“Mahatma Gandhi a martyr to assassin’s bullets”

Oc­ca­sion­ally, the human race pro­duces truly ex­cep­tional per­sons of unique qual­i­ties. Gandhi is with­out any doubt one of them. Be­hind an ap­par­ently frail and sim­ple phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance hid a tow­er­ing per­son­al­ity who for gen­er­a­tions has in­spired virtues not so com­mon among his fel­low human be­ings: a de­vo­tion to human dig­nity, jus­tice and non-vi­o­lence. In short, a great soul, as his name Ma­hatma im­plied.

The bar­ris­ter who be­came a po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist and a great com­mu­ni­ca­tor was the guid­ing light that led India to in­de­pen­dence from bru­tal British rule after the Sec­ond World War thanks to his as­ton­ish­ing cam­paign of civil dis­obe­di­ence and peace­ful re­sis­tance that at times seemed in­cred­i­ble. He also cam­paigned for women´s rights, for re­li­gious har­mony and for mea­sures against poverty.

Even­tu­ally, his stub­born­ness, de­fi­ance and per­sis­tence paid off and India be­came in­de­pen­dent after al­most a cen­tury of colo­nial­ism, only to suf­fer par­ti­tion on re­li­gious grounds –India for the Hin­dus and Pak­istan for the Mus­lims—that led to enor­mous mas­sacres.

Gandhi could not ac­cept this vi­o­lence among broth­ers, al­beit sep­a­rated by re­li­gious be­liefs, and sev­eral times he tried to end this vi­o­lence preach­ing end­lessly for peace and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and by fast­ing, a form of po­lit­i­cal protest that in­spired In­di­ans and Pak­ista­nis alike and had a moral im­pact on many more around the world.

But ha­tred won the day on the af­ter­noon of Jan­u­ary 30, 1948 when an ex­trem­ist Hindu na­tion­al­ist, ac­cus­ing him of be­trayal for his con­cil­ia­tory stance to­wards Mus­lims, walked slowly and coldly to­wards him dur­ing a re­li­gious gath­er­ing and shot him sev­eral times in his stom­ach at point blank range. Gandhi, 78, col­lapsed, bled pro­fusely and died thirty min­utes later.

The then prime min­is­ter Nehru in a na­tional broad­cast said that India had lost its bright­est man and the world its tallest fig­ure in terms of moral stan­dards.

“The light has gone out of our lives”, said Nehru after learn­ing of the as­sas­si­na­tion. “There is dark­ness every­where.”

The as­sas­sin was hanged after a hasty trial one year later. A pun­ish­ment Gandhi would have surely op­posed.

BREAK­ING NEWS Front pages through his­tory

Dawn, Karachi, Pak­istan