Nathuram Godse's Final Address to the Court.

One of the best speeches of All time, which is compared to Socrates's speech in his trial.
The Judge was astonished by his One of the best speeches of All time, which is compared to Socrates's speech in his trial.

WHY I KILLED GANDHI – Nathuram Godse's Final Address to the Court.

Nathuram Godse - His Last Speech

JANUARY 30th, 1949 - The Mahatma was assassinated by a man called Naturam Godse.

After he shot him, instead of running away, he stood his ground and surrounded. He said, "No one should think that Gandhi was killed by a madman"

One of the best speeches of All time, which is compared to Socrates's speech in his trial. 

The Judge was astonished by his speech and commented that if India had followed the Jury system of giving judgments, Godse would have been adjudicated as "Not Guilty" by the Jury, cause after the speech, the whole audience was in tears.

Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu

 religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely

 proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free

 thinking unfettered by any superstitious allegiance to any isms, political

 or religious. That is why I worked actively for the eradication of

 untouchability and the caste system based on birth alone. I openly joined

 anti-caste movements and maintained that all Hindus were of equal status as

 to rights, social and religious and should be considered high or low on merit

 alone and not through the accident of birth in a particular caste or

 profession. I used publicly to take part in organized anti-caste dinners

 in which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars

 and Bhangis participated. We broke the caste rules and dined in the

 company of each other. 

 I have read the speeches and writings of Dadabhai Naoroji, Vivekanand,

 Gokhale, Tilak, along with the books of ancient and modern history of

 India and some prominent countries like England, France, America and'

 Russia. Moreover I studied the tenets of Socialism and Marxism. But above

 all I studied very closely whatever Veer Savarkar and Gandhiji had written

 and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more to

 the moulding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last

 thirty years or so, than any other single factor has done. 

 All this reading and thinking led me to believe it was my first duty to

 serve Hindudom and Hindus both as a patriot and as a world citizen.

 To secure the freedom and to safeguard the just interests of some thirty

 crores (300 million) of Hindus would automatically constitute the freedom

 and the well-being of all India, one fifth of human race. This conviction

 led me naturally to devote myself to the Hindu Sanghtanist ideology 

 and programme, which alone, I came to believe, could win and preserve

 the national independence of Hindustan, my Motherland, and enable her to

 render true service to humanity as well. 

 Since the year 1920, that is, after the demise of Lokamanya Tilak,

 Gandhiji's influence in the Congress first increased and then became

 supreme. His activities for public awakening were phenomenal in their

 intensity and were reinforced by the slogan of truth and non-violence

 which he paraded ostentatiously before the country. No sensible or

 enlightened person could object to those slogans. In fact there is nothing

 new or original in them. They are implicit in every constitutional

 public movement. But it is nothing but a mere dream if you imagine

 that the bulk of mankind is, or can ever become, capable of scrupulous

 adherence to these lofty principles in its normal life from day to day.

 In fact, hunour, duty and love of one's own kith and kin and country might

 often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never

 conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would

 consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to

 overpower such an enemy by use of force. [In the Ramayana] Rama killed

 Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita. [In the Mahabharata],

 Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight

 and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the

 revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor.

 It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty

 of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of

 human action. 

 In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati

 Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny

 in India. It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill

 an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life.

 In condemning history's towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and

 Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his

 self-conceit. He was, paradoxical as it may appear, a violent pacifist

 who brought untold calamities on the country in the name of truth and

 non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain

 enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen for ever for the freedom

 they brought to them.

 The accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating in his last

 pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence

 of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately. Gandhi had done very

 good in South Africa to uphold the rights and well-being of the Indian

 community there. But when he finally returned to India he developed a

 subjective mentality under which he alone was to be the final judge of

 what was right or wrong. If the country wanted his leadership, it had to

 accept his infallibility; if it did not, he would stand aloof from the

 Congress and carry on his own way. Against such an attitude there can be

 no halfway house. Either Congress had to surrender its will to his and had

 to be content with playing second fiddle to all his eccentricity,

 whimsicality, metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on

 without him. He alone was the Judge of everyone and every thing; he was

 the master brain guiding the civil disobedience movement; no other

 could know the technique of that movement. He alone knew when to begin

 and when to withdraw it. The movement might succeed or fail, it might

 bring untold disaster and political reverses but that could make no

 difference to the Mahatma's infallibility. 'A Satyagrahi can never fail'

 was his formula for declaring his own infallibility and nobody except

 himself knew what a Satyagrahi is. 

 Thus, the Mahatma became the judge and jury in his own cause. These

 childish insanities and obstinacies, coupled with a most severe austerity

 of life, ceaseless work and lofty character made Gandhi formidable and

 irresistible. Many people thought that his politics were irrational

 but they had either to withdraw from the Congress or place their

 intelligence at his feet to do with as he liked. In a position of such

 absolute irresponsibility Gandhi was guilty of blunder after blunder,

 failure after failure, disaster after disaster. 

 Gandhi's pro-Muslim policy is blatantly in his perverse attitude on

 the question of the national language of India. It is quite obvious

 that Hindi has the most prior claim to be accepted as the premier

 language. In the beginning of his career in India, Gandhi gave a great

 impetus to Hindi but as he found that the Muslims did not like it, he

 became a champion of what is called Hindustani. Everybody in India

 knows that there is no language called Hindustani; it has no grammar; it

 has no vocabulary. It is a mere dialect, it is spoken, but not written.

