Twenty-two years later, in the autumn of 1958, there was a telephone call from André Malraux. I had just come back from Trivandrum (I spent about six months in Trivandrum and six months in Paris every year). Malraux said, ‘I have today, in fact only a few moments ago, been asked by General De Gaulle to head the first diplomatic mission abroad, of his new government. And where do you think it is going to—to India. Since it is you, mon ami, who first made me meet Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, I want you to accompany me on this historic visit. And help me that our dreams come true.’ And that is how I went with André Malraux to India—in fact I went a week in advance, and met Pandit Nehru over a luncheon. Panditji was suspicious of the new De Gaulle government. There was a belief in the air, that De Gaulle was a crypto-Fascist. But the French parliament, and the French people, in utter disarray, had called this great saviour of France, back to power, and to reorganize the country. Thus the Fourth Republic fell. And thus again the Fifth Republic’s first diplomatic mission—was to India. The general said to me: ‘Tell Pandit Nehru not what we can give India, but what India can give us.’ No Western government had the wisdom to see so far and deep into history, to recognize this truth. And I think I was able to dispel certain misconceptions the name André Malraux had gathered internationally through the confused times. Was he left? Was he right? I showed Panditji in The Metamorphosis of the Gods, Malraux’s latest book, some eight or ten lines in which Malraux had so brilliantly summed up Advaita Vedanta, as no foreigner had ever, ever done. Panditji read the text (it was in French). And I think that did it.

Despite the Algerian war (which De Gaulle happily concluded sometime soon) Panditji spoke to Malraux as to a younger brother. They talked to one another as schoolboys do, walking back home with a highfallutin intellectual discussion. There was camaraderie about them. It was all sport. Ambassador Ostrorog, Malraux told me later, had telegraphed to the Quai D’Orsay7 that ‘The door of India had been opened to France—at last!’ And that is the foundation of the Franco-Indian cultural relationship today.

Malraux often told me, ‘In the cabinet meetings, De Gaulle would never permit ministers to mention India and China in the same breath. They are not of the same dimension. India is closer to us philosophically, culturally. China is the middle empire. You know what that means.’ Such is the philosophy of statesmanship—and of De Gaulle’s famous ‘Raisons d’état.’8

5

Mahatma Gandhi1

Saint or Politician