A final fast
January 13, 2024
Occasionally, on days like today, I run into a problem where there are multiple events in different years. I had planned to write about how Gandhi was almost lynched on January 13, 1896, after the “European Protection Assosiation” objected to his ship landing in South Africa. (Biographer Ramachandra Guha calls this “far more important than the insult in Pietermaritzburg,” and I disagree with him.) But, for lack of time, I will recycle a lightly edited version of last year’s post—now, with 300% more hyperlinks! Tune in next year for more on the near lynching.
Seventy-six years ago today, Mohandas Gandhi began his final fast. It was an indefinite fast, a fast to the death, and sure enough, 17 days later, he would take his last breath.
His decades of work toward a free and independent India had come to an end, but not the way he’d imagined. Instead, as the British left, they acceded to the demands of M.A. Jinnah for a separate Muslim nation, carving the subcontinent into three pieces; Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh,1
Imagine the United States, broken up as part of a “national divorce.” Red states make up the center and the largest section, with blue states grouped on the east and west coasts. It might seem logical for a few seconds, until one realizes that states are composed of individual people, and such a division would leave millions and millions of families on the wrong side of the new borders.
Gandhi was in New Delhi, the capital of India, and it was a city in crisis. Trainloads of Hindus and Sikhs poured in daily from Pakistan, and Muslim shrines and mosques were gutted to house the new arrivals. Across the country, caravans as long as fifty miles formed as millions fled on foot with whatever possessions they could carry. The two-way traffic often came into conflict, resulting in brutal violence and senseless killings.
It was too much to bear. At his evening prayer meeting on January 12, Gandhi announced he would be starting a fast the next day. The 78-year-old’s efforts had produced peace in Kolkata the previous September, in the first critical weeks after Partition, but the violence between the different religions had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the meantime. Could calmer heads still prevail?
Gandhi believed all humans possessed an inherent ability for self-improvement, and was willing to gamble his life—again—on this belief. After five days, he would be proven correct. As an additional challenge this month, I’ll be commemorating Gandhi’s final fast with a five-day fast of my own.
What would you do if America was partitioned into red states and blue states?