The Fast

The bright light of a newly risen full moon sprinkled the steps of the temple Lakshmi Narain Mandir at Delhi. The temple bells clanged loud & long. Before the shrine stood a priest in a massive turban and with the holy mark gleaming on his forehead. The bells and the drums and cymbals ceased their clamor. Gently moving his hands, the priest led the congregation in a song. Offerings of flowers and sweets on brass plates were made to the deities. Then began a prayer for the life of a scrawny little man, toothless, moneyless, helpless Mohandas Gandhi.

Almost in whispers, the people prayed.

The prayer for Gandhi in the temple at Delhi was only part of a vast and tragic sense of gloom that engulfed India. In the fields the peasants laid aside their wooden plows. In mud-hut villages and princely palaces the talk was of Gandhi. Only the unbending British Raj would be blamed by millions of Indians if Gandhi died inside the guarded Palace of the Aga Khan at Poona.

Death & Decency. Each morning the Mahatma (Great Soul) was wheeled on his bed to a palace bathroom to be shaved and washed. He was massaged twice daily, had mud packs placed on his head. He was given occasional enemas. At the age of 74, in a land where life expectancy is only 27, Gandhi after twelve days of his intended 21-day fast was sinking rapidly. Said an Indian physician, Dr. B. C. Roy: "Only a miracle" could see him through. During the first days he took only citrus juice and water. Midway through his ordeal the act of drinking water exhausted him. A panel of nine doctors announced that Gandhi's "uremic condition deepens and if his fast is not ended without delay it may be too late to save his life." He was too far gone for blood transfusions or glucose injections to be of help. Government bulletins prepared Indians for news of his death. Only a body and a will that have survived a lifetime of fasts and jailings kept Gandhi alive.

Crowds gathered outside the Palace each day, peeping through the grilled gates to the sunburned lawns and neglected flower beds. They caught no glimpse of Gandhi but they felt closer to him. Other Gandhi followers, disavowing the Mahatma's creed of nonviolence, rioted, stoned police, burned state buildings. These uprisings increased as the fast progressed, threatened to disrupt a stable wartime economy on which both British and American armed forces are dependent. But the Raj was prepared to meet this type of unrest. The only effective weapon left to Gandhi's badly battered Congress party was a fast. Sir Reginald Maxwell, Home Member of the Viceroy's council, called it "repugnant to Western ideas of decency."

Saint & Sinner. In the minds of the mystical Indian people, Gandhi was a symbol of the fight for freedom, of the long struggle to throw off British rule. In the terms of Hindu philosophy, Gandhi was a man of peace who was offering his life to atone for the failings of his followers and, as a result, may be immortalized.

The political side of the problem Gandhi stated to the Marquess of Linlithgow in a recent exchange of letters: "If I don't survive the ordeal I shall go to the judgment seat with the fullest faith in my innocence. Posterity will judge between you as the representative of an all-powerful Government and me as the humble man who tried to serve his country and humanity through it."

This was not altogether fair to the fair-playing, liberty-loving Britons in England. But in India the British people were no longer differentiated from the British Raj. Indian scorn included Americans as allies of the British, despite a faint hope that the U.S. might still intervene.

Power & Justice. The British case against Gandhi was based on the Western interpretation of pragmatic justice. To the British, Gandhi was guilty of calling for a civil-disobedience campaign last August which set off a mass outburst. Lord Linlithgow held Gandhi legally responsible for the deaths that had occurred, the damage done. In the Viceroy's words, Gandhi's fast was "political blackmail"; as such it was Gandhi's "sole responsibility." This was the official British view. Any weakening of this position, setting Gandhi free--and thus permitting him to break his fast --would be an admission that the British were wrong. If the British stuck to their point (and Gandhi died) the result might be an immediate cataclysm. Or it might be the slower, perhaps more disastrous culmination of hate and anger.

Convinced that the Western mind cannot or will not attempt to understand the East, India's leading political figures (excluding those in jail), industrial tycoons and Europeans met at Delhi within a stone's throw of the Maharaja's palace now occupied by William Phillips, the Boston Brahman who is President Roosevelt's personal envoy to India.* Chakravarthi Rajagopalachariar, who broke with Gandhi over the civil-disobedience issue, spoke eloquently of Gandhi's leadership, kindliness, love of freedom. Even the two Chambers of Princes and most Moslem groups (with the exception of loudmouthed Mohammed Ali Jinnah's Moslem League) joined the cry.

The Eleventh Hour. A message from the Viceroy reiterating that "if he (Gandhi) fasts while in detention, he does so solely ... at his own risk" chilled all hopes for compromise. Rajagopalachariar visited Phillips but came away convinced that the Americans can do nothing.

Between Gandhi's will and that of the Viceroy the final clash had come. Like a Greek tragedy the action moved inexorably toward the climax. A frail little bag of bones had decided he would drink only fruit juice for three weeks, and the whole British Empire quivered. A world that uses and more than half believes in force watched the struggle with divided sympathies and a strange sense of shame.

* Japan, delighted with Britain's embarrassment, declared a "Mahatma Gandhi Week" in all occupied territories in the East.

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