Why godse killed mahatma gandhi

By Vani Mehrotra: On January 30, 1948, Nathuram Vinayak Godse assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in the compound of Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti), a large mansion in central New Delhi. Fondly called as 'Bapu', Mahatma Gandhi was 78 when he was shot three bullets into the chest and abdomen at point-blank range. Moments later, he succumbed to his injuries. WHO WAS NATHURAM GODSE Nathuram Vinayak Godse was a Chitpavan Brahmin from Maharashtra's Pune. He was a Hindu nationalist and a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Godse was also a member of the Hindu Mahasabha. Godse was born into a Maharashtrian Chitpavan Brahmin family. His father, Vinayak Vamanrao Godse, was a postal employee, while his mother was Lakshmi Godse. Godse gave the below reasons for killing Bapu - • Godse felt that the massacre and suffering caused during and due to the partition could have been avoided if Gandhi and the Indian government had acted to stop the killing of the minorities (Hindus and Sikhs) in West and East Pakistan. Godse said Gandhi did not protest against the atrocities. • Godse claimed the Indian government reversed its policy decision after Gandhi sat on a fast to pressurise the government to release the final payment to Pakistan that it had previously frozen because of the war in Kashmir. Godse said Gandhi had to be removed from the political stage, so that India can begin looking after its own interests as a nation. • According to Godse, Mahatma Gandhi's stance on religious tole...

Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead by Nathuram Godse on January 30, 1948. Godse entered a crowd of people as Gandhi headed for his evening prayers. He approached Gandhi on the pretext of touching his feet. He shot Gandhi instead, thrice, killing the Mahatma on the spot. The Beretta handgun that Godse used was an unusual weapon. Though considered to be supremely reliable, it was a rare weapon in India, as it was mostly used by Italy and other Axis Powers during World War II. The weapon was the Ital ian manufacturer’s response to the German Walther PP . World War I saw some of history’s greatest advances in weapons technology and manufacturing. Ushering in the birth of the modern military-industrial complex, the Great War propelled the growth of weapons manufacturers across Europe and the US. Beretta was one such company. The company traced its origins to 1526, when its eponymous founder started building gun barrels for the Venetian city state. While business boomed over generations, Beretta only started producing pistols in 1915 – responding to Italy’s wartime needs. The quality and reliability of Beretta guns made them a favourite among soldiers. Click here for more In the early 1930s, German Walther PP became extremely popular, impressing even the Italian army. Fearful of losing its biggest client, Beretta came up with the M1934 – a significant improvement on its previous pistol. Notably , the Beretta M1934 was a compact and light gun but packed a strong cartridge for its size....

Premium The trial of Nathuram Godse: What happened after Gandhi was killed Godse was sentenced to death in 1948 by a special court set up in Delhi’s Red Fort. In his appeal filed in the Punjab High Court, Godse objected to the court’s finding that there was a conspiracy to kill Gandhi. He remained unrepentant, wrote Justice Khosla, who heard his appeal. Seventy-five years ago on this day (January 30), as Mahatma Gandhi was walking towards the prayer mandap at Birla House in Delhi, 35-year-old Nathuram Godse came before him and pulled out a pistol from his pocket. He fired three shots from point-blank range that hit Gandhi in the chest, stomach, and groin. Within 15 minutes, the Father of the Nation was dead. Also in Explained | Godse was apprehended by military personnel who were at the spot, and his pistol was snatched away. The assassin was beaten by the crowd before police took him into custody. Subsequently, he was lodged at a police station on Tughlaq Road, where an FIR was registered. Godse’s trial The trial began in May 1948 at a special court set up in Also Read | The trial took place before Special Judge Atma Charan, a senior member of the judicial branch of the Indian Civil Service. The prosecution was led by CK Daphtary, then Advocate General of Bombay, who later became Solicitor General of India, and then the Attorney General for India. Godse along with other accused, including Narayan Apte and Vinayak Savarkar, were allowed to take the help of counsel of their...

Imagine an America in the not-so-distant future. A right-wing populist politician has just been reelected president of the United States, stirring a wave of ethnonationalism not seen since the Trump presidency. Amid the country’s nativist turn, a cult of personality forms around John Wilkes Booth, the actor who fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre just days after the end of the Civil War. Members of the president’s party hail Booth as a champion of the Confederate cause. Statues and memorials are erected in his honor. Although the president still pays lip service to Lincoln and his legacy, he is politically aligned much more closely with Booth. In the United States, this is a futurological fantasy, but in India a similar scenario is a reality: The man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, the father of India’s independence movement and the country’s most revered figure, is celebrated today—by some, at least—as a national hero. Nathuram Godse, who shot Gandhi to death on January 30, 1948, and was hanged the following year, has been hailed by Hindu nationalists, including some members of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as This year, that day happened to fall on the press night for The Father and the Assassin, a new play at the National Theatre in London about the life of Godse by the Indian playwright Anupama Chandrasekhar. That a show about the man who killed Gandhi would open today in an international city speaks to the tr...

Born the son of an Indian official in 1869, Gandhi’s Vaishnava mother was deeply religious and early on exposed her son to Jainism, a morally rigorous Indian religion that advocated nonviolence. Gandhi was an unremarkable student but in 1888 was given an opportunity to study law in England. In 1891, he returned to India, but failing to find regular legal work he accepted in 1893 a one-year contract in South Africa. Settling in Natal, he was subjected to racism and South African laws that restricted the rights of Indian laborers. Gandhi later recalled one such incident, in which he was removed from a first-class railway compartment and thrown off a train, as his moment of truth. From thereon, he decided to fight injustice and defend his rights as an Indian and a man. When his contract expired, he spontaneously decided to remain in South Africa and launched a campaign against legislation that would deprive Indians of the right to vote. He formed the Natal Indian Congress and drew international attention to the plight of Indians in South Africa. In 1906, the Transvaal government sought to further restrict the rights of Indians, and Gandhi organized his first campaign of satyagraha, or mass civil disobedience. After seven years of protest, he negotiated a compromise agreement with the South African government. In 1914, Gandhi returned to India and lived a life of abstinence and spirituality on the periphery of Indian politics. He supported Britain in the First World War but in...