Mahatma´s photo.
assassination of
the mahatma
By Kulamarva Balakrishna
Vienna,Wednesday,Tees January,2008: It was today sixty
years ago,Mahatma Gandhi,whom we revered as the Father
of the Nation, India was assassinated by a Hindu coward,
who came to his prayer meeting with a loaded pistol not
worth 30 dollars, let alone George Bush´s 30 Billion worth
weapons as against the savage sand land´s share of 20
billion,150 percent up.He came face to face to the Mahatma
who was to sing with the gathering =raghupati raghava raja
ram;patitapavana sitaram;ishvara allah tere nam;sabko sanmati
de bhagavan=.This is a universal articulation of the sound
=aum=you hear from the muezin´s call,church bell,temple bell
and of course the buddhist singing bowl,which is sacred
for the over six billion family of humanity.It means in essence
=the role model descendant of the great sun,you are refuge
to the weak,god or allah is your name,give us all positive
intelligence=.Nathuram Vinayak Godse then bowed before
Mahatma Gandhi as if to touch his feet in reverence.Then
he whipped out the cheap pistol to fire three shots at the old man,
who clearly had disengaged hatred from opposition in his
life.That was then the bell of death for the man, as the
Rochester University scholars would later describe him
=purported apostle of peace=.Now kosher eater Seligman
has taken over as =purported devotee of non-violence=.The
second death bell for the Mahatma just at the advent of
his 60th assassination anniversary.Never mind life and death
are two sides of the same coin,eternal consciousness.We
do not mourn death.This then is my tribute to the leader of
my grand father, Gandhi Krishna Bhat.
As the dramatic event was happening in Delhi vaishnava
temple of the Hindus, I was in my village having entered the
second year of my teens. I had not a few months older
Arun´s privilege to be by his side learning but I had
read his Hindi and English writings all the same.
My grand father also told about him and it was
inspired by him and of course by the late Lokamanya
Bal Gangadhar Tilak my grandfather´s father took
initiative to start a Sanskrit educational institution so we can
avoid attending Lord Macaulay´s =modern babu schools=.I
learned in that school,where the teaching began with learning
to treat the whole world as our family.
When I met Arun and his wife here in Vienna in nineties,
the younger brother of Nthuram Godse and the convicted
associate of the murderer, Gopal Godse,was in correspondence
with me appealing for funds for his Hundu´s hate crusade
against the rest of Indians.I remember mentioning this to
Arun and the late Sunanda Gandhi.She took the opportunity
to recall how Gopal Godse,he is also no more now,came to
them for lunch and at lunch table how he insisted he had
no regrets in abetting the murder of the Mahatma.Besides,
he had said sorry for Arun and his wife for their loss of
grand father so many years after the crime.That Arun and
Sunanda invited the murder participant of their grand father
is enough to say for the late Sunanda´s and Arun´s human
integrity.Now let me present you Michael Saba what she has
to say about Arun Gandhi,who has resigned from the
M.K.Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, he founded in the
United States,which has been smoothly hijacked to
Rochester University last year.
Arun Gandhi:Man of Peace
& Good Will
Michael Saba, sabamps@aol.com
(courtesy:arab news,Jeddah)
Arun Gandhi is a noble man. And he is certainly not a bigot.
He is a good friend and someone for whom I have the highest
respect. This week's Arab News reported that Gandhi resigned
from the peace institute that he co-founded after condemnation
of his comments where he said "Israel and the Jews are the
biggest players in a culture of violence that 'is eventually going
to destroy humanity'."
He is not a bigot and it is a real travesty that he had to resign
from his position. But watch him. He will turn the anger of his
adversaries into positive emotions and actions.That is the Arun
Gandhi that I know.
I first met Arun and his wife and co-founder of the M.K. Gandhi
Institute for Nonviolence in Memphis,Tennessee at Christian
Brothers University where his institute was first established in
1991. He was introduced to me by a common friend, Dr. Donald
Wagner, the founder of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign.
Don told me that this remarkable man, the grandson of Mahatma
Gandhi, was a genuine man of peace and nonviolence and a great
supporter of human rights worldwide. He told me that even then,
Arun was highly criticized by many in the pro-Israeli lobby only
because he spoke out for Palestinian human rights. However,he
worked closely with the Israeli peace community at the same time
and worked equally hard for Israeli human rights causes.
When I met Arun and Sununda, his wife of over 50 years, I was
struck by his quiet peaceful nature and an aura of calm that
radiated from him. He is a man so at peace with himself. He
and Sunanda told me the story of how they came to do their
life's work for peace and nonviolence that led to the founding
of the Gandhi Center.
Arun was born in South Africa where his grandfather,the Mahatma,
had lived and initially raised his family. His grandfather had
returned to India to start his peace and nonviolent movement.
At age 10 or 11, Arun told me that he was a very angry young
man and on the verge of becoming violent himself.In those days
the Indian community of South Africa was caught in the middle
of racial conflicts.He was beaten many times by both members
of the white ruling community and the black native population
as the Indians were often made the scapegoats by both sides
of that conflict.
His father finally told him that he must go live with his grandfather
in India to learn to control himself, which he then did. He lived
with his grandfather and grandmother in India for the next two
years.It was there, in his early years, that his grandfather taught
him to vent his negative emotions and change them into positive
responses. He was never angry again after his time with his
grandfather and his grandfather's movement.
I asked his wife Sunanda, a former nurse in India,who unfortunately
passed away last year, if she had ever seen him angry in their
over fifty years together. She said no. She told me that many
times she saw him get into situations that any other human being
would probably vent anger, but that he always took that potential
negative energy and turned it into positive emotions and actions.
I asked Sununda, also a very calm and serene person, if she ever
got angry.She said that the last time she showed anger was over 50
years prior to our conversation. She said that Arun was courting
her in Bombay and they got on a small bus together. There was
no room for them to sit together and she had to sit between two
men across from Arun. Apparently, these two men had had a bit
to drink and got fresh with Sununda. They started to tease her and
say inappropriate things to her. She said that she looked to Arun
to defend her honor and he sat there and said nothing.
After they left the bus, she angrily told Arun that he should have
defended her honor against these two men. She felt that, as her
suitor, he had a responsibility to do so. She said that he then
asked her if they touched her or physically hurt her and she said no.
He then told her that she also had to learn to vent her potential
negative emotions and thoughts into positive ones. That was the
last time that Sununda was angry.
I leaned so much from Arun and Sununda in the years that we were
together in Memphis.They had come to Memphis specifically
because this is where Martin Luther King was assassinated and he
was a loyal follower of the Gandhi nonviolent movement.They helped
me understand so many things about life and people and, particularly,
about being kind and considerate to your fellow man and not getting
angry with people, yet turning potential anger into positive emotions.
(end)
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