The Epic Fast (4/4)

September 26, 2024

(Previous posts can be found here: background, prologue, part 1, part 2, part 3)

After the Yerwada Pact was signed, its contents were cabled to London. Would the British be willing to change their plans? The prime minister was out of town for a funeral, but promptly returned to the capital when he learned an agreement had been reached. After studying it until midnight, he deemed it acceptable, and the full cabinet agreed the next day.

A celebratory photo outside the prison after the pact was signed. (Image via Wikimedia)

On the morning of the seventh day of Gandhi’s fast, the doctors pronounced him in “the danger zone.” His weight was 93-1/2 pounds; with no fat to burn, he was cannibalizing muscle. It had been 148 hours since Gandhi’s last meal of lemon juice and honey when the Inspector General of Prisons personally delivered the official approval from London.

Gandhi reviewed it, but had reservations. Perhaps another round of discussions could improve the product? Everyone cautioned him against the delay, and “he agreed, although with misgivings, to break the fast.”¹

The prison yard was sprinkled with water to ease the dust, and some 200 people gathered for the ceremony. After hymns were sung, Kasturba brought him a glass of orange juice. Gandhi’s weight didn’t get back over 100 pounds until October, and it took another month before his health had fully returned.

But it had been worth it. Despite the pain and suffering, he wrote, “God was never nearer to me than during the fast.”² Over those seven days, India had been transformed. Dalits were treated with higher regard than they had been for 3,000 years. His stated goal was to “sting the Hindu conscience into right action,” and he absolutely succeeded.

At least temporarily.

Soon, things returned to the old ways. Temples were purified and closed to Dalits again. Writing in the 1940s, Louis Fischer was happy to conclude that “Gandhi’s ‘Epic Fast’ snapped a long chain that stretched back into antiquity …. nobody would link the links together again. The future promised freedom.”³ Even though it didn’t work out that way, it was absolutely an experiment worth trying. As Fischer observes, “The real reform was religious and social, not political.”⁴

Years later, B.R. Ambedkar (who converted to Buddhism in 1956) criticized the outcome, even writing a book, What Gandhi and the National Congress have Done to Untouchables. But at the time, he expressed satisfaction, telling an audience, “I was surprised … there was so much in common between him [Gandhi] and me.”⁵ He even told Gandhi directly, “you would become our hero,” if he dedicated himself to improving the status of Dalits.⁶

Gandhi accepted the challenge… but that’s another story.

What’s a bad habit that you put down and then picked up again?

1. The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi (Robert Payne, 1969) p. 446

2. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Letter to Horace Alexander, October 4, 1932) p. 27,718

3. The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (Louis Fischer, 1983 paperback) p. 320

4. Ibid.

5. Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World (Ramachandra Guha, 2018) p. 422

6. Gandhi: The Man, The Empire, and his People (Rajmohan Gandhi, 2008) p. 349