The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi (The Robert Payne Library)

by Robert Payne

  There was a slow but constant progress from the penitential fasts of the early years to the fully orchestrated fasts of his later years. The concepts were refined, the techniques were adapted to changing circumstances, the application was broadened until it came to include purposes undreamed of during his earlier experiments. Penance, to which he once attached great importance, came to have less and less validity. More and more as he grew older he prayed that the fast would bring him to moksha, the vision of God’s face. But this intensely private and personal desire did not prevent him from believing that the same fast could have political purposes. As he finally conceived it, a fast could have many purposes simultaneously and the man fasting could play many roles.

  As Dr. Sushila Nayyar has recently pointed out, Gandhi’s last fasts assumed the dimensions of dramatic performances. As a curtain raiser, there were long and intricate discussions about whether he should go on a fast, and under what conditions. It was necessary to define the purpose and establish the nature of the fast: whether it should be short or of long duration, a fast unto death. Finally he would announce his aims and explain the reasons which had brought him in old age to undertake so dangerous and strenuous an activity. Since he commanded the services of All-India Radio and was heard by hundreds of thousands of people, these preliminaries were performed before a vast public breathless for news. There followed a brief interval as the preparations for the fast were pursued quietly, as though behind a curtain, and then he would appear like a king in the full regalia of his nakedness, lying in bed, alone with the alone, preparing himself for a period of intense suffering or for death. Each day was a new act in the drama. Bulletins would announce that he had sipped water, passed urine, slept badly, complained of headaches, suffered from fever. Every day he would speak, admonishing or encouraging the people, developing the ideas which led him to undertake the fast, and as the days passed the voice grew weaker, hoarser, more difficult to understand, until at last there was scarcely any voice at all.

  What they were seeing was the agony of a hero: the Greek agon, the hero caught in the toils of fate, suffering according to the relentless will of the gods. Every day the curtain went up on a new adventure played out against a panorama of world events. Everyone knew, or thought he knew, that the drama would end, as all his dramas had ended, with the triumph of the hero. In the last scene the hero rises refreshed from his own deathbed, having overcome the adversary and achieved victory over his own flesh. As a result, there is a general reconciliation, for the hero has taken the sins of the people upon himself and passed through the fiery gates unscathed.

  There was of course no logic in this experience, nor was there any logic in the ancient Greek dramas. Deeply-felt personal and national needs, halfforgotten traditions, myths and legends entered into the fast. There were conscious motives, but there were also unconscious motives. Sometimes Gandhi would attempt to unravel them, but he rarely succeeded in explaining them satisfactorily. In the middle of the night he would hear a voice and there would come to him a feeling of absolute assurance. This was his fifteenth fast, and because of his age it was likely to be his last.

  The fast began at noon on January 13. During the morning he received a few visitors including Nehru, Patel and Maulana Azad, and then his bed was moved into the garden where he took his last meal which consisted of some chapatis, milk, three slices of grapefruit and an apple. There followed Buddhist prayers, Muslim and Parsi prayers, his favorite hymn Vaishnava Jana, and then Dr. Sushila Nayyar sang “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” and finally there were devotional readings from the Koran, the holy book of the Sikhs and Hindu writings. There was an atmosphere of gloom. From time to time Gandhi talked about death in a way which did nothing to dispel the gloom. He compared himself with a man suffering from an incurable disease, dying in slow stages. “In China the sentence of death is executed in the right way,” he commented. “A button is pressed, and the criminal is finished.” He did not explain where he obtained this information; it was enough that the Chinese killed their victims instantaneously. A visitor from Bhagnavar reminded him of the small village where, according to tradition, the Gujarati poet Narsima Mehta, the author of the Vaishnava Jana hymn, was granted the vision of God, and Gandhi remembered that he had visited the village in the company of Mahadev Desai. In those days his thoughts were always turning to Mahadev Desai, and when he thought of death, it was the death of Mahadev Desai that came to mind.

