An Orchestrated Campaign of Lies
tushar@mahatma.org.in
The ideology that nurtured Nathuram Godse, Bapu’s murderer, launched a concerted campaign of lies to justify Bapu’s murder. For seven decades they have orchestrated the campaign of lies so successfully that a large segment of the Indian populace believes their lies. The campaign of disinformation justifying Bapu’s murder embodies the Gobellsian strategy of repeating a lie repeatedly till it is accepted as a truth the ideology of hate and violence, Sangh Parivar, which was the patron of Bapu’s murder has been shouting it from the roof tops and when they are in power they have officially done it while pretending to worship him. Now they have taken it to the next level, to spread doubts about the murder itself. Some time back a petition was filed in the Bombay High Court seeking a reopening of investigation into the murder of Mahatma Gandhi. The petitioner alleged that there was another shooter, that there was a fourth bullet and alluded to the presence of a mysterious foreigner. Fortunately Bombay High Court refused to admit the plea and dismissed it out of hand; it promptly consigned the plea to the place it belonged, the trash basket. The petitioner is a self confessed devotee of Savarkar and belongs to Abhinav Bharat Sanstha, The petition further requested the Court to invalidate the findings of the Justice Kapur Commission’s Report of 1969 and to order a fresh investigation into Mahatma Gandhi’s murder. It is important to know that the Kapur Commission had from its investigation, established a link between the RSS and Bapu’s murder and also had shown evidence of Savarkar’s involvement in the murder conspiracy. Thus the existence of the Kapur Commission’s Report has been a cause of anxiety for the Sangh Parivaar and Savarkarites, the dismissed petition in the Bombay High Court and the petition heard by the Supreme Court are steps in this strategy to discredit contemporary history and then replace it by their own Batraised work of fiction.
In 2014 immediately after the current dispensation came to power a major exercise was carried out by the orders of the PMO to destroy more than 14 thousand documents, many of them classified, from the national archives. The documents were declared to be of no consequence any more and were burnt. What is suspicious, is that there is no record of which documents were destroyed and no list of them or no reason given as to how they were deemed to be of no consequence. A similar exercise was carried out during N.D.A.1s regime too. We will never know whether this was an attempt to sanitise history, whether it was to dispose of the inconvenient truth or whether it was a part of their campaign to rewrite history. But the fact remains that without due diligence and without due process 14000 documents were condemned and destroyed, the information they contained lost forever.
Subramaniam Swami, the purveyor of untruth and a propagandist of the Sangh Parivar, has taken it upon himself to spread lies about Bapu’s murder and cloud the truth further.
Invisible Man
The petition heard by the Supreme Court alleges that there was a second gunman, present at Birla House on the evening of 30th January 1948 who the petitioner alleges fired the fatal shot that evening , the 4th round fired at Bapu, which resulted in his death. Attempting to suggest that the three shots fired at Bapu by Nathuram Godse from a range of 2 and a half feet which all three hit Bapu in the chest in a radius of less than three inches from a 9 MM gun did not kill Bapu. That evening there were more than a thousand people present at Birla House and yet the second gun man mysteriously fired at Bapu, unnoticed and got away without anyone else noticing his presence, an invisible man. Yes Godse’s accomplices Apte and Karkare did manage to get away after the murder, but that was because they did not participate in Bapu’s murder, they were merely Nathuram’s wingmen, unarmed, just there to ensure that Nathuram was not impeded as he approached Bapu and to ensure that if possible they would all make good their escape after the deed. Raghu Mali of the Birla House staff was the first to grapple and disarm Nathuram Godse, after the murder. In the ensuing confusion Apte and Karkare escaped. Nobody saw or heard the second gunman, because there wasn’t one. The mysterious gunman, is part of the excuses peddled for justifying Bapu’s murder by the RSS and its cadre, a propaganda of lies very expertly fabricated and sustained by the Hindu supremacist of the radicalised right wing, now, unfortunately, ruling India.
