Nathuram Godse

Nathuram Godse (19 May 1910 to 15 November 1949) was a Hindu nationalist from Baramati, in present-day Maharashtra, who shot Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi at Birla House, New Delhi, on 30 January 1948. He was tried at Delhi, lost his appeal in the East Punjab High Court at Simla and was hanged at Ambala Central Jail, in East Punjab, so the end of his case belongs to the Punjab's record.

Background. Wikipedia says he joined the RSS in 1932 while remaining in the Hindu Mahasabha, and that he claimed to have left the RSS in 1946. Whether he did is disputed. The RSS says he left in the mid-1930s. The historian Dhirendra K. Jha argues, from papers seized from the RSS headquarters at Nagpur and from Godse's own statements, that he never left (Al Jazeera, 2022), and Wikipedia reports that his brother Gopal Godse said all the Godse brothers were RSS members at the time of the killing.

The case

• 30 January 1948: at about 5 pm he fires three bullets into Gandhi at point-blank range as he walks to a prayer meeting.
• 4 February 1948: the RSS is banned for a year.
• 22 June 1948 to 10 February 1949: the trial before Justice Atma Charan at the Special Court in the Red Fort. Godse and Narayan Apte are sentenced to death, five others to life, and Savarkar is acquitted.
• May to June 1949: the appeal, filed on 2 May at Simla before Justices Bhandari, Khosla and Achhru Ram. On 21 June the High Court upholds the convictions of Godse, Apte, Karkare, Pahwa and Gopal Godse and acquits two others. Godse appealed only against the finding of conspiracy, not the murder conviction.
• Late 1949: pleas for mercy from Gandhi's sons Manilal and Ramdas are rejected by Nehru, Patel and Rajagopalachari.
• 15 November 1949: Godse and Apte are hanged at Ambala.

Aftermath and afterlife. Wikipedia, citing the historian Thomas Hansen, says the RSS was banned and 20,000 swayamsevaks arrested, the Hindu Mahasabha was stigmatised, and Chitpavan Brahmins, Godse's community, were attacked in collective retaliation. The sources we opened give no toll for that violence. Since 2014 the Hindu Mahasabha has tried to present Godse as a patriot, and in May 2019 the BJP candidate Pragya Thakur called him one and then apologised.

Remembered for: the murder of Gandhi, the trial and appeal that ended in the Punjab, and the continuing argument over his links to the RSS.