Acknowledgment

I owe a great many thanks to a great many people who helped and supported me during the
completion of this project. My deepest thanks to Lecturer, Dr. Vandana Singh the guide of
the project for guiding and correcting various documents of mine with attention and care. She
has taken pain to go through the project and make necessary correction as and when needed.
I would like to thank Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University for giving me this
opportunity to work on this project.
Lastly, I thank my friends for their support, for their help in collecting the material
and for critically going through the project and correcting the mistakes, without whom the
project would have been a distant reality. I also extend my heartfelt thanks to my family for
supporting and guiding me.

-Thanking You

1|Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgment--------------------------------------------------------------------------1

Introduction------------------------------------------------------------------------------3-4

Women suffer from Gandhis Legacy----------------------------------------------4-5

Thrill of the chaste----------------------------------------------------------------------6-9

Gandhi Ambedkar and Poona Pact------------------------------------------------9-11

Why did Nathuram killed Gandhi? ----------------------------------------------11-13

Conclusion--------------------------------------------------------------------------------14

Bibliography-----------------------------------------------------------------------------14

2|Page
Introduction
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 30 January 1948) was the preeminent
leader of the Indian independence movement in British-ruled India.
Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired
movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahatmaapplied
to him first in 1914 in South Africa,1is now used worldwide. He is also called Bapu in
India. In common parlance in India he is often called Gandhiji. He is unofficially called
the Father of the Nation.
Born and raised in a Hindu merchant caste family in coastal Gujarat, western India, and
trained in law at the Inner Temple, London, Gandhi first employed nonviolent civil
disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's
struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants,
farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination.
Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide
campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity,
ending untouchability, but above all for achieving Swaraj or self-rule.
Gandhi famously led Indians in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km
(250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942.
He was imprisoned for many years, upon many occasions, in both South Africa and India.
Gandhi attempted to practise nonviolence and truth in all situations, and advocated that others
do the same. He lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the
traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn hand-spun on a charkha. He ate simple
vegetarian food, and also undertook long fasts as a means of both self-purification and social
protest.
Gandhi's vision of an independent India based on religious pluralism, however, was
challenged in the early 1940s by a new Muslim nationalism which was demanding a separate
Muslim homeland carved out of India. Eventually, in August 1947, Britain granted
independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-
majority India and Muslim Pakistan. As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made
their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in
the Punjaband Bengal. Eschewing the official celebration of independence in Delhi, Gandhi
visited the affected areas, attempting to provide solace. In the months following, he
undertook several fasts unto death to promote religious harmony. The last of these,
undertaken on 12 January 1948 at age 78, also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay
out some cash assets owed to Pakistan. Some Indians thought Gandhi was too
accommodating. Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, assassinated Gandhi on 30 January
1948 by firing three bullets into his chest at point-blank range.

1
Gandhi, Rajmohan (2006) pp. 172.

3|Page
His birthday, 2 October, is commemorated as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and world-
wide as the International Day of Nonviolence.
But as everyone has some good as well as bad for his life, Gandhi was also not a perfect
human. There are several negative points to be known about the mahatma.

Women suffer from Gandhis Legacy

Mohandas Gandhi was an amazing human being. He led his country to freedom and helped
destroy the British Empire. Little wonder India worshipped him, and still worships him, as
the Mahatma "Great Soul". In the west he is viewed as a near-perfect combination of
compassion, bravery and wisdom.

But Gandhi was also a puritan and a misogynist who helped ensure that India remains one of
the most sexually repressed nations on earth and, by and large, a dreadful place to be born
female. George Orwell, in his 1949 essay Reflections on Gandhi, said that "saints should
always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent". If only.

Gandhi despised his own sexual desires, and despised sex in any context except for
procreation2. He preached that the failure to control carnal urges led to complaints including
constipation. He believed that sex was bad for the health of an individual, and that sexual
freedom would lead Indians to failure as a people. He sought to consign his nation to what
Martin Luther called "the hell of celibacy". He took his own celibacy vow unilaterally,
without consulting his wife.

