Adwait Adalatwale Research Paper On The Assassination Of Mahatma Gandhi

Modern History
Research Paper on
The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi
Written By- Adwait Adalatwale
B.A. LL.B. (Hons.)

CONTENTS
Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 1
Political Scenario as was during January 1948............................................................................... 2
The Trial.......................................................................................................................................... 3
The Judgment.............................................................................................................................. 3
Special Privilege given to Gandhi............................................................................................... 4
Appeals ....................................................................................................................................... 4
Acquittal of Savarkar .................................................................................................................. 5
Nathuram Vinayak Godse............................................................................................................... 6
Analysis of the last statement of Godse made in the court....................................................... 12
Backlash on The Marathi Brahman Community .......................................................................... 14
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 15
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 16

INTRODUCTION
Mahatma Gandhi the person, who is credited for getting this country independence from the
British, was shot dead on the evening of 30th
January 1948. When the news of his assassination
spread throughout the nation, people were not able to believe, as they couldn’t understand why
someone would murder Gandhi1
, a harmless saint. As any kind of portrayal of the character of
Gandhi cannot begin without the mention of his parents in the same way, we can’t end our study
of Gandhi without referring to Nathuram Godse. Nathuram Vinayak Godse, the person who shot
Gandhi when he was going for his evening prayer at his residence in Birla House in New Delhi.
In the public discourse after the assassination of Gandhi, if someone tried to criticize Gandhi and
evaluate Nathuram, he was considered to be against the patriotic feeling. It is undeniable that
Mahatma contributed immensely for this country but we must not brush aside other factors in the
personality of Gandhi because of which someone like Nathuram emerged and murdered him.
We restricted any kind of presentation of the ideas because of which Nathuram killed Gandhi, a
person whom he admired once. The statement of Nathuram made before the court was not
published, government put a ban on it, as it feared that it might cause some enragement in the
general public. Even after 50 years of independence any form portrayal of Nathuram was
prohibited, for example one of the epic Marathi Play written by Pradeep Dalvi; ‘Me Nathuram
Godse Boltoy’, . This Play was banned in 1980s and it was only in 2001 that the court allowed it.
But even till date though such censorship has got diluted but people still have a lot of
misconceptions attached to Nathuram without any substantial proof just because he has always
been presented in a particular fashion to them. This Research Paper tries to understand the
personality of Godse with the help of very little literature available on him and has also tried to
evaluate his statement made in front of the court. The relevance of this topic increases in the
present day scenario when the right wing extremism is increasing and they are trying to glorify
an assassin by installing his statutes in the country on the excuse that he was a great nationalist
and he gave up his life for this cause, so it is of utter importance for us to study this person. The
Research Paper also focuses on the trial of Godse and the repercussions on the Marathi Brahman
community in Maharashtra and other parts of the country, after Godse killed Gandhi.
1
Hereinafter, Gandhi refers to Mahatma Gandhi.

POLITICAL SCENARIO AS WAS DURING JANUARY 1948
During his address to the nation on the night of Gandhi’s Assassination, Nehru said that with the
death of Gandhi the light has gone out of the lives of all the people of the country and darkness
has engulfed the whole nation. He mentions that there was still so much for Bapu to do for this
country and they could never imagine him being unnecessary for the country or that he has done
his task, But the reality was that Gandhi by this time had actually became a burden over both
Nehru and Patel, the two most powerful political personalities of that time.
Gandhi himself had a guilt that he had failed, as he said that he would not let the partition happen
even over his dead body. But the political equations has changed and Gandhi could not stop the
partition and Mountbatten Plan was passed which bifurcated the country and Gandhi got
disillusioned from the political set up, he went to Bengal to stop the violence which was going on
there in the wake of the partition and the large scale displacement of population was happening.
He sat on fast to stop the people from committing atrocities on the other community. By this time
Gandhi was being cornered in the Congress as well, his principles were not being followed by
the government itself, and after his death the digression of the government from the path which
Gandhi showed was evident, for example the Military Action in Hyderabad which was carried
out by Sardar Patel. All this signified that Gandhi was gradually losing his command over
Congress.
In the next section of the paper I have dealt with the facts related to the assassination and the
trial, as any critical study of an historical event can’t be done without reference to the facts.

