1949: Nathuram Godse, Gandhi’s assassin
November 15th, 2007 Headsman
On this date in 1949, Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin was hanged at India’s Ambala Jail, together with one of his co-conspirators.
Often spoken of posthumously as little less than a saint, Gandhi was deeply immersed in the controversial rough-and-tumble politics of his time — India’s independence movement, and the shape of the nascent state. Winston Churchill, for instance, scorned him as “a seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace.”
The hatred of a Tory M.P. at the twilight of the empire might be expected, but it was a Hindu nationalist who struck Gandhi down after the partition into a Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan. Gandhi had vocally opposed partition on the grounds of interreligious tolerance — but he eventually assented to Pakistan’s separation when he became convinced that the alternative was civil war.
Distrusted by Hindu partisans for his “appeasement” of minority groups within India, Gandhi survived numerous attempts on his life. But he sealed his fate by fasting to compel Delhi to make its agreed-upon partition payments to Islamabad even in the midst of war. Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, gunned him down during evening prayers on January 30, 1948.
(For a less Hollywood take on Gandhi, a five-hour documentary available online surveys his life.)
Godse never betrayed doubt or regret. On the contrary, he cogently justified the murder at trial:
I thought to myself and foresaw I shall be totally ruined, and the only thing I could expect from the people would be nothing but hatred and that I shall have lost all my honour, even more valuable than my life, if I were to kill Gandhiji. But at the same time I felt that the Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would surely be proved practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful with armed forces. No doubt, my own future would be totally ruined, but the nation would be saved from the inroads of Pakistan. People may even call me and dub me as devoid of any sense or foolish, but the nation would be free to follow the course founded on the reason which I consider to be necessary for sound nation-building.
…
I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus. There was no legal machinery by which such an offender could be brought to book and for this reason I fired those fatal shots.
Sixty years later, the subcontinent and the world at large seem more strained than ever by the collision between these men’s visions — the secular and egalitarian as against violent religious animosity.
Godse’s old party, the RSS, has become a substantial far-right bloc in the modern political scene. And while the party has always disavowed responsibility for the murder, some still consider Godse a hero. Pakistan, for whose birth Gandhi was slain, totters on the brink of an abyss.
Gandhi, meanwhile, is not only the official “father of his country” but has become the very watchword for nonviolence, his tactics and ideas inspiring such luminaries as Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. But his life and legacy remain live topics of research and dispute.
Also on this date
- 2011: Oba Chandler
- 1781: Tupac Katari
- 1808: Sultan Mustafa IV, by his brother
- 1539: Richard Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury
- 1924: Daisuke Namba, for the Toranomon Incident
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Activists,Assassins,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,Famous,Hanged,History,India,Infamous,Martyrs,Murder,Notable for their Victims,Occupation and Colonialism,Pakistan
Tags: 1940s, 1949, gandhi, hinduism, islam, mahatma gandhi, martin luther king jr., mohandas gandhi, nathuram godse, nationalism, nelson mandela, nonviolence, rashtriya swayamsevak sangh, religion, winston churchill
November 15th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
you seem . . . ambivalent about Gandhi. but perhaps this is just your even-handedness regarding the assassin. odd, isn’t it, that we would find ourselves considering the logic of the assassin so closely? or the failings of gandhi?
and wouldn’t it be ironic if we thought gandhi’s greatest failing were his insistence on toleration?
i don’t. but in these times, when so many “liberals” would like to simply exclude those ideologically opposed to liberal democracy from participating in it, well, what we are prepared to tolerate in the name of toleration seems to have become a central point of contention.
November 16th, 2007 at 12:48 am
Putative saints merit ambivalence by definition.
November 17th, 2007 at 3:46 am
Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others. – JFK
July 10th, 2009 at 1:34 am
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October 31st, 2010 at 5:58 pm
its a little worrying that as always india isnt the kind of democracy we understand. NOBODY talks about what happened then….nobody talks about hoe literate Godhse was…. he did it because it was vital, he was just a little late. ? NOBODY!!!!!
but it truncated my country into bits because somebody inside of india agreed ….if Ghandi had not happened maybe today there would have been the same old hindustaan with our regular moguls…we are today irrespective of our so called religions …we are all indian funny thing is inspite of this islam scare worldwide, in idia we all grew up together, I am hindu, but without isalm i will lose my roots. godhse was right .
October 17th, 2011 at 8:36 am
yes godse was right.Had he not killed gandhiji even kashmir would had been a part of pakistan.hats of to godse
January 6th, 2012 at 4:53 am
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January 21st, 2012 at 11:06 pm
Gandhiji was known for his adherence to the rules & constraints, stuck to the non-violence & eternity, through the world & therefore known as “bapu” & ” Mahatma( the great soul)”, even his foes admit the same, though u r depicting him as was playing the rough & tumble politics !!! May be utter ignorance or hatred ?
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