On the trail of a frail's man's foretold murder

There’s so much iron underneath the earth’s surface that ironies never fail to erupt. Gandhi’s famous last word “Ram” also happened to be his murderer’s name. Nathuram was not born with the name. Three of his elder brothers had died very young, and his father was told that no male child could survive in his family. And therefore, if a boy was born, he’d have to be brought up as a girl to fool destiny. So, a boy was born and was named Ramchandra but he was given a nose ring or a ‘nath’ to fool destiny. Children teased him as Nathuram, and he officially became that. He wanted to prove that he was a man. And the way he did it, on 30th January 1948, changed the course of history.

A death foretold
Another irony is that Tushar Gandhi’s book Let’s Kill Gandhi has received a lot of flak, but it so intrigued us that it set us groping for places where the conspiracy to kill Gandhi shaped up. The book reminds one of A Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Marquez where it’s known to everyone except the victim that he’s going to be killed. There’s a sense of frustration as one reads that between 20th January and 30th January 1948, the entire nation’s police could not pin down a bunch of amateur conspirators despite having sufficient leads. On 30th January, pamphlets announcing Gandhi’s murder were distributed three hours before the killing at Alwar. The ‘plot’ part of the book reads like a thriller, though one would agree with candid Tushar that he is ‘no great shakes as a writer.’

The killer car
The ‘plot’ in the book, which has also been enacted in Hey Ram, took us to the places where the conspirators stayed. The conspirators had stayed in Marina Hotel in CP when they were planning the killing to happen to happen on the 20th. On that day, they burst two cotton slabs meant to create commotion at Birla House, after which Badge was supposed to shoot from the grills of a servant quarter. They panicked and none of the conspirators shot. The car in which they had come and fled, was a Ford or a Studebaker, Tushar tells us. It was a blue-green “moongia” car, and unlike most cars in Delhi then, it had a carrier on its top. In the book, the writer tells us that it’s with a car collector in Lucknow, but in conversation he says that someone later told him that it was spotted in a vintage car rally in Delhi.

Marina
Coming back to Marina, it’s a plush hotel on the outer circle of CP today, with all the colonial artefacts – the arches, the pillars intact. Interestingly, a dental surgeon operates out of the place as well. We could not manage to get permission to shoot inside Room No 40. Tushar says the room doesn’t exist any longer, for when Kamal Hassan was planning to shoot there for Hey Ram, he learnt that the building houses a magazine company now. Anyways, coming back to the conspirators, it is here that they had checked in on 17th January 1948, Nathuram as M. Deshpande and Narayan Apte as S. Deshpande. However, when they were running off Nathuram left his shirt behind with the washerman with the real initials “NVG” which would become his undoing. They also left behind a press release by Asutosh Lahiri of Hindu Mahasabha denying his pledge of peace to Gandhi. He had pledged peace alongwith many leaders to make Gandhi break his fast-unto-death just days before.

Just as we were entering Marina, we had spotted a pair of shattered glasses. I clicked a picture. Interestingly, Gandhi’s glasses were never found after his death. When we were coming out the glasses were missing! Tushar chuckles, “This is my purpose, that your generation can connect with that moment.”

The only surviving witness

We go to Old Delhi thereafter, where most of the action happened in the next round when the murder happened. After their first attempt, Madanlal Pahwa was caught and the conspirators were wary, so most of them stayed at the old Delhi railway station abuzz with refugees, so they wouldn’t be detected. They got their pictures clicked in a studio, the name of which is not known now. We had an altercation in the retiring room in which they stayed, for ‘one doesn’t know these days who is who’ as the policeman put it. The other places the conspirators stayed in were Sharif Hotel in Fatehpuri, which doesn’t exist anymore.

The other place they stayed in was Frontier Hindu Hotel, near St. Stephen’s Church. It’s called New Frontier Hotel now. The owners are from North West Frontier Province, and therefore the name; and assertion of identity was also important in times of incendiary circumstances. Though, obviously they did away with the ‘Hindu’ tag after they had the infamous guests. The owner J. Bajaj told us it’s difficult to operate in the area as they have to be very discreet about which guests to entertain. They have a CCTV network to ensure they do not fall into a trap. When we mention his infamous visitors, he chuckles, “Oh, you also know. I got to know of it very late, not from my family but from a friend.” He is fond of historical research himself but is in a dilemma if this revelation would hamper his business. History, notoriously, is not about the past. We were in luck, for Mr Bajaj had an important visitor in his hotel – 85-year-old Ramprakash Matta, who was the manager of the hotel on Januiary 20 1948, when Gopal Godse had checked in as Rajagopalan, and Karakare as G.M.Joshi when they were fleeing after the failed attempt. The octogenarian says he remembers nothing of that time. He remembers his partition flight from Kohat to Rawalpindi to Anritsar to Jalandhar to Delhi very well though. Some memories are best buried, for as we said, history is not just about the past.

The fascist special
Beretta 9mm was the gun used to kill Gandhi. Before this gun was acquired at the last minute – Nathuram didn’t even know how to use it- there were two guns and both were not working. The Beretta, Tushar tells us in an interview, was used by Mussolini’s army in World War II, and had taken a long route to reach Godse. It was called the Fascist Special. The fascist gun that killed the pacifist, now lies in the Gandhi Museum in Delhi.