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

by Robert Payne

  Dark tides of grief lapped against the house, where those who had been his faithful companions kept vigil. For a long time Abhabehn and Manubehn cradled his head on their laps, while the other women watched in silence or sang the Gita, and all the time from outside there came the sound of sobbing and the occasional thunderous cries of “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai.” Drawn faces appeared at the windows, and there were so many of them, and there was so much pressure from behind, that the windows were in danger of being broken; there was even the danger that the vast crowd, caught up in a stampede of grief, might break into the house and even destroy it. There were thousands of people streaming along Albuquerque Road and thousands more thronging the gardens, and they were almost out of their wits with grief. Nehru, who seemed to be going in and out of the room like a sleepwalker, his face tormented with the fury and horror of the events of that day, his eyes red with weeping, seemed incapable of understanding what was happening. Once he turned to one of the women and said: “Go and ask Bapu what arrangements we should make.”

  History, which rejoices in irony, dictated that all the arrangements for the funeral ceremony the following day should be placed in the hands of the Defence Ministry. In this way the ceremony became the direct responsibility of an Englishman, Major General Roy Bucher, the newly appointed commander in chief. The choice was made because it was felt that there was no other official agency capable of carrying out so difficult a task. During the night it was decided that instead of taking the body to the cremation ground in a farm cart, it would be taken instead in an American Army truck, a Dodge fifteen-hundredweight weapons carrier, drawn by two hundred carefully selected men of the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force. A platform was erected on the weapons carrier, with room at the sides for important dignitaries. Lying on this platform, Gandhi would be taken through the crowded streets to the banks of the Jumna River. Four thousand soldiers, a thousand airmen, a thousand policemen, and a hundred sailors would march in front of or behind the weapons carrier, and in addition there would be a cavalry escort from the bodyguards of the Governor General. The complicated logistics of the march were worked out during the night, and to prevent incidents armored cars were placed at strategic places along the route. The Air Force would provide airplanes, which would dip their wings in salute and drop thousands of roses on the people taking part in the procession.

  Meanwhile at Birla House the chanting of the Gita around the body of Gandhi was being drowned by the sobbing and chanting outside, and it became necessary to satisfy the crowds who insisted on a last darshan, growing more and more demanding as the hours passed. It was therefore arranged that the body should be carried up on the roof of Birla House and placed in an inclined position so that it could be seen by the multitudes in the garden. An army searchlight was trained on it, the white cloth which covered him up to the chest shining silver, while the face of Gandhi glistened with an unearthly light. In much the same way the relics of a saint are sometimes elevated in the Catholic Church, so that all can see them. Flowers and coins were tossed up to the roof, and once again there was heard the note of religious frenzy and exaltation as they shouted: “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai.” At last, around midnight, the body was taken down from the roof and carried into the room where he had been lying. Rose petals were showered on him; and the smell of incense and roses was mingled with the smell of death.

  By this time the delirium had passed, and those who were gathered around him, still chanting hymns, were aware that the body had grown cold and that he was really dead. They had been living in a nightmare, unable to bring themselves to the realization that he would never speak to them again. From time to time Nehru would caress the body, gazing at it with an expression of disbelief. And once, like a child, he addressed the chanting women and said: “Sing louder! Bapu may wake up! But for all of them there was coming the moment when they knew he could not be awakened by human voices.

  That evening Nehru spoke over All-India Radio in a voice which seemed not to be his own, the hoarse and broken voice of a man who had suddenly become very old. From time to time he would pause as he struggled with his tears. He said:

  The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere and I do not quite know what to tell you and how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of our nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that. Nevertheless, we will not see him again as we have seen him these many years. We will not run to him for advice and seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow not to me only but to millions and millions in this country. And it is difficult to soften the blow by any advice that I or anyone else can give you.

  The light has gone out, I said, and yet I was wrong. For the light that shone in this country was no ordinary light. The light that has illumined this country for these many years will illumine this country for many more years, and a thousand years later that light will still be seen in this country, and the world will see it and it will give solace to innumerable hearts. For that light represented the living truth, and the eternal man was with us with his eternal truth reminding us of the right path, drawing us from error, taking this ancient country to freedom.

  All this has happened. There is so much more to do. There was so much more for him to do. We could never think that he was unnecessary or that he had done his task. But now, particularly, when we are faced with so many difficulties, his not being with us is a blow most terrible to bear.

  The blow was even more terrible for those who had to bathe the body in ice-cold water in the early hours of the morning, for it was then, in the small bathroom, some nine hours after the murder, that they saw for the first time the full extent of his wounds. They saw the smoke-powder bums on the soft wool of his Australian shawl; his dhoti and chaddar were soaked in blood; the wounds on his chest and stomach were livid. While they were unfolding the shawl the shell of a cartridge dropped to the ground. Once again they were overcome with weeping, and with difficulty carried him, clothed in a new white loincloth, back into the room. Now at last, having washed him, they prepared him for his journey to the cremation grounds.