Both Gandhi and his hagiographers claimed he viewed women as equal to men, pointing to
his inclusion of women in India's independence struggle. He celebrated non-violent protest as
a "feminine" principle, neutralising the masculine brutality of British rule. But his sexual
hang-ups caused him to carry monstrously sexist views. His view of the female body was
warped. As accounted by Rita Banerji, in her book Sex and Power, "he believed menstruation
was a manifestation of the distortion of a woman's soul by her sexuality".

During Gandhi's time as a dissident in South Africa, he discovered a male youth had been
harassing two of his female followers. Gandhi responded by personally cutting the girls' hair
off, to ensure the "sinner's eye" was "sterilised". Gandhi boasted of the incident in his
writings, pushing the message to all Indians that women should carry responsibility for sexual
attacks upon them. Such a legacy still lingers. In the summer of 2009, colleges in north India

2
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jan/27/mohandas-gandhi-women-india

4|Page
reacted to a spate of sexual harassment cases by banning women from wearing jeans, as
western-style dress was too "provocative" for the males on campus.

Gandhi believed Indian women who were raped lost their value as human beings. He argued
that fathers could be justified in killing daughters who had been sexually assaulted for the
sake of family and community honour. He moderated his views towards the end of his life.
But the damage was done, and the legacy lingers in every present-day Indian press report of a
rape victim who commits suicide out of "shame". Gandhi also waged a war against
contraceptives, labelling Indian women who used them as whores.3

Like all men who wage a doomed war with their own sexual desires, Gandhi's behaviour
around females would eventually become very, very odd. He took to sleeping with naked
young women, including his own great-niece, in order to "test" his commitment to celibacy.
The habit caused shock and outrage among his supporters. God knows how his wife felt.

Gandhi cemented, for another generation, the attitude that women were simply creatures that
could bring either pride or shame to the men who owned them. Again, the legacy lingers.
India today, according to the World Economic Forum, finds itself towards the very bottom of
the gender equality index. Indian social campaigners battle heroically against such patriarchy.
They battle dowry deaths. They battle the honour killings of teenage lovers. They battle Aids.
They battle female foeticide and the abandonment of new-born girls.

In the words of the Indian writer Khushwant Singh, "nine-tenths of the violence and
unhappiness in this country derives from sexual repression". Gandhi isn't singularly to blame
for India's deeply problematic attitudes to sex and female sexuality. But he fought, and
succeeded, to ensure the country would never experience sexual freedom while his legend
persevered. Gandhi's genius was to realise the great power of non-violent political revolution.
But the violence of his thoughts towards women has contributed to countless honour killings
and immeasurable suffering.

"Gandhi was a misogynist, for instance he believed that a woman who has been raped lost
her value as a human being. He labelled women who used contraception as whores, justified
the honour killing of daughters over sexual assault to preserve a familys honour. Rita
Banjeri, author of Sex and Power asserted that "he believed menstruation was a manifestation
of the distortion of a woman's soul by her sexuality".4

3
https://subalternexpression.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/women-suffer-from-gandhis-legacy/
4
http://www.vagabomb.com/Gandhi-Was-Misogynist-and-Racist-but-History-Will-Have-You-Believe-
Otherwise/

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Thrill of the chaste: The truth about
Gandhi's sex life
It was no secret that Mohandas Gandhi had an unusual sex life5. He spoke constantly of sex
and gave detailed, often provocative, instructions to his followers as to how to they might
best observe chastity. And his views were not always popular; "abnormal and unnatural" was
how the first Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, described Gandhi's
advice to newlyweds to stay celibate for the sake of their souls.

