Word: indias
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...good friend, disciple and political heir of Gandhi, India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, spoke to the nation on the radio, in quivering voice: "Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere...
...India radio broadcast Gandhi's favorites: extracts from the Gita, the Upanishads and the Koran; the Lord's Prayer; the Christian hymn, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. Then, after midnight, Gandhi's youngest son Devadas (who insisted that Gandhi be cremated, as he had wished) helped wash the body. He and Gandhi's secretary Pyarelal then wrapped the body in pure white khadi. They put a yellow paste of sandalwood and water on his face...
...Gandhi's weapon contained a measurable threat of violence in India. When Gandhi fasted, Britons sometimes dared not keep him in jail, lest a massive anger at his death in their hands engulf India. "I always get my best bargains behind prison bars," he once chuckled. When Gandhi fasted, Moslem, Hindu and Untouchable leaders had to promise to work better together, lest that anger of the masses be directed against them. No communal group, not the mighty British Raj itself, dared have Gandhi's blood on its hands...
...Could Spit . . ." With independence, Gandhi's great victory, came defeat. India, seething with fear and fanaticism, spurted blood in scores of riots. Mohamed Ali Jinnah, once a member of Gandhi's All-India Congress Party, bolted, saying that the Congress was an instrument to impose Hindu rule on India's Moslem minority. With a notably unmystical metaphor, Gandhi said: "If we Indians could only spit in unison, we would form a puddle big enough to drown 300,000 Englishmen." But Jinnah refused to spit in unison with Hindus, for any cause. He demanded, and got, his separate...
Lone Voice. Independence without unity was as ashes in Gandhi's mouth. He continued to work for the reunion of Pakistan with India. But in the last half year of his life Gandhi found not only the Moslem leader, but many of his own Hindus, opposing attempts at reconciliation. Orthodox Hindus resented his inroads on Hindu customs which Gandhi considered brutal, and therefore indefensible: untouchability, suttee (widow suicide), child marriages. Hindu and Sikh refugees from Moslem hate and murder, pouring into Delhi and other Indian cities, clamored for revenge. The militant Hindu organization Mahasabha (Great Society), to which Gandhi...