The Fictitious Bullet
The petition claims that there was a fourth bullet, fired by the second gunman which actually killed Bapu. From what I read in press reports. The petitioner has sited the eyewitness account of Manuben who has written that after Bapu’s body was carried into Birla House and while it was being bathed and cleaned they discovered a bullet entangled in the folds of the shawl he draped on his torso to insulate against the January cold of Delhi. This the petitioner claims was the 4th bullet. The Gandhi murder investigation has confirmed three shots fired and has accounted for three entry wounds inflicted by the three bullets on Bapu’s chest and two exit wounds on his back where two of the bullets went right through his frail body and emerged out of his back. One flew up to about ten feet behind him and was recovered by the police later from the flower patch fringing the rear lawns of Birla House where prayers were held. One bullet which remained in Bapu’s body was recovered as a lump of melted lead from the funeral pyre at Raj Ghat, while the ashes were being gathered after the funeral and the third bullet was the one which was recovered from the folds of his shawl while his body was being bathed. The fourth bullet was never discovered because it did not exist. There is an interesting aside to this bullet which was recovered from the folds of the shawl, Devadas Gandhi, Bapu’s youngest son, took the bullet, later that evening to the Tughlaq Road Police station where the FIR was filed. Nathuram Godse, the murderer was held in a cell at the Tughlaq Road Police Station. The cell is situated such that anyone interred in it can see people coming and going from the police Station. Fortunately it still exists as it had in 1948. I have seen it while researching my book ‘Let’s Kill Gandhi!’ When Devadas Gandhi approached the Tughlaq Road Police Station, Nathuram Godse saw him and demanded to meet Devadas Gandhi and made a scene when his demand was ignored. The fourth bullet which caused the fatality as claimed by the petitioner and Subramaniam Swami, was in fact the second or third bullet fired by Nathuram Godse, that evening. The three cumulatively or one of them individually caused Bapu’s death. All three bullets are accounted for. There is no evidence, but the one alleged by the Sanghis about the existence of the fourth bullet, because there wasn’t one.
During the post murder investigations a bullet was recovered from the Parchure Wada in Gwalior which was shown to the police by Narayan Apte. It was tested by the forensic laboratory to ascertain whether it was fired from the gun used to murder Bapu. It was proven to be different, of a different bore than the 9 mm Berreta used by Nathuram Godse. It was a bullet fired from one of the useless guns carried by Nathuram which was test fired in the Parchure Wada on 28th January, 1948.
The Story of the 9 MM Beretta Automtic Sr. No. 60682
The petitioner has also alleged that there were two Beretta guns bearing the same serial number. Yes two Berretta guns bearing the same serial number do exist, they are both in the National Gandhi Museum at Raj Ghaat. One is the original murder weapon which along with other relics from the murder were handed over to the Gandhi Smarak Needhi and which resulted in the formation of the National Gandhi Museum where all these are stored. The other is the replica of the murder weapon which was made to be kept on display from time to time at the museum, much after the murder and the murder trial It was acuired sometimes in early 2000s. There was no other cloned Beretta bearing the same serial number as the murder weapon. The story of how this weapon got into the hands of Godse is interesting. Till the 28th of January 1948 the Godse Apte gang did not have a reliable weapon to murder Bapu. Their attempt on 20th had failed despite them possessing three revolvers that day, because none of them had proven reliable, they discovered on the afternoon of the 20th that they had the wrong calibre ammunition for two of the guns, and so they were useless and one which was a military issue revolver in the possession of Gopal Godse was rusted, jammed and thus useless. From 21st till the 28th they had gone to all their sources looking for a gun and failed. Gwalior was a thriving centre of illicit gun trade those days and a stronghold of Hindu Mahasabha and RSS fanatics, devoutly loyal Savarkarites. On the advice of Savarkar in their meeting on 27th January which was revealed in the Kapur Commission’s investigation. Savarkar pointed them in the direction of Gwalior to secure a gun and recommended the name of his very loyal follower Parchure a Hindu Mahasabha leader and a radical Hindu fanatic, so the two landed up at his home in the early hours of the 28th. They knew he possessed a capable gun himself, they initially asked for it, Parchure refused. But being an ardent Savarkar Bhakt he agreed to get them one. He assigned the task to his subordinate Dandavate. By the evening of 28th Dandavate reported back that he had found a suitable weapon, it was available from a known gun runner, Jagdish Prasad Goel. Godse and Apte struck a deal with Goel and got the gun from him for Rs.500/- cash and the revolver they could not fire. This is how the murder weapon with a full magazine and extra 7 rounds came into the possession of the murderers.
