"I have described Jawaharlal as the

uncrowned king," Gandhi told his

prayer meeting on June 3. Yet India
remained "a poor nation," so poor, as
he put it, that its elected leaders should
walk rather than ride in cars. "One
who lives in a palace cannot rule the
Government."5 He said it directly to
[ 237 ]
w
Gandhi's Passion
Nehru as well, every time they met, urging
him and Patel to turn New
Delhi's palatial homes and grand office
buildings into hostels for homeless
refugees, moving themselves into Harijan
quarters, such as he occupied, or
peasant huts. But none of Delhi's rulers
listened any longer to the "ravings"
of an old "fool," though not so long before
most of them had considered
him a "saint." "Corruption is rampant
among the civil servants," Gandhi
charged, and ministers of state were
"surrounded by wicked persons whom
they are not able to control," all of which

1
left inadequate food supplies for
the starving, no housing for naked
refugees, and violence and "rot"
throughout Delhi. Some old friends,
seeing how disgusted and distressed
Gandhi was, urged him to launch
Satyagraha against Nehru's Raj, but he
refused to lead any mass movement
against the Congress he once resurrected
and long led. "I would not carry on any
agitation against that institution."
6
He continued to be challenged at prayer
meetings, urged to leave Delhi,
to retreat as a true Sadhu (wise man)
should to any cave in the Himalayas.
He still hoped with the sublimated powers
of his sexual restraint to prevail
in his last valiant sacrificial effort to save
Mother India from vivisection.
"A perfect brahmachari never loses his
vital fluid," Gandhi explained, reiterating
ancient Hindu yogic philosophical faith in
the magic powers of
male seminal "golden" fluids, life-
prolonging as well as life-generating,

2
allowing
him to "never become old in the accepted
sense. . . . [I]ntellect will
never be dimmed."7
Gandhi felt that nothing he told Nehru was
now acceptable to his
former political disciple. "The more I
contemplate the differences in outlook
and opinion between the members of the
W. C. and me," he wrote Jawaharlal,
"I feel that my presence is unnecessary
even if it is not detrimental
to the cause we all have at heart. May I
not go back to Bihar in two or
three days."8 As the death tolls mounted
east and west of Delhi his sense of
failure intensified. "There is no miracle
except love and non-violence which
can drive out the poison of hatred,"
Gandhi told all pilgrims who attended
his evening prayer meetings. "I have faith
that in time to come India will pit
that against the threat of destruction which
the world has invited upon itself
by the invention of the atom bomb."9
To Mira, far away in her ashram in

3
Uttarkashi, he regretfully wrote
that "mine is a voice in the wilderness. Or
could it be that I am growing too
old and therefore losing my grip over
things?"10 To beloved Manu, he admitted,
"If I did not feel unhappy I would be a
person with a heart of
stone."11 Abha joined them in Delhi that
July, though she, like Manu, had
been quite sick. Gandhi loved to nurse his
"daughters" back to health, administering
mud-packs and enema nature cures
himself, precisely monitoring
their daily diets and hours of sleep.
Despite his loving care, however,
Manu ran so high a fever from
appendicitis that he finally agreed to allow
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Freedom's Wooden Loaf
surgery, which saved her life, even as it
had his own. Surrender to surgical
aid, however, always left him feeling
"defeated," impotent, and angry. He
castigated himself for still getting so angry
as to "scold" Manu. "He who
has conquered anger has achieved a

4
great victory in life."12
The Indian Independence Act passed
through Britain's Parliament on
July 17, 1947. It authorized the partition of
British India along boundary
lines to be drawn by a commission of
Hindu and Muslim jurists, chaired by
Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a London barrister.
Radcliffe had never seen India before
and would never dare to return there after
carving out two new borders,
one through the middle of Punjab, the
other through the heart of Bengal.
Mountbatten asked Gandhi to undertake a
mission to Kashmir, which
Nehru was so eager to do himself that the
viceroy and Patel feared their impulsive
prime minister would get arrested by
yelling at the Maharaja of
Kashmir before he officially took charge of
India's dominion in New Delhi.
Gandhi could not refuse a request to
undertake a mission from the viceroy
as well as from Princely States' Minister
Sardar Patel. His doctors advised
Gandhi not to take sick Manu along, but

5
he felt certain that Kashmir's cool
climate would "benefit her," as would
close proximity to himself. "Even in
her sleep she is often heard muttering,
beseeching me not to leave her behind.
. . . How then can I leave her here."13 So
they went up together in
early August, Gandhi determined to head
directly east again after completing
his delicate mission in Srinagar to try to
convince the Maharaja of
Kashmir to accede to India, and first to
release Sheikh Abdullah from
prison. He failed on both points.
"I am not going to suggest to the Maharaja