Perhaps somewhere along the way, the orphaned street urchin must have developed a deep-rooted resentment for the way life had treated him. While growing up it is very likely that Vishnu may have suffered at the hands of a callous society. Whatever the trauma he suffered, Vishnu grew up a very angry young man and the target of his anger was Muslims.
After spending fifteen years in Poona, Vishnu, now a young man of twenty-five, decided to move on. With his life's possessions packed in a gunnysack, he caught a bus to Ahmednagar. Here, the young man opened a small tea stall near the bus depot. Along with hot cups of chai, Vishnu served puri and thecha, a fiery paste of coarsely ground green chillies tempered with hot oil. A thick bhakri, a raw onion, smashed with the hand and peeled just before eating and a spoonful of thecha is the staple diet of labourers and farmhands of Maharashtra. Soon Vishnu's tea stall became popular and he moved to an unused cowshed. Karkare expanded it into a hotel which offered lodging and boarding. After a few years, Karkare built the Deccan Guest House in the Kapda Bazaar area of Ahmednagar where it still stands. The orphaned urchin who had lived most of his childhood and youth on the streets had become a moderately prosperous hotelier.
Karkare was now suffixed with 'Seth', which meant an employer or a rich person. He got married and decided to indulge in his fondness for theatre by funding a theatre group which regularly performed shows as a touring company. In rural Maharashtra these touring Companies were the only source of entertainment and were very popular. Vishnu, after achieving social status, decided to start doing 'social work'. He provided shelter for students from villages free of charge and established the Ahmednagar branch of the Hindu Mahasabha.
In 1938 Savarkar came to Ahmednagar. In his honour Karkare, now the district chief of the Hindu Mahasabha, held a special show performed by his theatre group. According to Karkare, Savarkar was very impressed by the show. In 1939, Apte met Karkare at a Mahasabha meeting. They did not interact much at the first few meetings, as both were indifferent towards the other. When elections were held for the Ahmednagar municipality, Karkare filed his nomination and was elected unopposed. The street urchin had come a long way. At the age of thirty-two he was married, ran a moderately successful business, was a patron of the performing arts, headed a political organisation and was an elected representative in the Town Council.
However, upward mobility and prosperity had done nothing to diminish the hatred for Muslims that had taken root in Karkare's psyche. With the availability of funds and his power over the cadres of the Hindu Mahasabha, Karkare's anti-Muslim activities increased and soon he was in the forefront of a campaign against the Muslims living in the district and in the villages bordering the territories of the Nizam of Hyderabad.
It was during this phase of his life that Karkare came in contact with a person who sold weapons in Poona—Digambar Badge. Whenever Karkare visited Poona, he would purchase some legal and a lot of illegal arms like homemade crude bombs and hand grenades from the Shastra Bhandar owned by Badge to stock his armoury. Karkare learned that Badge specialised in chain mail vests which protected the torso of the wearer from knife and sword wounds. Karkare had a couple made for himself, which he would wear under his shirt or jacket, whenever he went on 'missions'. In one of the letters he wrote to Badge to order weapons, he instructed him that, to avoid detection, he would refer to weapons as 'books', so when Badge received a letter or note from Karkare ordering certain books and novels he was to understand that it was actually an order for weapons, each title representing a weapon or explosive.
After the Direct Action Day called by the Muslim League, the whole of north-east India, particularly Calcutta and the interior districts of East Bengal, burst into an orgy of violence. In these areas there was a peculiar social structure. Hindus were in a minority and were mostly wealthy landowners, merchants, traders or moneylenders, while the majority Muslim community comprised agricultural labourers, artisans and were, in general, impoverished. So there was a long-standing class animus between the two. When the Muslim leaders encouraged their people to take to the streets to force the government to accede to their demand for a separate Muslim homeland, the call was endorsed by many Imams. The Muslims of East Bengal rose to a man and indulged in the most heinous slaughter of the Hindus and the abduction and rape of their wives and daughters. The disinterested police force manned by British officers and Muslim constabulary showed a very partisan attitude. They would disarm Hindu villages and then those villages would be attacked by mobs of Muslims.
Soon the horror stories of what was happening in Noakhali spread to every corner of India, shocking its population. The stories moved two very diverse kinds of people to action.
