Lets Kill Gandhi

by Gandhi, Tushar A.

  Nobody was known to have survived Kala Pani. Savarkar, the revolutionary firebrand, did not survive either; after serving ten years, his health and spirit were broken and he made his peace with the British government. He wrote several letters apologising for his inadvertent crimes against the British Crown and promised to be a loyal collaborator for the rest of his life in return for a pardon. This was a betrayal of the cause of independence and a slap in the face of the sacrifices made by the Indian revolutionaries. Many others at Port Blair endured daily floggings, starvation, unhygienic conditions and solitary confinement, but refused to be broken. Savarkar was not made of the same stuff. He surrendered to the British after only ten years and never in his entire life opposed them again. He emerged from the Cellular Jail a bitter religious zealot. Neither his bitterness nor his desire for revenge was directed towards the British; it was aimed at the Indian Muslims.

  Ironically, after his abject surrender to the British, his supporters hailed him with the honorific title 'Swatantra Veer', the bravest warrior of freedom. In one of his several pleas for mercy he wrote: 'I hereby acknowledge that I had a fair trial and just sentence. I heartily abhor methods of violence resorted to in days gone by and I feel myself duty bound to uphold law and constitution (added by the British) to the best of my powers and am willing to make the "reforms" (initiated by the colonialist British) a success in so far as I may be allowed to do so in future'. This is a verbatim excerpt from a facsimile of Savarkar's letter to the British authorities. After his acceptance of the government's conditions for his release, he was brought to the mainland and kept in confinement in Ratnagiri. He was forbidden from attending any public or private political activity. Publishers had to guarantee that his manuscripts did not contain any political message or any anti-British comment before publishing them. In return the British provided him with a comfortable bungalow in the picturesque seaside town of Ratnagiri in western Maharashtra where he stayed till 1937.

  During his journeys, Gandhi expressed a desire to visit Ratnagiri to meet Savarkar, but the administration rejected the application. Gandhi then sent Kasturba to meet him. It was in Ratnagiri that Nathuram Godse came under the spell of Savarkar. The seeds of Gandhi's murder were sown here.

  For the rest of his life Savarkar never indulged in any anti-British activities. He supported them during the Second World War, along with his arch enemy Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Savarkar was the first Indian leader to publicly say that India could never be a united country; at the Ahmedabad convention of the Hindu Mahasabha he stated that there were two Indias—a Hindu rashtra and a Muslim nation. This was much before the Muslim League voiced the demand for a separate Muslim homeland. Savarkar wanted to be the leader of the Hindu rashtra and did not care for what the Muslims did with their part of the country. One man stood between him and this dream of his—Mohandas K. Gandhi. Savarkar hated him for this. Under Gandhi, for the first time after the First War of Independence, the Hindu and Muslim communities had united for the cause of freedom. This worried the British greatly, knowing that if Gandhi's hold over the Indian masses was to be subverted, they would have to first foment communal trouble, and second, drive an unbridgeable divide between the Hindus and Muslims. For this, they needed Indians to do their dirty work. In Savarkar they found a committed ally. During his stay in Ratnagiri, he propagated the concept of an armed and militant version of Hinduism, not to counter the Britishers, but to fight and subjugate the Muslims. He motivated gullible youth to form armed commandos against the Muslims. He was greatly helped in his efforts by the destructive activities of the Muslim rulers of neighbouring Hyderabad state. Savarkar found it easy to exploit the resulting emotion to further his own cause. Savarkar and his supporters were incensed by the scuttling of separate electorates for untouchables, upper caste Hindus and Muslims, abandoned due to the fast undertaken by Gandhi in Poona.

  In 1937 the first Congress-led provincial government of Bombay province released Savarkar unconditionally. He was taken on a whirlwind tour of Maharashtra by the Hindu Sangathana. He delivered lecture after lecture on the need for the creation of a warlike Hindu community, armed and ready to defend and also ready to attack and subjugate the Muslims. He became the president of the Hindu Mahasabha and continued to propagate intolerance and subjugation of other religions. In 1942 when Gandhi issued the clarion call for the Quit India Movement and implored all Indians to boycott the colonial administration, Savarkar issued a firman: 'I issue this definite instruction to all Hindu Sanghatanists in general holding any post or position of vantage in the Government services, that they should stick to them and continue to perform their regular duties loyally to the British government'.

