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Why I Killed Gandhi Kindle Edition
by Nathuram Vinayak Godse (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.1 out of 5 stars 7,913
While the nation was celebrating Independence from British Rule and singing all praises for the ‘Father of The Nation’ – Mahatma Gandhi, the news of his assassination came as a shock. He was shot in the chest three times while he was walking towards the prayer grounds at the Birla House, New Delhi. The man behind the assassination – Nathuram Godse was a well known nationalist. He was arrested at the crime scene and sentenced to death after a year long trial. The book contains the final speech given by Godse in the court, mentioning the reason behind the drastic step he took.
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12 pages
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Top reviews from Australia
Mukesh
5.0 out of 5 stars Good reading
Reviewed in Australia on 16 November 2020
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Good to know about history. Gandhi was more concerned his image than the Hindu people. To rub salt to the wound, Nehru was his support in the saga.
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Balaji Padma
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant read.
Reviewed in Australia on 3 April 2020
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Nathuram has stood the test of time. Bharath now actually needs a hindu leader to cultivate a true 'vasudeva kutumbham' where every living being is considered sacred.
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Sanjay
5.0 out of 5 stars excellent formulation of the argument
Reviewed in the United States on 26 March 2024
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The author clearly has the conviction and had gone through a significant soul searching for answers before reaching the conclusion to do the unthinkable. He has certainly presented a very convincing argument to justify his actions.
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Prakash Ranganath
5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling as not much has changed in India…
Reviewed in Canada on 8 December 2021
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Gandhi’s attitude was My way or the Highway…Indians acquire this attitude as a result of some success overseas…if a successful Indian goes back home, he behaves like he’s visiting a tacky rural village and treats the natives as such…this is a kind of colonial attitude but by a fellow Indian…Gandhi exhibited this attitude only in his approach to national policy issues…personally he was second to none in his simplicity and frugality…this being a main reason why he was at the top…because he had the trust of all Indians - wealthy and common…even today in 2021 few can criticize him and survive in public life…he’s treated almost Godly in certain political aspects simply because the leaders can’t seem to break his strangle hold on the thought process of how India should be and conduct herself in the League of Nations…
The Congress Party men then and today and many other Indian politicians fully disagree with Gandhi but for the outside world they’ll continue to behave like he was correct and above all criticism - simply because they can’t measure up to his level of public austerity and incorruptibility…so he continues to be Godly in India even today…in brief Gandhi is having this Christlike fame in the world because of his personal sacrifices…
Another spoiler for India was both Muslim League and Gandhi didn’t believe in parliamentary democracy wherein the representatives gain upper hand by the strength of their just and logical arguments and prevail upon other members and the nation to formulate policies…instead they believed in street power and both were competing with and wary of each other…on one side was the League, a political party based on religious Islamic ideology and on the other side was an old man with a stick…both taking on each other on the streets of India…and Hindus had no other choice but to go with the old man at least for the current time…
Unfortunately even today in 2021, India hasn’t been able to exorcise the ghost of Gandhi from it’s polity…street power can still bring a popularly elected government to its knees and force reversal of beneficial policies and replace them with draconian ones benefiting a few…Hindus even though a majority, continue to at the receiving end most times…India is the only country where a majority community has to beg the government for its rights…
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Lalit Ray
5.0 out of 5 stars Very informative
Reviewed in India on 8 March 2024
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Tells us the true story and why facts were suppressed by the congress government s
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Nina T
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 January 2021
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He did not ask for mercy. I agree with his statement about non violence, Gandhi preached a lie about non violence because I lot of violence was created due to him.
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Fortunata
5.0 out of 5 stars Alegato
Reviewed in Spain on 20 July 2019
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Alegato final del hombre condenado por matar a Ghandi. Lo hizo por que lo creyó necesario y es muy convincente en sus razones. Muycorto, se lee en una hora y vale la pena.
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Raj polapragada
4.0 out of 5 stars Truth may on the side of Gandhiji. But definitely Transparency is not on his side.
Reviewed in India on 25 March 2024
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Gandhi is an ideal person but a failure as father of a nation. His non violence was feeder to Muslim violence. His Satya grapha gave fodder to British to play with indians. His failure to stop dividing India is a triumph to Jinnah and Mountbatten. He is a timid person under cloak of non violence and no match for cunning British and inhuman Jinnah. Absence of Krishna in Mahabharata war would have wiped Pandavas. If only Sardar Patel and Nehru are not
there I dia would have been 500 pieces.
