NEW DELHI: India wanted to celebrate Mahatma Gandhi on October 2, 1947. Gandhi, however, himself wanted no celebration at all.It was his first birthday in an independent India and, as it turned out, his last. Messages, flowers and greetings poured in from India and abroad. Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and others came to meet him. But Gandhi, who turned 78 that day, was consumed by what was happening outside the walls of Birla House.Barely seven weeks had passed since Independence. Partition had displaced millions and triggered widespread communal violence across India and Pakistan.So when people wished Gandhi a long life, his response was not one of celebration.“Where did the congratulations come in? Would it not be more appropriate to say condolences?” he asked.Later that day, Gandhi told those gathered for his prayer meeting: “For me today is the day of mourning. I am surprised and also ashamed that I am still alive.”
A country in flames
Freedom was just two months old and the country was still struggling to come to terms with Partition when Gandhi’s 78th birthday approached.Gandhi had already spent months confronting the violence. According to the Gandhi Heritage Portal, he left for Noakhali in November 1946 after communal violence erupted there and later began a barefoot march through affected villages, appealing for peace and Hindu-Muslim unity.His peace mission continued even when India became independent. The Gandhi Heritage Portal records that Gandhi stayed in riot-hit Calcutta in August 1947 and spent Independence Day fasting and praying rather than taking part in the celebrations.Violence followed Gandhi to Delhi. According to the Gandhi Heritage Portal, when he reached the capital on September 9, 1947, communal violence and refugee camps had made it impossible for him to stay at his usual accommodation at Valmiki Colony, and he moved into Birla House instead.
From there, Gandhi continued holding prayer meetings and appealing for communal peace as tensions gripped the capital.
What Gandhi did on his 78th birthday
According to historian Brijmohan Heda, October 2, 1947, was remembered by those who visited Gandhi that day as one of the most painful days of his life. While the country prepared to celebrate his birthday, Gandhi showed little interest in the celebrations and spent much of the day in prayer and spinning the charkha.
At the morning prayer, Mirabehn decorated the space around Gandhi’s seat at Birla House with flowers arranged in the shape of an Om, the words ‘Hey Ram’ and a cross. Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Ghanshyamdas Birla and Indira Gandhi were among those present.Lady Mountbatten was among those who visited Gandhi later in the day and brought letters and telegrams sent to him from India and abroad.A special radio programme had also been planned to mark his birthday. When asked whether he would listen to the All India Radio programme, Gandhi made his choice clear. He said he would give greater importance to the ‘rentio’, the spinning wheel, than to the radio.Later in the evening, Gandhi suffered a bout of coughing. His doctors advised him to take penicillin, but he refused, saying Ramanama: the chanting of Lord Rama’s name was his ‘sole remedy’.
‘Today nobody listens to me’
Consumed by the bloodshed around him, Gandhi used his prayer meeting address on October 2, 1947, to speak openly about his anguish.“Today is my birthday. I do not celebrate my birthday in the usual way. I would say that on this day we must fast, spin and pray. That, in my view, is the most appropriate way of celebrating one’s birthday,” Gandhi said.
“For me today is the day of mourning. I am surprised and also ashamed that I am still alive. I am the same person whose word was honoured by the millions of the country. But today nobody listens to me,” he added. The remarks are recorded in the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi.Gandhi then spoke about the growing hostility towards Muslims and questioned what India would become if the violence continued.“You want only the Hindus to remain in India and say that none else should be left behind. You may kill the Muslims today; but what will you do tomorrow? What will happen to the Parsis and the Christians and then to the British?” he said.“Ever since I came to India I have made it my profession to work for communal harmony, and I wish that though our religions are different we may live in amity like brothers. But today we seem to have become enemies,” Gandhi said.Gandhi also said he had given up his earlier desire to live to the age of 125.“I have now stopped thinking about living for 125 years. I have stopped thinking in terms of 100 or even 90 years. I am entering my 79th year today; but even that pains me,” he said.He ended with an appeal against communal hatred: “If you really want to celebrate my birthday, it is your duty not to let anyone be possessed by madness and if there is any anger in your hearts you must remove it.”After the prayer meeting, Gandhi spoke to Sardar Patel in private and asked what “sin” he had committed to be kept alive to witness such horrors, an exchange also recounted by historian Ramachandra Guha.
‘If I’m to die by the bullet of a mad man …’
Just four months later, Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi.On January 30, 1948, as he walked towards the evening prayer meeting at Birla House, Nathuram Godse approached him and fired three shots at close range. Gandhi died shortly afterwards. The Gandhi Heritage Portal records that he was shot while on his way to the prayer ground and received three bullets.
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Gandhi was 78 when he was killed. He had spent much of his life speaking against violence and urging Hindus and Muslims to live together peacefully.Just two days before his assassination, Gandhi had spoken about the possibility of being killed.“If I’m to die by the bullet of a mad man, I must do so smiling. God must be in my heart and on my lips,” he had said on January 28, 1948, according to a contemporary report published by ‘The Hindu’.Four months earlier, on his last birthday, Gandhi had already spoken of losing his desire for a long life.The man who had once hoped to live for 125 years had finally seen India become independent. But on his first birthday in free India, the violence surrounding that freedom left him with little reason to celebrate.
