'BUCHMAN KI JAI!'

Through the years Buchman kept in touch with Mahatma Gandhi. When he was in London for the 1931 Round Table Conference he came to tea with Buchman at Brown's with his son Devadas. 'Frank realised that my father never carried any money with him, indeed he could not because he was dressed in his dhoti which had no receptacle for it,' Devadas told Michael Barrett years later. 'When we arrived at Brown's Hotel, Frank was waiting on the pavement with the money for the taxi, plus a tip for the driver. After tea he put my father in another taxi and paid the driver the fare to the East End of London plus tip. That is why I always send my car to the airport for him when he passes through India.'

Buchman and Gandhi also conducted a correspondence at various times.* In the main, however, Buchman maintained his touch through mutual friends like Charles F. Andrews and Metropolitan Foss Westcott, and colleagues like Roger Hicks, Bishop West, and the Burmese school-mistress, Ma Nyein Tha, who visited Gandhi in his ashram. On occasion Gandhi made criticisms of Buchman's work. However, Hicks - who spent many years in India and stayed at the ashram for weeks at a time - told Gandhi of the character changes in certain British officials, notably Lionel Jardine, then Revenue Commissioner in the North-West Frontier Province, and the effect of this change in bringing peace between Hindus and Muslims. Hicks writes that when they next met in May 1940, 'Gandhi reminded me of the stories I had told him about Jardine and said that he had had Khan Sahib, the Chief Minister of the Province, investigate them and "they were all true". He considered that this was the most important thing coming out of the West today. ... If men's motives and conduct could be changed, then the chess board was upset and anything could happen. He bade me go and see the Viceroy and tell him that if this spirit prevailed India and Britain would be able to come to terms at once.'1

(* This correspondence is referred to in other papers, but is lost.)

Buchman had a natural sympathy with the newly independent countries of Asia, and in 1952 he accepted invitations to take an international team to India, Ceylon and Pakistan. The Indian invitation had come in September 1950 from eighteen distinguished personalities headed by G. L. Nanda, by then Minister of Planning in Delhi.* The Prime Minister of Ceylon, Dudley Senanayake, and members of his government and the opposition had sent a similar invitation, and Pakistani ministers had repeated one given to Buchman personally by Mohammad Ali Jinnah - and accepted by him - during the Independence talks in London.

(* Others on the invitation committee included R. K. Patil and G. L. Mehta, members of the National Planning Commission; Khandubhai Desai, President of the Indian National Trade Union Congress; Sir Lakhshmanaswami Mudaliar, Vice-Chancellor of Madras University; Dr B. C. Roy, Chief Minister of West Bengal; K. M. Patnaik, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Orissa; Dr Sampuranand, Minister of Education in the United Provinces; A. N. Sinha, Minister of Labour in Bihar; J. R. D. Tata, Chairman of Tata Industries.)

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