ABSTRACT
After the ‘success’ of his fast unto death in Delhi, as on earlier occasions, the aged Gandhi’s desire to live on and serve returned; this time, unlike earlier, not only for 125 years but with an added eight years, for 133 years. An opponent of government control and rationing who had cautioned the country against the dangers of the ‘permit raj’, Gandhi would not have seen the good of the people in Nehru’s socialistic system. The stench spreading within the Congress and across the country was choking him. Besides, the possibility of Gandhi’s ahimsa being workable in today’s circumstances is even less than what it was in Mandela’s times. Having traversed the crooked path of falsehood, trickery, Machiavellian diplomacy and violence for millennia, people have started thinking of it as the only way possible. It was not without reason that Nehru’s concern at the first glimpse of power was if people like him would make successful politicians.
