![]() Along with purchasing the pistol, Godse and his accomplices shadowed Gandhi's movements.Īssassination attempt on 20 January 1948 Nathuram Vinayak Godse and Narayan Apte purchased a Beretta M1934. On the day Gandhi went on hunger strike, Godse and his colleagues began planning how to assassinate Gandhi. Godse and his colleagues interpreted this sequence of events to be a case of Mahatma Gandhi controlling power and hurting India. The Indian government, yielding to Gandhi, reversed its decision. But Gandhi opposed the decision and went on a fast-unto-death on 13 January 1948 to pressure the Indian government to release the payment to Pakistan. 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, due to Godse's disagreement with Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence towards Muslims. 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. Godse joined a protest march in 1938 in Hyderabad, He was arrested for political crimes and served a prison sentence. Godse had previously led a civil disobedience movement against Osman Ali Khan, the Muslim ruler of the princely Deccan region dominion of Hyderabad State in British India. Godse and his assassination accomplices were residents of the Deccan region. ![]() The rioting had come in the wake of the partition of the British Indian empire, which had accompanied the creation of the new independent dominions of India and Pakistan, and involved large, chaotic transfers of population between them. In early September 1947, Gandhi moved to Delhi to help stem the violent rioting there and in the neighboring province of East Punjab. He was released again owing to Gandhi's policy of not pressing criminal charges. This time Godse was arrested with a dagger and he uttered threats to kill Gandhi. In September 1944, Godse again led another group to block Gandhi's passage from Sevagram to Mumbai. He was released due to Gandhi's own policy of declining to press criminal charges. Godse and his group were prevented by the crowds from reaching Gandhi. He led a group of 15 to 20 young men who rushed at Gandhi during a prayer meeting at Panchgani. In May 1944, Nathuram Vinayak Godse attempted to assassinate Gandhi with a knife. Godse and Apte were hanged in the Ambala jail on 15 November 1949. Although pleas for commutation were made by Gandhi's two sons, Manilal Gandhi and Ramdas Gandhi, they were turned down by India's prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, deputy prime minister Vallabhbhai Patel and the Governor-General Chakravarti Rajagopalachari. The trial was rushed through, the haste sometimes attributed to the home minister 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. 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. 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. ![]() He was carried back to his room in Birla House from which a representative emerged sometime later to announce his death. As Gandhi began to walk toward the dais, Godse stepped out from the crowd flanking Gandhi's path, and fired three bullets into Gandhi's chest and stomach at point-blank range. Sometime after 5 p.m., according to witnesses, Gandhi had reached the top of the steps leading to the raised lawn behind Birla House where he had been conducting multi-faith prayer meetings every evening. Godse considered Gandhi to have been too accommodating to Pakistan during the Partition of India of the previous year. His assassin was Nathuram Godse, a Chitpavan Brahmin from Pune, Maharashtra, a Hindu nationalist, a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu paramilitary organization as well as a member of the Hindu Mahasabha. Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948 at age 78 in the compound of Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti), a large mansion in central New Delhi.
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