Reasons for killing Mahatma Gandhi:
During the trial justice Khosla had
allowed Nathuram Godse the killer of Gandhi to read his own confession in the
court.
However the Indian
government had banned the confession of Nathuram.
Nathuram's brother Gopal Godse fought a
60 years legal battle after which the Supreme Court removed the
ban. The speech is after the 12 (of the more than 150 reasons to kill Gandhi)
Gopal Godse
Nathuram had given 150 reasons for
killing Gandhi;
few of which are as follows:
1. In 1919 people of India wanted General Dyer to
be tried for the Massacre of innocent people at Jalianwalla Baugh
.Gandhi refused to support this demand.
2. Entire India
wanted Gandhi to intervene and save Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev from the
Gallows. Gandhi stubbornly refused on the grounds that they were misguided
freedom fighters, and theirs was an act of violence.
3. On 6th May 1946 on public platform, Gandhi
asked Hindus to sacrifice and not fight the members of
Muslim league. In Kerala Muslim league members killed over 1500
Hindus and converted2000 to Islam. Instead of protesting
Gandhi expressed that it was a brave act of Allah's followers.
4. On several occasions Gandhi called Shivaji, Maharana
Pratapand Guru Govind Singh as misguided nationalists.
5. Gandhi
advised Raja Hari Singh of Kashmir to abdicate as Kashmir had Muslim
majority ,and settle down in Kashi. Raja Harisingh on
the other hand he supported the Nizam (Osman Ali Khan )of
Hyderabad to join Pakistan , even though the state
of Hyderabad(Andhra , Telangana , Karnataka and Berar) had Hindu
majority.
Nizam Osman
Ali Khan Sardar Patel however overruled Gandhi .When
Nehru heard of Patel's police action in Hyderabad(operation POLO) he
disconnected his telephone with Patel. Nizam
surrendering to Patel
6. In
1931 the congress committee on designing of Indian flag suggested that the flag
be only in saffron. Gandhi insisted changed it to a tri-colour
flag.
7. During
the Tripura congress , Subhash Chandra Bose was elected as president
with majority however Gandhi supported Pattabhai Sitaramayya forcing Bose
to resign.
8. On 15th June 1947 during congress conclave it was decided
to resist the partition of India but Gandhi went to the meeting at the last
minute and supported the partition. In-fact it was Gandhi who had declared
earlier that partition will take place only over my dead
body. Patel and
Nehru
9. Sardar
Patel was elected by majority as thefirst Prime Minister but Gandhi
insisted on Nehru .
10. Nehru government had decided to reconstruct
Somnath Mandirat its cost but Gandhi without even being a member of
the ministry forced the Govt. to reject this proposal . At
the same time on 13th January 1948 he went on a fast to allow Muslims
to repair the mosque in Delhi at govt's cost.
11. When
Hindus refugees returned to India after partition, some of them took
shelter in some mosques temporarily .When Muslims objected ,Gandhi
forced all such Hindus children, ladies and the old to leave the
mosque and live on the streets.
12. In
October 1947 Pakistan attacked Kashmir ,Gandhi went on a fast
and forced the Indian Govt to pay Pakistan a compensation of
Rs.55 crore. Gandhi did not mind hurting
Hindu feelings to win over the Indian Muslims.
Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were hanged on 15th November 1949 in the Ambala Jail in Punjab.
1. I'm sure most of us have read
Nathuram's longish last speech giving his reasons for killing Gandhi. Erudite
and powerful.
2. Such was the power and eloquence
of this statement that one of the judges, G. D. Khosla, later wrote, “I have,
however, no doubt that had the audience of that day been constituted into a
jury and entrusted with the task of deciding Godse’s appeal, they would have
brought a verdict of ‘not Guilty’ by an overwhelming majority”
3. Worth a repeat.
Nathuram Godse - His Last Speech
"May it please Your Honour"
Nathuram Godse
[On 8 November 1948, Nathuram Godse
(19 May 1910-15 November 1949) rose to make his statement in court. Reading
quietly from a typed manuscript, he sought to explain why he had killed Gandhi.
His thesis covered ninety-pages, and he was on his feet for five hours. Godse's
statement, excerpted below, should be read by citizens and scholars in its
entirely, for it provides an insight into his personality and his understanding
of the concept of Indian nationhood]
"Born in a devotional Brahmin
family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu religion, Hindu history and Hindu
culture. I had, therefore, been intensely proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I
grew up I developed a tendency to free thinking unfettered by any superstitious
allegiance to any isms, political or religious. That is why I worked actively
for the eradication of untouchability and the caste system based on birth
alone. I openly joined anti-caste movements and maintained that all Hindus are
of equal status as to rights, social and religious, and should be considered
high or low on merit alone and not through the accident of birth in a
particular caste or profession.