  To his loyal inner circle, Savarkar kept playing the Gandhi card, blaming him and the Congress for their friendship with the Muslims and their agitations against the British. Thus, amongst the fanatics that comprised Savarkar's inner circle, some of whom commanded units of fanatical Hindu storm troopers, the message was loud and clear: 'If you want to establish a Hindu rashtra, get rid of Gandhi and subvert the Congress.' He encouraged the effort to assassinate Gandhi. It was after 1934 that the numerous attempts on his life occurred, all, in some way or the other, associated with Poona, the Brahmins of Poona, Apte and Nathuram Godse.

  Till two days before Gandhi was killed, Godse and Apte lacked one of the most vital necessities to carry out the murder—a reliable firearm, which was then provided to them by Dr. Dattatreya S. Parchure from Gwalior. Parchure was born into a family of teachers. Originally from Poona the family had moved to the princely state of Gwalior. Dattatreya did his schooling and graduation from Poona and after a medical degree from Bombay University, he settled down in Gwalior. Although a qualified allopathic doctor, he practiced ayurveda and homoeopathy from a dispensary in the Patankar Bazaar locality of Gwalior. But his main activity was as the extremist leader of the local Hindu Mahasabha and as the self-styled dictator of the Hindu Rashtra Sena. They were very active during the partition in attacking, looting and murdering fleeing Muslims. The forty-seven-year-old doctor was a colourful character. His skeletal face sported flowing hair that cascaded on to wiry shoulders, and a long flowing beard hung down to his chest. Dull black eyes peered at faces from behind thick glasses that made his eyes look disproportionately magnified.

  Parchure had built up the Mahasabha and his sena to make the former a formidable force in Gwalior politics and the latter a means to achieve dominance. He also received patronage from the ruler of Gwalior who turned a blind eye towards their acts of fanaticism and terror. Madanlal Pahwa, who had also started his quest for revenge from Gwalior, had on several occasions partnered with Parchure's sena in attacking and murdering fleeing Muslims.

  Parchure was a quite a braggart. He liked to impress people with highly exaggerated accounts of his exploits, many of which he had maybe just heard about! As soon as word of Gandhi's murder reached Gwalior, Parchure publicly claimed to have been involved in the plot. He was arrested when reports of his boasting reached the administration.

  Parchure had interacted with Godse often as an office bearer of the Mahasabha. In December 1947 they had attended a Hindu Mahasabha-RSS summit in Alwar, as well as a secret training camp to learn the use of hand guns and other firearms. At one time they had been on the verge of merging the Hindu Rashtra Dal and the Hindu Rashtra Sena; the negotiations had ended in acrimony and bitterness when the two fought over the issue of the leadership structure of the unified body. But at a time when failure threatened the credibility of Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte, Nathuram turned to Parchure for help in procuring a reliable firearm.

  Parchure was a bitter and angry man. At the time of independence it was clear that the days of the princely states were numbered. In Gwalior there were two contenders for democratic administration, the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha. The Mahasabha leadership had assumed that they would be invited to form the government by the king Jiyajirao Scindia, but for reasons best known to the ruler and his equations with t
he Union government, Scindia invited the Congress to form the government. The Congress refused to form a coalition ministry with the Mahasabha. Parchure, who as the leader of the Mahasabha had dreamt of becoming the chief minister of Gwalior, was left out in the cold. When Godse confided in him about their intention to kill Gandhi, Parchure found a release for his hatred. It was alleged that Parchure had received a large amount of funds to finance a campaign of destabilisation aimed at the Congress government of Gwalior. Two witnesses described to the court, the circumstances under which they had seen Parchure interacting with Godse and Apte. They said in their statements that, as active members of the Mahasabha, they had questioned Parchure about the plan of action against the injustice done to it. After his arrest, Parchure tamely decided to make a sworn confession of his involvement in the conspiracy to murder Gandhi. The magistrate who recorded his confession advised him against it since the confession would legally be enough to convict him in the murder. The Defence Committee, formed to provide proper defence for the accused, had refused to take on Parchure's case since they believed that, after his sworn confession, there was no way out for him. In court he turned hostile and alleged that he had been forced to sign a pre-written statement under the threat of death and ruination for him and his family. The judge rejected this as an afterthought and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

