Mohandas Karamchand GandhiThe Portent

Touched to the quick by Gandhiji's ordeal, India gave the 55 crore cheque toPakistan which it had withheld. This and Gandhiji's solicitude for the Muslim minority, part of his broad humanity, roused fanatical Hindu hatred. At an evening prayer, on January 20, a bomb exploded, damaging a wall. The would be assassin was arrested, but released at Gandhiji's insistence. Gandhiji would have no security measures around and on the prayer ground. The Final Act January 30 1948: the evening temple bell and the mezzin's voice call the faithful to prayer. Bapu wends his way to the prayer ground. A man steps forward, pretending to offer obeisance. Gandhiji salutes him. Three shots ring out. Bapu falls, still smiling, with the words "Hey Ram" on his lips. They take him into the house. The light that led India for decades is extinguished, Nehru broadcasts. A gloom darker than darkness descends on the world.   The World Mourns They Kept the last vigil over the mortal remains of a man who had shed the fear of death and defied all vigilance to protect him. Tired of fraternal strife, where brother killed brother he had invited death as a long lost friend. It had come, making of him a martyr, the like of whom the world sees once in ages. The United Nations lowered its flag.    The Last Journey They carried him through a million-strong crowd of weeping men, women and children. To all of them he was Bapu, father, in an almost personal way. He had so long dominated the country's landscape and life that he was part of it, and it was impossible to think of them without his uplifting, elevating benevolent presence. To the world at large India was always the land of Gandhi. "Bapu Amar Hogaye" He was laid on pyre of sandalwood and roses. But little did he need their fragrance whose own aroma would persist till the end of time as the world's gentlest, kindliest leader of men whose sanction was only love. High and low, royalty and commoner grieved as the flames consumed the earthly tabernacle of great soul. And none more disconsolate and orphaned than his political heir, Jawaharlal Nehru. The Holy Ashes They gathered the ashes and filled urns with them and carried them in procession. Thousands filed past showering flowers on the ashes of one who, in life, had wanted none of them, refusing all adoration and honours. He claimed to be no more than the least among them, made of the same flesh and blood. Yet he had a spark of divinity that distinguished him from all the rest.    To the Sangam The urns were transported over thousands of miles covering the land, as in life he had done in countless journeys to his people, his tireless feet worn out in the pilgrimage of their service. And wherever the flower bedecked train halted, once again the multitudes teemed in as they had done before, shouting "Mahatma Gandhi Ki Jai". Consignment to Holy Waters And at Prayag, the confluence to Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati, the Triveni, Jawaharlal Nehru and Devdas Gandhi consigned to the holy waters the ashes which rendered them holier still. And so the ancient tradition of the last Teerthan Sanskar, speeding the soul to Moksha, was completed for a man who saw and sought no Moksha except in the salvation of people. The World's Homage And at Rajghat men and women of all nations came to pay their silent homage to a man who was no royalty, whose universal mind went out across narrow barriers of race and country, who belonged to no single nation though they in India called him the Father of the Nation, who stood for all mankind and all that was noble in the human spirit. And they planted the saplings of plants and trees from all climes. "Let the winds of all cultures blow around me", he had said. Rajghat And over the simple earthen mound where his body had rested on its last bed and where the ashes had mingled with the elements of the earth, the men whom he had led to freedom in the unique bloodless way, paid homage to the Master; scattering flowers. Chanting the hymns of all religions to him whose highest religion was the love of man. The Mausoleum He had believed not in palaces and mansions; he had lived among the hovels of the lowliest and the lost. He had wanted no statues, no memorials built to him. He little needed homage and hallelujahs. And yet they built around the little earth of his cremation, a Mausoleum.