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."