 "History Today: When Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated and there was ‘darkness everywhere’")
January 30 takes us back to a dark chapter in Indian history. Observed as Martrys Day, it was on this day in 1948, that Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated. The death came around five months after he led a long struggle for independence.
Gandhi was revered in India and around the world. His death saw hundreds and thousands mourn.
In our ongoing series History Today , we revisit the assassination and other events that shaped the world.
Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in Delhi
It seemed like a regular evening at New Delhi’s Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti). Mahatma Gandhi was walking to the luxurious lawn, where his evening prayer meetings were usually held. Frail and dressed in his homespun dhoti, he was leaning on the shoulder of his grandnieces.
From the crowd emerged a man dressed in a khaki jacket and blue trousers. We would later know him as Nathuram Godse .
The assassin was within five feet of Gandhi. After a namaste, he took out his pistol and fired three times. The bullets lodged in Gandhi’s chest, stomach and groin. He slumped to the ground. He was carried to Birla House and died half an hour later about 5.40 pm. Many say his last words were, “He Ram, He Ram.”
After shooting Gandhi, Godse fired a fourth shot, apparently to kill himself. However, the pistol was snatched by a Royal Indian Air Force sergeant standing nearby. He wanted to shoot Godse but the police stopped him. An angry crowd beat the assassin with sticks before the police whisked him away to the police station.
A pall of gloom enveloped Birla House. One of the grandnieces informed Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s prime minister, about Gandhi’s death. “Bapu (father) is finished,” she said.
In an extempore broadcast on All India Radio announcing the news of the assassination, Nehru famously said, “The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere.”
As the word spread, throngs of people headed to the Birla House to pay their respects to the Father of the Nation. Many were weeping; others were stunned by sorrow. Gandhi’s body was placed on a high table for viewing.
While some grieved, the other were gripped by anger. In Bombay (now Mumbai), riots broke out killing 15.
Adolf Hitler named Germany’s chancellor
Adolf Hitler was named as the chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg on this day in 1933.
The German dictator rose to prominence in 1932 due to people’s frustration with the deteriorating economic conditions and the wounds inflicted by the defeat in the Great War along with the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
His emergence as the chancellor is considered to be a turning point in German and world history. His plan was to make Germany a one-party nation and do away with the politics that he thought was holding back the country.
He immediately moved to consolidate power, rapidly expanding the state police, the Gestapo. He appointed Hermann Göring to head a new security force composed entirely of Nazis, tasked with suppressing any opposition to his regime. From that moment on it was difficult to stop him.
Martin Luther King Jr’s house was bombed
On January 30, 1956, Martin Luther King Jr received the news that his house in Alabama had been bombed. His wife Coretta Scott King and their 10-week-old daughter Yolanda, who were in the home at the time of the bombing, were unharmed.
The attack was an attempt to intimidate King, who was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement advocating for nonviolent resistance against racial segregation, and disrupt the movement. However, King responded with a powerful call for calm and peace, urging his supporters not to retaliate with violence, further solidifying his commitment to nonviolent principles in the fight for civil rights.
The bombing highlighted the risks civil rights leaders faced but also strengthened the movement’s resolve. King’s response solidified his reputation as a leader committed to justice through nonviolence, even in the face of personal danger.
This Day, That Year
In 2011, flooding forced the evacuation of more than 100,000 people from low-lying areas of the Netherlands.
Charles I, King of Great Britain and Ireland was executed in London in 1649.
In 1933, the fictional character the Lone Ranger was introduced on radio station WXYZ in Detroit, Michigan.
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