GANDHI’S LAST FAST

 

GANDHI’S LAST FAST

SARASIJ MAJUMDER

 

 

It was not merely a co-incidence that compelled Gandhi to stay  in Delhi during September 1947. Delhi was getting ready to accommodate migrated HINDU REFUGEES mercilessly butchered and  driven out from newly formed ‘PAKISTAN’. They were  trying to get a shelter, and Muslims of Delhi came in ‘CONFLICT’.

Muslims ambushed the vehicles carrying Hindu Refugees, Supply of Ration, and other materials.  Newly formed Government failed to provide security to the HINDUS. And I can’t blame HINDUS, for this violent retaliation.

RIOT broke out.

On the 18th of September, Gandhi appealed to both the Government to maintain peace.

On October 2nd 1947, Gandhi turned seventy-eight. He lamented concluding the morning prayer, “..I am the same person whose word was honoured by the millions of the country. But today nobody listens to me…”

Gandhi’s talk at the AICC focused on religious harmony. ‘India does not belong to Hindus alone…’ he said. But he couldn’t say so to Muslim League of Pakistan. Jinnah cared two hoots for him!! Jinnah & Co.  have done what they wanted to do in Pakistan—West, and East.

In West Punjab, Hindu and Sikh girls had been captured and often forcibly converted to Islam. Some of Gandhi’s disciples, such as Mridula Sarabhai and Rameshwari Nehru, and RSS were working on restoring these girls and women to their families. They estimated that the number of abducted women was close to forty thousand or more. A large, perhaps we should say alarming and very disturbing figure.

The public mood in Delhi remained angry, and soon rioting became violent once more in the city. Gandhi further postponed his plans to visit Punjab. This was just as well, for the trouble escalated. In Mehrauli, a village on the outskirts of Delhi, there was a celebrated Sufi shrine, visited by tens of thousands of people, including Hindus and Muslims. Now the Muslims whose families had tended the shrine for hundreds of years were hounded out by a Hindu mob.

On 12th January, Gandhi informed during his prayer meeting that he was commencing a fast unto death from the next day. The recent riots more or less got contained by police and military action, but he felt there was yet a ‘…storm within the breast. It may burst forth any day’. So he had decided to go on a fast, which would end when he would be  ‘satisfied that there is a reunion of hearts of all communities brought about without any outside pressure, but from an awakened sense of duty’.

Refugee Hindus were shivering on the road, but Gandhi was concerned about Muslims.

On the morning of the 12th, he went to the Viceregal Palace to inform Mountbatten of his fast. Later, Nehru came to Birla House and sat with Gandhi for two hours. Although the stated reason for the fast was the deteriorating communal situation, it seems Gandhi was actually upset with the Government’s decision to withhold from Pakistan its share of the sterling balances owed by Britain to (undivided) India after the War. Because of Pakistan’s invasion of Kashmir, the Indian Government had delayed payment. But in Gandhi’s view of the world, financial debts to another person or entity, whether friend, enemy, or neither, had to be discharged immediately.

Industrialist Ghanshyam Das Birla had also tried to explain to Gandhi that the consequences of transferring money to Pakistan would not be good because belligerent Pakistan will use that money to buy weapons to fight against India. But Gandhi did not budge.

On the 13th, Gandhi had his usual morning meal of goat’s milk, boiled vegetables and fruit juice. Then he had a long conversation with Sarder Vallabhbhai Patel.

Mahatma Gandhi started his fast unto death on 13 January 1948 at 11:15, and then had prayers. And as it happened, this  was the last fast of his life. Outside people were raising slogans condemning him.

On the evening of 14th January, a batch of angry men arrived on bicycles at Birla House, where he was fasting,  and raised what were described as ‘communal and anti-Gandhi slogans’. Inside the house, speaking with Gandhi, were Patel, Azad, and Nehru. When the trio came out and heard the demonstrators say ‘Let Gandhi Die’, Nehru shouted: ‘How dare you say that. Come and kill me first’.

They told him that the slogans were on behalf of the Hindu refugees languishing at Delhi,  who needed food, homes, clothes, and jobs. Nehru left.

Fast continued.

Meanwhile, on 15^th January, news reached Birla House that the Government had agreed to pay the Sterling balances owed to Pakistan, as their contribution ‘to the non-violent and noble effort made by Gandhiji, in accordance with the glorious traditions of this great country, for peace and goodwill’. The Government of India had bowed to Gandhi’s blackmail. He made GOI bent on its knee to pay PAKISTAN.

Will the city of Delhi also do likewise?

On Saturday the 17th, Gandhi entered the fifth day of his fast.

Meeting Maulana Azad in the morning, Gandhi laid down seven conditions for breaking his fast.

Those were:

 1. The annual fair (the Urs) at the Khwaja Bakhtiyar shrine at Mehrauli, due in nine days’ time, should take place peacefully;

 2. The hundred odd mosques in Delhi converted into homes and temples should be restored to their original uses;

3. Muslims should be allowed to move freely around Old Delhi;

4. Non-Muslims should not object to Delhi Muslims returning to their homes from Pakistan;

5. Muslims should be allowed to travel without danger in trains;

6. There should be no economic boycott of Muslims;

7. Accommodation of Hindu refugees in Muslim areas should be done with the consent of those already in these localities.

Gandhi’s emotional blackmail worked and the then Government of India paid Rs 55 crores to Pakistan. Mahatma Gandhi ended his fast on 18 January 1948. Before that, after meeting with Dr. Rajendra Prasad, leaders of all non-Muslim religions had promised that nothing would happen to Muslims in Delhi. The Nehru government somehow wanted to end this fast, and it succeeded in that purpose.

A Hindu Brahmin was witnessing all these BLACKMAILS, exploitation of  the weakness of the newly formed Government of INDIA, and emotion of  Indian People by Mr. Gandhi. It was a blatant Muslim appeasement which Mr. Gandhi always did. The Brahmin decided to bring an end to this, even at the cost of his own life.

He achieved this 12 days later,  on 30/01/1948.  Held his  ground after firing the shots, got arrested, tried,  and delivered a ‘JABANBANDI’ for posterity.  He was subsequently hanged on November 15, 1949 at Ambala Central Jail.

I salute him for his supreme sacrifice for a just cause. Only—it could have been done  about 20 years before. 

References:--(Only a few are listed below)

1.0  Freedom by Midnight—by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre 

2.0  https://www.opindia.com/2022/01/gandhis-last-protest-gave-55-crores-to-pakistan/

3.0  HOW GANDHI’S MARTYRDOM SAVED INDIA-by Ramachandra Guha: (published in the Hindustan Times, 1st February 2015)

4.0  Those fifteen days:- Prashant Pole.

5.0  Bahuroope Gandhi—Anu Bandopadhyay.

6.0  Why I Killed Gandhi?—Nathuram Godse

7.0  Image:-- From HT. Acknowledged.