  What followed was a kind of purification, an anointing. A vermilion mark was painted on his forehead, his rosary and a garland of hand-spun yarn were placed round his neck, and he was anointed with sandalwood paste. Near his head they wrote in rose petals the words: “Hai Rama,” and near his feet there was the sacred word OM. Having performed all the proper rites, they resumed their chanting.

  As the dawn came up, the crowds outside resumed their demand that they should have darshan. Accordingly it was arranged that for the second time he should be shown to them from the roof of the house. There for a long time the body remained, while the sun rose through heavy clouds. Death was subtly changing his features. His face looked even smaller, and the sharp outlines were growing softer.

  Then once more, for the last time, the body was brought down to the room, where the women laid claim to it, chanting and offering prayers. All the preparations for the last journey had been made during the night, and now they had only to scatter more rose petals on him. The funeral was being delayed to await the arrival of Ramdas, the third son of Gandhi, who was flying from Nagpur in the Central Provinces. Devadas was already in Delhi, where he maintained a home, and Manilal, the second son, was in South Africa. To Ramdas, his father’s favorite, would be given the task of setting fire to the funeral pyre.

  With the coming of Ramdas at eleven o’clock in the morning, there was no further reason for waiting. The body was lifted onto the weapons carrier, and the high dignitaries—Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Kripalani, Rajendra Prasad, and many others—took up their places beside the bier, standing guard, for they were the political custodians of the treasure about to be consigned to the flames. Four armored cars led the procession. Behind the armored cars came the lancers with white pennants from the Governor General’s bodyguard, and then there were more troops, and these were followed by a regiment of police and a group of Gandhi’s worke
rs—those who were attached to him from the days when he founded his first ashram and later. After these fellow workers came the weapons carrier, with Gandhi’s body now draped with the white, green and saffron flag of the new India, with Lord Mountbatten and all the great officers of state who were not already on the weapons carrier marching on foot. Because there was such a concentration of important officials, special precautions were taken for their safety. Armed police mingled with the crowds; here and there, at strategic positions, more armored cars were being stationed. The great procession resembled one of those processional triumphs which sometimes took place in ancient Rome and in the Italian cities of the Middle Ages. The exact gradations of power were measured, with every group taking its orderly place. To the military was given the honor of leading the procession, and since Gandhi in his lifetime had rarely shown any great faith in the military, there were many who wondered whether the government had acted wisely in ordering the Defence Ministry to take command of the funeral.

  The vast crowds who had gathered along the roads were in no mood to respect the military. They had come to say farewell and to have darshan, to feast their eyes on the dead Mahatma, and they crowded round the weapons carrier and slowed up the procession. From time to time a bewildered and angry Nehru would jump off the weapons carrier and remonstrate with the people, saying that they were showing disrespect for Gandhi by holding up the weapons carrier. They answered him with blank stares and moved back a little. When police officers approached Nehru and reminded him that he was placing himself in danger by mingling with the crowd, he turned on them angrily: “You could not save Bapu, could you?” His eyes were swollen with sleeplessness and grief, his cheeks were pale, and his hands fluttered nervously.

  The procession moved at a snail’s pace along Kingsway, the enormous processional avenue which stretches between the government offices and the triumphal statue of King George V, and along Hardinge Avenue and Bela Road to the Delhi Gate and the banks of the Jumna River, where the body would be cremated. The crowd roared: “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai,” while holy conch shells blared and roses fell from the low-flying Dakotas. All the while seething multitudes pressed forward to see the dark face lying on the weapons carrier. Young Indians climbed up on telegraph poles, where they perched precariously in midair, and some waded across the artificial lake around the canopied statue of King George V and clung to the statue. Incongruously, a Chinese banner waved in the procession, with words delicately patterned in silk reading: “May Mahatma Gandhi be immortal.” The banner had been provided by the Chinese ambassador, the doyen of the diplomatic corps, who asked all the Chinese living in Delhi to take part in the procession.

  India is a land of processions, but no one had ever seen a procession like this, or such vast crowds. It was not so much a great sea of people as an immense glutinous mass clogging the arteries of the city, shapeless and diffuse, so powerful that it could have pushed over anything in its path. A million people were following him to the cremation ground. They came from the nearby villages, and by train, and by airplane. From all over India they came, and a man standing on high ground could watch the crowds visibly swelling, as though people were rising through the earth. Wide-angle photographs showed crowds as solid and compact as the sands on the seashore.

  From the early morning the cremation ground had been prepared, and all the necessary materials were now gathered together. A small brick platform, twelve feet by twelve feet, had been raised. It was strewn with a fine layer of river sand, and there were scented logs of sandalwood nearby. In a zinc bucket was holy water from the Jumna River, and there was a large tin of ghee, which would later be opened with a tin-opener. Five kinds of leaves and flowers, jars of incense, coconuts, camphor, were all kept in readiness. A strong barricade had been erected at a distance of a hundred yards from the brick platform; it would be reduced to matchwood before the day was over. All morning and afternoon people had been congregating here, and some had already been injured in the crush. Ambulances were attempting to make their way through the crowds. The afternoon was cold, and a biting wind was blowing.

