Why They Killed Gandhi Unmasking the Ideology and the Conspiracy

DescriptionThree bullets were shot into the chest of Mahatma Gandhi by a certainNathuram Godse on the evening of 30 January 1948. His true motivations, however, are today actively obscured, and his admirers sit in the Indianparliament as members of the ruling establishment. This book is a timelyeffort to remind us that Gandhi's killing was not a random act of a mindlesskiller. It was the culmination of a cold-blooded conspiracy.The men who stood trial for the murder of Gandhi claimed that they wereacting for a stronger, more united, India. Their 78-year-old peace-loving target, they felt, was the single biggest impediment to achieving that goal. They accusedhim of dishonesty and treachery; he was blamed for the Partition of India, for'appeasing' Muslims; and condemned for 'fail[ing] in his duty' to the people ofthis nation. To them, Gandhi had to die because 'there was no legal machineryby which such an offender could be brought to book'. Do any of the accusationshave any claim to truth whatsoever? If not, what, then, was the actual intentionthat these arguments made by Godse were attempting to hide? And was V.D.Savarkar, among others, involved in the conspiracy?Ashok Kumar Pandey's Why They Killed Gandhi, translated from the celebratedHindi original, lays bare the facts of the murder, and offers a passionatedefence of the Mahatma and his politics, while simultaneously delivering atrenchant polemic against the ideology of bigotry and perpetual violence thatkilled him.