THE TRIAL
Gandhi was killed on January 30th
, 1948, Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte went to gallows on
15 November, 1949. It was one of the fastest trials in the legal history of that time. It is one of
three trials which happened in the Red Fort in Delhi.
A Special Court was constituted to conduct the trial of the accused and Shri Atma Charan
Agrawal, I. C. S. was appointed as the Judge. Twelve persons were accused for different charges.
Three of them were absconding. The nine produced before Shri Atma Charan on 27th
May, 1948
and they were Nathuram Vinayak Godse, Narayan Dattatraya Apte, Vishnu Ramkrishna Karkare,
Madanlal K. Pahwa, Shankar Kistaiya, Gopal Vinayak Godse, Digambar Ramchandra Badge,
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar,Dattatraya Sadashiv Parchure. There were three absconders as well,
these were Gangadhar Dandavate, Gangadhar Jadhav, Suryadev Sharma. Digambar Badge
turned approver.
The accused had engaged counsels. However, replies to the charges were to be given by the
accused themselves, which they did. Before doing so, they submitted their written statements.
Nathuram, in his written statement replied in detail the reasons of his decision to kill Gandhi.
The prosecution had the knowledge of it before-hand. It raised an objection to the reading, which
was over-ruled by the Judge. The statement was read out. The government banned the
reproduction or publication of the statement on part or full. The motive on the part of the
Government was very obvious. It is after about three decades that the statement reaches the
public. Nathuram argued his own case and this was by his choice. He argued for two days
without challenging his conviction under the murder charge.
The Judgment
During the whole process the prosecution produced a total of 149 witnesses. The hearing was
ended on 30th
December, 1948 and the judgement was finally pronounced on 10th
February,
1949. V.D. Savarkar was acquitted. Digamber Badge was granted pardon because he deposed
against his co-accused. Vishnu Karkare, Madanlal Pahwa, Gopal Godse, Shankar Kistaiya and
Dr. Parchure got the sentence of transportation for life. Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were
sentenced to death.

Special Privilege given to Gandhi
Gandhi enjoyed privilege in this new democratic set-up of Government. A Special Act, that was
the Bombay Public Security Measures Act, was extended to Delhi before constituting the Special
Court for the trial of Nathuram Godse and other accused. The Act came into force with
retrospective effect so that the accused in the case can be tried under it. Equality before law and
other inalienable rights were denied to the people through the provisions of this Act. The
Supreme Court was not constituted by then, but subsequently it declared this Act as ultra verse.2
Since retrospective effect was not provided to the annulment, the convict’s sentence was not
dismissed. According to this enactment, unlike in other cases under the normal law, death
sentence was not required to be confirmed by the High Court. Instead of sixty or ninety days,
which were the time limit for going for appeal in normal cases, as per this law the time limit to
prefer appeals was kept only fifteen days.
There is another question on the award of death sentence to Godse and Apte, as in any other
murder case such a severe punishment was not given. My personal belief in this situation is that,
even though Gandhi was considered to be the father of the nation and was one of the stalwarts of
Indian freedom struggle but just because of this awarding death sentence to the culprits is not
justified. The law of that period was the same as it is now regarding any case of murder; death
sentence was to be awarded in those cases which were of exceptional nature.
Appeals
All the seven convicts submitted appeals to the Punjab High Court. Nathuram preferred appeal
against his conviction for conspiracy and other charges but not against the death sentence. He
wanted permission for arguing his own case and it was granted to him. Various other counsels
represented other convicts in the case. Justice Bhandari, Achhru Ram and G.D. Khosla heard the
appeals in May and June 1949. They pronounced their judgement on June 22, 1949. They, found
Shankar Kistaiya and Dr. Parchure not guilty and acquitted them. The sentences of Vishnu
Karkare, Gopal Godse and Madanlal Pahwa were confirmed. The Judges also, confirmed the
2
Beyond one's legal power or authority.

