Gopal Godse - Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi

Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi

Gopal Godse's brother, Nathuram Godse, shot Gandhi and was executed by hanging with co-conspirator Narayan Apte on November 15, 1949. Gopal was arrested on 5 February from his house in Pune and was sentenced to 18 years for his part in the assassination. The three men believed that Gandhi had turned his back on the Indian Independence Movement, and that his actions led to the Partition of India which in turn led to the inflammation of sectarian strife between Pakistan's Muslims and India's Hindus. In an interview in 1998 he reiterated that he never regretted Gandhi's killing. He hated what he called Gandhi's "appeasement" of Muslims.

According to Gopal what triggered the assassination was a bomb explosion on 20 January 1948 at Gandhi's prayer meeting in Delhi, just 50 meters away from Gandhi. The failed explosion for which Madan Lal Pahwa was caught, heightened the urgency-the Godse brothers wanted to finish it before the police caught them.

Gopal was a Hindu nationalist. He claimed that Gandhi never really said Hey Ram as he was dying and this was just a ploy of the government to prove that he was, indeed, a staunch Hindu who deserved to be elevated to sainthood. In an interview with Time Magazine he said, "Someone asked me whether Gandhi said, Hey Ram. I said Kingsley did say it. But Gandhi did not. Because that was not a drama."

He admitted that at one point, Gandhi was his idol. He credited Gandhi for the mass awakening that he created and that he removed the fear of prison from the minds of Indians.