Word: desai
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Niqht Call from Delhi. While Desai fasted, his supporters gradually rallied. In Ahmedabad's 66 mills 120,000 workers who had kept apart from the rioting started each day with a prayer for the Chief Minister's success. In Bombay his well-wishers formed huge lines at the telegraph office. And from New Delhi Prime Minister Nehru called nightly to inquire after Desai's health...
With his only nourishment a glass of bicarbonate of soda every 24 hours, Desai within a week had lost 8½ Ibs. He was, announced the eight doctors who hovered over him, "extremely weak." At week's end, on the urging of 40 leading citizens of Ahmedabad, who assured him that the people would now listen with respect, Desai took his first nourishment in eight days-a glass of orange juice-and once again tried to make his speech. The leading citizens turned out to be sadly mistaken. While Desai spoke, a surly, milling crowd of 1,000 Gujaratis...
...Great Debate. Meanwhile, all India had gravely debated whether Desai's fast was in the true Gandhian tradition. Gandhi, who stoutly maintained that his own methods of fasting were "noncoercive," regarded fasting as a form of self-sacrifice and renunciation so extreme that it astounded one's opponents and led them to reconsider their own attitudes. "Fasting for the sake of personal gain is nothing short of intimidation," said Gandhi. "I fasted to reform those who love me ... you cannot fast against a tyrant...
Some Indians argued that Desai's objective-"to make people attend a speech"-did not involve an issue "important enough for a fast." Others suspected that it had an unworthy political purpose: to reestablish Desai's threatened leadership of the Gujarati people...
What few Indians cared to recognize, however, was that both the student curfew and Desai's fast represented a dangerous retrogression in Indian politics. In Gandhi's day, soul force and fasting were directed against an alien government. Today India's mobs are using soul force (and physical force) in an attempt to overturn decisions of their own Parliament, and Indian leaders who fast to assert their power are countering with another perversion of Gandhi's legacy...