death sentence of Narayan Apte. Nathuram’s death penalty was automatically confirmed as he
did not appeal against his death sentence.
Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were executed in Ambala jail at 8 A. M. on Tuesday,
November 15, 1949 i.e. after twenty one and a half months of the shooting incident. Just before
the execution, when their wrists and toes were tied, Nathuram and Narayan shouted slogans
which reverberated over the silent atmosphere around. ‘Akhand Bharat Amar Rahe! Vande
Mataram.’ The Assistant Superintendent Shri Ram Nath Sharma performed the last rites before
the bodies were cremated. The cremation was carried out within the Jail.
The Government accorded unusually harsh and cruel treatment to the three life convicts,
particularly, in respect of their release. The fate of the absconding accused depended on Dr.
Parchure’s conviction or acquittal. On Dr. Parchure’s acquittal the three; Gangadhar Dandavate,
Gangadhar Jadhav, Suryadev Sharma appeared before a Magistrate in Gwalior. They were all set
free, as there was nothing much which could be proven against all these three.
Acquittal of Savarkar
Among the accused for the conspiracy to kill Gandhi was also Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who
had been an integral part of the independence movement since his teenage. He was the only
person who got acquitted by the trial court, he was acquitted because of the unavailability of any
proper evidence against him, the political elites particularly those belonging to the congress
doubted that it was under the guardianship of Savarkar that Godse and others planned the
conspiracy and he also provided them ideological support. But in the prosecution could not prove
any charge against him and therefore he was acquitted.

NATHURAM VINAYAK GODSE
In my Paper, I have focused majorly on Godse among all the conspirators who were involved in
the assassination as, firstly it was Nathuram who eventually pulled the trigger and also that it was
his choice to kill Gandhi single handedly and this was against the wish of other conspirators, he
thought that including a lot of people will make it more prone to failure. Other than Godse and
Apte the other conspirators had very minor role and they were all picked up randomly. Now
before we start dealing with Nathuram Godse we should first deeply look at his background, with
the help of an essay by a famous political psychologist3
. It is in this background where the reason
for the killing of Gandhi lies.
Nathuram Godse and most of his co-conspirators were from Maharashtra, a region where
Brahmanic dominance had been very strong. Before actual assassination of Gandhi, there were
three attempts for killing, and all of these happened in Maharashtra. Godse was a Chitpavan
Brahman, who by cultural inheritance was an opponent of Gandhi. The Chitpavans, traditionally
belonged to the western coast and were one of the very rare Brahman communities in India, this
community had a history of showing courage in battlefield. This fact gave them a certain kind of
superiority as compared to the other Brahman communities in Maharashtra. There was no
presence of the of the Kshatriya castes, The Maharashtrian Brahmans not only enjoyed higher
status but also they incorporated the Kshatriya identity and lived the way Kshatriya did, so the
Chitpavans were able to combine the traditional priestly work of Brahmans and martial skills of
the Kshatriyas. The social divide in the Brahmans and the non-Brahmans was the widest in this
region of Chitpavans. The Maharashtrian Brahman had a history of struggle against Muslims in
India in the seventeenth and the eighteenth century. By the beginning of the twentieth century,
the Maharashtrian Brahmans had interpreted their history in terms of saving the Hindus and
upbringing the feeling of Hindu Nationalism in the people of the country. They started seeing
themselves as the lost heroes of the Hindu land, who were previously powerful and now have got
weakened. Gandhi rejected the Kshatriya identity as he always emphasized on pacifism and self-
control, which was totally against the warrior culture of the Chitpavans or the Kshatriyas for that
region. Gandhi along with criticizing the priestly castes he also posed a threat to the martial
3
The Politics of the Assassination of Gandhi, At the Edge of Psychology, Ashis Nandy.

