PUNE, India, Feb. 27
On Jan. 30, 1948, Gopal Godse was a 28-year-old storekeeper at an Indian Army barracks in Pune. At 6 P.M., All-India Radio announced that a lone gunman in New Delhi had shot and killed Mohandas K. Gandhi, the 79-year-old apostle of nonviolence who led India to independence from Britain at midnight on Aug. 14, 1947.
The assassination stunned India but came as no surprise to Mr. Godse. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was his older brother. The two men had been active in the Hindu nationalist movement since the 1930's and planned the assassination along with several others.
Their purpose was to punish Gandhi, a Hindu, for his evenhanded attitude toward Muslims -- in particular for acquiescing in Britain's partition of India into the separate nations of India and Pakistan.
Congrats to Annie, who was first in researching how Gandhi's assassin justified the murder. She wins the Gandhi doll!