The Men Who Killed Gandhi

by Manohar Malgonkar

  This bringing back of a revolver may have been some indication of a split personality, for as soon as Gopal heard what his brother and Apte were planning to do he seemed to be transformed into a blood-thirsty terrorist. It was almost as though his meekness had been a mask, that all his life had been a period of waiting for just such an opportunity to show his fangs. He declared that he would not part with his revolver unless he was himself allowed to use it, and that nothing Nathuram could do would shake his resolve. He became a member of the conspiracy, and promised that he would bring his revolver to Delhi in good time for the assassination, Nathuram advanced him Rs 250 for his expenses.

  It was a fitting commentary of Gopal’s Jekyll-and-Hyde personality that, even to commit a murder, he could not bring himself to go off without obtaining leave from his office. On the morning of the fourteenth, he put in an application for seven days’ leave beginning from the fifteenth to attend to some ‘immediate farm affairs in my village’. And when his commanding officer turned down the application Gopal put in another application asking for leave from the seventeenth instead. Only after his was sanctioned did he proceed with his mission.

  So Gopal could be relied upon to contribute a revolver. The two leaders had also decided that they should take with them the grenades and explosives that Madanlal had been shown in Badge’s shop and said he could use. Apte sent for Badge.

  This was on the evening of 13 January. Badge who had returned from one of his excursions only a few hours earlier, went to see Apte, who told him he wanted to buy all the grenades and explosives he had shown to Madanlal, but that he would take delivery and pay for them in Bombay. It is possible that, at least as far as Bombay, Apte wanted to avoid all possible risk of being caught with a bag full of munitions. A more charitable explanation might be that he had no money to pay for the goods and was sure that he could raise it in Bombay. Badge had no objection to this provided, of course, that Apte would pay his and his servant’s travelling expenses. They agreed to meet in the Hindu Mahasabha office in Bombay on the following evening.

  The Deccan Express leaves Poona railway station at 3.30 in the afternoon and gets into Bombay’s Victoria Terminus four hours later. On 14 January, Badge, accompanied by Shankar, got into a third-class compartment. Shankar carried a shoulder bag made of khaki cloth which contained the five hand grenades, two gun-cotton slabs, six detonators and a coil of black fuse that Badge had promised to deliver to Apte and Godse in Bombay. Badge, who had an idea that the police were showing an excessive interest in his activities, was being extra careful. He had ensured that, in case of a search, it would be Shankar who would be caught with the goods. He was also in one of his moods for affecting disguise. He had, for the past few weeks, let his beard grow, and today was dressed up in a saffron dhoti and a knee-length saffron robe. Around his neck he wore garlands of dried-up berries and he had daubed his forehead with wood ash. He was a sadhu, a holy man. No sadhu ever dresses up so fully, and even in the crowded third-class compartment Badge must have stood out like a flame-coloured danger signal. But, if his disguise only made him more conspicuous, such doubts could never have assailed Badge himself.

  A few carriages behind him, in an otherwise empty second-class compartment, sat Apte and Nathuram. They had managed to find window seats facing one another. If Badge’s efforts to hide his identity verged on the comic, neither Apte nor Godse seemed to be bothered about hiding theirs. Or, if they were, any such resolve must have melted when Apte looked up and saw that a very pretty woman was going up and down the corridor obviously looking for a window seat. Apte got up and offered her his seat and himself sat on the opposite bench, next on Nathuram. As soon as the train started, he asked the woman if she was not Bimba, the famous screen actress, and she admitted that that indeed was her screen name.

  As the train neared Dadar, a suburb of Bombay, they struck up an amicable conversation, and Apte, who was getting out at Dadar, discovered that Bimba, too, lived there. He asked if he could take her to her destination, but it turned out that she was being met by her brother. She offered to drop Apte and Nathuram instead, if they were going somewhere close to where she lived, which was in Shivaji Park. Her house, she told them, was almost next door to Savarkar’s house, which was called Savarkar Sadan.