But was there something more complex than a pious plea for chastity at play in Gandhi's
beliefs, preachings and even his unusual personal practices (which included, alongside his
famed chastity, sleeping naked next to nubile, naked women to test his restraint)? In the
course of researching my new book on Gandhi, going through a hundred volumes of his
complete works and many tomes of eye-witness material, details became apparent which add
up to a more bizarre sexual history.

Much of this material was known during his lifetime, but was distorted or suppressed after his
death during the process of elevating Gandhi into the "Father of the Nation" Was the
Mahatma, in fact, as the pre-independence prime minister of the Indian state of Travancore
called him, "a most dangerous, semi-repressed sex maniac"?

Gandhi was born in the Indian state of Gujarat and married at 13 in 1883; his wife Kasturba
was 14, not early by the standards of Gujarat at that time. The young couple had a normal sex
life, sharing a bed in a separate room in his family home, and Kasturba was soon pregnant.

Two years later, as his father lay dying, Gandhi left his bedside to have sex with Kasturba.
Meanwhile, his father drew his last breath. The young man compounded his grief with guilt
that he had not been present, and represented his subsequent revulsion towards "lustful love"
as being related to his father's death.

However, Gandhi and Kasturba's last child wasn't born until fifteen years later, in 1900.

In fact, Gandhi did not develop his censorious attitude to sex (and certainly not to marital
sex) until he was in his 30s, while a volunteer in the ambulance corps, assisting the British
Empire in its wars in Southern Africa. On long marches in sparsely populated land in the
Boer War and the Zulu uprisings, Gandhi considered how he could best "give service" to
humanity and decided it must be by embracing poverty and chastity.

At the age of 38, in 1906, he took a vow of brahmacharya, which meant living a spiritual life
but is normally referred to as chastity, without which such a life is deemed impossible by
Hindus.

5
www.independent.co.uk/arts/books/features/thrill-of-the-chaste-the-truthabout-gandhi-sex-life-
1937411.html

6|Page
Gandhi found it easy to embrace poverty. It was chastity that eluded him. So he worked out a
series of complex rules which meant he could say he was chaste while still engaging in the
most explicit sexual conversation, letters and behaviour.

With the zeal of the convert, within a year of his vow, he told readers of his newspaper Indian
Opinion: "It is the duty of every thoughtful Indian not to marry. In case he is helpless in
regard to marriage, he should abstain from sexual intercourse with his wife."

Meanwhile, Gandhi was challenging that abstinence in his own way. He set up ashrams in
which he began his first "experiments" with sex; boys and girls were to bathe and sleep
together, chastely, but were punished for any sexual talk. Men and women were segregated,
and Gandhi's advice was that husbands should not be alone with their wives, and, when they
felt passion, should take a cold bath.

The rules did not, however, apply to him. Sushila Nayar, the attractive sister of Gandhi's
secretary, also his personal physician, attended Gandhi from girlhood. She used to sleep and
bathe with Gandhi. When challenged, he explained how he ensured decency was not
offended. "While she is bathing I keep my eyes tightly shut," he said, "I do not know ...
whether she bathes naked or with her underwear on. I can tell from the sound that she uses
soap." The provision of such personal services to Gandhi was a much sought-after sign of his
favour and aroused jealousy among the ashram inmates.

As he grew older (and following Kasturba's death) he was to have more women around him
and would oblige women to sleep with him whom according to his segregated ashram rules
were forbidden to sleep with their own husbands. Gandhi would have women in his bed,
engaging in his "experiments" which seem to have been, from a reading of his letters, an
exercise in strip-tease or other non-contact sexual activity. Much explicit material has been
destroyed but tantalising remarks in Gandhi's letters remain such as: "Vina's sleeping with me
might be called an accident. All that can be said is that she slept close to me." One might
assume, then, that getting into the spirit of the Gandhian experiment meant something more
than just sleeping close to him.

It can't, one imagines, can have helped with the "involuntary discharges" which Gandhi
complained of experiencing more frequently since his return to India. He had an almost
magical belief in the power of semen: "One who conserves his vital fluid acquires unfailing
power," he said.

