I was out of step with the times. I believed that British rule was good for India; we Indians never had nor ever would be able to run an administration which was just and fair to all communities. But there was no one who seemed to agree with my views. My old mother who had at one time lit incense in front of a picture of Queen Victoria now spent her time praying and spinning her charkha and once gave me a bundle of yarn she had spun to be presented to Gandhi. Two of my elder sons when they went to buy material for their school uniform came back with khadi (handspun, hand-woven cloth) because Gandhi had proclaimed a boycott of British fabrics. I knew that behind my back my Sikh employees called me a jholi chook (one who stretched his apron for alms). Many a time when I was on duty with the police to prevent a riot, the mob yelled todi-baccha (son of a toady) and beat their breasts shouting hai, hai I persisted in my belief that the English would stay in India as rulers in my lifetime. I had eaten their salt and was not going to betray them.

Lord Irwin did his best to accommodate the nationalists. At his instance a commission headed by Sir John Simon which included Attlee visited India in 1923. The nationalists organized massive demonstrations against the commission wherever it went. Irwin arranged for Round table Conferences in London to discuss giving India Dominion Status. The nationalists boycotted the first one and sent only Gandhi to the second. They launched one civil disobedience movement after another bringing the country to near anarchy. They talked of satyagraha (truthfulness) and ahimsa (nonviolence) but gloated over bombings and political murders. The worst example of this was the way they treated a god-fearing man like Irwin. The date for the inauguration of New Delhi had been fixed. Lady Dorothy, the Vicereine, had sent for Lutyens to help her choose the right kind of furnishings, curtains and decor for the Viceregal palace and the kind of flowers to plant in the Mughal gardens. All was ready by the end of August 1931. On 23 December 1931 the Irwins came by train for the inaugural ceremony. I was amongst the dignitaries chosen to receive them on the ceremonial platform of New Delhi railway station. As the train slowed down on its approach to the station, a bomb planted on the track went off. Fortunately it missed the Viceroy’s carriage and blew up the one behind it. The Viceroy and the Vicereine looked completely unperturbed and went through the ceremony as if nothing had happened. Ironically it was this Viceroy, Lord Irwin, who had given his heart to India and who chose the words inscribed on the Jaipur column facing his residence:

In thought faith

In word wisdom

In deed courage

In life sevice

—So may India be great.