  Apte and Godse were actually headed for the office of the Hindu Mahasabha, which was about half a mile from where Savarkar lived, but Apte accepted Bimba’s offer with alacrity. She dropped them in front of Savarkar’s house, but never saw whether they went in.

  By giving in to his vanity as a lady-killer, Apte was not only creating evidence against himself but was also tightening the noose around Savarkar, who had no idea of what they were planning to do. For Bimba remembered the dashing young man and his taciturn friend and where she had dropped them, and the evidence she gave in court strengthened the police case against Savarkar as the brain behind the conspiracy.

  Their excursion in Bimba’s car had actually taken them away from the Hindu Mahasabha office where they had told Badge to meet them, and it was well past 8.30 when they got there. It would have been unlike Apte if he had not gone on talking about his chance meeting with a well-known film actress even after they were joined by Badge and Shankar, with the result that Badge, too, came to know about the encounter.

  Shankar Kistayya, who was greatly excited about his trip to the great city, was sorely disappointed when Badge told him that they were getting off at Dadar. ‘Why?’ he demanded.

  ‘Because this is where we have to deliver the mal.’

  It seems they had no idea that Apte and Nathuram had travelled on the same train as theirs, nor did they run into them on the platform at Dadar. As befitted a holy man, Badge decided to walk to the Hindu Mahasabha office.

  The office consisted of a three-storeyed building. The main hall where the members came and sat and read papers and chatted (and, as will be seen, at times even stretched out on the floor and spent the night) was on the first floor, reached by a staircase which was common to all the floors of the building. When Badge discovered that Apte and Nathuram were not there, he decided to wait. After half an hour, just as he and Shankar were thinking of going down for a cup of tea, Apte and Godse walked into the hall.

  Apte had not had time to raise the money to pay off Badge. They sat and talked for a while and it was decided that Badge should keep the bag somewhere safe for the night and bring it back the next morning; whereupon, according to Badge, they took a taxi and went to Dixitji Maharaja’s house in the yard of the Bhuleshwar temple, getting there when it was well past ten o'clock and Dixitji had already retired. But Badge, who had visited the house several times earlier and knew Dixitji’s personal servant, Narayan, left the bag with him, telling him that he would call for it the next morning.

  It was nearing midnight by the time Badge and Shankar were taken back to Dadar and dropped at the Hindu Mahasabha office where Apte told them to spend the night, and where he promised to come and see them in the morning. As they walked into the main hall, in which most of the lights had now been turned off, they saw that three or four other men were sleeping on the floor. One of these men sat up and called out ‘Badge, kabh aye?’ ('Badge, when did you come?') So much for Badge’s elaborate disguise. He glared at his questioner and haughtily told him that he must be making a mistake, but after a few seconds recognized him to be Madanlal Pahwa, whom Karkare had brought to his shop a few days earlier.

  Savarkar Sadan: According to Badge, who became the police approver, Apte and Godse had visited the Savarkar Sadan, to take his blessings before leaving for Delhi on 17 January. The house was attacked by an angry mob after it became public that Nathuram Godse, the man who killed Gandhi, was a Hindu fanatic. A present day photograph is of the Savarkar Sadan.

  On their way to Delhi to accomplish the mission, the members of the team all collected in Bombay, where the office of Hindu Mahasabha became their common meeting point.

  Credentials thus established, they chatted amicably, and Madanla
l, who had plenty of bedding to spare, gave the other two a blanket and a sheet to sleep on.

  At 8.30 the next morning, when Madanlal was barely awake, Apte and Nathuram turned up. They had stayed the night at the Sea Green Hotel (South) on Marine Drive and had been up for hours. They had already visited the Tata Airlines office in the Fort area where they had bought tickets for Delhi for the afternoon flight on 17 January, two days later. They had booked the tickets under false names, Apte calling himself ‘D.N. Karmarkar’ and Nathuram ‘S. Marathe’.