Gandhi immediately rushed to Noakhali and began walking through the riot-torn districts, spreading his message of peace and brotherhood. The other group who descended on the district, at least the Hindu strongholds of the districts, were Hindu extremists. Their mission was to spread hate so that the victims and their stories could be used to fan anti-Muslim feelings into an inferno of hatred in other parts of the country. Karkare was one of them. According to him, he travelled in the riot-affected districts, instilling confidence amongst Hindus, and rescuing Hindu women kidnapped by Muslims. He was also on a mission to re-convert Hindus who had been forcibly converted to Islam. While recounting his exploits in Noakhali to a friend, Karkare claimed that he and his troupe of Hindu rescuers had travelled through the riot-ravaged districts wearing traditional Hindu attire, their foreheads adorned with vermilion tilaks. This seems to be rather exaggerated: the Hindu Mahasabha and its cadres are not known to go deep into Muslim-dominated areas. Also, if Karkare's band had ventured into the riot-ravaged areas of Noakhali dressed as he claims to have been, it is highly unlikely that they would have been spared by the Muslims.
But whatever may have been a figment of Karkare's imagination, the anger and hatred that filled him was real. He returned from East Bengal determined to inflict savage retribution on the Muslims and to achieve this he remembered Narayan Apte and Nathuram Godse, who were running the Hindu Mahasabha mouthpiece from Poona. He wanted them to publish his rather exaggerated stories from Noakhali. When he met the duo the initial resentment and suspicion that Apte and Karkare shared seemed to melt away in the flames of their newfound anger. Karkare was taken up by the schemes of revenge conjured up by Nathuram and Apte. In the summer of 1947, Karkare pledged his support to Apte and Godse and agreed to provide funds and collect weapons for the activities of the Apte-Godse gang.
Dada Maharaj (Maharaj here is used as a title and implies priest), a Hindu religious leader from Bombay, had also visited some parts of Noakhali in an attempt to reconvert Hindus. He was keen to help anybody who would seek revenge for the atrocities committed on the Hindus in East Bengal. Dada Maharaj was a wealthy man and keen to fund attacks on Muslims. On his return from Noakhali he was informed by one of his followers, Mukund Malaviya, about the plans of the Apte-Godse gang. Apte, after downing a few whiskies was known to boast about his plans to teach Muslims and Pakistani leaders a lesson. One of his schemes was to acquire a couple of mortars and attack the Pakistani Cabinet when it met in Delhi. This when he didn't even know what a mortar looked like, let alone how to use it!
Dada Maharaj made a special trip to Poona to meet Apte and Nathuram. After meeting them, he was so impressed by Apte's mortar attack scheme that he agreed to fund it. For Apte and Godse, this was heaven sent. They were on the verge of bankruptcy and here was a very wealthy man promising to fund them. Dada Maharaj not only gave them money but also introduced them to others in the business community who were inclined to fund Hindu extremist activities. Soon Apte was a regular at Dada Maharaj's home, selling him scheme after scheme. Sometimes it was purchasing mortars, another time it was stockpiling weapons to supply to the Hindu fighters in the territories of the Nizam of Hyderabad, while on another occasion it was the purchase of explosives to attack and blow up homes and offices of Pakistani leaders. One thing that Apte sincerely did
on his fund collecting trips to Bombay was to visit Manorama, take her out to dinner and then spend the night at one of their regular haunts. The readily available and mostly unused funds allowed him to be lavish.
The supply of arms to Hindu extremists that Dada Maharaj financed, was looked after by his younger brother Dixit Maharaj. Dada decided whom to help and released the funds while Dixit Maharaj made the arrangements, bought and supplied the weapons and generally was the go between. One of Dixit Maharaj's regular suppliers was Digamber Badge who— with his mismatched features—had a face that was not easily forgotten. He had a luxurious flowing beard and shoulder-length hair, which he kept heavily oiled. Badge fancied himself to be a master of disguise and liked to dress up sometimes as a sadhu, fakir, butcher, Sikh farmer, musician and so on. But he always overdid his disguises and instead of blending in, drew attention to himself due to his outlandish attire. Once he landed up at Dixit Maharaj's house dressed as a folk musician with his servant behind him carrying his drum. Badge dramatically ripped the drum open to reveal neatly packed daggers and swords inside its cavity.