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Shantala Shenoy Nayak
5.0 out of 5 stars There are 2 Sides to Every Story, and both are Equally Valid
Reviewed in the United States on 19 April 2019
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This is the kind of book/review/subject that warrants a 100, no a 1000 disclaimers, but I am going to offer none. Mostly because I don't even know where to begin with the disclaimers on this one. What do I even say? Especially when I am so conflicted on how I feel about the assassination, which is at the core of this book.
So here's what I'll do - I'll just share my own thoughts on the book & leave it to you guys to decide whether or not to read this one. However, just to be clear, at-least on that front, my recommendation is clear: read this book.
Not because it's pro or against anyone or any ideology. And certainly not because I condone Godse's act (because I don't, that's the root cause of my internal conflict).
Read this book because it will give you insight into the mind of the man who killed Gandhi, his thought process & his reasons. Especially read it, because it highlights a side of Indian history that has been intentionally erased from textbooks, all to promote the brand & idea of Gandhi.
Which truth be told, is not all propaganda. Because Gandhi did do some truly great work, if nothing else, then he must be applauded for sustaining a mass movement for freedom and standing up for a lot of noble values.
But then again to highlight only one side of the man & his movement while disregarding the other, is to settle for a half truth instead of the complete history, which is not that straightforward, but complicated, messy and downright unpleasant.
And that's why I say read this book, use your judgement & make up your own mind on how you feel about the book, the man (both the men in-fact) & the assassination. But do read it.
Full review / unfiltered thoughts on the blog: shanaya tales dot com.
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Hinna K.
4.0 out of 5 stars An honest account
Reviewed in the United States on 31 December 2019
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Very honest account. It’s important for us to know all sides of the story to let go of the prejudices we may subconsciously hold. However, killing can never ever be justified and this needs to be emphasized in this era more than any other. I wish we all can think openly, live and let live.
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Mallaiah
5.0 out of 5 stars Truth comes out strong.
Reviewed in India on 29 February 2024
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This book gives a good picture of how MKG played a pseudo Hindu role. If the points were true (I trust so), nothing wrong in eliminating such elements from society. I think MKG would have arm twisted Ambedkar to give reservation to that community in India if he had survived until 1950.
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Kithha
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for every Nationalist
Reviewed in Canada on 4 October 2021
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This statement should have been made available for the public to read and debate over 7 decades ago: it would have saved many lives of the community to which the writer belonged. Politics sacrificed those innocents.
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P. S.
5.0 out of 5 stars Godse was a true patriot, not a villan. Gandhi, conversely isn't the "mahatma" he is made out to be!
Reviewed in the United States on 3 February 2022
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I grew up in India and was taught that Godse was a fanatic and a murderer - same was perhaps taught to every single Indian. After reading Godse's defense and his rationale, there is no doubt in my mind that his action that day was indeed heroic and for the betterment of the country. I don't come to this conclusion lightly. One only has to look at not just what happened then but what has been happening in India even after 75 years of independence. Gandhi's policies and actions were not consistent with his carefully portrayed image of "mahatma" and champion of non-violence and human rights. His appeasement policies to Muslim extremists, and inability and inaction caused deaths, rapes, forced conversions and displacement of millions of Hindus and India is still paying the price of such thinking. Godse was indeed a patriot and should be treated as such. Godse's statement of defense was banned from being published and circulated in India. Sad that India could neither handle truth nor free-speech when it comes to inconvenient facts.
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Su
5.0 out of 5 stars Real life narrative
Reviewed in Canada on 2 July 2018
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This book deals with factual matter which needs to be read as such. It needs to be read as a person"s point of view who was in full possession of his faculties at the time. It cannot really be liked or disliked. You can agree or disagree with it. Glad that Amazon has this up.
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Aanand
3.0 out of 5 stars Gandhi & partition
Reviewed in India on 25 February 2024
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The writer blames Gandhi for partition, which is only partially correct. Partition was the implementation of the separation of Dar-ul-Islam & dar-ul-harb which is central to Islamic political thought. The cunning British used it for implementing divide &rule.
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Arun Sundaram
3.0 out of 5 stars Good
Reviewed in the United States on 17 November 2017
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Because without rating application is not allowing to proceed further. Because without rating application is not allowing to proceed further.
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Placeholder
5.0 out of 5 stars Good or bad is ones perspective
Reviewed in India on 24 March 2024
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Truthfulness, courage to confront the actions, Patriotism, acceptance, intention of doing best in the interest of humanity and love above all.
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Nathuram Godse
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Why I Killed Gandhi
Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu
religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely
proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free thinking unfettered by any superstitious allegiance to any isms, political or religious. That is
why I worked actively for the eradication of untouchability and the caste system
based on birth alone. I openly joined RSS wing of anti-caste movements and
maintained that all Hindus were of equal status as to rights, social and religious and
should be considered high or low on merit alone and not through the accident of
birth in a particular caste or profession.