Meanwhile, it seemed that challenging times required greater efforts of spiritual fortitude, and
for that, more attractive women were required: Sushila, who in 1947 was 33, was now due to
be supplanted in the bed of the 77-year-old Gandhi by a woman almost half her age. While in
Bengal to see what comfort he could offer in times of inter-communal violence in the run-up
to independence, Gandhi called for his 18-year-old grandniece Manu to join him and sleep
with him. "We both may be killed by the Muslims," he told her, "and must put our purity to

7|Page
the ultimate test, so that we know that we are offering the purest of sacrifices, and we should
now both start sleeping naked."

Such behaviour was no part of the accepted practice of bramacharya. He, by now, described
his reinvented concept of a brahmachari as: "One who never has any lustful intention, who,
by constant attendance upon God, has become proof against conscious or unconscious
emissions, who is capable of lying naked with naked women, however beautiful, without
being in any manner whatsoever sexually excited ... who is making daily and steady progress
towards God and whose every act is done in pursuance of that end and no other." That is, he
could do whatever he wished, so long as there was no apparent "lustful intention". He had
effectively redefined the concept of chastity to fit his personal practices.

Thus far, his reasoning was spiritual, but in the maelstrom that was India approaching
independence he took it upon himself to see his sex experiments as having national
importance: "I hold that true service of the country demands this observance," he stated.

But while he was becoming bolder in his self-righteousness, Gandhi's behaviour was widely
discussed and criticised by family members and leading politicians. Some members of his
staff resigned, including two editors of his newspaper who left after refusing to print parts of
Gandhi's sermons dealing with his sleeping arrangements.

But Gandhi found a way of regarding the objections as a further reason tocontinue. "If I don't
let Manu sleep with me, though I regard it as essential that she should," he announced,
"wouldn't that be a sign of weakness in me?"

Eighteen-year-old Abha, the wife of Gandhi's grandnephew Kanu Gandhi, rejoined Gandhi's
entourage in the run-up to independence in 1947 and by the end of August he was sleeping
with both Manu and Abha at the same time.

When he was assassinated in January 1948, it was with Manu and Abha by his side. Despite
her having been his constant companion in his last years, family members, tellingly, removed
Manu from the scene. Gandhi had written to his son: "I have asked her to write about her
sharing the bed with me," but the protectors of his image were eager to eliminate this element
of the great leader's life. Devdas, Gandhi's son, accompanied Manu to Delhi station where he
took the opportunity of instructing her to keep quiet.

Questioned in the 1970s, Sushila revealingly placed the elevation of this lifestyle to a
brahmacharya experiment was a response to criticism of this behaviour. "Later on, when
people started asking questions about his physical contact with women with Manu, with
Abha, with me the idea of brahmacharya experiments was developed ... in the early days,
there was no question of calling this a brahmacharya experiment." It seems that Gandhi lived
as he wished, and only when challenged did he turn his own preferences into a cosmic system
of rewards and benefits. Like many great men, Gandhi made up the rules as he went along.

8|Page
While it was commonly discussed as damaging his reputation when he was alive, Gandhi's
sexual behaviour was ignored for a long time after his death. It is only now that we can piece
together information for a rounded picture of Gandhi's excessive self-belief in the power of
his own sexuality. Tragically for him, he was already being sidelined by the politicians at the
time of independence. The preservation of his vital fluid did not keep India intact, and it was
the power-brokers of the Congress Party who negotiated the terms of India's freedom.

Gandhi, Ambedkar and the Poona Pact

At the Second Round Table Conference in London from September to December 1931, Dr B
R Ambedkar demanded a separate electorate for the Untouchables in the provincial
legislatures. Gandhi opposed the proposal, saying that it would divide the Hindus. He pleaded
that Untouchables should not be considered a separate group. He clashed with the leader of
depressed classes, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, over this issue. In an attempt to meet both demands
of Ambedkar and Gandhi, the British government announced the Communal Award. The
Communal Award was announced by the British Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, on 16
August19326.