I used publicly to take part in
organized anti-caste dinners which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins, Vaishyas,
Kshatriyas, Chamars and B-----s participated. We broke the caste rules and
dined in the company of each other. I have read the speeches and writings of
Dadabhai Naoroji, Vivekanand, Gokhale, Tilak, along with the books of ancient
and modern history of India and some prominent countries like England, France,
America and Russia. Moreover I studied the tenets of socialism and Marxism. But
above all I studied very closely what Veer (brave) Savarkar and Gandhiji had
written and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more to
the moulding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last
thirty years or so, than any other factor has done.
All this thinking and reading led me
to believe that it was my first duty to serve Hindudom and Hindus both as a
patriot and as a world citizen. To secure the freedom and to safeguard the just
interests of some thirty crores (three hundred million) of Hindus would
automatically constitute the freedom and well-being of all India, one fifth of
the human race. This conviction led me naturally to devote myself to the Hindu
Sanatanist ideology and programme, which alone, I came to believe, could win
and preserve the National Independence of Hindustan, my Motherland, and enable
her to render true service to humanity as well. Since the year 1920, that is,
after the demise of Lokmanya Tilak, Gandhi's influence in the Congress first
increased and then became supreme.
His activities for public awakening
were phenomenal in their intensity and were reinforced by the slogan of truth
and non-violence, which he paraded ostentatiously before the country. No
sensible or enlightened person could object to these slogans. In fact there is
nothing new or original in them. They are implicit in every constitutional
public movement. But it is nothing but a dream if you imagine the bulk of
mankind is, or can ever become, capable of scrupulous adherence to these lofty
principles in its normal life from day to day. In fact, honour, duty and love
of one's own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard
non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance
to an aggression is unjust.
I would consider it a religious and
moral duty to resist and if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of
force. (In the Ramayana) Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved
Sita. (In the Mahabharata) Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and
Arjuna had to fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relations,
including the revered Bhishma, because the latter was on the side of the
aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as
guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed the total ignorance of the springs of
human action. In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by
Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim
tyranny in India. It was absolutely essential for Shivaji to overpower and kill
an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life. In
condemning history's towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru
Govind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhi has merely exposed his self-conceit.
He was, paradoxical, as it may
appear, a violent pacifist who brought untold calamities on the country in the
name of truth and non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will
remain enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen forever for the freedom they
brought to them. The accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating
in his last pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the
existence of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately. Gandhi had done
very good work in South Africa to uphold the rights and well being of the
Indian community there.
But when he finally returned to
India, he developed a subjective mentality under which he alone was to be the
final judge of what was right or wrong. If the country wanted his leadership,
it had to accept his infallibility; if it did not, he would stand aloof from
the Congress and carry on in his own way. Against such an attitude there can be
no halfway house. Either Congress had to surrender its will to his and had to be
content with playing second fiddle to all his eccentricity, whimsicality,
metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on without him. He alone
was the judge of everyone and everything; he was the master brain guiding the
Civil Disobedience movement; no other could know the technique of that
movement. He alone knew when to begin it and when to withdraw it. The movement
might succeed or fail, but that could make no difference to the Mahatma's
infallibility. 'A Satyagrahi can never fail' was his formula for his own
infallibility and nobody except himself knew what a Satyagrahi is.
Thus the Mahatma became the judge and
the jury in his own case. These childish insanities and obstinacies, coupled
with a most severe austerity of life, ceaseless work and lofty character made
Gandhi formidable and irresistible. Many people thought that his policies were
irrational, but they had either to withdraw from the Congress or place their
intelligence at his feet to do with as he liked. In a position of such absolute
irresponsibility, Gandhi was guilty of blunder after blunder, failure after
failure, and disaster after disaster. Gandhi's pro-Muslim policy is blatantly
illustrated in his perverse attitude on the question of the national language
of India. It is quite obvious that Hindi has the most prior claim to be
accepted as the premier language.
In the beginning of his career in
India, Gandhi gave a great impetus to Hindi, but as he found that the Muslims
did not like it, he became a champion of what is called Hindustani. Everybody
in India knows that there is no language in India called Hindustani; it has no
grammar; it has no vocabulary. It is a mere dialect; it is spoken, not written.