culture as he stressed on the feminine nature and nurturing non-violent aspects. Nathuram Godse
came from such a background of Chitpavan Brahman, and so did most of the other conspirators4
.
Nathuram was born in 1910, in a small village near Poona. His father Vinayak R. Godse worked
in the postal department of the government and his mother was Lakshmi. He was the eldest son
and second child in the family of four sons and two daughters. Three sons were born to his
parents before his birth but they died in infancy. Both of his parents were orthodox and devoted
Brahmans and so they so sought a religious solution to the problem of the survival of their new
born son. So, they used the old technique and Nathuram was brought up as a Girl, his nose was
pierced and he was made to wear a nose ring. Such experiences go with a high religiosity and a
sense of being chosen. This child very soon became a devotee of family gods. People say that he
acquired the ability to occasionally go into a trance and speak as an oracle. Neither a burden of
living a bisexual life nor the oracular religiosity came in the way of Nathuram from becoming a
“young man”, because of the physical upbringing or the masculine pursuits, it was very apparent
that Nathuram would try to regain his lost clarity of his sexual role by trying to become a
masculine. Whatever inner complications existed in Nathuram could never come up, he was
always a well mannered, quite, humble young man unlike Narayan Apte. People say that often
offered help to the neighbors and showed interest in informal social work. With time his oracular
abilities declined and he ceased to be the medium between the family deity and the family. But
still a certain kind of intellectual brightness remained. Even though he lost his oracular ability
but he still had a sense of being chosen. Evidence says that his qualities became more noticeable
after he killed Gandhi. People say that in his pre assassination days he was poor in his social
skills, these people were surprised by his competence and composure after the murder of Gandhi
and by the way he argued his own case in English in the court with sheer self confidence. It was
as if the assassination of Gandhi gave meaning to his life which was going prosaic and this was
perhaps the reason why Godse wanted to play out his full role in killing Gandhi. Till the end
there was only one fear in his mind that the government might have pity on him and he would
have to live with the shame all his life. He never wanted any kind of mercy as he says that he
himself had not shown any mercy in killing Gandhi therefore he does not expect any mercy.
People in jail used to say that as per his attitude even if he was thrown out of jail he would not
4
Exiled at Home, in AT THE EDGE OF PSYCHOLOGY 78.

flee. Though he had failed to matriculate, Godse was a self educated man with great knowledge
of religious Hindu text. He had learnt entire Bhagavad Gita and had read texts such as patanjali,
yoga sutra and Tukaram gatha. He had good command over written and spoken Marathi and
Hindi. And was widely read in sociology, politics, history and also in the works of Gandhi.
Conforming to the pshycologist’s concept of the authoritarian man, Godse was highly respectful
towards his parents and attached to conventional idea of social status and was afraid that after he
killed Gandhi his parents would lose this social status, so in his letters to his parents he justified
his act of killing Gandhi by quoting puranas. Nathuram was soft spoken and well built just like a
typical member of his caste.5
But there was clear discrepancy between this image and his actual
life. Nathuram belonged to a poor family; he had to start working at the age of sixteen. He
opened a cloth shop. This was very demeaning for him as belonging to a Brahmin caste he was
doing a lower caste work. So there was enormous gap between Nathuram’s membership of a
culturally privileged section of the Indian society and in his actual economic status and
experiences. It is from this kind of background that people of violent extremist group come
from. Nathuram at the age of became a active member of the Hindu Mahasabha, it was a group
which aimed at hindu revivalism. He was extremely religious and read into the sacred text what
one would expect a man from martial background to read into them. In the politics of the
Mahasabha he found a legitimate expression of the Hindu search for political power. He did very
well in the party and became secretary of the Pune branch. He did not find the RSS and
Mahasabha militant enough so he fo
rmed a new organization the Hindu Rashtra Dal. Nathuram with the help of the donations
received from his sympathizers purchased Agrani newspaper. The government soon banned the
newspaper because of its fiery political language. Godse revived the newspaper under a new
name Hindu Rashtra, Narayan Apte provided him financial support. Hindu rashtra was even
more vehemently opposing Gandhi and it portrayed the popular belief of the middle income
upper class Hindus mostly Bengali and Maharashtrian. The newspaper did not give Nathuram
any economic edge; he continued to be a tailor and started a coaching class in tailoring for
continuation of the printing of the newspaper. Hindu Rashtra helped Godse to crystallize his
main difference with Gandhi in their political style.
5
Ibid, at 80

