Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on the 30th of January 1948 at the age of 78 in the compound of The Birla House. His assassin was Nathuram Godse, from Pune, Maharashtra, a right-wing Hindu nationalist with a history of association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Sometime after 5 PM, witnesses reported that Gandhi had reached the top of the stairs leading to the raised lawn behind Birla House. He had been conducting multi-faith prayer meetings every evening there. As Gandhi began to walk toward the dais, Godse stepped out of the crowd flanking his path. He fired three bullets into Gandhi's chest and stomach at point-blank range. Gandhi fell to the ground. He was carried back to his room in Birla House from which a representative emerged sometime later to announce his death.
In May 1944, Nathuram Vinayak Godse attempted to assassinate Gandhi with a knife. He led a group of 15 to 20 young men who rushed at Gandhi during a prayer meeting at Panchgani. Godse and his group were prevented by the crowds from reaching Gandhi. He was released due to Gandhi's own policy of declining to press criminal charges. In September 1944, Godse again led another group to block Gandhi's passage from Sevagram to Mumbai. This time Godse was arrested with a dagger and he uttered threats to kill Gandhi. He was released again owing to Gandhi's policy of not pressing criminal charges. In early September 1947, Gandhi moved to Delhi to help stem the violent rioting there and in the neighboring province of East Punjab. The rioting had come in the wake of the partition of the British Indian empire. Godse and his assassination accomplices were residents of the Deccan region. Godse had previously led a civil disobedience movement against Osman Ali Khan, the Muslim ruler of the princely Deccan region dominion of Hyderabad State in British India. Godse joined a protest march in 1938 in Hyderabad. He was arrested for political crimes and served a prison sentence.
Herbert Reiner Jr, a vice-consul at the American embassy in Delhi, captured the assassin immediately after the shooting. According to an obituary for Reiner published in May 2000 by The Los Angeles Times, Reiner's role was reported on the front pages of newspapers around the world. On the 30th of January 1948, Reiner had reached Birla House after work, arriving fifteen minutes before the scheduled start of the prayer meeting at 5 PM. By the time Gandhi and his small party reached the garden area a few minutes after five, the crowd had swelled to several hundred people. As Gandhi walked briskly up the steps to the lawn, another man, a stocky Indian man in his 30s and dressed in khaki clothes, stepped out from the crowd and into Gandhi's path. He soon fired several shots up close, at once felling Gandhi. BBC reporter Robert Stimson, who was present at Birla House, reported in a broadcast that night that half a dozen people stooped to lift Gandhi while others hurled themselves upon the attacker. Others described how the crowd seemed paralyzed until Reiner's action broke the spell.
The Gandhi murder trial opened in May 1948 in Delhi's historic Red Fort, with Godse the main defendant, and his collaborator Narayan Apte, and six more, deemed co-defendants. The trial began on the 27th of May 1948 and ran for eight months before Justice Atma Charan passed his final order on the 10th of February 1949. The prosecution called 149 witnesses, the defense none. The court found all of the defendants except one guilty as charged. Eight men were convicted for the murder conspiracy, and others convicted for violation of the Explosive Substances Act. Savarkar was acquitted and set free. Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were sentenced to death by hanging and the remaining six were sentenced to life imprisonment. Pahwa, Gopal Godse, and Karkare were all released from prison in October 1964. The appeal by the convicted men was heard from the 2nd of May 1949, at Peterhoff, Shimla which then housed the Punjab High Court. The High Court confirmed the findings and sentences of the lower court except in the cases of Dattatraya Parchure and Shankar Kistayya who were acquitted of all charges.
