No doubt, Nathuram Godse killed Mahatma Gandhi. But then what about the role of the Congress, the state administration and the society at large? And what about Gandhi’s own desire to be a martyr?
Today, on 30 January 1948, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was assassinated. He was shot point-blank by Nathuram Godse, who pumped three bullets into his chest with an M1934 Beretta semi-automatic pistol while the evening prayer was on at Delhi’s Birla House.
The Gandhi murder trial took place in Delhi’s Red Fort. Godse and Narayan Apte were sentenced to death. Vinayak Savarkar was acquitted. Others, including Nathuram’s brother Gopal Godse, were given prison sentences on conspiracy charges.
Interestingly, Koenraad Elst, in his highly engaging book Why I Killed the Mahatma: Uncovering Godse’s Defence, cites an interview Gopal Godse gave in 1992 wherein he claimed that Dr BR Ambedkar, law minister in the Nehru cabinet, contacted Godse’s lawyer to convey the message that “if Nathuram would like his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, he would arrange for it. After all, it was easy enough to invoke Gandhiji’s non-violence to this effect.” But Godse sought quite persuasively not to impose mercy on him. “I want to show that through me, Gandhiji’s non-violence is being hanged.” Taken aback by the response, Elst writes, “Ambedkar, who had never thought highly of Gandhiji’s eccentric ideas, actually praised Godse.”
Justice GD Khosla was one of the judges who presided over Godse’s trial. Hardly a sympathiser of Godse and his brand of ideology, Justice Khosla recalled in his book Murder of the Mahatma how the audience in the courtroom was “visibly and audibly moved”. He wrote, “There was a deep silence when he ceased speaking. Many women were in tears and men were coughing and searching for their handkerchiefs.” Seeing this, Justice Khosla was in no doubt that “had the audience on that day been constituted into a jury and entrusted with the task of deciding Godse’s appeal, they would have brought in a verdict of ‘not guilty’ by an overwhelming majority”.
Be that as it may, the fact remains that Godse, through this single act of terrorism, harmed immensely the so-called cause he was fighting for. While his primary objective of keeping India united didn’t materialise, his assassination of the greatest man alive at that time gave Hindus and Hinduism a bad name. Not only the Hindu political movement which was gaining momentum at that time in reaction to the untidy Gandhian/Nehruvian response to Partition, but also Godse’s abhorrent act silenced an entire generation of Hindus who retreated in the guilt of killing the Mahatma.
As we observe Martyrs’ Day today, it’s the time to look at what happened on 30 January 1948. How was the greatest apostle of peace so easily assassinated just 10 days after a failed bomb attack on the same venue, and that too by the same group of people? And if so, was there a bigger conspiracy to kill the Mahatma? Had Gandhi become an inconvenience for a lot more people than just the likes of Godse? Just a month and a half before he was assassinated, Gandhi had said on 18 December 18, 1947: “I know that today I irritate everyone… What irks me is that people deceive me. They should tell me frankly that I have become old, that I am no longer of any use and that I should not be in their way.”
Prof Makarand R Paranjape, in his 2014 book The Death and Afterlife of Mahatma Gandhi, expands the periphery of examination when he writes, “Nathuram Godse murdered him but the Mahatma martyred himself.” As Gandhi resisted tighter security at Birla House despite an attempt on his life and continued with his daily prayer meetings despite protests at certain aspects of these meetings, Paranjape makes a valid observation: “Gandhi was not a passive victim, but an active participant.” In fact, his utterances towards the last days of his life often veered around life and death. He would repeatedly declare that he would rather die than compromise on his freedom. “In that sense, Gandhi’s self-willed martyrdom was an offering, as he himself put it, a last and desperate yajna — sacrifice, oblation, sacred rite — to save India,” adds Paranjape.
Louis Fischer, in his celebrated biography The Life of Mahatma Gandhi, writes in detail about the happenings a day after the bomb was hurl at Gandhi’s prayer meeting. “The next day Gandhi, having walked to the prayer meeting, told the worshippers that congratulations had poured in on him for remaining unruffled during the incident. He said he deserved no praise; he had thought it was military practice. ‘I would deserve praise,’ he asserted, ‘only if I fell as a result of such an explosion and yet retained a smile on my face and no malice against the doer. No one should look down upon the misguided youth who had thrown the bomb. He probably looks upon me as an enemy of Hindustan.'” Gandhi, in the course of the meeting, reiterated his desire to go on a peace mission to Pakistan as soon as his health got better.