  As usual he attended the evening prayer meeting, telling the audience that there was nothing in the least remarkable in the fact that he made his way on foot to the prayer ground. A fast weakened nobody during the first twenty-four hours after a meal. He had resolved on the fast because it was intolerable that the Hindus and Muslims should still be fighting one another. If the fighting ended, then India and her honor would be saved, but not otherwise. But he said nothing about the promises which would have to be made to bring his fast to an end, and gave the impression of a man resigned to fasting unto death. The weather was cold, and the nights were chilly.

  When Gandhi woke up early the next morning, the first matter of business was a reply to a letter from Devadas urging him to put an end to the fast, saying that it had been brought about by an excess of impatience. Addressing his “most revered, holy father,” Devadas concluded the letter with the words: “What you can achieve by living, you cannot achieve by dying. On this score alone I pray you to give up the fast.”

  Gandhi’s reaction was one of incomprehension and pity. How was it possible that Devadas could have so thoroughly misunderstood a situation which was perfectly clear? He had placed his trust in God; it was not his will, but God’s, which had ordered the fast; and was he expected to disobey God’s commands? Devadas had written out of a sense of filial affection, but affection had its roots in ignorance or illusion. For himself, he prayed that he would have the strength to continue the fast to the end.

  The day went on quietly. He was on the massage table at eight o’clock, took his bath at nine, rested, read letters, and sat in the sun. Sometimes a man fasting will give way to inexplicable bouts of ill-temper. For some reason, while he was taking his bath, he grew angry with one of his disciples. “I will put this girl to a test,” he exclaimed. “She will be consumed by the fire of her own vanity or untruth.” The anger passed, and later in the morning a cabinet meeting was held on the lawn with Nehru, Patel and others, to discuss the question of the cash balances owed to Pakistan. Gandhi was in favor of giving Pakistan the entire sum amounting to 550 million rupees, which had been previously agreed upon, though it had been withheld as a result of the conflict in Kashmir. In his view India had a moral obligation to pay the money, and even if Pakistan spent it on armaments to attack India, the moral obligation remained, and was binding. There was a long debate, Patel protesting earnestly, Nehru and Gandhi overwhelmingly in favor of carrying out the contract. Afterward Gandhi rested, sipping warm water.

  In the afternoon he decided to walk to the prayer meeting. He was weak, but felt he had a duty to speak about the massacres still taking place in Karachi and the Punjab. Refugees from the Frontier Province had been butchered, and their women abducted. Some fifteen hundred Sikhs had been murdered in Karachi. Where was the end to it? Surely Pakistan could not tolerate these evils. Let there be a sign from Jinnah that Pakistan had foresworn murder as an arm of government. Then he remembered that many years ago he had seen the famous inscription in the Red Fort at Delhi: “If there is Paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.” He said he would like to see this inscription over the gates of Pakistan, a new Pakistan, which had become truly holy. As for his fast—“God has inspired it, and it will be broken only when and if He wishes it. No human agency has ever been known to thwart the Divine Will.”

  Later there was another meeting of the cabinet. About nine o’clock, just as Patel and Nehru were leaving Birla House, some Sikhs from the West Punjab came up Albuquerque Road, shouting: “Gandhi mordabadr!” “Death to Gandhi.�
�� There were other shouts, equally ominous. “Blood for blood!” they cried. “We must have revenge!” Nehru was just getting into his car when the Sikhs came up the road. He ran out into the street and shouted: “Who dares to say such things? Let him come out and face me! He will have to kill me first!” The Sikhs ran away, and the street was quiet again.

  Inside the house Gandhi heard the confused clamor, and said: “What are they shouting?”

  “They are shouting, ‘Gandhi mordabad’”

  “How many are they?”

  “Not many.”

  Gandhi sighed, and began to recite the Ramanama, the names of God. He was growing weaker, and would fall into long silences to conserve his energy. He was having trouble with his kidneys, and complained of pains in his stomach and chills. The three doctors who attended him were already urging him to stop the fast, but he would only smile at them indulgently, saying that he had heard these words so many times before that they had lost all meaning. God would determine when the fast would end.

