The earthquake in India's western Gujarat state has kept visitors away from Mahatma Gandhi's Ahmedabad headquarters, which were shrouded in silence on the anniversary of his death yesterday.
Sabarmati Ashram, a hermitage set up by the independence leader on the banks of the Sabarmati river in Gujarat's main city Ahmedabad in 1915, has in the past been thronged with visitors on the day that Gandhi was killed 53 years ago.
But yesterday, only about a dozen people gathered at the cluster of small wooden huts to pray for victims of Friday's quake which killed an estimated 20,000 people and flattened homes across the industrial state of Gujarat.
Gandhi's home at the hermitage, which has been made into a museum, developed deep cracks after the quake, but his personal belongings, including his wooden sandals and ceramic bowls, were not damaged, ashram officials said. The hermitage was set up by Gandhi on his return from South Africa in 1915. The champion of non-violence lived there until 1930 when he left for a historic march to the coastal village of Dandi to make salt in defiance of a British tax on the commodity.