Badge was a very resourceful and effective salesman and his clients rarely left empty-handed. The success of his arms business was due to the fact that there was nothing he could not get for his customers. He had made inroads into the arms depot in Poona Cantonment, and when needed, he could even supply genuine British-manufactured hand grenades.
In July 1947, Apte visited Shastra Bhandar again with Karkare. Apte told Badge that he needed a stengun for some influential clients. Badge jumped into the car, and drove off towards Yervada Central Jail, picking up a Sikh called Gurdayal Singh on the way. Parking the car behind the jail, Gurdayal got out and returned a few minutes later holding a packet containing a gleaming stengun. Till then Apte had always scoffed at Badge, but the ease with which he had produced the stengun established his credentials with Apte. After dropping off Gurdayal Singh they returned to Shastra Bhandar where Badge asked for Rs. 1,200 for the stengun. Very soon Apte realised that neither he nor his commandos could even hold the stengun properly, let alone aim and fire it. They realised that they would need a lot of ammunition to train people, but they had none. Just like the mortars, the stengun was another of Apte's follies.
Badge ran his business on a minimum expenses-maximum profit basis. He employed workers at the lowest salaries and drove them like slaves. Sometime in 1945, Badge visited Sholapur, a town near the border of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, which had a reasonable Telugu-speaking population. Shankar Kistayya, an illiterate youth, lived in one of the hovels of Sholapur with his mother. The youngster worked as an apprentice to a carpenter. Badge was looking for someone who would make and fix handles on the dagger blades he bought at discounted rates. Shankar was the right choice. Badge offered him the job at a salary of rupees twenty per month. What Shankar did not know was that, along with his official duty, he was supposed to act as a rickshaw puller, delivery boy, sweeper, washerman, cook, masseur and anything else that Badge ordered him to do. He had to do the same chores for Badge's sister too. Badge was a bad paymaster and never paid Shankar his full salary. At one time, Badge owed him six months' salary and Shankar decided to quit and ran away to Sholapur. Using his contacts with the police, Badge filed a complaint of theft against Shankar and got him arrested. After being at the receiving end of police treatment Shankar decided that he was better off with Badge. He meekly resumed his duties and the case was finally dismissed.
In Bombay Dada Maharaj was getting impatient with Apte. Apte had taken Rs. 5,000 for the mortars but there was no sign of an attack on the Pakistani legislature. The future leaders of Pakistan were all leaving Delhi and shifting to Karachi; when was the promised attack coming? Apte visited Dada Maharaj with Karkare and admitted that he hadn't been able to get the mortars; he blamed it on his contact in Goa who had reneged on the deal at the last minute. But Apte was offering two more schemes: the first was a raid on a frontier octroi post on the border of Hyderabad. They would kill the Nizam's octroi agents and decamp with the day's collection of octroi. For the attacks Apte said, they would need Dada Maharaj's car, a Chevrolet station-wagon, which would be able to carry a large raiding party and the weapons. The second scheme was even more impressive. Apte proposed to ambush and destroy the train carrying Pakistan's share of the explosives and ammunition left by the British. But to carry out this raid he needed Rs. 10,000 to purchase a couple of flame-throwers.
Dada agreed to give his car but refused to advance any money without having seen the flame-throwers first. He also said he had access to some hand grenades and dynamite which they could use to blow up the train. But Apte wanted money. He took the car and drove off to keep his date with Manorama.
Dada Maharaj waited patiently to hear from Apte or read in the papers about the attack on the octroi post, but there was no news for two months. Finally in October he went to Poona looking for Apte and an explanation, and to get back his car. Apte realised that Dada was at his wit's end. He lined up the members of his Hindu Rashtra Dal, claiming that the team was ready and was only waiting for the flamethrowers to attack and destroy the next ammunitions train to Pakistan. He invited Dada to inaugurate the new office and press building of the Hindu Rashtra. The building had been constructed by diverting the funds they got for their plans to carry out raids in Hyderabad and on the Pakistani leadership and was to be inaugurated by Savarkar, but due to ill health he did not travel out of Bombay. Apte did not have an explanation as to why the raid on the octroi post had not been carried out. Dada Maharaj, relieved at finding his car intact, did not pursue the matter, but declined to give money for the flamethrowers.