  Dr. Sushila Nayyar kept accurate records of his health. The water he drank was carefully weighed; so was his urine. Every two or three hours there was another medical examination. Manubehn, watch and notebook in hand, reported on all his movements. Here she reports on the early hours of January 15, the third day of the fast:

  Bapu passed urine at 2.30 in the night. Did his writing work, lying in bed. Cleaned his teeth at 3.30 and got ready for prayer. Prayer at 4.30. Took 8 oz. of plain hot water; dictated notes to Pyarelalji. Fell asleep at 6.30 and woke at 7.15. Sat up against a pillow at 7.35. Took 8 02. of hot water at 742. Had newspapers read to him. Had a talk with Ghanshiamdasji about his fast from 7.55 to 8.5. Sat up in bed at 8.35. Has to be supported when he sits up. Passed urine at 840. Got ready for massage at 8.45. Took 8 oz. of hot water and foot-bath while sitting on the massage table. Rajkumariben came. Dr. Jivaraj, Dr. Vidhan Babu and Dr. Sushilaben examined him. Bapu walked to the bath at 9.10. (He had walked to the massage table also.) Did not evacuate faeces, nor did he pass urine. Felt giddy in the bath. Sat in a chair. Came out of the bath at 10.40. Weight 107 lb. and blood pressure 98/100 . . .

  So she would go on day after day, recording his journeys to the bathroom and the massage table, carefully noting the people he saw, the times when he dictated letters and read the newspapers and took an enema. Yet in her oddly discursive way she was giving a complete picture of his life, filling in the details. Gandhi was seriously ill; his kidneys were failing; on that day he drank 68 oz. of water and discharged 28 oz. of urine, with the result that his body was becoming waterlogged. In the evening the doctors issued their medical bulletin: “He is naturally losing weight. The weakness has increased. The voice is feeble. Acetone bodies have appeared in the urine.” In fact his weight was stable, and this was the most disturbing part of the diagnosis, for the loss of body weight was being made up by water. The fast had already entered the danger zone.

  On that day he was too weak to walk to the prayer ground, and so a radio microphone was hooked up to his bed. He spoke about the fast, the failure of his kidneys, and the worry it caused the doctors, but this was the least important part of his message. Once more he called for communal peace; he denied the rumors that he had quarreled with Patel, and announced that the government had finally decided to transfer to Pakistan the 550 million rupees, which properly belonged to it. Above all, he reminded his listeners that he would not stop the fast until peace had been secured.

  Though ill and suffering from fits of giddiness, he could still maintain his good humor. Early the next day he dictated a note to Mirabehn:

  I am dictating this immediately after the 3.30 A.M. prayer, while I am taking my meal such as a fasting man with prescribed food can take. Don’t be shocked. The food consists of 8 oz. of hot water sipped with difficulty. You sip it as poison, well knowing that in result it is nectar. It revives me whenever I take it. Strange to say this time I am able to take about 8 meals of this poison-tasting, but nectar-like meal. Yet I claim to be fasting and credulous people accept it! What a strange world!

  So the days passed, while the doctors became increasingly distressed and Gandhi entered into that phase of calm detachment which usually occurred on the third or fourth day of a fast. He could walk a little, and did not feel giddy. He fell in the bathroom and hurt himself, but not severely. There was no change in his state of health, and he still weighed 107 pounds.

  The third day of the fast was made memorable by the arrival of a letter from Patel. The rumors of his disagreements with Nehru, though often denied, were true. Patel was a man of force and intelligence, without human warmth, possessing all the qualities of an efficient party manager, and therefore indispensable in a party continually tending to split into factions. He was the iron hoop round the wine cask, harsh, abrupt, compelling by the sheer force of his personality. Inevitably there were clashes with Nehru, who had his own ideas how the government and the party should be managed. Gandhi trusted and admired Patel; he loved Nehru. He had a way of looking at Patel searchingly, probingly, as though he was never quite sure whether his answers were satisfactory, but he looked at Nehru with eyes of love. Suddenly Patel submitted his resignation on the grounds that he was deteriorating with age and his continued presence in the government was exasperating the other cabinet members.

