"If devotion to one’s country amounts to a sin, I admit I have committed that sin.

Monday, 18 August 2014

"If devotion to one’s country amounts to a sin, I admit I have committed that sin.

Pandit Nathuram Vinayak Godse (19 May 1910 – 15 November 1949) was the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. He shot Gandhi in the chest three times at point blank range on 30 January 1948 in New Delhi. Godse, a Hindu nationalist activist from Pune, Maharashtra, and ex-member of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, who resented what he considered was Gandhi's partiality to India's Muslims, plotted the assassination with Narayan Apte and six others. Following a year-long trial, Godse was sentenced to death on 8 November 1949. Although pleas for commutation were made by India's premier, Jawaharlal Nehru and by two of Gandhi's sons on the grounds that a death sentence would dishonor the legacy of a man opposed to all forms of violence, Godse was hanged a week later. During his trial Nathuram Vinayak Godse had said : -

"If devotion to one's country amounts to a sin, I admit I have committed that sin. If it is meritorious, I humbly claim the merit thereof. I fully and confidently believe that if there be any other court of justice beyond the one founded by the mortals, my act will not be taken as unjust. If after the death there be no such place to reach or to go, there is nothing to be said. I have resorted to the action I did purely for the benefit of the humanity. I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack and ruin and destruction to lakhs of Hindus."

The Nationalist

Pandit Nathuram Vinayak Godse (19 May 1910 – 15 November 1949) was the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. He shot Gandhi in the chest three times at point blank range on 30 January 1948 in New Delhi. Godse, a Hindu nationalist activist from Pune, Maharashtra, and ex-member of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, who resented what he considered was Gandhi's partiality to India's Muslims, plotted the assassination with Narayan Apte and six others. Following a year-long trial, Godse was sentenced to death on 8 November 1949. Although pleas for commutation were made by India's premier, Godse was hanged a week later. During his trial Nathuram Vinayak Godse had said : -

"If devotion to one's country amounts to a sin, I admit I have committed that sin.If it is meritorious, I humbly claim the merit thereof. I fully and confidently believe that if there be any other court of justice beyond the one founded by the mortals, my act will not be taken as unjust. If after the death there be no such place to reach or to go, there is nothing to be said. I have resorted to the action I did purely for the benefit of the humanity. I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack and ruin and destruction to lakhs of Hindus."

परोपकाराय फलन्ति वृक्षा: परोपकाराय वहन्ति नद्यः।

परोपकाराय दुहन्ति गावः परोपकाराय इदं शरीरम्।।