Narayan Apte

• 1. Introduction

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  Narayan Dattatraya Apte stood at Nathuram Godse's side on the 30th of January 1948, in the grounds of Birla House, as shots rang out and Mahatma Gandhi fell. He was not the man who pulled the trigger. But he had spent years helping plan the moment, and he would hang for it. Who was Apte, and how did a science graduate from Bombay University and a recruiter for the Royal Indian Air Force come to stand at the center of the most consequential political killing in modern Indian history? The answers stretch from a Sanskrit scholar's household in Maharashtra to the radical fringes of Hindu nationalism, through the unlikely vehicle of a failing newspaper, and finally to a gallows in 1949.

• 2. Scholar's Son

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  Apte's father, Dattatreya Apte, was a Sanskrit scholar and historian, and the household shaped Narayan's appetite for learning. Born in 1911 into a Chitpavan Brahmin family, Narayan was one of eight children: three sisters and four brothers. His marriage was arranged, as was customary, to Champa Phadtare, the daughter of an influential family from Pune. The match was described at the time as a perfect one for both spouses, and the couple later had a son together.

  Narayan followed his family's scholarly bent. He graduated from Bombay University in 1932 with a Bachelor of Science degree, then faced three years of unemployment before finding work as a tutor at Mission High School in Ahmednagar. Ambition pushed him further: he sat the Bachelor of Education examination and passed, aiming to master the field of education. He also started a shooting club in Ahmednagar. The club attracted enough attention that it was eventually replicated in other towns, including Pune.

• 3. Hindu Mahasabha and the War

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  In 1939, Apte joined the Hindu Mahasabha, the Hindu nationalist political organization whose president at the time was Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. When the Second World War broke out, Savarkar ordered party members to assist the British by any means available. Apte responded by rising quickly through the ranks. He became a recruiter for the Poona region and reached the rank of Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Indian Air Force.

  The recruiting situation in Poona was thin, leaving Apte with substantial idle time. He used it to build a close working relationship with Nathuram Godse inside the Mahasabha. At around this period Savarkar also launched a new body called the Hindu Rashtra Dal, intended as a radical wing of the parent organization. One of its stated aims was disrupting Congress Party meetings.

• 4. The Newspaper Front

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  In 1944, Godse raised the idea of a newspaper called Agranee, designed to promote the ideals of the Dal and the Mahasabha. Apte became the paper's manager and continued to wear his World War Two recruiter's uniform while running it. The publication struggled badly; it was kept alive largely by generous donations that Savarkar personally arranged. Its content was inflammatory enough to breach the Bombay Press Act.

  To sidestep an imminent government shutdown order, the editors renamed the paper Hindu Rashtra. The final issue of Hindu Rashtra appeared on the 31st of January 1948, one day after Gandhi's assassination. The paper's last run bookended the very event its founders had plotted.

• 5. The Weeks of Planning

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  On the 14th of January 1948, Apte and Godse boarded a train from Pune to Mumbai. Three days later they flew to Delhi. The target was Gandhi.

  On the 20th of January, Apte drove to Birla House with two other conspirators, Badge and Kistayya, to work through the details of the murder plan. Godse stayed behind that day, incapacitated by severe headaches. By the 27th of January the leadership of the plan had shifted: it was settled that Godse himself would be the one to fire the shots. Apte's role became supporting and standing with Godse through the act itself.

  After Gandhi died on the 30th of January, Apte managed to evade arrest for two full weeks before police caught up with him in Mumbai.

• 6. Trial and Execution

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  Apte was tried for his role in Gandhi's murder and found guilty in 1949. He was sentenced to death alongside Godse. On the 15th of November 1949, both men were hanged. Apte was thirty-eight years old. Champa Phadtare, who had been described as his perfect match, and their son outlived him by decades, their futures altered by a conspiracy that had been taking shape since those quiet days of the recruitment shortfall in Poona.