Godse and Apte were sentenced to death on the 8th of November 1949. Pleas for commutation were made by Gandhi's two sons, Manilal Gandhi and Ramdas Gandhi, but these pleas were turned down by India's prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, deputy prime minister and home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the Governor-General Chakravarti Rajagopalachari. Godse and Apte were hanged in Ambala Gaol on the 15th of November 1949. According to the Almanac of World Crime, at the hanging Apte's neck broke and he died instantly, but Godse died slowly by the rope. Instead of having his neck snap, he choked to death for fifteen minutes. The Government of India made the assassination trial public. Godse tried to use the courtroom as a political forum by reading a long declaration in which he tried to justify his crime. He accused Gandhi of complacency towards Muslims, blamed him for the sufferings of Partition and generally criticized his subjectivism and pretension to a monopoly of the truth. Although his attacks were met with some echo in high-caste Hindu circles traditionally hostile to Gandhi, he could not create a groundswell of opinion in his favor.
In the newly formed Dominion of India, the carnage that had been set off by the Partition of India ended with the shock of Gandhi's assassination. The RSS, the Hindu paramilitary volunteer organisation, whose activities had been hidden from public view, and whose member Nathurum Godse had once been, was banned on the 4th of February 1948. The ban lasted one year. A few weeks before, Vallabhai Patel had invited the RSS and its more overtly political sister organization, the Hindu Mahasabha, to join the Congress and to build the new nation. He had warned the Hindu nationalists that they were not the only defenders of Hinduism. Nehru argued against this viewpoint, emphasizing that the RSS had a history of easily succumbing to violent solutions, and needed to be punished and dissolved. With Gandhi's assassination, Patel's approach took the back seat. Yasmin Khan argued that Gandhi's death and funeral helped consolidate the authority of the new Indian state under Nehru and Patel. The government was really a duumvirate between him, who represented the idealism and left-wing tendencies of the party, and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the realist and party boss from Gujarat who leaned to authoritarianism, orthodoxy, and big business.
Several books, plays and movies have been produced about the event since 1948. I, Nathuram Godse speaking is a play composed by Pradeep Dalvi based on the assassination trial. Locally produced as Me Nathuram Godse Boltoy, after seven sold-out shows it was banned in the State of Maharashtra in 1999 on directions from the then BJP-led coalition government in Delhi. Nine Hours to Rama is a 1963 British movie based on Stanley Wolpert's novel of the same name, which is a fictional account of the final nine hours leading up to Gandhi's assassination. May It Please Your Honor was published in 1977, containing Nathuram Godse's statement to the court, after the Indian Congress party lost power for the first time since Indian independence. The text was republished in 1993 as Why I Assassinated Mahatma Gandhi? The 1982 film Gandhi is bookended by the assassination; Godse is portrayed by actor Harsh Nayyar. Hey Ram (2000) is a Tamil-Hindi bilingual film by Kamal Haasan about a fictitious plot to kill Gandhi by a man devastated by the partition riots and his change of heart even as the real-life plot succeeds.
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Common questions
When and where was Mahatma Gandhi assassinated?
Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on the 30th of January 1948 in the compound of The Birla House in New Delhi, India. He died at the age of 78 after being shot by his assassin Nathuram Godse.
Who killed Mahatma Gandhi and what was his background?
Nathuram Godse from Pune, Maharashtra, a right-wing Hindu nationalist with a history of association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, killed Mahatma Gandhi. Godse fired three bullets into Gandhi's chest and stomach at point-blank range as he walked toward the dais during an evening prayer meeting.
What happened to Nathuram Godse after the assassination trial?
Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were sentenced to death by hanging on the 8th of November 1949 and executed on the 15th of November 1949 in Ambala Gaol. Other co-defendants received life imprisonment while Savarkar was acquitted and set free.
How did the Indian government respond to the RSS following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi?
The Government of India banned the RSS, the Hindu paramilitary volunteer organisation whose member Nathurum Godse had once been, on the 4th of February 1948 for one year. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru argued that the organization needed to be dissolved due to its history of succumbing to violent solutions.
Which books or movies have been produced about the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi since 1948?
Several works including the play I, Nathuram Godse speaking composed by Pradeep Dalvi and the 1963 British movie Nine Hours to Rama based on Stanley Wolpert's novel have been produced about the event. The 1982 film Gandhi features actor Harsh Nayyar portraying Godse and is bookended by the assassination.