Number of words: 344

He marks the next stage of India’s progress. Much more touched than Gandhi by social preoccupations and much better informed of the overall worldwide social movement, he has formed an advanced Socialist party in Congress of which he is the recognized leader, although his imprisonments have made it impossible for him ideas seem to have developed to an even more advanced stage, almost to the verge of Communism, from which the only thing that seriously saperates him is a moral, not a social problem; that of violence or non-violence. But he says, his meditations have already led him to the discovery that Gandhi’s non-violence  is, in many of its essential features, a form of violence – or, more exactly, an extreme form of constraint exercised on those who practice it is well as those who undergo it. And he has also come to recognize that the worst violence is not always physical violence, and that the kind which is exercised morally can even at times be more equal. There is thus no insurmountable barrier between violence and non-violence; and the first canot be eliminated a priori from the field of action. It is more appropriate to measure the conditions in which it should operate. This Gandhi does not want to do – at leats on the intellectual level; for on the level of action, as Nehru goes on to say, he is different.

Nehru has known and loved Gandhi for fifteen years and, he says, he has not yet got to know him well. Gandhi has done and will always do things which will disconcert his friends; there is something unpredictable about him, and on the social question no one can succeed in making him take a clear stance. I say that no doubt there is a permanent conflict within him between the traditional and the rational parts of his nature. His reason will show him what is just and necessary, but his attachement to Hindu tradition will restrict him or lead him backwords.  

Excerpted from”page number 328 – 329, of Romain Rolland and Gandhi Correspondence.”