page_title: Mahadev Desai
section_title: Death and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Mahadev Desai / Death and legacy
caption_attribution_description: w:Harijan
context_page_description: Mahadev Desai was an Indian independence activist and writer best remembered as Mahatma Gandhi's personal secretary. He has variously been described as "Gandhi's Boswell, a Plato to Gandhi's Socrates, as well as an Ananda to Gandhi's Buddha".
context_section_description: Aged 50, Mahadev Desai died of a heart attack on the morning of 15 August 1942 at the Aga Khan Palace where he was interned with Gandhi. When Desai stopped breathing, Gandhi called out to him in agitation: "Mahadev! Mahadev!" When he was later asked why he had done so, Gandhi answered: "I felt that if Mahadev opened his eyes and looked at me, I would tell him to get up. He had never disobeyed me in his life. I was confident that if had he heard those words, he would have defied even death and got up". Gandhi himself washed Desai's body and he was cremated on the Palace's grounds, where his samadhi lies today.
  The Indian Department of Posts published a commemorative stamp in his honour in 1983. His son Narayan Desai was also a noted Gandhian activist and writer who wrote Mahadev Desai's biography The Fire and the Rose. The Mahadev Desai Samajseva Mahavidyalaya, Gujarat Vidyapith's faculty of social sciences, arts and humanities was named in Mahadev Desai's honour.
caption: Mahadev Desai's obituary in Harijan, Gandhi's newspaper
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