The Beretta 9 MM semi automatic bearing Serial No. 606824 was one of the most popular murder weapon for close range work. It was the weapon of choice of assassins all over the world. This gun was specially made as a limited edition gun by the Berretta Co. of Italy, for the officers serving in Mussolini’s army, so even today, it is called the ‘Fascist Special’. An officer in Mussolini’s army which invaded Abyssinia in North Africa was carrying the gun. Mussolini’s army was defeated by the allied forces, in this case the 4th Gwalior Infantry, its commanding officer Lieutenant Col. V. V. Joshi accepted the gun as a symbol of victory from the surrendering commanding officer of Mussolini’s army, a cherished war trophy. After the war Joshi brought it back with him to Gwalior. Joshi was then appointed as the Aide De Camp to H. E . Maharaja Jiyajirao Scindia, Maharaja of Gwalior.
It was never investigated how a cherished trophy of war in the possession of a senior officer serving in Gwalior Court, fell into the hands of a gunrunner and from him reached Bapu’s murderers. Parchure was a co-accused in the Gandhi Murder. He was acquitted by the Punjab High Court in the appeal on a technicality that he was technically a British Citizen at the time of his arrest and since proper extradition proceedings weren’t carried out, his arrest was illegal and so he could not be convicted despite irrefutable evidence and his own voluntary confession. Even the defence council formed to defend the accused, had refused to defend Parchure.
These are the facts about the Gandhi murder, they are inconvenient for liars. Now they think they have the ability to rewrite history and so they are attempting to replace the truth by something they have cooked up which suits them better. They have successfully trivialised ancient history now they will trivialise and discredit contemporary history and replace it with a narrative more suitable to their needs. Truth be Damned!
Now the ideology that got Bapu murdered by one of theirs, is not merely satisfied with having murdered Mohandas Gandhi, they wish to obliterate and corrupt his ideology and legacy too. A systematic and officially patronised campaign has been launched to corrupt and bastardise his ideology and to eulogise his murderer. Some times they worship replicas of the murder weapon, some times his murderer is venerated by their elected representatives both in public as well as in the houses of Parliament. Attempt is being made to remodel heritage monuments which have been painstakingly maintained the way they were in his time. To chnge them so that people will not witness the real history and ideology but will be presented with a sanitised and fictionalised history of the Iconic leader who troubles them even after they got him murdered.
