ABSTRACT
Jawaharlal Nehru died on 27th May 1964. When Nehru died many millions of Indians, both rich and humble, felt that they were the poorer for his passing. His body lay in state and thousands filed past the body. Then Nehru’s body, covered with the Indian flag, was carried off on a gun-carriage to the sacred river Yamuna. The police were unable to hold back the crowds and so on his last journey Nehru was surrounded, as he had been for most of his adult life, by crowds, the people’s love, disorder, ineffectiveness and masses of colour. At the place of cremation a helicopter showered rose petals on the gun-carriage. There was the sound of muffled drums and the body was placed on the funeral pyre. Nehru’s ashes were added to those of Kamala, which he had kept in his room for twenty-eight years. They were sprinkled into the Ganges at Allahabad.
