What today’s politicians could learn from the relationship between Gandhi and his critic VSS Sastri Though they were on opposite sides of the political spectrum, the two men would defend each other passionately against criticisms from their own camps. Jan 02, 2021 · 11:30 am Mohandas Gandhi and VSS Sastri | Gandhi (Elliott & Fry, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons), Sastri (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress, Public Domain) It was the late in the evening on January 12, 1924. At the Servants of India Society house in Poona, the organisation’s President VS Srinivasa Sastri had just sat to have his supper, when the local doctor came rushing in and huffed out an urgent message: Mahatma Gandhi, incarcerated in Yerawada Jail on the city’s periphery, had been taken to Sassoon Hospital for an emergency operation to remove his appendix. Gandhi had asked to meet Sastri before his surgery.