Freedom at Midnight (49 page)

A PORTRAIT GALLERY OF ASSASSINS

Like the members of a college debating society posing for their yearbook portrait, Gandhi's assassins pose before their murder trial. Seated, left to right, Narayan Apte, 34, the womanizing "brains" of the plot—hanged; Veer "the Brave" Savarkar, 65, a homosexual Hindu fanatic in whose name the crime was committed—acquitted; Nathuram Godse, 39, the killer, a woman-hating failure in a dozen trades—hanged; Vishnu Karkare, 34, anti-Moslem proprietor of a tawdry travelers' hotel—life imprisonment. Standing, Shanker Kistaya, Badge's servant—convicted, but acquitted on appeal; Gopal Godse, 29, the killer's brother— life imprisonment; Madanlal Pahwa. 20, a Punjabi refugee who'd sworn to avenge his mutilated father—life imprisonment; Digamber Badge, 37, the arms peddler who disguised himself as a holy man—turned state's witness, released. {Opposite) police photos of the eight men.

GANDHIS LAST FAST

Sickened by the spectacle of so much slaughter and hatred in the land he'd brought to freedom by preaching brotherhood and nonviolence, Gandhi, on January 13, 1948, announced he would fast to death unless peace returned to India. As he agonized {above), millions who'd been slaughtering each other swarmed in India's streets pledging themselves to peace. The triumphant Gandhi {left, arms around his two grand-nieces, Abha, left, Manu, right) broke his fast and vowed to live to 125.

THE LIGHT HAS GONE OUT OF OUR LIVES"

A grief-stricken Jawaharlal Nehru announces to a stunned crowd outside Birla House, New Delhi, the news of Gandhi's death at an assassin's hand as he walked to his daily prayer meeting in the house's gardens on the afternoon of January 30, 1948.

"HE RAM!"

As he had hoped he would, Gandhi died crying "He Ram!" ("Oh God!") with his last breath. {Right) his weeping entourage gather by his bier in Birla House a few hundred yards from the garden in which he was killed.

His closest companions, including his devoted grandniece Manu {A) and his secretary, Pyarelal (B), offer a farewell gesture as his body leaves for the cremation grounds.

ROSE PETALS FOR A FALLEN LEADER

Face frozen in the still serenity of death, India's murdered Mahatma offers his visage to his countrymen for an ultimate and pathetic darshan. His followers' parting tribute, a shower of rose petals, litters his winding sheet, made of cotton he'd spun himself on his wooden spinning wheel.

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GANDHI'S LAST PASSAGE THROUGH THE MILLIONS HE'D FREED

The greatest throng of modern times, well over a million people, swarmed through the streets of New Delhi to view the funeral cortege bearing Mahat-ma Gandhi's body {above, and aerial view, right) to his funeral pyre. The very dimensions of that crowd, thought by Life's Margaret Bourke-White to be 'the largest ever to gather on the face of the earth," was responsible for a final irony. The body of the prophet of nonviolence had to ride to the cremation ground resting on a Dodge weapons carrier of the Indian Army, escorted through the multitudes by the bodyguard of the viceroys against whom he'd struggled for three decades.

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RENDEZVOUS AT RAJ GHAT

The Mountbattens and their daughter Pamela join ministers, princes, politicians, diplomats and millions of Indians at Raj Ghat, the cremation ground of the kings, outside Delhi's walls before the funeral pyre of the uncrowned king in pauper's garb who toppled the empire Mountbatten's great-grandmother's ministers had fashioned.

"MAHATMA GANDHI HAS BECOME IMMORTAL!"

A chill winter wind drives the flames through Gandhi's funeral pyre as a

million mourners chant the ritualistic phrase: "Mahatma Gandhi amar ho

gaye!" ("Mahatma Gandhi has become immortal!")

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those wretched people had never known—light. The municipality had offered them the candles and the little oil lamps flickering in the gloom of their huts to honor their new freedom. On bicycles, tonga carts, cars, even on an elephant draped in rich velvet tapestry, crowds swept toward the center of Delhi to sing, cheer and walk in a buoyant mood of self-congratulation. The restaurants and cafes of Connaught Circus were thronged. Every member of that gigantic army of white-shirted bureaucrats for which Deljii was notorious seemed to have gravitated to its sidewalks.

The bar of the Imperial Hotel, a sanctuary of Delhi's old English rulers, swarmed with celebrating Indians. Just after midnight, one of them climbed onto the bar and asked the crowd to join him in singing their new national anthem. They gleefully accepted his invitation, but as they started through the chorus of the hymn, written by India's great national poet Tagore, most of them made a disconcerting discovery: they didn't know the words.