It is a tongue and a crossbreed between Hindi and Urdu, and not even the Mahatma's
sophistry could make it popular. But in his desire to please the Muslims he
insisted that Hindustani alone should be the national language of India. His
blind followers, of course, supported him and the so-called hybrid language
began to be used. The charm and the purity of the Hindi language were to be
prostituted to please the Muslims. All his experiments were at the expense of
the Hindus.
From August 1946 onwards, the private
armies of the Muslim League began a massacre of Hindus. The then Viceroy, Lord
Wavell, though distressed at what was happening, would not use his powers under
the Government of India Act of 1935 to prevent the rape, murder and arson. The
Hindu blood began to flow from Bengal to Karachi with little retaliation by the
Hindus. The Interim Government formed in September was sabotaged by its Muslim
League members right from its inception, but the more they became disloyal and
treasonable to the government of which they were a part, the greater was
Gandhi's infatuation for them.
Lord Wavell had to resign as he could
not bring about a settlement and was succeeded by Lord Mountbatten. King Stork
followed King Log. The Congress, which had boasted of its nationalism and
secularism, secretly accepted Pakistan literally at the point of the bayonet
and abjectly surrendered to Jinnah. India was vivisected and one-third of the
Indian Territory became foreign land to us from 15 August 1947. Lord
Mountbatten came to be described in the Congress circles as the greatest
Viceroy and Governor-General this country ever had.
The official date for the handing
over of power was fixed for June 30, 1948, but Mountbatten with his ruthless
surgery gave us a gift of vivisected India ten months in advance. This is what
Gandhi had achieved after thirty years of undisputed dictatorship and this is
what the Congress party calls 'freedom' and 'peaceful transfer of power'. The
Hindu-Muslim unity bubble was finally burst and a theocratic state was
established with the consent of Nehru and his crowd and they have called it
'freedom won by them with sacrifice' - whose sacrifice? When top leaders of
Congress, with the consent of Gandhi, divided and tore the country - which we
considered a deity of worship - my mind was filled with direful anger.
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. Gandhi was shrewd enough to know
that while undertaking a fast unto death, had he imposed some conditions on the
Muslims in Pakistan, here would have been found hardly any Muslims who could
have shown some grief if the fast had ended in his death. It was for this
reason that he purposely avoided imposing any conditions on the Muslims.
He was fully aware from past
experience that Jinnah was not at all perturbed or influenced by his fast and
the Muslim League hardly attached any value to the inner voice of Gandhi.
Gandhi is being referred to as the Father of the Nation. But if that is so, he
has failed in his paternal duty inasmuch he has acted very treacherously to the
nation by his consenting to the partitioning of it. I stoutly maintain that
Gandhi has failed in his duty. He has proved to be the Father of Pakistan. His
inner-voice, his spiritual power, his doctrine of non-violence of which so much
is made of, all crumbled against Jinnah's iron will and proved to be powerless.
Briefly speaking, I thought to myself
and foresaw that 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 thought that the Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would
surely be practical, able to retaliate and would be powerful with the 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 or 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 necessary for sound nation-building.
After having fully considered the
question, I took the final decision in the matter, but I did not speak about it
to anyone whatsoever. I took courage in both my hands and I did fire the shots
at Gandhiji on 30th January 1948, on the prayer-grounds in Birla House. 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. I bear no ill will towards anyone
individually, but I do say that I had no respect for the present government
owing to their policy, which was unfairly favourable towards the Muslims. But
at the same time I could clearly see that the policy was entirely due to the
presence of Gandhi.
I have to say with great regret that
Prime Minister Nehru quite forgets that his preaching and deeds are at times at
variance with each other when he talks about India as a secular state in season
and out of season, because it is significant to note that Nehru has played a
leading role in the theocratic state of Pakistan, and his job was made easier
by Gandhi's persistent policy of appeasement towards the Muslims. I now stand
before the court to accept the full share of my responsibility for what I have
done and the judge would, of course, pass against me such orders of sentence as
may be considered proper. But I would like to add that I do not desire any
mercy to be shown to me, nor do I wish that anyone should beg for mercy on my
behalf.
My confidence about the moral side of
my action has not been shaken even by the criticism levelled against it on all
sides. I have no doubt that honest writers of history will weigh my act and
find the true value thereof someday in future."
Nathuram Godse was hanged a
year later, on 15 November 1949; as per his last wishes, his family and
followers have preserved his ashes for immersion in the Indus River of a
re-united India
