Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi (1948): Death in New Delhi

The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi took place in New Delhi on 30 January 1948, when Nathuram Godse shot the 78-year-old leader at close range as he walked to an evening prayer meeting. Gandhi had led India’s non-violent struggle for independence, and his killing, less than six months after independence, shocked the new nation and the world. It also forced India to confront the religious hatred unleashed by partition.

Background: partition and a nation in turmoil

India and Pakistan became independent in August 1947, at the end of British rule. The partition of India was accompanied by mass migration and communal violence between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. Estimates of the dead range from around 200,000 to two million, and some 10 to 20 million people were displaced.

Gandhi had opposed partition and spent the months around Indian independence trying to stop the killing. He walked through riot-hit villages in Bengal, fasted in Calcutta in September 1947 and then moved to Delhi, where Muslim neighbourhoods were under attack. His insistence on protecting Muslims made him a hero to many and a hated figure to some Hindu nationalists.

On 13 January 1948 Gandhi began a fast in Delhi to demand communal peace. One of the issues behind it was a sum of 550 million rupees (55 crore) owed to Pakistan from the division of British India’s assets, which the Indian government had withheld because of the conflict over Kashmir. The government agreed to pay, and Gandhi ended his fast on 18 January after community leaders pledged to keep the peace.

The conspirators

The plot was organised by a small group of men from western India. Its leader was Nathuram Vinayak Godse, a 37-year-old editor of a Marathi newspaper in Pune. He had been a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist volunteer organisation, and was active in the Hindu Mahasabha party.

His closest partner was Narayan Apte, his business associate in the newspaper. Others included Vishnu Karkare, Madanlal Pahwa, a refugee from Punjab, Godse’s younger brother Gopal Godse, Digambar Badge, an arms dealer, his servant Shankar Kistayya, and Dattatraya Parchure, a doctor from Gwalior. The veteran Hindu nationalist ideologue V. D. Savarkar was later charged as well.

The group believed Gandhi had weakened Hindus, appeased Muslims and allowed India to be divided. The payment to Pakistan, which they saw as rewarding an enemy, hardened their decision to act.

The failed attempt of 20 January

The conspirators made their first attempt on 20 January 1948 at Birla House, the mansion of the industrialist G. D. Birla where Gandhi was staying. Madanlal Pahwa set off a guncotton charge against a wall near the prayer ground. The plan was for others to shoot or throw grenades in the confusion, but they lost their nerve.

Pahwa was arrested on the spot and gave the police information about the group, including clues pointing to Pune and Bombay. Investigations were slow and poorly coordinated between the Delhi and Bombay police. Gandhi refused to let guards search people attending his prayer meetings, and security was only modestly increased.

The assassination

On the afternoon of 30 January 1948, Gandhi was meeting the deputy prime minister, Vallabhbhai Patel, and was running a few minutes late for his 5 pm prayer meeting. He walked across the garden of Birla House, leaning on his grandnieces Abha and Manu.

Nathuram Godse stepped out of the crowd, bowed to Gandhi and then fired three shots into his chest and abdomen at point-blank range with a Beretta semi-automatic pistol. Gandhi collapsed and died within minutes. Godse did not try to escape and was seized by onlookers, among them an American diplomat, Herbert Reiner, before being handed to the police.

That evening Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru spoke on the radio. His words, “The light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere”, became one of the most famous statements in Indian history. Fearing riots if the killer had been a Muslim, the government quickly announced that the assassin was a Hindu.

Funeral and national mourning

Gandhi’s body lay at Birla House overnight. On 31 January a funeral procession carried it through Delhi to the banks of the Yamuna River, watched by enormous crowds; contemporary reports spoke of hundreds of thousands of mourners, and many estimates exceed a million. He was cremated at the site now known as Raj Ghat.

His ashes were divided and taken to many parts of India. The main portion was immersed at the confluence of rivers at Allahabad (Prayagraj) on 12 February 1948. Messages of grief arrived from around the world, and the United Nations lowered its flag in his honour.