  The last member of the gang was Gopal Godse, the younger brother of Nathuram. Gopal was twenty-seven years old at the time of the murder. Unlike his brother Nathuram, he was married and was the father of two daughters. Gopal hero-worshipped his elder brother and had followed in his footsteps since his childhood. After completing his matriculation, he joined the Military Ordinance Service as a civilian clerk. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he volunteered for overseas service. In 1941 he was sent abroad along with the British Column to Iran and Iraq. He served with the PAIFORCE for the next three years and returned to India at the end of the war in April 1944. After being demobilised he went back to his old job, and was promoted to the post of assistant storekeeper, in the Ordinance Depot at Kirkee, on the outskirts of Poona. But one rather unusual action, by this person of very regular habits and stickler for the rules, confirms that he was a part of the conspiracies hatched by his elder brother. While resigning from the war-time commission, where he was issued a .38 Webley Scott revolver, he did not hand it in. Gopal would not have done this unless someone he trusted and respected had asked him to do so. Not wanting to keep the now illegal weapon with him Gopal made a trip to their ancestral home in Uksan and buried it under a guava tree in the courtyard, to be retrieved for future use.

  Gopal lived with his family in a small two-room apartment he had rented behind the bazaar in Kirkee. At work he was meek, but when summoned by his elder brother, he would be ready for any action. He agreed to go back to Uksan to fetch the revolver for the Apte-Nathuram gang. When he dug up the Webley Scott from its shallow grave and carried it to Delhi, he became an accomplice in the conspiracy to murder Gandhi. After the failed attempt of the 20th, Gopal developed cold feet, and after delivering the .32 bore revolver to his brother Nathuram, he severed all contact with the gang and returned home, hoping that it was the end of his involvement. Speaking after his release from prison, Gopal gave a very theatrical account of his commitment to the Apte-Godse gang and their goal to murder Gandhi. 'After seeing Badge and Shankar running away without accomplishing the task of murdering the Mahatma on 20 January; the first thought that crossed my mind was to escape. But when I reached the taxi I found that the driver was not at the wheel. When I opened the rear door I found the guns hidden by Badge on the back seat.

  'I was filled with uncontrollable rage. Instantly I decided that this was my chance to complete the task we had planned. I picked up my gun and rushed back to the servant's quarters. I entered Choturam's room, from where Badge was to have shot Bapuji. I rushed into the room and bolted the door from inside. It was then that I realised that the ventilator covered by the lattice work grill was too high. I pulled a cot under the grill and climbed on top of it. I pulled out my .38 Webley Scott service revolver and prepared to shoot Gandhiji. But even after climbing on top of the bed I was barely able to reach only up to the bottom edge of the grill, this too after stretching to my maximum height on tip toes. There was no way I could have aimed the gun, and fired. I pulled myself up to the grill but to do this I needed both my hands and realised that I could not fire the gun from this position. Finally I gave up the attempt. When I tried to open the door I forgot that I had bolted it and desperately pushed it to open it, but the door would not budge. I was terrified, and thought this was it. I broke into a cold sweat. Then I felt new energy and superhuman strength coursing through my limbs I aimed a kick at the door, at the second kick the door flew open and I was free. Gathering my wits I calmly walked up to the taxi and got in.'

