Word: desai
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...last-ditch attempt to stop the violence, local Congress Party leaders called in one of Gandhi's most respected followers, Morarji Desai, an ascetic, deeply religious Gujarati, who as Chief Minister of Bombay has proved himself one of India's best administrators and a likely successor to Nehru...
...Prepare My Pyre." To spike Desai's guns, Ahmedabad's students promptly called a janata, i.e., a "people's curfew," for the day he was to speak. At dawn large bands of students began to swarm through Ahmedabad's streets warning shopkeepers to close up for the day. Only people with "passes" signed by local Socialist leaders were permitted on the streets and pigtailed girls of 15 or 16 stopped pedestrians to check on their passes. By midafternoon the student curfew was almost 100% effective, and at 4:15, shortly before Desai was due to speak...
Shocked and angry. Desai declared in a strained voice: "So long as the citizens of Ahmedabad do not hear me peacefully, I shall not take food. If Gujarat is eager to cremate me, I am ready. Let it prepare my funeral pyre." Then Desai, who normally eats only one meal a day anyway, hurried off to his brother's Ahmedabad home and began fasting...
Smash, Burn, Kill. It was a moment the Communists had been preparing for, a fact well known to Chief Minister Morarji Desai of Bombay State, who is often spoken of as Nehru's heir apparent. Before dawn, on Desai's orders, police arrested 435 Communist, Socialist and United Maharashtra Party leaders. The Communists had prepared for this eventuality, too. Secretly trained alternates swiftly swung into action. At their direction, hundreds of thousands of Maharashtrian workers dropped their work and swarmed out of dockyards, textile mills and railroad shops into the streets, shouting "Death to Nehru!" The rioters blocked...
Calcutta, Too. In his house above the city, Chief Minister Desai sadly looked over burning Bombay. Desai, who is a Gujarati, had warned Nehru against dividing India by lingual groups. "Maharashtrians have made a mockery of India's preaching to the world to be nonviolent," he mourned. "If the government yields to Maharashtrian violence, democracy in India becomes mobocracy, and India will be cut to pieces...