Page 109 - GANDHI A Biography for Children and Beginners

GANDHI – A Biography for children and beginners

The Hindus in Bihar vied with the Muslims of Noakhali in repudiating the values

of humanness and mutual love that had characterized and sustained Indian

society for centuries. They descended to levels that would have shamed the
most barbarous tribes and animals.

Gandhi 'had reached Calcutta on his way to Noakhali, when reports of the Bihar

outrage reached him. He was overcome with sorrow and shame. What was
happening to India which had set an example to the world in tolerance and

mutual love? What had happened to all the lessons that people had learnt:

about the power of love and Satyagraha? Were we destined to destroy each
other in fratricidal strife and kill each other as animals, or even as animals will

not do? He had special affection for Bihar. It was there that he had started his

first Satyagraha in India and served the exploited, starving people. He decided

to live on "the lowest diet possible" a semi-fast, and announced that he would
go on a fast unto death, if the people of Bihar did not immediately halt the

madness and turn a new leaf. Gandhi's semi-fast and the timely measures taken

by the Government had their effect, and the madness abated in Bihar.

Gandhi proceeded to Noakhali. He wanted to go alone. But a Minister and

Parliamentary Secretaries of the Government of Bengal accompanied him. He

had to travel by train and car and boat. He was almost besieged by people who
had flocked for his darshan.

As Gandhi approached Noakhali he saw the havoc that communal madness had

wrought, — the charred remains of houses, the skulls and skeletons that were
strewn beside huts and houses; the vacant and lifeless looks of women whose

honour and self- respect had been looted, the living dead who were haunting

the villages that had become charnel grounds. They had seen their husbands or

children or fathers being butchered before them. Men had seen their mothers
or wives or sisters being raped before being killed. Gandhi did not know how to

console them. Who could give back to them what they had lost forever? Gandhi

said that he had not come to console, but to give courage. He would stay with
them. No, he would stay alone in the hut of any Muslim who would house him,

living on whatever he could get to eat, sleeping on the mud floor, at the mercy

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