Gandhi – The Final Years, Episode 6: ‘A satyagrahi knows no failure’

On January 30, 1948, Nathuram Godse elbowed his way through the crowd, joined his hands as if in supplication and then fired three bullets from a Beretta pistol. Gandhi collapsed in a pool of blood that seeped into the earth. He began chanting “Ram! Ram! Ram…”. The chanting faded as his life ebbed …

Gandhi – The Final Years, Episode 5: All India needed was a miracle

After Bengal, Bihar and Punjab, it was Delhi’s time to burn. Independence had been achieved, but the streets were deserted. Riots had erupted and corpses lined many streets. As the refugees poured into the city, their anger at having lost everything was incandescent. Lord Mountbatten observed: “If …

Gandhi – The Final Years, Episode 4: ‘Meri koi nahi sunta’

As the communal landscape worsened, the political situation was in utter disarray. Mahatma Gandhi found that his former proteges and political wards had little time or use for his advice. He found himself increasingly isolated despite the crowds that always surrounded him. “One calls himself my bet…

Gandhi – The Final Years, Episode 3: Coming full circle in Bihar

It was in Bihar that Mahatma Gandhi had made his first mark, politically speaking, after returning from South Africa in 2015. It was where the  Champaran Satyagraha gave him an unbreakable grassroots connection with the poorest Indians. In 1946, alongside the bloodletting in Bengal, there was a pog…

Gandhi – The Final Years, Episode 2: Death and resurrection in Noakhali

As Jinnah declared Direct Action Day, India feared a tsunami of violence. Mahatma Gandhi struggled to hold together the unwinding threads of unity that he had so painstakingly woven. At the concluding session of the Muslim League Council, Jinnah declared: “Today we bid goodbye to Constitutional met…

Gandhi – The Final Years, Episode 1: Of love, loss and the shattering of a dream

Mahatma Gandhi’s last years were the most tumultuous of his life. They marked his greatest triumphs, his greatest losses and the crumbling of his dream. India achieved Independence in 1947, but at the cost of Partition and enormous suffering.  Gandhi’s final years show us why India took the path t…

Gandhi: The Final Years

On Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary, All Indians Matter launches a six-part series that takes you on a journey through the last years of his life. Those years were a saga by themselves, in many ways the most dramatic of his extraordinary journey and also perhaps the most significant for a nation …