.
I used publicly to take part in organized anti-caste dinners in which thousands of
Hindus, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars and Bhangis participated. We
broke the caste rules and dined in the company of each other. I have read the
speeches and writings of Ravana, Chanakiya, Dadabhai Naoroji, Vivekanand,
Gokhale, Tilak, along with the books of ancient and modern history of India and
some prominent countries like England, France, America and Russia. Moreover I
studied the tenets of Socialism and Marxism.
But above all I studied very closely whatever Veer Savarkar and Gandhiji had
written and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more to
the moulding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last thirty
years or so, than any other single factor has done.
All this reading and thinking led me to believe it was my first duty to serve
Hindudom and Hindus both as a patriot and as a world citizen. To secure the
freedom and to safeguard the just interests of some thirty crores (300 million) of
Hindus would automatically constitute the freedom and the well-being of all India,
one fifth of human race. This conviction led me naturally to devote myself to the
Hindu Sanghtanist ideology and programme, which alone, I came to believe, could
win and preserve the national independence of Hindustan, my Motherland, and
enable her to render true service to humanity as well.
Since the year 1920, that is, after the demise of Lokamanya Tilak, Gandhiji’s
influence in the Congress first increased and then became supreme. His activities
for public awakening were phenomenal in their intensity and were reinforced by
the slogan of truth and nonviolence which he paraded ostentatiously before the
country. No sensible or enlightened person could object to those slogans. In fact
there is nothing new or original in them. They are implicit in every constitutional
public movement. But it is nothing but a mere dream if you imagine that the bulk of
mankind is, or can ever become, capable of scrupulous adherence to these lofty
principles in its normal life from day to day.
In fact, honour, duty and love of one’s own kith and kin and country might often
compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that
an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would consider it a religious and
moral duty to resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force.
[In the Ramayana]
Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita. [In the Mahabharata]
Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight and slay quite a
number of his friends and relations including the revered Bhishma because the
latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama,
Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of
the springs of human action.
In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that
first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India. It was
absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan,
failing which he would have lost his own life. In condemning history’s towering
warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots,
Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit. He was, paradoxical as it may appear,
a violent pacifist who brought untold calamities on the country in the name of truth
and non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain enshrined in
the hearts of their countrymen for ever for the freedom they brought to them.
The accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating in his last proMuslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence of Gandhi
should be brought to an end immediately. Gandhi had done very good in South
Africa to uphold the rights and well-being of the Indian community there. But
when he finally returned to India he developed a subjective mentality under which
he alone was to be the final judge of what was right or wrong. If the country wanted
his leadership, it had to accept his infallibility; if it did not, he would stand aloof
from the Congress and carry on his own way.
Against such an attitude there can be no halfway house. Either Congress had to
surrender its will to his and had to be content with playing second fiddle to all his
eccentricity, whimsicality, metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on
without him. He alone was the Judge of everyone and everything; he was the master
brain guiding the civil disobedience movement; no other could know the technique
of that movement. He alone knew when to begin and when to withdraw it. The
movement might succeed or fail, it might bring untold disaster and political
reverses but that could make no difference to the Mahatma’s infallibility. ‘A
Satyagrahi can never fail’ was his formula for declaring his own infallibility and
nobody except himself knew what a Satyagrahi is. Thus, the Mahatma became the
judge and jury in his own cause. These childish insanities and obstinacies, coupled
with a most severe austerity of life, ceaseless work and lofty character made Gandhi
formidable and irresistible.
Many people thought that his politics were irrational but they had either to
withdraw from the Congress or place their intelligence at his feet to do with as he
liked. In a position of such absolute irresponsibility Gandhi was guilty of blunder
after blunder, failure after failure, disaster after disaster. Gandhi’s pro-Muslim
policy is blatantly in his perverse attitude on the question of the national language
of India. It is quite obvious that Hindi has the most prior claim to be accepted as the
premier language. In the beginning of his career in India, Gandhi gave a great
impetus to Hindi but as he found that the Muslims did not like it, he became a
champion of what is called Hindustani. Everybody in India knows that there is no
language called Hindustani; it has no grammar; it has no vocabulary. It is a mere
dialect, it is spoken, but not written. It is a bastard tongue and cross-breed between
Hindi and Urdu, and not even the Mahatma’s sophistry could make it popular. But
in his desire to please the Muslims he insisted that Hindustani alone should be the
national language of India. His blind followers, of course, supported him and the
so-called hybrid language began to be used. The charm and purity of the Hindi
language was to be prostituted to please the Muslims. All his experiments were at
the expense of the Hindus.