Today an attempt is being made to alter the very soul of India which was created by Bapu and our founders. The soul of India is being corrupted. Immediately after independence a sinister plot was hatched by The Mahasabha, the Sangh and coterie of erstwhile Kings to overthrow the Democratic Government of India and create a authoritarian Hindu Caste Supremacist Rashtra in its place, Bapu’s murder was supposed to be the signal to overthrow the Government. They succeeded in killing the man but even in his death he saved the nation in its infancy from being murdered and its character altered. They murdered the man but his legacy became more and more powerful and during the very dangerous and turbulent period in its infancy, the martyrdom of the man brought the nation to its senses and the forces of hate and division were defeated, the nation was saved. For the first five decades the martyrdom of the Father of the Nation kept the forces of hate at bay but they kept consolidating underground and their unchallenged campaign of lies helped them brainwash a couple of generations of Indians to begin believing their lies and subscribe to their divisive and hate filled ideology. The decade of the 80’s saw the emergence of the Hindu supremacist forces coming to the forefront and in the 90’s they consolidated their power, slowly they were emerging as the voice of the Indian mainstream and were successfully beating back the secular, liberal and tolerant forces, finally they were succeeding in radicalising India. Post 1992, they became the mainstream and that is when they unleashed their final assault on the legacy of Gandhi and the founders of the nation. Their agenda of forming a New India, Hindu Rashtra was in top gear. The nation was divided. By 2014 the fanatics became the face of India and now they could launch the final assault on obliterating Gandhi, erasing him completely from the public psyche. The first step was the destroying of thousands of historic documents from the National Archives, they had already begun rewriting the history of India, during their first stint in power, no they were destroying any evidence that could prove their version of History wrong. During NDA1 the first assault on rewriting Gandhi’s words happened when the publication division ‘republished’ the 100 volume Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, fortunately their mischief was noticed and after a strong protest a committee decided to scrap the faulty set of volumes and after an extensive and painstaking effort the Collected Works were corrected, checked and republished, the words of Gandhi were saved. But this was not the end of their attempt to erase the legacy of Gandhi and change the character of the Nation he helped liberate and foist their corrupted version of India. But to do this they had to spread the poison of hate into the people of the nation, this was easy for them, hate was their creed, their ideology. And so the poisoning started in earnest, mandir masjid, conversions, Pakistan, Kashmir, Jihad, whenever it suited them they raised issues and manipulated them to increase the venom, an inferno was being prepared and the soul of the nation was to be incinerated. They have suceeded spectacularly.
Post 2014, they went into overdrive and succeeded in presenting a new icon of ‘new’ India. P. M. Modi. He very astutely under the pretext of worshipping Gandhi, started acquiring and appropriating all the symbolisms and identifications associated with Gandhi. He attempted to replace Bapu as the icon of Khadi, he trivialised Swadeshi and from ‘Made in India Swadeshi’ he turned it into ‘Make in India Swadeshi’ and became its icon too. He reduced Bapu to becoming a lensless pair of eye glasses as an icon of cleanliness but exploiting the association turned it into his initiative. He was ably helped in popularising his image by his sycophants. They hailed him as the creator of ‘New’ India. The ‘New’ Father of the Nation. Now all that remained to be done is to irreparably alter the character of India, the legacy of Sardar, Netaji, Nehru, Ambedkar and Gandhi. In his second innings Modi has put the process of birthing a ‘New’ India on steroids. In the first months of the new innings, attacks on the spirit of the constitution and the soul of India have been accelarated. The pillars of democracy have been weakened or compromised. India is being communalised, radicalised and the populace is being divided with the objective of rendering the democratic process ineffective and manipulatable. Rule of brutal mobs is being encouraged and patronised. Fascism is seizing control of the nation. Autocracy is throttling democracy. It seems that India of Gandhi’s dreams and those of our founders is dead. A large and vociferous percentage of people seem to have embraced the ideology of hate and intolerance and the Government is seen to be patronising them. Senior Ministers openly state that they do not care about public opinion, only power matters to them. It feels as if India is lost.
But in the midst of such bleak and hopeless scenario once again the Legacy seems to be emerging and recharging the forces who still believe in the true India, the one which is tolerant, compassionate, inclusive, liberal and democratic. The spontaneous demonstrations sweeping the nation once again gives hope that Gandhi’s spirit lives on and will not allow his baby, the India he helped liberate to die. They ensures that the Constitution written by the founders and Babasaheb will not be corrupted and made inconsequential. His ideology has inspired the youth and the women of India to take on the autocratic Government and its fascist ideals head on. The battle to save India is going to be long and arduous, just like our freedom movement, then we fought an empire now we are fighting their lackeys. The farmers have just proven the effectiveness of Bapu’s methods and brought an arrogant PM to his knees.
As long as Bapu lives on in the hearts of even a few, he will continue to inspire and defeat the forces of his murderers. In the end hate will be conquered by love, intolerance by understanding, selfishness by compassion and autocracy by democracy.
Three bullets killed Bapu but hate will not be allowed to defeat his legacy of love and liberty. In the end truth will triumph.
