“We found your number in Gandhi’s diary. He was hit by a car near the highway and he died,” B. Krishnaiah, a ration shop owner and political activist, told me on the phone around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, December 9.
I had written a story about Gangappa for PARI in May 2017. He was around 83 years old then. After 70 years as an agricultural labourer, he had refashioned himself as the Mahatma – dressing up as Gandhi and positioning himself in public places across Anantapur town in western Andhra Pradesh. The alms he received amounted to a better income than what he had earned from agricultural labour.
That a frail man can like Gandhi could shake an empire and bring it down inspired Gangappa when he was a child, he had said. He believed travelling and patience were essential to being Gandhi. And by being on the move and constantly meeting new people, Gangappa also tried to escape a reality that haunted him through his life – his Dalit (Madiga) caste.
When I first met Gangappa, he asked me to not write about his caste because he was sleeping at night at a temple in Anantapur, where he had not told anyone he was from a Dalit community. Even when dressed up as Gandhi, he used religious symbols like a sacred thread and kumkum to try and look ‘priestly’.
No one could identify the car that knocked down the frail old man.
— source ruralindiaonline.org | Rahul M. | May 12, 2022