The following sentences in the text are in ‘direct speech’.
(а) He said, “I will tell you how it happened that I decided to urge the departure of the British. It was in 1917.”
(b) Gandhi recounted. “A peasant came up to me looking like any other peasant in India, poor and emaciated, and said, ‘I am Rajkumar Shukla. I am from Champaran, and I want you to come to my district!”
(c) Gandhi said, “I have to be in Calcutta on such-and-such a date. Come and meet me and take me from there”.
(d) “It was an extraordinary thing ‘in those day s,” Gandhi commented, Tor a government professor to harbour a man like me.’
(e)He said, “I have come to the conclusion that we should stop going to law courts. Taking such cases to the courts does little good. Where the peasants are so crushed and fear-stricken, law courts are useless. The real relief for them is to be free from fear.”
(f) “The commissioner,” Gandhi reports, “proceeded to bully me and advised me forthwith to leave Tirhut”.
(g) ‘But how much must we pay?’ they asked Gandhi.
(h) One woman took Kasturbabai into her hut and said, “Look, there is no box or cupboard here for clothes. The sari I am wearing is the only one I have”.
(i) “What I did”, he explained, “was a very ordinary thing. I declared that the British could not order me about in my own country”.
(j) He said, “You think that in this unequal fight it would be helpful if we have an Englishman on our side. This shows the weakness of y our heart. The cause is just and you mu st rely upon y ourselves to win the battle. You should not seek a prop in Mr ‘ Andrews because he happens to be an Englishman”.
(k) “He had read our minds correctly,” Rajendra Prasad comments, “and we had no reply … Gandhi in this way taught us a lesson in self-reliance”.
The choice of the direct form strengthens the effectiveness of narration. The author uses quotations to highlight certain points which may not appear so effective in reporting indirectly.
