Word: sadhus
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...join-the muddy Ganges, the blue Jumna, and the Saraswati, which, according to Hindu legend, wells up from underground. At the Triveni Sangam (Meeting of the Three Rivers) last week, a tumultuous tent city had grown up, peopled by 3,000,000 Hindus. By thousands of fires, breech-clouted sadhus (holy men) chanted Vedic hymns. Around the clock a clangor of raucous songs mingled with hymns, flutes with elephant bells, caterwauls with the keening of sacred recitations. The millions had come for the religious festival of Ardh Kumbh Mela, to revel and to bathe where the sacred rivers meet...
...were alarmed. Holy India was going to be divided. Worse, the Indian Government had taken steps to break down untouchability and other extreme outgrowths of Hinduism. So, from all over India, the holy men trudged to Delhi, set up camp along the bank of the Jumna River. There the sadhus huddled around holy fires and chanted appeals to the Universal Force "to save earth's children from destruction." In groups they picketed the Parliamentary Rotunda (where the Constituent Assembly was meeting), Cabinet ministers' homes, the Government Secretariat. They shouted slogans: "Absolute Good unto All," "Cow Slaughter Must...
...Martyr's Grave. By week's end, the 600 sadhus who had gathered on the Jumna's banks had a martyr,* if not a program for India. Swami Krishnanandji, like many another holy picketer, had been taken to jail. The police took away his trishool (5-ft. wooden staff with three points, known as the "stick of righteousness"), without which no sadhu can take food. So Krishnanandji went on a hunger strike. The police released him, but too late. He trudged wearily back to the sadhu camp. The next day, while a score of fellow ascetics chanted...
...holy men. Instead they piled demonstrators into a van (although many holy men had vowed always to walk and never to ride on wheels), drove them 20 or 30 miles out into the country. Some wondered if even a Jinnah would show the single-minded stubbornness of the sadhus; many of them plodded back to Delhi through the blistering heat (113°), chanting "Good understanding among all living beings...