The Communal Award gave the Untouchables two benefits:

(i) It considered the Untouchables as minorities and assigned them 71 seats to be filled by
election from special constituencies in which voters belonging to the Untouchables only
could vote and to be filled by persons belonging to the Untouchables;
(ii) double vote, one to be used through separate electorates only for Depressed class voters
and the other to be used in the general electorates.

Gandhi strongly opposed the Communal Award on the grounds that it would disintegrate
Hindu society. At that time, Gandhi was confined in the Yerwada Jail, Pune. He began an
indefinite hunger strike at Yerwada Central Jail in Pune from September 20, 1932 to protest
against this Award. He declared his resolve to fast unto death if the separate electorates for
the depressed classes were not abolished.

But the British Government took the stand that the separate electorates were demanded by the
depressed classes themselves and the decision of the British Government could not be altered
unless the minority communities concerned agreed to do so.

6
www.britannica.com/events/poona-pact

9|Page
The Hindu leaders including Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, M.R.
Jayakar, C. Rajagopalachari etc., tried to persuade Dr. B.R. Ambedkar to withdraw the
demand for separate electorates. But Dr. Ambedkar refused to give in.

As was natural, Gandhis announcement threw the country into a state of consternation.
Ambedkar knew the significance and magnitude of the crisis arisen out of Gandhis fast unto
death. A furious campaign was launched against Ambedkar. For Ambedkar, the problem was
simple. If Gandhi died, in villages throughout India there would be pogroms directed against
Dalits and a massacre. In the evening of 23 September 1932, Gandhis health had taken a
serious turn, and he was fast losing strength. Gandhis son, Devdas Gandhi, with tears in his
eyes, described the condition of his father to Ambedkar. Dr. Ambedkar with selected leaders
saw Gandhi in the jail at nine o clock that night. Gandhis voice had now sunk to a whisper.
The jail Doctors intervened and stopped further conversation7.

Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru suggested a scheme of primary and secondary election for a limited
number of seats which, while maintaining the principle of joint electorate, would enable the
depressed classes to choose their own candidates. Dr. Ambedkar accepted this proposal.

Ambedkar had been forced to sign away the gains of the Ramsay Macdonald Communal
Award through the Poona Pact. The Poona Pact refers to an agreement between Dr.
Babasaheb Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi signed on 24 September 1932 at Yerwada
Central Jail in Pune.

It was signed by Pt Madan Mohan Malviya on behalf of the caste Hindus and by Dr BR
Ambedkar on behalf of the Depressed classes to break the fast unto death undertaken by
Gandhi in Yarwada jail to annul Macdonald Award giving separate electorate to Dalits for
electing members of state legislative assemblies in British India.

The text uses the term "Depressed Classes" to denote Untouchables who were later called
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes under India Act 1935, and the later Indian
Constitution of 1950

The Poona Pact abandoned separate electorates for the depressed classes. The Poona Pact
replaced separate electorates with reservation in joint electorates. The seats reserved for the
depressed classes were increased from 71 to 147 in provincial legislatures and 18 per cent of
the total in the central legislature.

So effective and crushing was the victory of Gandhi that he deprived Ambedkar of all the
life-saving weapons and made him a powerless man as did Indra in the case of Karna.
One way of explaining the conflict between Ambedkar and Gandhi, perhaps an
oversimplification, is to say that Ambedkar saw advancement for the untouchables in terms
of using political means to achieve social and economic equality with the highest classes in a
modern society.

7
www.roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option=content&view=article:drambedkar-remembers-poona-pact-
bbc=116&ItemId=128

10 | P a g e
While Gandhi held to a more traditional concept of Varna system, cleansed of untouchability,
in which untouchables would be Shudras and their unclean work made honourable.

