Doug Springsteen was an Army driver in Europe during the Second World War who came home and seethed at his crabbed circumstances.

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When the folksy, septuagenarian former army driver began a new hunger strike at a ground in Mumbai on Tuesday demanding a strong anti-corruption law, only a few hundred people turned up.

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At the funeral for the Hot 8 drummer, the pallbearers put the casket into an ancient buggy hearse, led by a horse and driver as an army of musicians played "Lord, Lord, Lord, " a thumping gospel song with roaring trumpets that galvanized the crowd.

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During WWII, for example, he was an ambulance driver (his poor eyesight kept him out of the infantry) attached to the old British-Indian Army in India and Burma, where, among other horrors, he witnessed a famine that took the lives of millions.

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