  In the Mahasabha hall, they told Madanlal that they would call for him later and dashed off with Badge and Shankar. In the street they took a taxi to the Shivaji Printing Press, run by Karkare’s friend Mr G.M. Joshi and which was also in Dadar, barely a mile away. Near the entrance to the Press, they ran into Karkare. Apte and Nathuram took Karkare to one side and told him what they had decided to do, and then all of them got into the taxi and went back to the Hindu Mahasabha office. Here Madanlal was waiting for them, his bedding done up in a neat roll. Badge ordered Shankar to get out and wait for him upstairs, and Madanlal, after depositing his bed-roll on the luggage-carrier fixed on top of the taxi, got in. They told the driver to take them to the Bhuleshwar temple where Dixitji Maharaj lived.

  Dixitji was in bed, suffering from a virulent form of scabies, and asked for his visitors to be shown into his bedroom. He had, at one time or another, met Apte, Nathuram, Badge and Madanlal, but did not know who Karkare was. Only after the others had vouched for Karkare did Dixitji call his servant and order him to bring out the bag that Badge had left the previous night.

  Dixitji was greatly annoyed with Badge for having, without his knowledge, used his house for depositing incriminating material, and at the way Badge was now displaying the contents of his bag to his friends, without any attempt at camouflage or secrecy. He was about to say something sharp to Badge when he noticed that Badge was ‘trying to explain to the others as to how to work a hand grenade’, and was shocked that he did not even know that the striker handle had to be held down till the moment of throwing. It was not as though Dixitji himself had ever thrown a hand grenade, but he had seen it being done in films, and at least knew that to go on holding the grenade after the striker handle had been released was to invite a horrible death. He explained to them that it was ‘important that the spring was to be kept tightly held down’. Then he told them — as he must have seen a film hero doing it — that ‘the pin was to be pulled out with one’s teeth’.

  Incredibly enough, even Madanlal who, it will be recalled, had made and thrown bombs, had no knowledge of the proper way to handle a military-type hand grenade.

  By all accounts, this was the only lesson that the conspirators ever received in the use of the 36 grenade; they went on believing that it was essential to pull out the pin with one’s teeth. Having by his display of superior knowledge put his visitors in their place, the holy man shuffled off painfully for his medicinal bath; but his resentment was still unappeased and, as will be seen, when he joined them again he remained firmly un-cooperative.

  In the bedroom, the five visitors were left to themselves. Here Karkare took Madanlal to one side and told him that they had decided to murder Gandhi. Madanlal, ever the man of quick decisions and instant action, pronounced it to be ‘an excellent idea’, and took charge of Badge’s bag. Later he tucked the bag away in his bed-roll, which he had left in the entrance hall.

  Madanlal, who was headed for Delhi anyway to be introduced to the several girls his relatives there had arranged for him to look over so that he should select one of them as his bride, was impatient to start. It does not seem to have occurred to him that he could not take an active part in the plot to murder Gandhi and still hope to go through with the plans for his marriage. Karkare, Madanlal’s benefactor and guide, immediately agreed that they should leave Bombay on the first train they could get on. It was arranged that they would take a room in the Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan in Delhi, where Apte and Nathuram would come and see them on the morning of 18 January.

  Sea Green Hotel: An affordable hotel on Marine Drive, Bombay. It was in the Room No. 6 of this hotel that Godse and Apte stayed from January 14 to 17, 1948, before they left for Delhi. Apte even met up with his girlfriend Manorama Salvi here.

  On 15 January 1948, just five days before the first appointed date for the murder, Godse and Apte visited the Tata Airlines office (Air India Ltd.) in the Fort area where they bought tickets for Delhi for the afternoon flight of 17 January. The tickets were booked under false names — Apte calling himself ‘D.N. Karmakar’ and Nathuram ‘S. Marathe’.

  Apte and Nathuram who, for the past three days, had gone over the details of their plot time and time again, had begun to feel that, to be sure of success, they would need one or two more revolvers. Dixitji, they knew, had supplied several revolvers and other firearms to his workers in Hyderabad state; indeed, he had bought at least three revolvers from Badge himself. Apte, who now wanted to tackle Dixitji about giving them a revolver, signalled to Nathuram, Karkare and Madanlal to leave the room, and he and Badge waited for Dixitji to return.