Dr. Ambedkar was not happy about the Poona Pact. He commented
If the Poona Pact increased the fixed quota of seats it also took away the right to the Dual
Vote (double vote). The increase in seats can never be deemed to be a compensation for the
loss of double vote. The second vote given by the communal award was a priceless privilege.
Its value as a political weapon was beyond reckoning.

Ambedkar was never a believer in a parliamentary democracy based on first-past-the-post

(FPTP) system, especially in societies that had a mixture of minorities. He did not believe
that mere proportionate representation of minorities in an elected body would ensure them
justice. The one man one vote principle and FPTP would perhaps make sense when there
was a level playing field premised on both social and economic equality among all the
participants in such a system, but not in Indian society which was a gradation of castes.

Ambedkar believed that a mere right to vote would do the dalits no good and they would be
subject to the manipulations and machinations of caste Hindus. With the double vote, the
savarnas and the rest of society would come to regard untouchables as worthy of respect
and dignity.

The Poona Pact of September 1932 ensured that the caste Hindus, who invariably
outnumbered the dalits even in reserved constituencies, elected only pliable dalit candidates.
Now, the caste Hindus got the power to elect the representatives of the Depressed classes. As
Bhagwan Das, a historian of the Ambedkarite movement says about the Poona Pact, It gave
the untouchables more seats, less rights and no power.

Dr. Ambedkar made it very clear that the Poona Pact was accepted only because of
Gandhijis Coercive fast and not that it could secure for Depressed Classes a better
representation in the Legislature.

Why did Nathuram killed Gandhi ?

Sixty-seven years ago, the pre-eminent leader of the Indian independence movement in
British-ruled India, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, stood in the gardens of a New Delhi
building where a prayer meeting was about to take place.

Nathuram Godse approached Gandhi at 5.17pm and bowed, then pushed aside one of
Gandhi's grandnieces and shot him in the chest three times. As Gandhi collapsed, he shouted
"police" and surrendered himself.

11 | P a g e
Gandhi's death was mourned nationwide. More than two million people joined the five-mile-
long funeral procession from Birla House, where he was assassinated, to Raj Ghat. Erected as
a memorial to Gandhi, Raj Ghat bears the epigraph "Oh God" widely believed to be his last
words.

As the primary leader of India's liberation, Gandhi was the architect of a form of civil
disobedience that would influence the world and later inspire the 1960s Civil Rights
Movement in the United States. So who was Godse and why did he murder Gandhi?

School and politics

Godse was born in the Pune district, now situated in the Maharashtra state of India. Before he
was born, his parents lost three sons and, fearing a curse was targeting their male children, he
was brought up as a girl for the first few years of his life including having his nose pierced.
When he brother was born, he was brought up as a boy.

Godse attended the local school in Baramati, before moving to an English-language school.
He highly respected Gandhi during his school days, but dropped out of high school and
became an activist with Hindi nationalist organisations the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a
right-wing charitable and education non-profit, and the Hindu Mahasabha, a Hindu
nationalist political party. He also started a Marathi-language newspaper, Agrani, which was
later renamed Hindu Rashtra.

Nathuram Vinayak Godse, bottom right, on trial for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in
May 1948

Muslim interests

Several reasons have been put forward as to why Godse assassinated Gandhi on 30 January
1948, after plotting the shooting with his friend Narayan Apte and six others.

Godse left the RSS in the early 1940s and formed a militant organisation called Hindu
Rashtra Dal. He believed Gandhi was giving in to Muslim interests, which he deemed anti-
national.

Speaking during his trial, Godse said: "It was not so much the Gandhian Ahimsa teachings
that were opposed to by me and my group, but Gandhiji, while advocating his views, always
showed or evinced a bias for Muslims, prejudicial and detrimental to the Hindu Community
and its interests.

