The Nation lost its father

Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was assassinated in the garden of the former Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti) at 5:17 pm on January 30,1948. Accompanied by his grandnieces, Gandhi was on his way to address a prayer meeting, when his assassin, Nathuram Godse, fired three bullets from a Beretta 9 mm pistol into his chest at point-blank range. Godse was a Hindu nationalist with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha, who held Gandhi guilty of favouring Pakistan and strongly opposed the doctrine of nonviolence. Godse and his co-conspirator were tried and executed in 1949. Gandhi's memorial (or Samadhi) at Raj Ghat, New Delhi, bears the epigraph ‘He Ram’, (Devanagari: हे ! राम or, He Ram), which may be translated as "Oh Rama". These are widely believed to be Gandhi's last words after he was shot, though the veracity of this statement has been disputed.