From August 1946 onwards the private armies of the Muslim League began a
massacre of the Hindus. The then Viceroy, Lord Wavell, though distressed at what
was happening, would not use his powers under the Government of India Act of
1935 to prevent the rape, murder and arson. The Hindu blood began to flow from
Bengal to Karachi with some retaliation by the Hindus. The Interim Government
formed in September was sabotaged by its Muslim League members right from its
inception, but the more they became disloyal and treasonable to the government of
which they were a part, the greater was Gandhi’s infatuation for them. Lord Wavell
had to resign as he could not bring about a settlement and he was succeeded by
Lord Mountbatten. King Log was followed by King Stork. The Congress which had
boasted of its nationalism and socialism secretly accepted Pakistan literally at the
point of the bayonet and abjectly surrendered to Jinnah. India was vivisected and
one-third of the Indian territory became foreign land to us from August 15, 1947.
Lord Mountbatten came to be described in Congress circles as the greatest Viceroy
and Governor-General this country ever had. The official date for handing over
power was fixed for June 30, 1948, but Mountbatten with his ruthless surgery gave
us a gift of vivisected India ten months in advance. This is what Gandhi had
achieved after thirty years of undisputed dictatorship and this is what Congress
party calls ‘freedom’ and ‘peaceful transfer of power’. The HinduMuslim unity
bubble was finally burst and a theocratic state was established with the consent of
Nehru and his crowd and they have called ‘freedom won by them with sacrifice’ –
whose sacrifice? When top leaders of Congress, with the consent of Gandhi, divided
and tore the country – which we consider a deity of worship – my mind was filled
with direful anger.
One of the conditions imposed by Gandhi for his breaking of the fast unto death
related to the mosques in Delhi occupied by the Hindu refugees. But when Hindus
in Pakistan were subjected to violent attacks he did not so much as utter a single
word to protest and censure the Pakistan Government or the Muslims concerned.
Gandhi was shrewd enough to know that while undertaking a fast unto death, had
he imposed for its break some condition on the Muslims in Pakistan, there would
have been found hardly any Muslims who could have shown some grief if the fast
had ended in his death. It was for this reason that he purposely avoided imposing
any condition on the Muslims. He was fully aware of from the experience that
Jinnah was not at all perturbed or influenced by his fast and the Muslim League
hardly attached any value to the inner voice of Gandhi.
Gandhi is being referred to as the Father of the Nation. But if that is so, he had
failed his paternal duty inasmuch as he has acted very treacherously to the nation
by his consenting to the partitioning of it. I stoutly maintain that Gandhi has failed
in his duty. He has proved to be the Father of Pakistan. His inner-voice, his spiritual
power and his doctrine of non-violence of which so much is made of, all crumbled
before Jinnah’s iron will and proved to be powerless. Briefly speaking, 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 and that I shall have lost all my honour,
even more valuable than my life, if I were to kill Gandhiji. But at the same time I felt
that the Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would surely be proved practical,
able to retaliate, and would be powerful with armed forces. No doubt, my own
future would be totally ruined, but the nation would be saved from the inroads of
Pakistan. People may even call me and dub me as devoid of any sense or foolish, but
the nation would be free to follow the course founded on the reason which I
consider to be necessary for sound nation-building.
After having fully considered the question, I took the final decision in the matter,
but I did not speak about it to anyone whatsoever. I took courage in both my hands
and I did fire the shots at Gandhiji on 30th January 1948, on the prayer-grounds of
Birla House. I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action
had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus. There was no
legal machinery by which such an offender could be brought to book and for this
reason I fired those fatal shots. I bear no ill will towards anyone individually but I
do say that I had no respect for the present government owing to their policy which
was unfairly favourable towards the Muslims. But at the same time I could clearly
see that the policy was entirely due to the presence of Gandhi.
I have to say with great regret that Prime Minister Nehru quite forgets that his
preaching’s and deeds are at times at variances with each other when he talks about
India as a secular state in season and out of season, because it is significant to note
that Nehru has played a leading role in the establishment of the theocratic state of
Pakistan, and his job was made easier by Gandhi’s persistent policy of appeasement
towards the Muslims. I now stand before the court to accept the full share of my
responsibility for what I have done and the judge would, of course, pass against me
such orders of sentence as may be considered proper. But I would like to add that I
do not desire any mercy to be shown to me, nor do I wish that anyone else should
beg for mercy on my behalf. My confidence about the moral side of my action has
not been shaken even by the criticism levelled against it on all sides. I have no doubt
that honest writers of history will weigh my act and find the true value thereof
some day in future
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