HEY RAM

It was prayer time.  Gandhiji was on his way to address the prayer meeting.  It was on this day in 1948, in the evening, 3 bullets stopped Bapu from reaching the prayer hall. Nathuram Godse fired three bullets into the chest of Bapu at point-blank range.  Bapu’s last words were ‘Hey Ram’.  When Jesus Christ was nailed on cross, his last words were “Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing”.  Bapu became a martyr.  Why does man kill great souls?  Can’t these insane persons realise that bullets or nails cannot stop noble principles “truth & service” these two noble souls stood for.

Bapu’s death was mourned nationwide.  Over two million people joined the five mile long funeral procession that took over five hours to reach RajGhat from  Birla House where Bapu was assassinated.  While India mourned, communal violence escalated.  There were calls for retaliation.  Nehru and Patel two strongest figures in the Government tried to calm the hysteria.  They called on Indians to honour Bapu’s memory and his ideals.  Government made sure that citizens of India realised that  the guilty person was not a Muslim. Government banned RSS.

“Truth and non-violence are as old as hills” said Bapu.  ‘I have nothing new to teach the world.  I have simply tried in my own way to apply the eternal truths in my daily life and problems.  There is no such thing as Gandhism’, Bapu concluded.

“God is Truth.  The way to truth lies through Ahimsa (non-violence)”.   Bapu believed this and adopted these principles in his life.  Bapu dedicated his life to the wider purpose of discovering truth.  Learning from his own mistakes and conducting experiments on himself, he tried to discover truth and non-violence.  He called his autobiography  as “The Story of My Experiments WithTruth”.

Civil disobedience and non-cooperation as practiced under Satyagraha are based on “the law of suffering”.  Bapu’s major strategies were to unite Muslims and Hindus to work together in opposition to British imperialism  first in South Africa and then in India. Bapu used fasting as a political device.  This generated wide spread sympathy.

In the year 2007 United Nation General Assembly declared Bapu’s birthday,  2^nd October as the International day of non-violence.  It is not just the responsibility of the government, even society has responsibilities.  What ails our Society that cannot protect it’s Nobel Souls?

Hey Ram