Worshipping False Gods by Arun Shourie

Author:Arun Shourie [Shourie, Arun]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789350293430
Amazon: 9350293439
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-07-26T18:30:00+00:00

There was nothing heroic about it [the fast unto death by which Gandhiji sought to get the British government to take back its Communal Award]. It was the opposite of heroic. It was an adventure. It was launched by Mr. Gandhi because he believed that both the Untouchables and the British Government would quake before his threat of fast unto death, and surrender to his demand. Both were prepared to call off his bluff and as a matter of fact did call it off. All his heroism vanished the moment Mr. Gandhi found that he had overdone the trick. The man who had started by saying that he would fast unto death unless the safeguards to the Untouchables were completely withdrawn and the Untouchables reduced to the condition of utter helplessness without rights and without recognition was plaintively pleading ‘My life is in your hands, will you save me?’ Mr. Gandhi’s over-impatience to sign the Poona Pact—though it did not cancel the Prime Minister’s Award as he had demanded but only substituted another and a different system of constituent safeguards—is the strongest evidence that the hero had lost his courage and was anxious to save his face and anyhow save his life.

There was nothing noble in the fast. It was a foul and filthy act. The fast was not for the benefit of the Untouchables. It was against them and was the worst form of coercion against a helpless people to give up the constitutional safeguards of which they had become possessed under the Prime Minister’s Award and agree to live on the mercy of the Hindus. It was a vile and wicked act. How can the Untouchables regard such a man as honest and sincere?¹⁹

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