 It is a bastard tongue and cross-breed between Hindi and Urdu, and

 not even the Mahatma's sophistry could make it popular. But in his

 desire to please the Muslims he insisted that Hindustani alone should be

 the national language of India. His blind followers, of course, 

 supported him and the so-called hybrid language began to be used.

 The charm and purity of the Hindi language was to be prostituted to

 please the Muslims. All his experiments were at the expense of the

 Hindus. 

 From August 1946 onwards the private armies of the Muslim League began

 a massacre of the Hindus. The then Viceroy, Lord Wavell, though

 distressed at what was happening, would not use his powers under the

 Government of India Act of 1935 to prevent the rape, murder and arson.

 The Hindu blood began to flow from Bengal to Karachi with some

 retaliation by the Hindus. The Interim Government formed in September

 was sabotaged by its Muslim League members right from its inception,

 but the more they became disloyal and treasonable to the government of

 which they were a part, the greater was Gandhi's infatuation for them.

 Lord Wavell had to resign as he could not bring about a settlement and

 he was succeeded by Lord Mountbatten. King Log was followed by King

 Stork. 

 The Congress which had boasted of its nationalism and socialism

 secretly accepted Pakistan literally at the point of the bayonet and

 abjectly surrendered to Jinnah. India was vivisected and one-third of

 the Indian territory became foreign land to us from August 15, 1947.

 Lord Mountbatten came to be described in Congress circles as the greatest

 Viceroy and Governor-General this country ever had. The official date

 for handing over power was fixed for June 30, 1948, but

 Mountbatten with his ruthless surgery gave us a gift of vivisected

 India ten months in advance. This is what Gandhi had achieved after

 thirty years of undisputed dictatorship and this is what Congress party

 calls 'freedom' and 'peaceful transfer of power'. The Hindu-Muslim

 unity bubble was finally burst and a theocratic state was established

 with the consent of Nehru and his crowd and they have called 'freedom

 won by them with sacrifice' - whose sacrifice? When top leaders of

 Congress, with the consent of Gandhi, divided and tore the country -

 which we consider a deity of worship - my mind was filled with direful

 anger. 

 One of the conditions imposed by Gandhi for his breaking of the fast

 unto death related to the mosques in Delhi occupied by the Hindu

 refugees. But when Hindus in Pakistan were subjected to violent attacks

 he did not so much as utter a single word to protest and censure the

 Pakistan Government or the Muslims concerned. Gandhi was shrewd enough

 to know that while undertaking a fast unto death, had he imposed for

 its break some condition on the Muslims in Pakistan, there would have

 been found hardly any Muslims who could have shown some grief if the

 fast had ended in his death. It was for this reason that he purposely

 avoided imposing any condition on the Muslims. He was fully aware of

 from the experience that Jinnah was not at all perturbed or influenced

 by his fast and the Muslim League hardly attached any value to the

 inner voice of Gandhi. 

 Gandhi is being referred to as the Father of the Nation. But if that

 is so, he had failed his paternal duty inasmuch as he has acted very 

 treacherously to the nation by his consenting to the partitioning of it.

 I stoutly maintain that Gandhi has failed in his duty. He has proved

 to be the Father of Pakistan. His inner-voice, his spiritual power and

 his doctrine of non-violence of which so much is made of, all crumbled

 before Jinnah's iron will and proved to be powerless. 

 Briefly speaking, I thought to myself and foresaw I shall be totally

 ruined, and the only thing I could expect from the people would be

 nothing but hatred and that I shall have lost all my honour, even more

 valuable than my life, if I were to kill Gandhiji. But at the same time

 I felt that the Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would surely

 be proved practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful with

 armed forces. No doubt, my own future would be totally ruined, but the

 nation would be saved from the inroads of Pakistan. People may even

 call me and dub me as devoid of any sense or foolish, but the nation

 would be free to follow the course founded on the reason which I consider

 to be necessary for sound nation-building. After having fully considered

 the question, I took the final decision in the matter, but I did not

 speak about it to anyone whatsoever. I took courage in both my hands

 and I did fire the shots at Gandhiji on 30th January 1948, on the

 prayer-grounds of Birla House.  

 I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action

 had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus.

 There was no legal machinery by which such an offender could be

 brought to book and for this reason I fired those fatal shots. 

 I bear no ill will towards anyone individually but I do say that I had

 no respect for the present government owing to their policy which was

 unfairly favourable towards the Muslims. But at the same time I could

 clearly see that the policy was entirely due to the presence of Gandhi.

 I have to say with great regret that Prime Minister Nehru quite forgets

 that his preachings and deeds are at times at variances with each other

 when he talks about India as a secular state in season and out of

 season, because it is significant to note that Nehru has played a

 leading role in the establishment of the theocratic state of Pakistan,

 and his job was made easier by Gandhi's persistent policy of

 appeasement towards the Muslims.  

 I now stand before the court to accept the full share of my responsibility

 for what I have done and the judge would, of course, pass against me

 such orders of sentence as may be considered proper. But I would like

 to add that I do not desire any mercy to be shown to me, nor do I wish

 that anyone else should beg for mercy on my behalf. My confidence about

 the moral side of my action has not been shaken even by the criticism

 levelled against it on all sides. I have no doubt that honest writers of

 history will weigh my act and find the true value thereof some day

 in future. 

We thank Shyam Chintapalati for providing this valuable document to us

The Judge was astonished by his speech and commented that if India had followed the Jury system of giving judgments, Godse would have been adjudicated as "Not Guilty" by the Jury, cause after the speech, the whole audience was in tears. and commented that if India had followed the Jury system of giving judgments, Godse would have been adjudicated as "Not Guilty" by the Jury, cause after the speech, the whole audience was in tears.