The Epic Fast (2/4)
(Previous posts can be found here: background, prologue, part 1)
As Gandhi continued his fast in Yerwada Prison, the British relaxed the usual restrictions for prisoners. On the second day, he was moved from his cell to a courtyard, where he rested in the shade of a mango tree. Sarojini Nadiu was allowed to join him; she appointed herself bodyguard, acting as a buffer between Gandhi and the visitors who spilled into the yard.
On September 22, 1932, his wife Kasturba arrived. She’d been incarcerated elsewhere, but the British had opened the gates of her prison so she could be by her husband’s side for what were widely expected to be his final days. She was not impressed by all the commotion. “Same old story,” Kasturba chided him. Still, he was happy to see her.
What was on Gandhi’s mind, though, wasn’t prison gates. It was temple gates.
As an American, it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the concept that Hindu temples dated back thousands of years. When I served in the legislature, the marble stairs in the State House showed signs of wear, a mere two hundred years after it was built. For thousands of years, so-called “untouchables” had been barred from temples.
Until Gandhi’s fast began.
His intention, he wrote, was to “sting the Hindu conscience into right religious action.” Thus spurred, hundreds of Hindu temples threw open their doors to all for the first time. High-caste Hindus publicly accepted food and drink from Dalits. Anyone who wanted to drink from community wells were welcomed. It was a dramatic upheaval. Seven Mumbai temples held a referendum; the vote was 24,797 in favor of admitting Dalits to 445 opposed. “A spirit of reform, penance, and self-purification swept the land,” wrote biographer Louis Fischer.1
B.R. Ambedkar felt pressure to negotiate over the separate electorates, but the pressure was just as great on orthodox Hindus. How could they live with themselves if the Mahatma died because of their continued insistence on discrimination? His fast prompted deep soul searching, and as he believed, what was found was good. Where discrimination had been a time-honored tradition just a week earlier, now it was horribly out of fashion.
I’m reminded of MLK’s comment about civil rights legislation. The law couldn’t make a man love him, but it could stop a man from lynching him. To me, that summarizes the difference between Ambedkar’s strategy and Gandhi’s. Laws could address Hindu behavior, but it couldn’t make them want to change the way they treated the Dalits. For Gandhi, the means determined the ends. Love was the end goal, so love must be the means as well.
Despite the wave of reform that was sweeping the subcontinent, there was still no resolution to the question of separate electorates. Gandhi, who only weighed about 100 pounds, continued his fast.
What has spurred your conscience to change your behavior?
The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (Louis Fischer, 1983 paperback) p. 319