Even eating came in for some serious stick: “Taking food is as dirty an act as answering the call of nature”.145 Would a person who was starving think of eating as a ‘dirty act’? Gandhi always said that he wanted to live like the poorest of the poor. The question is, can poverty be simulated? Poverty, after all, is not just a question of having no money or no possessions. Poverty is about having no power. As a politician, it was Gandhi’s business to accumulate power, which he did effectively. Satyagraha wouldn’t have worked, even as much as it did, if it wasn’t for his star power. If you are
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