Why killed mahatma gandhi

The rigid social hierarchy, and privileges flowing from it, stood undermined, generating anxieties among the traditional elite. This anxiety Godse personally experienced in his early life. At the age of 16, he opened a cloth shop — for a Brahmin to enter business was a marker of downward social mobility.

Worse, his cloth shop failed and he took to tailoring, deemed to be a lower caste profession. There was thus an enormous gap between Godse belonging to the traditional elite group of India and his actual socio-economic status.

Godse joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, left it because he did not find it militant enough and entered the Hindu Mahasabha. He started a newspaper, Hindu Rashtra , which argued against and opposed Gandhi because he was perceived to be emasculating Hindus, turning them effeminate. By contrast, the militant traditions of urban middle-class Bengal, Punjab and Maharashtra impressed him immensely. Gandhi and Godse represented two contrasting ideas of politics and religion.

For Godse, politics was about harnessing power to drive fear into opponents, to inflict manifold losses on them through means legitimate or illegitimate. He neither interrogated nor redefined the extant notions of power and their functions. Instead, his idea of power mimicked that of the British, employing force to defeat the rulers, to give them a taste of their own medicine, so to speak.

For Gandhi, though, politics was not so much about defeating the British as it was about transforming the rulers, about making the colonial ruler realise the sheer immorality of the power they exercised. It was not about the end justifying the means. Then again, Gandhi did not perceive Hindus as a religious group, in the way followers of Semitic religions are, but a people spread over a land who believed in an open-ended system that forever incorporated new elements or reinterpreted the existing or old ones.

There was no one book, no one way of praying, no one body of rituals. Erroneously believing that the unity, organising capacity and missionary zeal of Muslims and Christians had enabled them to conquer India, he wanted Hindus to become a rigidly closed religious group as the followers of those religions were.

However, the problem of caste had to be overcome to achieve this unity. Godse sought this by participating in programmes such as inter-dining. In , Gandhi returned to India and lived a life of abstinence and spirituality on the periphery of Indian politics.

Hundreds of thousands answered his call to protest, and by he was leader of the Indian movement for independence. He reorganized the Indian National Congress as a political force and launched a massive boycott of British goods, services, and institutions in India.

Then, in , he abruptly called off the satyagraha when violence erupted. One month later, he was arrested by the British authorities for sedition, found guilty, and imprisoned. After his release in , he led an extended fast in protest of Hindu-Muslim violence. In his most famous campaign of civil disobedience, Gandhi and his followers marched to the Arabian Sea, where they made their own salt by evaporating sea water.

The march, which resulted in the arrest of Gandhi and 60, others, earned new international respect and support for the leader and his movement. The meeting was a great disappointment, and after his return to India he was again imprisoned.

His protege, Jawaharlal Nehru , was named leader of the party in his place. With the outbreak of World War II , Gandhi returned to politics and called for Indian cooperation with the British war effort in exchange for independence. Britain refused and sought to divide India by supporting conservative Hindu and Muslim groups. Gandhi and other nationalist leaders were imprisoned until Gandhi sought a unified India, but the Muslim League, which had grown in influence during the war, disagreed.

After protracted talks, Britain agreed to create the two new independent states of India and Pakistan on August 15, Gandhi was greatly distressed by the partition, and bloody violence soon broke out between Hindus and Muslims in India. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! On January 30, , an unidentified white supremacist terrorist bombed the Montgomery home of Reverend Dr.

The grounds advanced for this heinous crime are clever rationalization to hoodwink the gullible. The staging of the play entitled, "Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoy" is a clear proof of the fact that the mindset that led to Gandhiji's assassination has not disappeared from our national psyche.

A civil society is wedded to the democratic method of resolving differences by a frank and open debate and evolving a working consensus. Gandhiji was always open to persuasion. Gandhiji had invited Godse for discussions but the latter did not avail of this opportunity given to him. This is indicative of the lack of faith in the democratic way of resolving differences on the part of Godse and his ilk. Such fascist mindset seeks to do away with dissent by liquidating the opponents.

The Hindu backlash was as much responsible for the creation of Pakistan as the sentiments of the ethnic Muslims. The hard core Hindus looked down upon the Muslims as misguided "Mlechchh" - unclean and came to believe that coexistence with them was not possible. Mutual distrust and recriminations led the extremists among both the groups to regard Hindus and Muslims as different nationalities and this strengthened the Muslim League's demand for partition as the only possible solution to the communal problem.

Vested interests on both the sides stirred up the separatist sentiment and sought to justify their hate - campaign by clever and selective distortion of history. It is indeed a matter for serious concern for the nation that this mentality has not disappeared even today.

Poet Mohamed Iqbal who wrote the famous song "Sare Jahanse Acchchha Hindostan Hamara" was the first to formulate the concept of a separate State for Muslims as early as Needless to state that this sentiment, in a sense, was strengthened by the Hindu extremists. In , at the open session of the Hindu Mahasabha held at Ahmedabad, Veer Savarkar in his presidential address asserted: "India cannot be assumed today to be Unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main - the Hindus and the Muslims.

In , he had stated "I have no quarrel with Mr. Jinnah's two nation theory. We, the Hindus are a nation by ourselves, and it is a historical fact that the Hindus and the Muslims are two nations. It was this sentiment of separate and irreconcilable identities of the followers of these religions that led to the formation of Pakistan. In complete contrast to this mentality, Gandhiji throughout his life remained an un-compromising advocate of oneness of God, respect for all religions, equality of all men and non-violence in thought, speech, and action.

His daily prayers comprised verses, devotional songs and readings from different scriptures. All people irrespective of their allegiance to different religions attended those meetings. Till his dying day Gandhiji held the view that the nationality of fellow citizens was not in any way affected by the fact of his subscribing to religious belief other than yours. During his life, on more than one occasion he strove for the unity and equality among Hindus themselves as well as amity among Hindus and Muslims even risking his life.

The idea of partition was anathema to him. He was given to saying that he would sooner die than subscribe to such a pernicious doctrine. His life was an open book and no substantiation is necessary on this score.

Under Gandhiji's leadership, communal amity occupied the pride of place in the constructive programmes of the Congress. Jinnah himself were in the Congress fold. It is but natural that the Congress opposed the proposal for the division of the country but as a result of the incitement on the part of the lumpen elements among the Hindus and Muslims a tidal wave of carnage and lawlessness engulfed the nation.

Jinnah adopted an inflexible attitude. Lord Mountbatten being motivated by the time-limit given to him by the British Cabinet used all his powers of persuasion and charm to steer all the leaders to a quick solution and yet acceptable to all; but the adamantine attitude of Mr.

Jinnah made everything except partition unacceptable. Partition seemed to be the only solution. In the nationwide elections of the Muslim league secured 90 per cent seats.

Faced with such a scenario Congress found it difficult to keep up its morale. Gandhiji conveyed to Lord Mountbatten on 5th April that he would agree even if the British made Mr. Jinnah the Prime Minister and left the country as it was. But on the other hand Lord Mountbatten succeeded in getting the Congress to agree to partition.

Gandhiji was in the dark about it; he was shell-shocked when he learned about it. The only remedy available to him was fasting unto death to dissuade his followers from acquiescence to a ruinous course of action.