Apte sent for Badge, who brought a whole cocktail of explosives-gun cotton slabs, '808' packets of nitro-glycerine, fuse wires and detonators. Dada bought almost everything he offered. He had it loaded in his car to take back to Bombay as he wanted to distribute it to more reliable Hindu arsonists in Hyderabad. Apte showed him a small calibre revolver which he claimed to have bought for Rs. 400. He requested Dada to have it exchanged for a more reliable and bigger calibre revolver. Before leaving for Bombay, Dada ordered Apte to blow up the ammunition train to Pakistan. But Apte was preoccupied. Pappan, his son, had become progressively more unmanageable and he had to finally send him to an asylum. Champa became hysterical on losing her son and blamed Apte for it who had to relent and bring him back home.
In Bombay, Manorama told Apte that she was pregnant. She had moved out of the hostel and begun living with her parents. Her father, Daulatrao Salvi, lived in police quarters next to the Northcote Police Hospital in Byculla where he worked as a medical assistant. Manorama was in her final year of BA, a few months away from graduation. Her pregnancy was a matter of great worry for her, as she belonged to a very orthodox and close knit Roman Catholic community.
Nathuram had no such worries. His family had moved back to Poona; his sisters were married off and two of his brothers were working and had their own homes. He lived in a tiny one-room tenement at 334, Shanvar Peth, very close to the office and press of the Hindu Rashtra. Unlike Apte, Nathuram did not have any interest in the opposite sex; his aversion towards them had, if anything, increased and now grown into a phobia. He edited the Hindu Rashtra from a tent pitched behind the building that housed the printing press. He accepted Apte as his leader in all their schemes and actions on behalf of the Mahasabha. He was happy as long as Apte was bringing in the money: the means did not matter.
But Apte was getting worried; the people who had readily funded his hare-brained schemes were now demanding results. They would have to give up something quickly. Apte needed money to sustain his lavish lifestyle, while Nathuram had to keep his publication going. Discussing this over cups of hot tea and coffee, Apte said, 'Let's kill Gandhi!' Nathuram's eyes lit up. They had attempted this many times but failed. An attempt on Gandhi's life was sure to generate a lot of publicity; it would be easy to convince their financiers and the funds would come in. Like most killers, Apte and
Godse believed that they could walk away after murdering Mahatma Gandhi.
In the core team, Apte and Nathuram were good friends; Karkare was the odd man out. Soon he too would meet someone he could befriend. Ahmednagar was one of the many destinations for refugees of Partition. Karkare started working to make life a bit easier for these unfortunate victims and provided them temporary shelters and unlimited meals. Ahmednagar had a sizeable Muslim population who had good homes and flourishing businesses and were generally well off. This infuriated the refugees; they wanted to drive out the Muslims and have their businesses and homes distributed amongst them. Their anger was heightened by news from across the border: Nizam's cadre of thugs called the 'razakars' or 'volunteers' led by a ruthless fanatic called Kassim Rizvi, had not only terrorised the Hindus living in Hyderabad but also often crossed the borders to raid isolated villages. The backlash for these actions was born by the innocent Muslim residents of Ahmednagar. The situation became so volatile that the administration prohibited the carrying of any weapons by civilians in the entire district.
At that time Karkare was busy collecting weapons and ammunition for Apte's raid on the border octroi post. They needed grenades but Badge had hiked his price and was asking for Rs. 200 per piece. Karkare heard that grenades could be bought much cheaper in Bombay from one of the many illegal factories. Karkare went to Bombay and visited the refugee camp in Chembur. Here he met Madanlal, who claimed to have actually made hand grenades. Madanlal came from a village called Pakpattan, in the Montgomery district of West Punjab, now in Pakistan. He was just twenty-one days old when his mother died. The boy was a troublemaker since childhood and was severely disciplined by his father and stepmother. At the age of seven he was sent to a gurukul where he got into scraps and violent fights with fellow students. As a youth Madanlal joined the militant RSS shakha. His father was a dedicated Congressman and his son's antics displeased him. Once after he received a sound thrashing, he ran away from home. He reached Rawalpindi and enlisted in the Navy, where he worked as a radio operator. Madanlal served in Lahore, Rawalpindi and Jhelum and then in Bombay where he was discharged in 1946.
Lets Kill Gandhi Page 5