- Nathuram Godse was arrested immediately after
he assassinated Gandhiji, based on a F. I. R. filed
by Nandlal Mehta at the Tughlak Road Police
staton at Delhi .
The trial, which was held in
camera, began on May 27, 1948 and concluded on
February 10, 1949. He was sentenced to death.
An appeal to the Punjab High Court, then in
session at Simla, did not find favour and the
sentence was upheld. The statement that you are
about to read is the last made by Godse before the
Court on the May 5, 1949.
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”
WHY I KILLED GANDHI
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 RSS wing of anti-caste movements and
maintained that all Hindus were 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 in which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins,
Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars and Bhangis
participated. We broke the caste rules and dined
in the company of each other. I have read the
speeches and writings of Ravana, Chanakiya,
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
whatever Veer 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 single factor
has done.
All this reading and thinking led me to believe 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 (300 million) of Hindus would
automatically constitute the freedom and the
well-being of all India , one fifth of human race.
This conviction led me naturally to devote myself
to the Hindu Sanghtanist 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
Lokamanya Tilak, Gandhiji’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
those 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 mere dream if you imagine that 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 a 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 essentially 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 Gobind Singh as
misguided patriots, Gandhiji 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 for ever 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 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 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 every thing; 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 and when to withdraw
it. The movement might succeed or fail, it might
bring untold disaster and political reverses but
that could make no difference to the Mahatma’s
infallibility. ‘A Satyagrahi can never fail’ was his
formula for declaring his own infallibility and
nobody except himself knew what a Satyagrahi is.
Thus, the Mahatma became the judge and jury in
his own cause. 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 politics 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,
disaster after disaster. Gandhi’s pro-Muslim policy
is blatantly 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 called Hindustani;
it has no grammar; it has no vocabulary. It is a
mere dialect, it is spoken, but not written. It is a
bastard tongue and cross-breed 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 purity of the Hindi language was 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 the
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 some 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 he was succeeded by
Lord Mountbatten. King Log was followed by King
Stork. The Congress which had boasted of its
nationalism and socialism 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 August 15, 1947.
Lord Mountbatten came to be described in
Congress circles as the greatest Viceroy and
Governor-General this country ever had. The
official date for handing over 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 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 ‘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 consider a deity of worship –
my mind was filled with direful anger.
One of the conditions imposed by Gandhi for his
breaking of the fast unto death 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 for
its break some condition on the Muslims in
Pakistan , there 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 condition
on the Muslims. He was fully aware of from the
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 had failed his paternal
duty inasmuch as 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 and
his doctrine of non-violence of which so much is
made of, all crumbled before Jinnah’s iron will and
proved to be powerless. Briefly speaking, I
thought to myself and foresaw 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 felt that the Indian politics in the
absence of Gandhiji would surely be proved
practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful
with 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 and 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 to
be 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 of
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 preachings and deeds
are at times at variances 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
establishment of 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 else 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 some day in future.
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