Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948 at the age of 78 in the compound of The Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti), a large mansion in central New Delhi. His assassin was Nathuram Godse, from Pune, Maharastra a right-wing Hindu nationalist, with a history of association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu paramilitary organization, and with membership in the Hindu Mahasabha.
Sometime after 5 PM, according to witnesses, Gandhi had reached the top of the stairs leading to the raised lawn behind Birla House where he had been conducting multi-faith prayer meetings every evening. As Gandhi began to walk toward the dais, Godse stepped out of the crowd flanking Gandhi's path, and fired three bullets into Gandhi's chest and stomach at point-blank range. Gandhi fell to the ground. He was carried back to his room in Birla House from which a representative emerged sometime later to announce his death.
Godse was captured by members of the crowd—the most widely reported of whom was Herbert Reiner Jr., a vice-consul at the American embassy in Delhi—and handed over to the police. The Gandhi murder trial opened in May 1948 in Delhi's historic Red Fort, with Godse the main defendant, and his collaborator Narayan Apte, and six more, deemed co-defendants. The trial was rushed through, the haste sometimes attributed to the Minister of Home Vallabhbhai Patel's desire "to avoid scrutiny for the failure to prevent the assassination." Godse and Apte were sentenced to death on 8 November 1949. Although pleas for commutation were made by Gandhi's two sons, Manilal Gandhi and Ramdas Gandhi, they were turned down by Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru, deputy prime minister Vallabhbhai Patel, and Governor-General C. Rajagopalachari. Godse and Apte were hanged in the Ambala jail on 15 November 1949.
Preparations
In May 1944, Nathuram Godse attempted to assassinate Gandhi with a knife. He led a group of 15 to 20 young men who rushed at Gandhi during a prayer meeting at Panchgani. Godse and his group were prevented by the crowds from reaching Gandhi. He was released due to Gandhi's own policy of declining to press criminal charges.
In September 1944, Godse again led another group to block Gandhi's passage from Sevagram to Mumbai. This time Godse was arrested with a dagger and he uttered threats to kill Gandhi. He was released again owing to Gandhi's policy of not pressing criminal charges.
In early September 1947, Gandhi moved to Delhi to help stem the violent rioting there and in the neighbouring province of East Punjab. The rioting had come in the wake of the Partition of India, which had accompanied the creation of the new independent dominions of India and Pakistan, and involved large, chaotic transfers of population between them.
Godse and his assassination accomplices were residents of the Deccan region. Godse had previously led a civil disobedience movement against Mir Osman Ali Khan, the Muslim ruler of the princely Deccan region dominion of Hyderabad State in British India. Godse joined a protest march in 1938 in Hyderabad, He was arrested for political crimes and served a prison sentence. Once he was out of prison, Godse continued his civil disobedience and worked as a journalist reporting the sufferings of Hindu refugees escaping from Pakistan, and during the various religious riots that erupted in the 1940s.
Plans to assassinate Gandhi were initiated by Godse and his accomplices in January 1948, after India and Pakistan had already started a war over Kashmir. Jawaharlal Nehru had held up a payment to the belligerent Pakistan as part of the post-Partition division of funds of British India. But Gandhi opposed the decision and went on a fast-unto-death on 13 January 1948 to pressure the Government of India to release the payment to Pakistan. The Government of India, yielding to Gandhi, reversed its decision. Godse and his colleagues interpreted this sequence of events to be a case of Mahatma Gandhi controlling power and hurting India.
On the day Gandhi went on hunger strike, Godse and his colleagues began planning how to assassinate Gandhi. Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte purchased a Beretta M1934. Along with purchasing the pistol, Godse and his accomplices shadowed Gandhi's movements.
Assassination attempt on 20 January 1948
Gandhi had initially been staying at the Balmiki Temple, near Gole Market in the northern part of New Delhi, and was holding his prayer meetings there. When the temple was requisitioned for sheltering refugees of the partition he moved to Birla House, a large mansion on what was then Albuquerque Road in south-central New Delhi, not far from the diplomatic enclave. Gandhi was living in two unpretentious rooms in the left wing of Birla House, and conducting prayer meetings on a raised lawn behind the mansion.
