Gandhi’s Shocking Death Wish
All our lives are imbued with uncertainty. While the pandemic has only exacerbated our consciousness of fragility, our material realities have always been stitched with tenuousness. In a world or even universe, where nothing is certain, we can all be sure of one thing only: that each of our lives will, at some point and in some manner, cease to be.
Without dwelling on the ifs and buts of afterlives, I would assume as a writer, that a majority of human beings would prefer a peaceful end. And perhaps also a timely death – a gentle cessation of being after the fulfillment of certain public and private obligations. With the last few breaths preceded by minimal physical and emotional pain. A cursory scanning of the literature on a “good death” seems to indicate that most people wish for a sense of closure with families, spiritual/religious fulfillment (for believers), and more emphatically a dignified departure. Many seem to indicate that they would like to die while asleep – sliding from the dream state into cozy non-existence or a tranquil after-life. None of this is surprising. One might have reached these findings with just common sense – after all, apart from a few masochists, why would anyone wish for anything else?
But here’s the kind of jolting revelation that even we writers are unprepared for. Gandhi did not hanker for this. Given Gandhi’s manner of living and his unrelenting advocacy of peace, one would have thought that the Mahatma would prefer to die, eyes closed in repose, surrounded by a coterie of well-wishers and friends. With some of his favorite bhajans being chanted softly in the background. Not so, apparently. The apostle of non-violence yearned for and even prayed for a very violent death. Gandhi sought, rather intensely, to die at the hands of an assassin.
Not being simple with his yearnings even to the Higher Forces, he also desired something else. That at the exact moment of his being shot or bombed, he would be able to forgive his killer before slipping into the ether. In other words, for those who might subscribe to Gandhi’s spiritual powers, he ‘manifested’ Nathuram Godse. But unlike the avid followers of Rhonda Byrne, the author of the wildly popular The Secret, Gandhi did not want to positively think his way into wealth or into having more. Rather he wished for annihilation, or nullity, but effected with theatrical flair. As Ashish Nandy, the social theorist and cultural critic suggests, Gandhi co-authored his death.
An Abiding Obsession with Death
Gandhi had long since obsessed with his own death, as he tried to expand the lives of vast swathes of people. Such reflection was a practice, or a training even for nonviolence. As the leader himself wrote: “Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training of killing for violence, so one must learn the art of dying in the training for nonviolence.” There had been a time when the Mahatma wished to live a much longer life – till the age of 125 or so. He certainly had the personal mastery – the exercise and dietary habits – that could have granted him such longevity. But later, racked by the violence and senseless killings of Partition, he seemed willing for a shorter life. He even said as much at his last birthday celebration in October 1947.
But he remained equally steadfast about not wanting to “die of lingering illness,” so much so, that he told his niece Manu to expose him as an “imposter and fraud” if he died in such a manner. He had also given her a litmus test of sorts, on whether to declare him as being worthy of the title, “Mahatma.” If he were shot or bombed, he was on the right path. If not, Manu was to announce his falseness to the world.
Why did he wish for a violent end? Because as Tridip Suhrud, one of the few Gandhi scholars who is fluent in all three of Gandhi’s languages, says in an interview with The Open Magazine, the Mahatma had imbibed certain notions of martyrdom. He was attracted to figures like Jesus Christ, who had ceded their bodies to larger Truths. Attuned always to the semantics of everything he did, Gandhi must have intuited that a leader’s assassination at a time of searing national violence might halt the senseless killings. While many people might wish to live purposefully, Gandhi extended this further. He wished to die purposefully. As Suhrud puts it: “Did he fear death? No. Did he fear a violent death? Certainly not. What he feared was a purposeless death.”
The Mahatma’s Last Day
Given this backdrop, let’s wade into the details of Gandhi’s last day. On Jan 30th 1948, according to an essay by Vinay Lal, Professor of History at UCLA, Gandhi was uncharacteristically late for his evening prayer meeting. He had, after all, a singular relationship with time. He was careful about being punctual for meetings – a Protestant ethic that he might have shared with the colonizers. On the other hand, he always had time available for those who needed it, regardless of social stature. As Lal puts it: “Gandhi’s life was governed by the watch to an unusual degree, but he was no prisoner of time; remarkably, though he adhered to a meticulous, even punishing, schedule for much of his life, Gandhi was generous in giving his time to others, whatsoever their station in life.”
On that fateful day, as he was walking towards his final prayer meeting, he was already discomfited about being late. He berated his niece Manu for not alerting him to the delay and for not interrupting his conversation with Sardar Patel. At that stage, when the nation was still being roiled by Partition, there was a rift between Patel, the Home Minister, and Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister. Though Gandhi wasn’t playing any official role in the government, he might have been trying to bridge the gap.
As he walked toward the stage, he was setting himself up for one of the trickiest and most private undertakings in his life. To forgive Godse, the man who would brush Manu aside, fold his hands in an ironical namaste and fire three bullets into the Mahatma’s chest and abdomen. There are various versions of Gandhi’s immediate response in those historic microseconds after the gunshots. In one version, the Mahatma said “Hey Ram” twice before crumpling to the ground. In another, he merely said “Ah” or in a third, he just gasped. Later, Godse’s brother would claim in an interview, that the Government constructed Gandhi’s last words – “Hey Ram” – in order to reinforce his Hindu antecedents.
More touchingly, Gandhi’s timepiece, tucked into his loin cloth fell down and cracked, stopping its hand movements when the owner no longer needed it. Sixty years later, the Delhi Government would issue an ad with an image of Gandhi and his timepiece, with a single line: “Even time cannot forget.”
References:
https://southasia.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2017/06/Lal_ArtOfDying_GALLEY.pdf