Nathuram Godse: The Man Behind Gandhi's Assassination And His Failed First Attempt
On this day in history, May 19, 1910, Nathuram Godse was born in Baramati to a Chittapavan Brahmin family that had already lost three sons. Believing their family was cursed, his parents initially raised him as a girl, complete with a nose ring (nath) that contributed to his name.
After failing to complete his matriculation and experiencing business failures, Godse's path took a radical turn when he joined the RSS at age 22. He later became secretary of a Hindu Mahasabha branch in Pune, embracing extremist Hindu nationalism that would ultimately lead him to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi.
What's less known is that Godse and his accomplices originally planned to kill Gandhi on January 20, 1948—ten days before the successful assassination. This first attempt, described by historians as a "comedy of errors," involved six conspirators including Godse's brother Gopal, arms dealer Digambar Badge, and Narayan Apte, a whiskey-loving womanizer who had harbored resentment toward Gandhi for years.
Their elaborate scheme at Delhi's Birla House prayer meeting collapsed spectacularly. A time bomb created a diversion but failed to harm Gandhi. Meanwhile, Badge lost his nerve, Gopal became trapped in a room after a cot collapsed under him, and accomplice Madanlal Pahwa was captured after being identified by a young girl. Gandhi, remarkably calm throughout the chaos, later addressed the incident without animosity, saying, "You should not have any kind of hate against the person who was responsible for this."
The failed plot gave Gandhi ten more days of life before Godse would return on January 30, 1948, to fire three fatal bullets into the Mahatma's chest, forever altering history and cementing his own legacy as the man who killed the father of the nation.
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