The first attempt to assassinate Gandhi at Birla House occurred on 20 January 1948. According to Stanley Wolpert, Nathuram Godse and his colleagues followed Gandhi to a park where he was speaking. One of them threw a grenade away from the crowd. The loud explosion scared the crowd, creating a chaotic stampede of people. Gandhi was left alone on the speakers' platform. The original assassination plan was to throw a second grenade, after the crowds had run away, at the isolated Gandhi but the alleged accomplice, Digambar Badge, lost his courage, did not throw the second grenade and ran away with the crowd. All of the assassination plotters ran away, except Madanlal Pahwa who was a Punjabi refugee of the Partition of India. He was arrested.
30 January 1948
Manuben Gandhi
Manu (Mridula) Gandhi, called "Manuben" in Gujarati fashion, was Mahatma Gandhi's great niece (more precisely, a first cousin twice removed). She had come to join Gandhi's entourage during his peace mission to Noakhali in East Bengal, which had been gripped by communal violence. Abha Chatterjee (Abhaben Chatterjee) was a girl adopted by the Gandhis who would later marry Gandhi's nephew, Kanu Gandhi. Both young women were walking with Gandhi when he was assassinated. According to Last Glimpses Of Bapu, a memoir by Manuben Gandhi published in 1962, Mahatma Gandhi (Bapu) started the day in Birla House by listening to a recitation of the Bhagavad Gita. He then worked on a Congress constitution he wanted to publish in the Harijan (magazine), had his bath and massage at 8 a.m., and reprimanded Manuben to take care of herself since her health was not what it should be for an 18-year-old. Gandhi, aged 78, was weighed after his bath and was 109.5 pounds (49.7 kg). He then ate lunch with Pyarelalji discussing Noakhali riots. After lunch, states Manuben, Gandhi napped. After waking up, he had a meeting with Sardar Dada. Two Kathiawar leaders wanted to meet him, and when Manuben informed Gandhi that they wanted to meet him, Gandhi replied, "Tell them that, if I remain alive, they can talk to me after the prayer on my walk".
According to Manuben's memoir, the meeting between Vallabhbhai Patel and Gandhi went past the scheduled time and Gandhi was about ten minutes late to the prayer meeting. He began his walk to the prayer location by walking with Manuben to his right and Abha to his left, holding onto them as walking sticks. A stout young man in khaki dress, wrote Manuben, pushed his way through the crowd bent over and with his hands folded. Manuben thought that the man wanted to touch Gandhi's feet. She pushed the man aside, saying, "Bapu is already ten minutes late; why do you embarrass him?" Godse pushed her aside so forcibly that she lost her balance, and the rosary, notebook, and Gandhi's spittoon she was carrying fell out of her hands. She recalled that as she bent to the ground to pick up the items, she heard four shots, resounding booms, and she saw smoke everywhere. Gandhi's hands were folded and he was saying, "Hey Ram...! Hey Ram...!". Abhaben, wrote Manuben, had also fallen down and she saw the assassinated Gandhi in Abhaben's lap.
The pistol shots had deafened her, wrote Manuben, the smoke was very thick, and the incident complete within 3 to 4 minutes. A crowd of people rushed towards them, according to Manuben. The watch she was carrying showed 5:17 p.m. and blood was everywhere on their white clothes. Manuben estimated that it took about ten minutes to carry Gandhi back into the house, and no doctor was available in the meanwhile. They only had a first aid box, but there was no medicine in it for treating Gandhi's wounds. According to Manuben:
the first bullet from the assassin's seven-bore automatic hit the belly 3.5 inches to the right of the middle and 2.5 inches above the navel; the second hit the belly 1 inch away from middle, and the third 4 inches away to the right".
Gandhi had suffered profuse blood loss. Everyone was crying loudly. In the house, Bhai Saheb had phoned the hospital many times, but was unable to reach any help. He then went to Willingdon Hospital in person, but came back disappointed. Manuben and others read the Bhagavad Gita as Gandhi's body lay in the room. Colonel Bhargava arrived, and he pronounced Gandhi dead.
