Why mk gandhi was killed

When his contract expired, he spontaneously decided to remain in South Africa and launched a campaign against legislation that would deprive Indians of the right to vote. In , the Transvaal government sought to further restrict the rights of Indians, and Gandhi organized his first campaign of satyagraha, or mass civil disobedience.

After seven years of protest, he negotiated a compromise agreement with the South African government. 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.

The most perplexing and yet a pertinent question was Mr. Jinnah's most vocal propagation of the idea of Pakistan. With the intentional or otherwise efforts of Mountbatten, he succeeded in carving it out. Then, instead of making the two his targets why did Godse select one for murder who vehemently opposed the idea of partition till the resolution by the Congress accepting the partition of the country was passed on 3rd June and Pakistan became fate accompli?

Or is it that, as Savarkar put it, he had no quarrel with Mr. Jinnah and his two-nation theory but, can one surmise that he and his apologists had real quarrel with Gandhi and Gandhi alone? In view of this, Gandhiji acquiesced into the situation. It is necessary to point out an aspect of Gandhiji's personality that made him a source of unabated distrust and dislike in the eyes of hard core Hindus. Though he was a devout Hindu, he had the most amicable and warm relations with many who did not belong to the Hindu fold.

As a result of this exposure he had developed an eclectic religious sense based on oneness of God and equality of all religious sense based on oneness of God and equality of all religions. Caste divisions and untouchability prevalent among the Hindu social organization distressed him immensely.

He advocated and actively encouraged inter-caste marriages. Lastly he blessed only those marriages wherein one of the partners belonged to the untouchable castes. Vested interests amongst high caste Hindus viewed this reformist and other religious programmes with bitter resentment. In course of time it developed into a phobia and thus he became anathema to them. The matter regarding the release of Rs. Of the 75 crore to be paid the first instalment of Rs.

Invasion of Kashmir by self-styled liberators with the covert support of the Pakistani Army took place before the second instalment was paid. Government of India decided to withhold it. Lord Mountbatten was of the opinion that it amounted to a violation of the mutually agreed conditions and he brought it to the notice of Gandhiji.

To Gandhiji's ethical sense the policy of tit for tat was repugnant and he readily agreed with the Viceroy's point of view. However, linking his stand in this matter with his fast he undertook, as you will find in the following lines, is an intentional mix-up and distortion of facts of contemporary history.

The fast was undertaken with a view to restoring communal amity in Delhi. Gandhiji arrived from Calcutta in September to go to Punjab to restore peace there. On being briefed by Sardar Patel about the explosive situation in Delhi itself he changed his plans and decided to continue his stay in Delhi to restore peace with the firm determination to "Do or Die.

The influx of Hindus from Pakistan who were uprooted and who had suffered killings of relatives, abduction and rape of women and looting of their belongings had created an explosive situation. The local Hindus who were outraged by the treatment meted out to their Hindu brethren and the anger of local Muslims against reports of similar outrages on their coreligionists in India made Delhi a veritable witches' cauldron.

This resulted in killings, molestation, torching of houses and properties. This caused deep anguish to Gandhiji.

What added poignancy to this was the realization that it happened in India itself just after a unique incident in the history of mankind: doing away of the shackles of a colonial regime by non-violent means. It was in this background that he undertook a fast unto death to restore communal amity and sanity in Delhi. 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. His second method of uniting Hindus was to identify and define the other, the Christians and Muslims, by subjugating them for the pain and torment their ancestors were supposed to have inflicted on them.

In assassinating Gandhi, Nathuram gave his otherwise ordinary life a new meaning. Repercussions of the crime are certain to be widespread and intense throughout India and Pakistan. It may produce that change of heart for which Gandhi laboured and gave his life. On the other hand it may stimulate communal frenzy; the presence of 5,, Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan of whom about , are in Delhi has exacerbated public tempers and communal organisations such as the Hindu Mahasabha and Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh have been active in preaching vengeance against Pakistan.

Assassination of Mr Gandhi. Assasssin beaten by crowd The man, who gave his name as Nathuram, fired a fourth shot, apparently in an effort to kill himself, but a Royal Indian Air Force sergeant standing alongside jolted his arm and wrenched the pistol away. Topics India. Reuse this content.