we know that the Allies position, although bad, was not so bad as it appeared to Gandhi and his colleagues in the AICC and to the communist leadership. However, if you read Stalin's letters, Stalin was writing to Churchill and Roosevelt that Russia has lost so much territory that it could be defeated or be so weakened that it could no longer be of any assistance to the Allies. This was an extremely difficult time, between the offensive on Moscow and the battle of Stalingrad. There are times when national interest comes into conflict with larger interests of world peoples, and if the larger interest weighed with the communist dissenters, I would, even at this time, when it is fashionable to regret it, hold it to be the right decision. I would also not condemn Gandhi for his position. The Indians had waited too long and had been patient. Gandhi had described the Extremists and the Moderates as the patient and the impatient lot, and patience had now run out for all. But it was clear that Gandhi's perception of the world situation, as of the communists, were wrong. The Russian people and the Soviet system was stirong enough to defeat Hitler and this being so the Quit India exercise became meaningless. Accordingly it is obvious that Gandhi never expected that there would be a rebellion or a violent agitation: he wanted to tell the British that if you really want to make peace with Indians, when faced with such continuing Axis Successes, then you must offer substantive concessions to the Indian Congress leaders. But the Red Army changed the situation by defeating Hitler at Stalingrad. The result was that British imperialism did not need to talk with the imprisoned leaders. I do not think Gandhi was so ignorant of the Indian situation as to have thought that there would be a rebellion of the Indian people and the situation for the British in the war would worsen and there would be a compromise. My last point; I think Gandhi's'finest hours' were his last months-that when massacres broke out, Gandhi stood by his principles; and here he could forget the narrow national interests for the larger cause. If you remember he said in so many words: T am not for the moment concerned with the massacres in Pakistan. I am basically concerned with the massacres in Delhi and its neighbourhood therefore, I am going on hunger strike here. When I succeed here, I would go on hunger strike there in Pakistan, which is also my country'. The second demand he made was that India must pay Rs.55 crore to Pakistan. For the Father of a Nation to take a direct position against his own nation, and in support of another country whose goverment was showering abuse on him and the entire Indian people, I think that was Gandhi's finest act. It was an action for which he ultimately gave his life at the hands of one of the heroes and precursors of the present Sangh Parivar. It seems to me that there is a message in this particular action for all serious political movements - a message that there is a point at which to compromise with principle is fatal. Gandhi's own success in stopping the massacres in India was achieved by frontally opposing the "mainstream" communal perceptions. One must take a position which is right even if it is opposed to the national "consensus". How many of us could remember it in 1962 or 1965?