Gandhi undertook a fast unto death to force the hands of the Government of India by way of giving Pakistan its due amount of 55 crore rupees at a time when the latter had invaded Indian territory in Kashmir. However, when Jinnah, Nehru and Mountbatten had earlier made common cause to partition the motherland, Gandhi was wary enough to avoid giving them the ultimatum of a fast unto death for he knew for certain that his truth at last would be kept, after a life of false promises and resolves, in the teeth of Jinnah's total unconcern for his would-be-death. The wily politician realised the futility of his fast this time for he was sure he would fail to achieve his objective through emotional blackmailing of the Muslim League and would only in the bargain lose his dear life.
When Jatin Das had undertaken a fast unto death, he had carried it out manfully till he perished after 63 days. Not so with Gandhi. He was careful when to fast and when not to, always weighing the probability of his possible death or survival and the likelihood of attainment of his pertinent political objective through his effeminate means of application of psychological pressure on the affected parties. Gandhi was manipulative even in his apparently noble --- though never really so --- endeavours such as the sacrifice of fasting for freedom and made every prior arrangement as cited above to see to it that he survived the ordeal. Thus, he never succumbed in the final analysis to his fasts unto death for they were never conducted to that end ever.
Where Gandhi really could have undertaken a fast unto death and suffered martyrdom for his principled opposition to Partition and, thus, saved the nation from dismemberment, he shied away from the challenge, meekly giving in to the amputation of the limbs of the motherland while offering lip-service of disagreement with the entire episode that has scarred the history of the sub-continent now for over seven decades.
That much for the Mahatma's courage of conviction and that much for his being dubbed by Netaji, in folly or out of pragmatic consideration to unite India against the British, 'The Father of the Nation', for, indeed, he emerged at the end of the holocaust the father of the newly-born Pakistan whose existence, had he acted upon the advice of Subhas Chandra Bose in time, he could have aborted but for whose rights he feigned to fast unto death a final time once the pernicious child had been delivered unto the world to spread the tyranny of terror. The rest is history.
When Jatin Das had undertaken a fast unto death, he had carried it out manfully till he perished after 63 days. Not so with Gandhi. He was careful when to fast and when not to, always weighing the probability of his possible death or survival and the likelihood of attainment of his pertinent political objective through his effeminate means of application of psychological pressure on the affected parties. Gandhi was manipulative even in his apparently noble --- though never really so --- endeavours such as the sacrifice of fasting for freedom and made every prior arrangement as cited above to see to it that he survived the ordeal. Thus, he never succumbed in the final analysis to his fasts unto death for they were never conducted to that end ever.
Where Gandhi really could have undertaken a fast unto death and suffered martyrdom for his principled opposition to Partition and, thus, saved the nation from dismemberment, he shied away from the challenge, meekly giving in to the amputation of the limbs of the motherland while offering lip-service of disagreement with the entire episode that has scarred the history of the sub-continent now for over seven decades.
That much for the Mahatma's courage of conviction and that much for his being dubbed by Netaji, in folly or out of pragmatic consideration to unite India against the British, 'The Father of the Nation', for, indeed, he emerged at the end of the holocaust the father of the newly-born Pakistan whose existence, had he acted upon the advice of Subhas Chandra Bose in time, he could have aborted but for whose rights he feigned to fast unto death a final time once the pernicious child had been delivered unto the world to spread the tyranny of terror. The rest is history.
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