"I have fully described my point of view hereafter in detail and have quoted numerous
instances, which unmistakably establish how Gandhiji became responsible for a number of
calamities which the Hindu Community had to suffer and undergo."8

8
Creative.sulekha.com/whi=y-i-killed-gandhi-nathuram-godse-s-address-in-court_463732

12 | P a g e
Non-violence

It is generally understood that Godse felt the suffering caused by the partition could have
been avoided had the Indian government lodged strong protests against the treatment meted
out to the minorities Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan. According to Godse, they too were
influenced by Gandhi's non-violent approach and resorted to "weaker" methods. Godse felt
Gandhi's fasts against the atrocities in Pakistan were insufficient.

"I thought to myself and foresaw I shall be totally ruined, and the only thing I could expect
from the people would be nothing but hatred... if I were to kill Gandhi," Godse said in court.
"But at the same time, I felt that the Indian politics in the absence of Gandhi would surely be
proved practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful with armed forced."

Mahatma Gandhi leading the Salt March in protest against the government monopoly on salt
production in 1930

Fasts

As part of his philosophy of non-violence, Gandhi undertook 17 fasts during India's freedom
movement the longest of which was 21 days. Godse believed that it was Gandhi's last fast,
announced weeks before he was killed, that forced the cabinet to reverse its earlier decision to
give a cash balance to Pakistan on 13 January 1948.

However, in March, the cabinet decided to withhold the money after self-styled liberators
from Pakistan invaded Kashmir with support from the Pakistani army. Godse felt this was
appeasing Pakistani Muslims at the expense of Hindus in India. Interestingly, Gandhi's fast
was for the restoration of Hindu-Muslim peace and continued for three days after the cabinet
announced its decision to give the money to Pakistan which Godse may have not known.

Social mobility decline

The Godses were Chitpavan Brahmins, a community concentrated in Maharashtra that were
not esteemed in social ranking until the 1700s. In the 20th century, however, the group
enjoyed social prestige but has become anxious about its status in the midst of the
transformation of India's socio-economic milieu.

The threat to the established social hierarchy left the traditional elite anxious, according to
Quartz. This is something Godse experienced personally. A clothes shop he had opened age
16 failed and he took to tailoring, seen as a lower caste profession.

Following the assassination of Gandhi, Godse was put on trial at the Punjab High Court and
sentenced to death on 8 November 1949.

13 | P a g e
Conclusion
Mahatma Gandhi held no official position, power or wealth or any kind of special distinction.
Yet there are few individuals, who like Gandhi, have had such a profound influence, not only
in their own country, but outside it as well.

Gandhi was in no sense an academic. He was a widely read man. He wrote on every
conceivable subject and his works run into several volumes. Yet he was not built on
'academic writings.' He was an individual who though an idealist, had a firm grasp of reality
and understood the real essence of India. He recognized as few have done, the real strength of
his countrymen.

When one reviews Gandhi's role in the freedom struggle of India, one realises that his
greatest contribution was his practice of non-violent revolution and his use of satyagraha to
oppose oppression. He used 'non-cooperation' to awaken the Indian masses to a sense of
dignity and power and it became a powerful tool with which to fight the might of a colonial
power. By openly and peacefully defying the British might, by instilling fearlessness in the
minds of the Indians, he knocked off the main pillar of imperialism.

To Gandhi, the means were as important as the ends. He stood for open, value-based politics
and the unique means of satyagraha and ahimsa that he used, seem to be of even greater
importance to us now in this new millenium.

Bibliography
1. Why I Assassinated Gandhi? Nathuram Vinayak Godse

2. Sanskriti Magazine- Nathurams Final Address to court(2nd February, 2014)

3. http://www.ashtarcommandcrew.net/forum/topics/the-evil-side-of-
gandhi?xg_source=activity

4. http://www.independent.co.uk/articles.html

5. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/mahatma-gandhi-experiment-sexuality-manuben-
discovered-diaries/1/278952.html

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