Khushwant Singh, in his profile of the Mahatma, too writes how “Bapu was pretty certain that he would not be allowed to live”. The author quotes Gandhi as saying at a prayer meeting on 16 June 1947 how he would consider himself “brave” if he was “killed and I still pray to God for my assassin”.
Gandhi devoted all his life for a world bereft of hatred, violence and bloodshed. For national unity, he made several compromises, some of them one-sided as during the Khilafat movement (maybe out of his “fundamental mistake” to “insist on treating India as if it were South Africa”, as Faisal Devji explains in The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence). At the fag end of his life, he could see all his legacy going into vain in the devastating fire of Partition. Finding himself sidelined politically, Gandhi had just one way to get things in control: Martyrdom.
And it worked to an extent. The communal tension unilaterally stopped in India, though in East and West Pakistan pogroms against minorities continued unabated until 1950. Gandhi had his way politically when he was alive. And in death he ensured he had his way again, one last time!
There’s another aspect of the Gandhi assassination: The dubious role of the government of the day, especially the administration of Delhi and Bombay. While Godse and his gang wanted Gandhi dead, and the Mahatma himself wished martyrdom for the country’s redemption, the then administration was no less complicit in the assassination.
The powers-that-be were well aware of the conspiracy to kill the Mahatma. In fact, the killers had botched up a bomb attempt on Gandhi’s life at the same venue, Birla House, just 10 days earlier, on 20 January 1948. “Of the team of assassins, Madanlal Pahwa, the latest recruit and weakest link, actually an angry and restive refugee from the just-created Pakistan, was caught by the police. He not only led the investigators to the Marina Hotel in Connaught Circus where Godse had stayed, but warned them that he would be back, with the ominous prediction, ‘Phir ayega‘ — he will come again,” writes Paranjape.
Complementing the administrative incompetence was the rising anti-Gandhi sentiment among the masses. Several refugees from Pakistan, who had lost home and hearth, whose loved ones had been raped, kidnapped and murdered, were vastly enraged by Gandhi’s stand on Pakistan and Partition. Those were the days when one would regularly witness anti-Gandhi slogans outside his prayer meetings. With a section of the public so angry and with credible intelligence about threats to the Mahatma’s life, it’s inconceivable why the police failed to beef up Gandhi’s security. British historian Robert Payne reported in his book, The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi, how only one assistant sub-inspector, two head constables, and 16 foot constables were deployed to ensure the safety of Gandhi at his overcrowded prayer meetings!
Even more baffling was the Congress’ attitude, or even indifference, towards Gandhi. The party which owed its pan-India presence to this old man did pretty little to protect him against growing anger amid certain quarters. Was it because the Mahatma had just called for the disbanding of the Congress? Was it because of his “unnecessary demands” as in the case of seeking Rs 55 crore compensation for Pakistan at a time the latter was showing military aggression in Kashmir? To add to it was Gandhi’s proposed Pakistan visit. What if an Islamist lone wolf targeted the Mahatma there? The entire subcontinent would have been on fire.
Tushar Gandhi, the Mahatma’s grandson, in his 2007 book Let’s Kill Gandhi, accused the Congress of finding it easier to live with a martyred Mahatma than the alive one. “The Congress government and at least some of the members of the cabinet were fed up with the interventions of the meddlesome old man… The way the investigation was carried out, and the lackadaisical approach of the police in trying to protect Gandhi’s life, leads one to believe that the investigation was meant to hide more than it was meant to reveal. The measures taken by the police between 20th and 30th January 1948 were more to ensure the smooth progress of the murderers, than to try to prevent his murder.”
Payne too points at shoddy investigation. “The attentive reader of the voluminous trial reports soon finds himself haunted by the certainty that many others who never stood trial were involved in the conspiracy.”
So, who killed Gandhi? Yes, of course, Godse pulled the trigger, but the entire episode doesn’t seem to be so simple and straight-forward. For, what about the role of the Congress, the state administration and the society at large? And what about Gandhi’s own desire to be a martyr? As we observe yet another death anniversary of the Mahatma, we must re-evaluate what the great man stood for, and who failed him the most.
Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News,
India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.