  At 4:20 P.M. the weapons carrier reached the cremation ground and the body was lifted on the brick platform. There it was sprinkled with holy water, the logs were carefully arranged over it, and a priest recited the sacred mantras. Most of the members of the Indian government and Lord and Lady Mountbatten sat on the grass, watching quietly. From time to time the crowd would break through the barriers guarded by a cordon of Royal Indian Air Force men, and they would be beaten back; and screams mingled with the cries of “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai.”

  Someone asked Nehru to light the funeral pyre, but he shook his head vigorously. He was white and ghostlike, and suddenly looked very frail. Ramdas Gandhi lit the pyre with flaming camphor. As the flames rose, there was a sound like an explosion, and the wind threw the flames high, while sparks scattered far and wide. The pyre was lit at 4:45 P.M., less than half an hour after the body was placed on the platform. At the moment when the flames rose, the crowd shouted the deafening cry: “Mahatmaji amar ho gae” “Mahatmaji has become immortal.”

  After the flames died down, a barbed-wire fence was erected around the platform and a military guard was stationed at the site, while hundreds kept watch during the night. At two o’clock in the morning Devadas Gandhi drove some of the ashram sisters to the cremation ground. Manubehn was among them, and she reported that flames were still licking Gandhi’s bones and the bones of his legs were clearly visible among the small flames.

  Among the many visitors who came to the cremation ground that night was Harilal Gandhi, the prodigal son. Thin and gaunt, suffering from the tuberculosis that would soon carry him off, he mingled unrecognized with the crowd, and spent the rest of the night in the house of his brother Devadas, who had always loved him and never lost faith in him. Harilal was dead less than five months later. He died in a Bombay hospital on June 19.

  There were some who wanted the bones to be housed in a great mausoleum where they would be honored through all the generations to come. Once more Pyarelal, Gandhi’s secretary, stepped forward, insisting that Gandhi had specifically objected to any memorials and wanted no special honors paid to him. It was decided that the asthis, the bones as distinguished from the ashes, should be cast into the waters at Allahabad, at the Triveni, the place where the Ganges, the Jumna and the invisible celestial river meet. The ashes were divided up and given to the governors of each province for safekeeping, and in addition small amounts of the ashes were immersed in all the sacred rivers of India.

  Thirteen days after the cremation the bones were gathered up and placed in a copper urn. A special train carried the flower-decked urn to Allahabad, stopping at the wayside stations only long enough to let the people standing on the crowded platforms have their last darshan. At Allahabad the urn was mounted on an enormous truck for the short journey from the railroad station to the river, and then it was taken down and placed on a small amphibious landing craft, with Nehru, Maulana Azad, Ramdas and Devadas Gandhi to watch over it until the bones were emptied into the river. Dakotas flew overhead, dropping roses, and soon the landing craft turned toward the shore.

  All through the funeral procession the military had been in command, and now at the very last, by some strange irony, a military vessel was used to immerse his bones in the holy rivers.

  The Inheritance

  THE MURDER of Gandhi sent shock waves around the world, for he had been larger than life and nearly as large as India. Dimly at first and then with increasing clarity people began to realize that he belonged among the kings and emperors, and that he was one of the very few people of our time who would be remembered a thousand years hence. He had conquered India and changed the landscape of the human heart. Never again would people deride the idea of non-violence, for he had planted it firmly in men’s minds, showing them how they could always prevent governments from imposing themselves too harshly on the people. To those who had lost hope he offered new hope, a
nd the memory of that small man wandering over the roads of India in search of peace was to be a perpetual reminder that peace might someday be found. Men and women who had never set eyes on India felt that they knew him well and had lost a father.

  When Gandhi died, a part of India died with him. The small man with the bright eyes and the enchanting smile towered above his compatriots; he had been more powerful than any maharajah or Viceroy. He had never occupied high office, never commanded an army, never claimed any special sanction for his words, but for nearly two generations he had been the conscience of his country, the priest-king who commanded the allegiance of his countrymen while the King-Emperor commanded only the Government of India. He cast a spell upon a whole nation and profoundly changed it by giving men a purpose in their lives. While he lived, there was a sense of heroic struggle, of fierce determination. When he died, the reins slackened, for there was no one who could speak with his authority. An age had ended, and a crown had fallen.

  During the last months of his life there were many who feared he would die by an assassin’s bullet. Gandhi himself had half expected it, speaking about his death with a strange foreknowledge, as though it were very close to him. Yet that death could ever touch him was almost beyond belief, so much had he become a part of the Indian landscape. If a whole chain of mountains had fallen into the sea, it would not have been so remarkable as his death.

  When high officers of state spoke about the murder, they were tongue-tied, incapable of anything but the formal protestations of grief. His loss was regretted, his shining example would not soon be forgotten, humanity was the poorer for his death. President Truman spoke of his “selfless struggle for the betterment of his people”; Mr. Attlee wrote that “the loss of this unique personality will be received with sorrow not only in his country but in all parts of the world”; Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek telegraphed that he was deeply grieved that “the saintly ambassador of non-violence had fallen victim to violence.” The language of official condolence is usually predictable, following a well-worn pattern, but it seemed oddly out of place in tributes to Gandhi, who had spent most of his life fighting officialdom.