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On
January 30,
1948, Gandhi was shot and killed while having his
nightly public walk on the grounds of the Birla
Bhavan (Birla
House) in
New Delhi. The assassin,
Nathuram Godse, was a Hindu radical with links to
the extremist
Hindu Mahasabha, who held Gandhi responsible for
weakening India by insisting upon a payment to Pakistan.
Godse and his co-conspirator
Narayan Apte were later tried and convicted; they
were executed on
15 November
1949. Gandhi's memorial (or Samādhi) at
Rāj Ghāt,
New Delhi, bears the epigraph "Hē Ram", (Devanagari:
हे ! राम or, He
Rām), which may be translated as "Oh
God". These are widely believed to be Gandhi's last
words after he was shot, though the veracity of this
statement has been disputed.
Jawaharlal Nehru addressed the nation through radio:
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“ |
Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of
our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and
I do not quite know what to tell you or how to
say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called
him, the father of the nation, is no more.
Perhaps I am wrong to say that; nevertheless, we
will not see him again, as we have seen him for
these many years, we will not run to him for
advice or seek solace from him, and that is a
terrible blow, not only for me, but for millions
and millions in this country. |
” |
According to his wish, the majority of Gandhi's ashes
were immersed in some of the world's major rivers, such
as
The Nile,
Volga,
Thames, etc. A small portion was sent to
Paramahansa Yogananda from Dr. V.M. Nawle, (a
publisher and journalist from
Pune (formerly Poona), India) encased in a brass &
silver coffer. The ashes were then enshrined at the
Mahatma Gandhi World Peace Memorial in the
Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine within a
thousand-year-old stone sarcophagus from
China.
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