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INDIA
2/9/48
DEATH OF A
SAINT
*
With his arms round the shoulders of his
grandnieces Ava and Manu, the knobby brown
man Mahatma Gandhi, 78, shuffled weakly to
the vine-covered pergola that served as
his prayer-meeting place. A stocky young
man in gray slacks, a blue pullover and
khaki bush jacket stepped forward and
knelt at Gandhi's feet.
He was Nathu Ram Vinayak
Godse, editor of the extremist newspaper
Hindu Rashtra, which had denounced Gandhi
as an appeaser of Muslims. "You are late
today for the prayer," said the murderer.
"Yes, I am," said Gandhi.
Godse suddenly pulled out
a tiny Beretta automatic pistol. He fired
three times. One bullet ripped into
Gandhi's chest, two into his belly. With
hands folded, as if welcoming the blow, in
the gesture that is both the Hindu
greeting and the Christian attitude of
prayer, Gandhi fell backward. He murmured,
"Ai Ram, Ai Ram" (O Rama, O Rama), in
invocation to the gentle hero of the Hindu
pantheon, Gandhi's favorite. His two male
secretaries carried the bleeding Gandhi
into Birla House. He never spoke again. As
his soul seeped out, his grandniece Ava
chanted Gandhi's favorite verses from the
Bhagavad-Gita.
The event brought the
shock of recognition rather than the shock
of surprise. More forcibly than anyone
else in his age, Gandhi had asserted that
love is the law; how else should he die
but through hatred? He had feared machines
in the hands of men not wise enough to use
them, had warned against the glib, the
new, the plausible; how else should he
die, but by a pistol in the hands of a
young intellectual?
Gandhi's ashes were not cold before the
world began to vulgarize his saintliness
by insisting, against the facts, that
there was no vulgarity in him. The world
finds it hard and self-shaming to believe
that truth can be glimpsed from the earth;
its heroes must be projected into a
nebulous world of "mysticism."
The story of Gandhi's
death is best read after a glance south
from Delhi, to the place where stands a
monument, the Taj Mahal, to another dead
Indian. The great Shah Jehan built it to
immortalize the memory of his Empress's
beauty. It is man's most eloquent effort
to deny that the body and its beauty die.
It is a triumph of the mortician's art.
Some may try to raise a Taj to Gandhi. But
Gandhi's true monument will be his
story--told again and again.
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AT LAST, THE END OF AN
ANACHRONISM
JAPAN
1/14/46
DIVERSION FROM DIVINITY
*
Hirohito, Son of Heaven and
Scion of the Sun Goddess, last week denied his own
identity. "We have ... to proceed unflinchingly,"
he said, "toward elimination of misguided practices
of the past. The ties between us and our people ...
do not depend upon mere legends and myths. They are
not predicated on the false conception that the
Emperor is divine and that the Japanese people are
superior to other races and fated to rule the
world. The Emperor is not a living god."
Thus an ideological hara-kiri was
committed on the body of Shintoism. The
consequences of Hirohito's proclamation might well
be profound. With Shintoism's anachronism blasted,
the building of a new Japan could proceed with some
chance of success.
PAKISTAN
11/16/53
ISLAMIC
STATE
*
When India and Pakistan became
independent states in 1947, each inherited a
bristling minority problem. Twelve million
apprehensive Hindus stayed in Pakistan; 43 million
Muslims stayed in India. The Indian Parliament
guaranteed its minorities equality, and Prime
Minister Nehru conspicuously appointed Muslims and
Christians to his Cabinet. But Pakistan, in framing
its constitution last week, chose the dark path.
The Constituent Assembly ruled that the nation
should become "the Islamic Republic of Pakistan,"
in which: * No law that is
"repugnant to the Holy Koran" may be enacted.
* Only Muslims may serve as Chief of State.
* The State will make "the teachings of Islam known
to people."
The Hindu members of the Assembly protested, then
walked out. In India there were demands that
Muslims be subjected to similar treatment. But the
prospects of worsened relations with India worried
Pakistan's Muslim-Firsters not one bit. Pakistan
means, literally, "the Land of the Pure."
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