Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948

by Ramachandra Guha

Talbot went to Noakhali in early February 1947. He followed the Mahatma around from village to village, writing that ‘the Gandhi march is an astonishing sight’. It began just before dawn, with Gandhi setting off on the road, accompanied by a party of about a dozen aides, among them a ‘Sikh attendant who fawns as much as Gandhi permits’. Then, as the sun began to climb, peasants from hamlets on the way came along, ‘swelling the crowds as the snows swell India’s rivers in spring’. They joined in the singing of hymns of prayer and of peace. The peasants pressed in on Gandhi, men and women, young and old, and many children too. ‘Here, if I ever saw one,’ wrote the American journalist, ‘is a pilgrimage. Here is the Indian and the world’s—idea of sainthood: a little old man who has renounced personal possessions, walking with bare feet on the cold earth in search of a great human ideal.’