  Hitherto Dixitji had proved an agreeably soft touch, and Apte told him a fanciful story about an expedition they were taking right into Kashmir and that they needed a revolver ‘because travelling beyond Delhi had become dangerous’. But this time Dixitji refused to help. It is possible that word had been received from the big brother, Dada Maharaj, that Apte’s schemes were no longer to be underwritten. After trying vainly to get at least a little money out of him ‘to buy a revolver’, Apte and Badge left him.

  It was as they were walking out of the house and towards the others who were waiting for them in the yard of the Bhuleshwar temple that Apte, according to Badge, turned to him and invited him to come to Delhi with them.

  It is difficult to believe that Badge, who had been sitting in on most of the discussions that had so far taken place, did not know their purpose. Yet he says that he asked Apte what they were going to do in Delhi and was told that Savarkar had ordered Apte and Nathuram to ‘finish’ Gandhi and Nehru.

  At the time that Badge made this statement, he was speaking as the ‘approver’, the alleged offender who had earned his pardon in exchange for helping the prosecution to clinch its case. It was important to establish the fact of ‘conspiracy’ and also that Savarkar was behind it. But the dropping of Nehru’s name seems inexplicable unless it was done to heighten the sense of shock.

  But, even according to his own story, he was neither shocked nor dismayed. On the contrary, he agreed to join the plot with surprising alacrity. All he asked for was a day in Poona ‘to make arrangements regarding my household affairs’.

  The household affairs, it turned out were the finding of a safe place to store away the rest of his stock in trade of hand grenades and explosives. He, too, does not seem to have thought how improbable it was that he could fire a pistol at Gandhi and still return to his business in Poona as though nothing had happened.

  It was thus in response to a casual question thrown at him by Apte in the courtyard of the Bhuleshwar temple in Bombay that Badge volunteered to become a member of the conspiracy to murder Gandhi. And where Badge went, Shankar went; he, too, was dragged into it even though he had absolutely no idea as to who they were going to kill and why.

  It seems that the carrot that led Badge on was the prospect of ultimate payment for the material he had given the conspirators. He was desperate for money since some of his other customers had not paid him on time, and he was highly impressed by the lifestyle that Apte and Nathuram had adopted. In Bombay, Nathuram had casually paid him Rs 50, and told him that it was to cover his travelling expenses, and that the bill for his mal would be settled later. Since Badge, by his own admission, had not spent even Rs 10 on the journey to Bombay, he was both surprised and delighted at this largesse. These were good people to work for. Apte had assured him that all his expenses on the trip to Delhi would be similarly taken care of and, even though
Badge never admitted this, Apte must have also promised him a handsome reward after their mission was accomplished.

  It was all too tempting to be passed up. There was big money to be made for doing so little; meanwhile there were square meals in hotels and tots of rum and travel to distant parts, and the intoxicating glow of the soldier invited to sit at the officers’ table. Badge worked hard and uncomplainingly till the last moment when his nerve failed him. The result was that he never qualified for the reward.

  But nor did he get paid for the explosives and weapons he had contributed to the venture.

  Such was the cast of characters. They were seven in number; the three pairs, Apte/Nathuram, Karkare/Madanlal and Badge/Shankar, and the odd man, Gopal, who of course was still in Poona worrying about his leave. The other six mingled together briefly in the temple yard and dispersed. It was decided that Badge should go to Poona for a day and put his household affairs in order, and meet them again in Bombay on the morning of the seventeenth. At this time, since their efforts to raise another revolver had failed, and since none of them knew whether Gopal really would be able to come to Delhi with his revolver, Nathuram thought that he, too, would go back to Poona for a day and make sure of at least Gopal’s revolver.

  The train by which Madanlal and Karkare had decided to leave Bombay, the Punjab Mail, left Victoria Station at five in the evening. It left without them. At the last minute, Madanlal had rushed off to Dadar, to Dr Jain’s house, to see if there was a letter for him.

  There was no letter. Madanlal paid Dr Jain’s dues to him and then, in what could only be ascribed to a spectacular bid for self-dramatization, revealed to his host that he was on his way to Delhi, and that ‘his party had plotted against the life of some leader’.