  “In the circumstances, it will perhaps be good for me and for the country if you now let me go,” he wrote. “I cannot do otherwise than what I am doing. And if thereby I become burdensome to my lifelong colleagues and a source of distress to you and still I stick to office, it could mean—at least that is what I would feel—that I let the lust of power blind my eyes and so was unwilling to quit. You should quickly deliver me from this intolerable situation.” Then Patel made a surprising request: Gandhi should immediately stop his fast in order to study the overwhelmingly important question of Patels continued presence in the government.

  To Gandhi this letter was merely an additional burden to be borne with as much good humor as a man can muster when he is fasting unto death. No one doubted that Patel lusted after power or that he was a burden to his colleagues or that he was an exemplary Home Minister and the man chiefly responsible for negotiating with the princely states. He knew he was essential, and could not simply be dismissed from the cabinet Having written the letter, he flew off to Kathiawar, where he had urgent business with the princely states which were intermittently objecting to joining the Indian Union.

  Gandhi was too ill to make an immediate decision, and clearly the matter could remain in abeyance until Patel’s return. There were far more important matters at stake. Nehru was addressing mass meetings on behalf of communal peace. Rajendra Prasad, the President of the Congress, was calling the leaders of the different factions to his house, urging them to make a gesture of communal friendship, one which would be sufficiently bold to convince Gandhi that they really meant what they said. Processions began to parade through the streets with everyone shouting slogans in favor of Hindu-Muslim unity. The Maharajah of Patiala, the most important of the Sikh princes, came to say that he had commanded the Sikhs in Delhi to live peacefully with their Muslim neighbors and that he was in no way responsible for the massacres of Muslims in his own state. He protested too much, and Gandhi remained unconvinced. The Nawab of Maler Kotla, a Muslim prince, was more convincing, for he related that he had given orders that if any Sikh or Hindu was killed in his state, he would shoot ten Muslims. Gandhi approved of vigorous solutions and gave the Nawab his blessing.

  The fast was now making great inroads in his strength, and the kidneys were functioning so badly that Dr. Sushila Nayyar suggested cupping the flesh over the kidneys. Cupping was regarded as a kind of nature cure, and it was thought that he might therefore agree to it. But he was in no mood for cupping and he was beginning to think that mud plasters, baths, and all the other nature-cure practices were unnecessary and even senseless. “Ramanama alone is my nature cure,” he said.

  That evening a vast processi
on came up Albuquerque Road to demonstrate Hindu-Muslim unity by shouting: “Bhai-bhai!” “Brothers!” There were cries of “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!” and sometimes a single voice would rise above the others shouting: “Gandhi mordabad!” Manubehn wrote in her diary that she clearly heard the words: “Stab! Kill!” But the voices of dissension were vastly outnumbered by the voices proclaiming peace. Nehru spoke earnestly to the crowd which spilled over onto the prayer ground, saying over and over again that it was necessary to have peace in Delhi so that Bapu should be preserved, and then the crowd dispersed quietly. Lord and Lady Mountbatten came, and Gandhi greeted them with folded hands, saying in a weak voice: “It takes a fast to bring you to me.” He was not being censorious, for there was a flicker of amusement in his tired eyes.

  Behind the scenes Rajendra Prasad was working for an agreement acceptable to Gandhi. On the evening of January 17 one hundred and thirty representatives of the various communities met at his house and passed a resolution that they would maintain the peace, but it was observed that some of the dissident groups were absent from the meeting. During the night and the next morning they were rounded up. Finally representatives of the militant Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh offered to sign the agreement. It was felt that if all these representatives came to Birla House and solemnly swore to protect the Muslims in Delhi then Gandhi would be compelled to give up the fast.