It is not fair to discuss the difference between Godse and Gandhi without looking at their
similarities. Both were committed and courageous and nationalist, both agreed that the majority
of the population being Hindu so the basic problem of India was the problem of Hindus, both
wanted an undivided free India, both felt austerity was a necessary part of political activity.
Gandhi’s asceticism was world known but even Godse lived like a hermit he left all the comforts
and leisure and lived very modestly. In this regard a popular notion is that Godse used to drink
and smoke and was a materialistic person, such image of Godse was portrayed in movies like
nine hours to Rama. Godse like Gandhi believed in rejection of sexuality, he never married and
remained a strict celibate, he considered himself a Sanatani. He like Gandhi believed in a
casteless Hindu society and in a democratic polity. He favored Gandhi in his attempt to mobilize
Muslims for nationalist cause by giving them some concessions in the leadership. Godse began
his political career as a participant in the Gandhi led civil disobedience movement and ended his
political life with a speech which showed a grudging respect for Gandhi’s contribution to he
country. The differences between the two were basic, Godse considered that Gandhi’s emphasis
on political ethics sole force and the moral supremacy of the oppressed over the oppressor was
irrational. Godse Hinduism was basically very different from Gandhi’s. For Gandhi Hinduism
was a lifestyle and an open ended system of ethics, he wanted to organize the Hindus a
geographically community and not as a religious group. To Godse who was impressed by the
organized western Christianity and Islam and by their aggressive self affirmation, he thought that
the salvation of Hindus lay in giving up their ideological openness and in being religious as per
the politically successful society. He wanted Hindus to organize, compete, and became self
defend and eventually become a single community and a nation. Godse looked at history as
sequence of relation event so he saw the one thousand years of domination of India by Muslims
and Christian as a humiliations of Hindus which had to be redressed. For Gandhi history was a
contemporary myth which had to be interpreted as per the contemporary needs. The long Muslim
rules meant nothing as defeat for him was a problem for the victor not for the defeated. All this
led to Godse saying that Gandhi was not the father of nation but he proved to be the father of
Pakistan so it is my duty as son of mother India to put an end to life of the so called father of
nation who had played a very important part in bisecting our motherland.
There were reasons other than this fantasy of the mother being violated by intruders and a weak
Father who has failed in his paternal duty and has collaborated with the aggressors and as an

allegiant mother’s son, he tries to redeem his masculinity by protecting the mother, by defeating
the aggressors and by patricide.6
Godse’s personal history was endorsed by the history of his community, the “Chitpavans”. The
Chitpavans were losing the domination of the Maharashtrian society to the British. The
commercial culture of the emerging Bombay city was gradually pushing the culture of Poona,
particularly the culture of Chitpavans to the periphery. The ambivalence of Chitpavans towards
the fast changing social environment was deeply anxiety provoking. The community eventually
got split. A few did very well under the new British culture while the others felt that the
colonialism is an unmitigated evil which was eroding their traditional culture and Godse ended
up inheriting this ambivalence. Gandhi was a threat to Godse as he was trying to make the social
periphery, which was the lower caste, a part of the political centre. Gandhi never offered political
competition to either the traditional system or the modern colonial establishment. This must have
been a threat to those who wanted to offer a clear resistance to the colonial system on purely
nationalist grounds.
The other major theme which bonded Gandhi and Godse was underlined by Collins and Lapierre
in their recent book in which they try to provide a psychological link between Godse and
Gandhi. It claims that Nathuram and his political mentor, V.D. Savarkar had a homosexual
experience. It also hints that by the time Nathuram assassinated Gandhi, he had become an
ascetic misogynist. These claims haven’t been authenticated but Savarkar, as some people say
was a known womanizer and used to spend long stretches of time inside jails owing to his
political activities. Hence the same is attributed to the distortion of his sexuality and such
experiences might have prompted him to find an outlet, either through homosexuality or
promiscuity. Savarkar was not found to be guilty of being involved in the conspiracy, but still he
was morally wrong as he served as the ideal for Nathuram and others who were involved in the
conspiracy.
For Nathuram, Savarkar was a male prototype, who was vehemently protesting the reduction of
Hindus to a passive and feminine role, constantly fearing the further oppression of the by the
Muslims and the British. Because of the Muslims and later because of the British there was a
6
Ibid, at 81