Investigation and trial

Within weeks police in Bombay, Delhi and Gwalior had arrested the main conspirators. Digambar Badge turned approver, giving evidence for the prosecution in exchange for a pardon. The trial was held before a special court sitting in the Red Fort in Delhi under Judge Atma Charan, beginning in May 1948.

In court Godse made a long statement defending his act on political grounds, while denying that the RSS was involved. On 10 February 1949 the judge sentenced Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte to death and gave life imprisonment to Karkare, Pahwa, Gopal Godse, Parchure and Kistayya. Savarkar was acquitted for lack of corroborating evidence.

On appeal, the East Punjab High Court in Simla acquitted Parchure and Kistayya in June 1949 but upheld the other convictions. Godse and Apte were hanged at Ambala Central Jail on 15 November 1949. Gandhi’s sons had asked for clemency, in keeping with their father’s beliefs, but the request was refused.

Consequences and legacy

The government banned the RSS on 4 February 1948 and arrested thousands of its members. The ban was lifted in July 1949 after the organisation adopted a written constitution. The killing discredited militant Hindu nationalism for a generation and strengthened Nehru’s vision of a secular state.

Gandhi’s death also helped calm the communal violence that had raged since partition. Large-scale killing in north India largely subsided in the following months, as shock at the murder spread across communities.

Questions about security failures did not go away. After Gopal Godse’s release in 1964, new claims about prior warnings led the government to appoint a commission of inquiry under Justice J. L. Kapur. Its report, completed in 1969, criticised the police for failing to act on the information they had after the January bomb.

Birla House was acquired by the government and opened to the public in 1973 as Gandhi Smriti, a museum where a line of stone footprints marks Gandhi’s last steps across the garden. Raj Ghat, his cremation site, became a national memorial visited by foreign leaders on official trips to India.

The killing has remained politically sensitive. Organisations accused of fostering the climate that produced it have long rejected any responsibility, and occasional attempts by fringe groups to honour Godse provoke strong public condemnation. Historians generally see the assassination as the work of a small conspiracy rooted in the wider hostility that partition had created.

Gandhi’s life and death reached global audiences through biographies, newsreels and later the 1982 film Gandhi, directed by Richard Attenborough. Leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela cited him as an influence, and in 2007 the United Nations declared his birthday, 2 October, the International Day of Non-Violence.

Myths and facts

“Hey Ram” were his last words. This is the traditional account, inscribed on his memorial at Raj Ghat, but some people present later recalled that he died without speaking. It remains uncertain.

Godse acted alone. He fired the shots, but courts found that he was part of a wider conspiracy that planned the 20 January attack and supplied the weapon.

Gandhi had no protection. Police were present at Birla House, but Gandhi himself refused searches of worshippers, which made close protection very difficult.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1947, 15 August: India and Pakistan become independent.
• 1948, 13–18 January: Gandhi fasts in Delhi for communal harmony.
• 1948, 20 January: Madanlal Pahwa’s bomb explodes at Birla House; he is arrested.
• 1948, 30 January: Nathuram Godse shoots Gandhi at Birla House.
• 1948, 31 January: Gandhi is cremated at Raj Ghat on the Yamuna.
• 1948, 4 February: The Indian government bans the RSS.
• 1948, 12 February: Gandhi’s ashes are immersed at Allahabad.
• 1949, 10 February: The special court delivers its verdict.
• 1949, 15 November: Godse and Apte are hanged at Ambala.

Why it matters

Gandhi’s assassination removed the most influential moral voice of India’s independence movement at a time of acute danger. It exposed the depth of communal hatred after partition, pushed the new state towards a firmly secular course, and turned 30 January into India’s Martyrs’ Day. Gandhi’s methods of non-violent resistance, first seen on a mass scale in campaigns such as the Salt March, continued to inspire movements around the world.