Gandhi Falls to Bullet: India Mourns Father of Nation

Three bullets from a Beretta M1934 pistol struck Mahatma Gandhi in the chest and abdomen at point-blank range as he walked to his evening prayer meeting in the garden of Birla House, New Delhi. Gandhi, 78 years old, fell immediately, reportedly uttering "He Ram" (Oh God) before dying. The date was January 30, 1948—five months and fifteen days after India had achieved the independence he had spent his life pursuing. The assassin was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist and member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), who blamed Gandhi for being too accommodating toward Muslims during the partition of India. Godse and his co-conspirator Narayan Apte believed that Gandhi''s insistence on Hindu-Muslim unity and his recent fast demanding that India pay Pakistan 55 crore rupees owed under the partition agreement constituted a betrayal of Hindu interests. Godse approached Gandhi in the crowd, bowed as if in greeting, and then fired three shots from less than three feet away. India was plunged into grief and shock. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru addressed the nation by radio: "The light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere." Gandhi''s body was cremated the following day at Raj Ghat on the banks of the Yamuna River; an estimated two million people lined the five-mile funeral procession route. The government declared thirteen days of national mourning. Within hours of the assassination, violent reprisals against Brahmins (Godse''s caste) erupted in Bombay and Pune, and the RSS was temporarily banned. Godse was tried, convicted, and executed by hanging on November 15, 1949, along with Apte. At his trial, Godse delivered a lengthy statement defending the assassination, which was suppressed by the Indian government for decades. Gandhi''s murder removed the one figure with the moral authority to bridge India''s communal divide, and the wound of his loss has never fully healed. His assassination—by a fellow Hindu, motivated by the very sectarianism he had fought against—remains the cruelest irony of India''s independence.