continuous fear in the minds of Hindus of further reduction of their masculine self. Femininity
for him meant submission to the rule of others and this was the notion which he inherited from
the community background he came from. Godse throughout his life time showed concerns
about his sexuality either by an aggressive denial of it or by his apparent asceticism, or by the
conflicts he faced centering around his sexual identification. All this seems very evident when
we look at Godse’s political speeches and conversations and writings where he often uses this
imagery of Hindu subjugation and passive femininity, he usually refers the British and Muslims
as Rapists and Hindus as the victims, who have been castrated. This again signified his thinking
of Hindus becoming less masculine. Godse represented such people who were in deep
disagreement with themselves about their sexual identity and had now begun to politicize it. The
most important reason why Godse killed Gandhi was that, Gandhi was trying to gradually
legitimize femininity as a valued aspect of the Indian self-definition and this was depriving the
Hindus of their two main scapegoats; the Muslims and the British. The theory of action which
Nathuram had in mind was that for redeeming the masculinity of the Hindus, the Muslims and
the British has to be defeated. Now the Gandhian culture made this whole action theory
irrelevant, as Gandhi placed on the victims of the aggression the responsibility of becoming
authentic innocents.7
This self-redefinition could not be attained by reaffirming one’s masculine
self but only by militant nonviolence8
which totally refuses to recognize the defeat in the violent
confrontation as defeat. Gandhi says that the Godses9
had way long lost to the British because
they conformed to the martial values of the British and he promised to win because he could
draw upon the non-martial self of the apparent victors and create doubts about their own victory
in them.10
In conclusion we can surely say that Godse was showing the latent awareness of the dominant
sections of the Indian society of what Gandhi was trying to do to them. So, when Godse fired at
Gandhi, it was not actually him who pulled the trigger but it was the anxiety ridden, insecure,
partly westernized community whose meaning of life Gandhi was taking away.
7
Ibid, at 86.
8
This form of non-violence required paramount courage as the enemy will resort to violence but still you have to
remain non-violent till the end.
9
Here Gandhi is referring to the whole princely states in India who tried to fight with the British using violent
methods.
10
Supra note 4 at 87.

Analysis of the last statement of Godse made in the court
Gandhi, the most influential Indian leader had displeased many with his firearm brand of non-
violence, even in toughest of conditions. Godse was one such person, he initially admired
Gandhi but later become so disillusioned with his ideas that he went to the extent of murdering
him. But Nathuram Godse was disregarded as an extremist fanatic for a long period. In this
section of my paper I have tried to critically analyze the last statement made by Godse in front of
the court without any prior bias.
He was born in a Devoted Brahman family and was upbrought in the Hidnu culture. He himself
worked for the eradication of untouchability. He did not have much formal education but he was
a well read person, he studied the writings of Savarkar and Gandhi both. He was a follower of
Gandhi and appreciated his work for public awareness. In his statement he was also seen
criticizing Gandhi for over emphasizing on non-violence, as he said even when you are attacked,
you must not turn to non-violent means, Godse differed from him in this regard, he gave
examples of Lord Rama, Arjuna and Shivaji for justifying his claim that in case of self defense
and resistance resorting violence is not wrong. He praises Gandhi for his work in South Africa
but he says that after returning to India he became a kind of self judge, he took himself as
infallible. He was majorly angry with Gandhi because of what seemed to him as his pro muslim
policies, he gives an example of favoring Hindustani after he felt that Muslims were opposed to
the idea of Hindi.
Nathuram was deeply disturbed by the formation of Pakistan, he says ‘This is what Gandhi had
achieved after thirty years of undisputed dictatorship and this is what Congress party calls
freedom and peaceful transfer of power’. He considered Gandhi to be partisan, it is evident when
he says that ‘One of the conditions imposed by Gandhi for his breaking of the fast related to the
mosques in Delhi occupied by the Hindu refugees. But when Hindus in Pakistan were subjected
to violent attacks he did not so much as utter a single word to protest and censure the Pakistan
Government or the Muslims concerned’ According to him, Gandhi did not impose any condition
on Muslims because he knew that they wont be affected by his fast or even his death and as per
him the Muslim did not attach any value to the inner voice of Gandhi.
He thinks that the Indian politics would be able to take decisions in a better way in the absence
of Gandhi as his principles will not come in between taking practical decision, which is very

important for nation building. He admits that he killed Gandhi and said that he doesn’t want any
kind of mercy to be shown on him and is ready to face the punishment.
In the last part of his statement he say that he knew very well that once he kills Gandhi he would
loose all the honour he has in the society and would be disregarded by the people and would just
receive hatred. But still he had no guilt for his actions as what he did was only for the greater
good of the nation.
He believed that someday some hinest writers of history would weigh his act and would find the
true value.
Justice Khosla in his book11
said that, if the audience of that day in the court was to be
constituted into a jury and was asked to deliver a judgment, it would have surely held Nathuram
‘Not Guilty’ with an overwhelming majority. This was the affect of his final speech.
11
The Murder of the Mahatma, Justice G. D. Khosla.