Herbert Reiner
According to several reports, while the attending crowd was still in shock, Gandhi's assassin Godse was seized by Herbert Reiner Jr., a 32-year-old, newly arrived vice-consul at the American embassy in Delhi. According to an obituary for Reiner published in May 2000 by Los Angeles Times, Reiner's role was reported on the front pages of newspapers around the world.
According to Stratton (1950), on January 30, 1948, Reiner had reached Birla House after work, arriving fifteen minutes before the scheduled start of the prayer meeting at 5 p.m., and finding himself in a relatively small crowd. Although there were some armed guards present, Reiner felt that the security measures were inadequate, especially in view of an attempted bomb explosion at the same location ten days before. By the time Gandhi and his small party reached the garden area a few minutes after five, the crowd had swelled to several hundred, which Reiner described as comprising "schoolboys, girls, sweepers, members of the armed services, businessmen, sadhus, holy men, and even vendors displaying pictures of 'Bapu'". At first, Reiner had been at some distance from the path leading to the dais, but he moved forward, explaining later, "An impulse to see more, and at a closer range, of this Indian leader impelled me to move away from the group in which I had been standing to the edge of the terrace steps".
As Gandhi walked briskly up the steps to the lawn, an unidentified man in the crowd spoke up, somewhat insolently in Reiner's recollection, "Gandhiji, you are late." Gandhi slowed, turned towards the man, and gave him an annoyed look as he passed directly in front of Reiner. No sooner had Gandhi reached the top of the steps than another man, a stocky Indian man in his 30s and dressed in khaki clothes, stepped out from the crowd and into Gandhi's path. He soon fired several shots up close, at once felling Gandhi. BBC reporter Robert Stimson, who was present at Birla House, reported in a broadcast that night, "For a few seconds, no one could believe what had happened; everyone seemed dazed and numb. And then a young American who had come for prayers rushed forward and seized the shoulders of the man in the khaki coat. That broke the spell. ... Half a dozen people stooped to lift Gandhi. Others hurled themselves upon the attacker. ... He was overpowered and taken away." Others, as well, described how the crowd seemed paralyzed until Reiner's action.
Robert Trumbull of The New York Times, who was an eyewitness, described Reiner's action in a front-page story on January 31, 1948:
The assassin was seized by Tom Reiner of Lancaster, Mass., a vice consul attached to the American Embassy and a recent arrival in India. ... Mr. Reiner grasped the assailant by the shoulders and shoved him toward several police guards. Only then did the crowd begin to grasp what had happened and a forest of fists belabored the assassin ...
Reiner too had noticed a man in khaki step into the path leading to the dais, but his further view was occluded by a party of associates following Gandhi. He soon heard sounds, though, which in his words were "not loud, not ringing, and not unlike the reports of damp firecrackers ..." and which for a moment made him wonder if some sort of celebration was underway.
The details and the role of Reiner in seizing Godse vary by the source. According to Frank Allston, Reiner stated that:
Godse stood nearly motionless with a small Beretta dangling in his right hand and to my knowledge made no attempt to escape or to take his own fire. ... Moving toward Godse I extended my right arm in an attempt to seize his gun but in doing so grasped his right shoulder in a manner that spun him into the hands of Royal Indian Air Force men, also spectators, who disarmed him. I then fastened a firm grasp on his neck and shoulders until other military and police took him into custody.
According to Tunzelmann, Godse was seized and pummeled by Reiner. According to K. L. Gauba, Reiner was the "unsung hero" and had he not acted "Godse would probably have shot his way out". Reiner was standing in the front row, states Pramod Kapoor, and he seized and held Godse until the police arrived, but his name only appeared in some American newspapers. According to Bamzai and Damle, during the assassination trial, the government did not call to the stand American marine Herbert "Tom" Reiner who caught Godse or the nephew of then Congress minister Takthmal Jain of Madhya Bharat ministry (1948), as well as many others.