  This story seems very far-fetched. That this foolhardy antic of Gopal went unnoticed is not likely. Immediately after the bomb explosion, the servants, some people attending the prayer meeting and the police constables had all rushed to the spot and arrested Madanlal. The eyewitnesses who had pointed out Madanlal as the bomber were standing in the courtyard of the servants' quarters. A woman, Sulochana Devi, who had seen the taxi arrive and the gang alighting from it, had also seen them talking to Madanlal. All this was happening in very close proximity to where Gopal claims to have carried out his attempt on Gandhi's life. If nobody noticed him going into the room, they would have definitely heard the banging on the door, it crashing open and a stranger emerging from the servant Choturam's quarter. The people surely would have, under the circumstances, detained him and handed him over to the authorities. But both Sulochana who was a key witness and whose testimony in the murder trial established the presence of the gang at Birla House, and the staff there, who helped piece together the events of the evening of the 20th, never mentioned seeing Gopal's antics. But they did see three men rush out of the compound, get into the car and the car being hastily driven away immediately after the blast.

  This story narrated by Gopal seems to be an afterthought in trying to prove that he was not a mere camp follower but an equally committed fanatic dedicated to the cause of killing Gandhi.

  Nathuram Godse would have never succeeded in murdering Gandhi if he had not been able to procure one of the most popular European close range killers, the 9 mm Beretta automatic pistol. The important issue here is how a gunrunner from Gwalior acquired a foreign made automatic almost in mint condition. It was one of the most efficient guns for use at point blank range. The 9 mm bullets would cause maximum damage to its victim and would pass through the body at close range inflicting even bigger exit wounds, ensuring death due to shock and heavy bleeding if they failed to kill instantly. A frail man would never survive the wounds.

  The 9 mm Beretta automatic, bearing the serial number 606824, was in excellent working order, almost brand new. It was the perfect weapon for the murder. It had travelled an improbable route, halfway across the world, to reach Birla House on 30 January 1948. Manufactured in Italy in 1934, the gun was carried by one of the officers of Mussolini's invading army into Abyssinia. When Mussolini's army in Abyssinia surrendered to the British, the Beretta was taken from its owner as a trophy of war by an officer of the 4th Gwalior Infantry. The pistol reached Gwalior with the commanding officer of the battalion, Lieutenant Colonel V.V. Joshi. On his return Joshi served as a military aide de camp to Maharaja Jiyajirao Scindia of Gwalior. How it came in possession of Jagdishprasad Goel is a mystery which has remained unresolved. Did Joshi sell it to a gunrunner? Why would Joshi sell a gun, which he had taken as a souvenir of a famous victory in battle? How Goel got hold of it has also remained a mystery. Goel, in turn, sold the gun to Dandavate, who purchased it on behalf of Nathuram Godse. Dandavate gave the fully loaded gun and seven additional rounds of ammunition to Nathuram on the evening of 28 January at Parchure's home.

  On 30 January 1948, at 5.17 p.m., the Beretta was fired for the
last time by Nathuram Vinayak Godse. Three 9 mm bullets emerged out of its short barrel in quick succession and hit Gandhi, traversing a distance of less than two and a half feet. Till today the gun remains locked up in a sealed steel cabinet at the National Gandhi Museum opposite Raj Ghat in Delhi. In 1997 I had an opportunity to handle the gun. The memory of that brief contact with the murder weapon fills me with revulsion.

  There were three more people who were listed as accused in the Gandhi murder case, all three belonging to Gwalior, but the police was not able to capture them till the very end of the trial. These three fugitives had a very minor role in the conspiracy, largely of being witnesses. The police had established a very sound case against almost all the accused and the three absconders did not really matter. The three were arrested sometime towards the end of the trial but the government did not prosecute them.

  This was the diverse cast of characters who came together to carry out one of the most heinous acts in the history of India—the murder of a Mahatma.

  3

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  THE PLOT

  'Murder consists in making others suffer unto death, so that a murderer, or those others for whom he murders, may benefit'.

  — MAHATMA GANDHI, 21 May 1925

  In November 1947, Narayan Apte asked Badge for arms and ammunitions. Badge claimed that he did not have the weapons at that moment but would arrange for them soon. A few days later, Badge told Apte his order was ready. In the last week of December, Apte went to the Shastra Bhandar to ask Badge if the weapons that he had bought were still available. On being told that they were, Apte told Badge that a colleague, Vishnu Karkare, would collect them in a couple of days. It was only in the second week of January, however, that Apte sent someone to Badge. The events that followed from that day, 9-30 January 1948, would reshape the future of the newly independent nation.