BACKLASH ON THE MARATHI BRAHMAN COMMUNITY
In the Indian context any kind of political assassination has led to riots or atrocities on a
particular community. When Nathuram Godse, a Maratha, as refereed in one of the leading
newspaper’s report of the assassination12
, killed Gandhi this brought along with it violence and
mayhem targeted against a single community, Marathi Brahmins.
Nathuram Godse assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in New Delhi on January 30, 1948. Godse was a
Maharastrian Brahman, as I have mentioned earlier as well, he belonged to the Chitpavan
Brahamans. When Nehru addressed the country at night, he said that we must show respect to
Gandhi by showing sheer non-violence even in this situation of mayhem around. Unfortunately
the advise of the then Prime Minister was not followed by people and to an extent not even by
many Congress supporters. The Maharashtrian Brahman community was specifically targeted
after the assassination, a lot of atrocities happened on them. Perhaps this anger was the
culmination of the decades of tension between the Brahmans and the other castes. In any case,
angry mobs pillaged, burnt and looted the homes of hundreds of innocent Brahman families, and
many people were killed. All of this happened on the baseless assumption of the people that all
the Marathi Brahman families were complicit in the assassination of Gandhi.
12
The Hindu, 31st
January, 1948. http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/gandhiji-shot-dead-the-hindu-january-31-
1948/article4358055.ece (last accessed on January 11, 2015)

CONCLUSION
The paradox attached to the death of Gandhi is that, he himself was a devout follower of
Hinduism and was murdered by such people who considered themselves to be the protector of
Hinduism (or Hindutva, as these people called it as). It is ironic that the person who always
professed non-violence and asked his disciples never to use violence, when he died his followers
present on the spot had beaten the assassin.
Through this paper I have not tried to justify the act of killing Gandhi by Godse my only
objective is to look at the psychology of Godse behind killing Gandhi and to also see into his
personality as all of this contributed in his action of murdering Gandhi. Nathuram Godse was not
a mercenary, he was a well literate person and was even an editor of a newspaper. His full
personality never came in the popular discourse for example people never looked at his modern
mindset as he considered that the caste based discrimination us wrong and he himself worked for
its eradication. Public portray of Godse has been very wrong as he has been shown as a
materialistic person. The videos which are shown every year on the death anniversary of Gandhi
portray Godse in a totally absurd way, which is miles away from what actually Godse was. He
has been shown as someone who did not give much regard to his parents and friendship, but the
reality was that he held his parents in very high esteem and was always ready to die for his
friends. He never wanted Narayan Apte, who was his childhood friend to be involved in the
assassination as he did not want him to die because of this whole conspiracy.
Godse expected that someday in future people would understand his actions, I think that time has
come.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Ashis Nandy, Exiled at Home; At the Edge of Psychology, Oxford India Paperbacks.
2. A.G. Noorani, Savarkar and Hindutva: A Godse Connection, LeftWord Publications.
3. Justice G.D. Khosla, The murder of the Mahatma, Jaico Publishing House.
4. Tapan Ghose, The Gandhi Murder Trial.
5. T.K. Mahadevan, Godse Versus Gandhi, Times of India, 12 March 1978.
6. Payne, Mahatma Gandhi.
7. J.C. Jain, The Murder of Mahatma Gandhi: Prelude and Aftermath.

Adwait Adalatwale Research Paper On The Assassination Of Mahatma Gandhi

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Adwait Adalatwale Research Paper On The Assassination Of Mahatma Gandhi

Similar to Adwait Adalatwale Research Paper On The Assassination Of Mahatma Gandhi (7)

More from Fiona Phillips

More from Fiona Phillips (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Adwait Adalatwale Research Paper On The Assassination Of Mahatma Gandhi