Mark Lindley

A few days after Mahatma Gandhi died, his secretary, Pyarelal, wrote a detailed account of the assassination, including the following: "At the first shot, the foot that was in motion, when he was hit, came down. He still stood on his legs when the second shot rang out, and then collapsed. The last words he uttered were 'Rama Rama'."*1

[To find the footnote, search forward for "*1".]

A different exclamation, "Hey, Ram!", is normally attributed to him. (An American scholar has suggested that this version is due to Gurbadu Singh.*2) In the 1960s his niece, Manu, who was near him, recalled his last words as "Hey Ram, Hey Ram."*3 According to one of the conspirators who was in the crowd, he produced only an inarticulate guttural rasp.*4

At least some of the witnesses seem to have heard what they expected or wanted to hear. The "guttural rasp" version, for example, might well be dismissed as hostile. However, the fact that two of the other three accounts imply that he said more than just "Hey Ram" once - which a devout Hindu might be assumed in principle to say - suggests that this "normal" version is probably also incorrect.

"Rama, Rama" would beautifully express surrender to Rama's will, whereas "Hey Ram, Hey Ram" would more likely express an un-Gandhian sense of helplessness. However, the mere existence of so many contradictions makes it seem likely that he was heard indistinctly. And indeed, he was frail and old and two bullets had just entered his chest.

In this light it may be of interest that nine months earlier, Gandhi in one of his talks after a prayer meeting suggested unequivocally that his very last words, if he were assassinated, would be "Rama, Rahim": "Even if I am killed, I will not give up repeating the names of Rama and Rahim, which mean to me the same God. With these names on my lips, I will die cheerfully."*5

("Rahim" comes from an ancient Hebrew word for "womb." In religious writings in Hebrew - such as the Old Testament - its plural form means "mercy" or "compassion."*6 In Islam, "Rahim" meaning "compassion" was transformed from an alleged attribute of God to a synonym for "Allah." Thus, one reason for Gandhi's wanting to invoke Rahim would be to suggest that his assassin should be forgiven.)

Was it only a passing remark? That is certainly suggested by the fact that no indication has been published of his having made the same assertion on other occasions. Nevertheless, there is some circumstantial evidence suggesting that he might have kept the idea in mind and acted upon it. This evidence can be put under three headings (though some of it actually belongs under two of them at once): (1) a growing willingness, particularly in his very last years, to innovate even more radically than he had ever done before; (2) his apparent attitude toward the assassination and, in particular, what might be (and indeed was) achieved by it; and (3) a certain tendency to take on a broader religious identity and, in particular, to be somewhat Moslem as well as Hindu. Let us consider each heading in turn.

(1) Spiritual sea-changes late in life. In the 1920s and '30s, Gandhi had considered prohibition or at least self-imposed restriction against marrying outside one's own varna [basic caste] to be "essential for a rapid evolution of the soul".*7 But in 1940 he congratulated a caste-Hindu for marrying a Harijan [untouchable] and thereby "breaking through the rock of caste superstition";*8 in 1945 he said that "If... castes and sub-castes as we know them disappear as they should we should [then] unhesitatingly accord the highest importance to marriages between Ati-Shudras ["untouchables"] and ["touchable"] caste-Hindus";*9 and in 1946 he vowed never again to attend a wedding between two Hindus unless one of them was an "untouchable"*10 and he said: "If I had my way I would persuade all [upper] caste-Hindu girls coming under my influence to select Harijan husbands."*11

He had previously envisaged "nothing but disaster" following any attempt to advocate Hindu-Moslem marriages so long as the relations between the two religions remain strained;*12 but by 1947, when those relations were more strained than ever before, he had "come to the conclusion that inter-religious marriage was a welcome event whenever it took place" and he welcomed the institution of civil marriage "as a much-needed reform to clear the way for inter-religious marriages".*13

He had long abhorred vivisection "with my whole soul" and declared that "if the circulation-of-blood theory could not have been discovered without vivisection, the human kind could well have done without it".*14 But when he had to decide in 1945 whether to allow at Sevagram the vivisection of a frog in order merely to demonstrate in a nurses' class the phenomenon of heartbeat, he said: "Dissect the frog if that is the only way to explain the heartbeat."*15

He used to say things like: "An atheist might floor me in a debate, but my faith runs so very much faster than my reason that I can challenge the whole world and say, 'God is, was, and ever shall be.'"*16 But in 1945 he privately told a militant atheist (of good character, and a dedicated social-worker), "I can neither say my theism is right nor your atheism wrong. We are seekers after truth.... There is no harm as long as you are not fanatical. Whether you are in the right or I am in the right, results will prove";*17 and, a year later: "I know you are not a fanatic.... It looks as if... you will carry this old man into your camp."*18

Of course he deeply loved religion as he conceived of it. Yet all these examples taken together - and others could be cited to broaden the point - show that he was never more ready to innovate than in his very last years.

(2) Attitude toward the assassination. Gandhi knew it was coming, and yet did nothing to prevent it. The story has been told so many times, it needn't be reviewed here.*19 Given his unparalleled depth of political insight into India, it seems likely that he expected his assassination to fulfill, as indeed it did, one of his dearest wishes in his last years, which not even his heroic walking-tours and fasts could fulfill: to mitigate the mutual hatred of Hindus and Moslems far more than anyone else at that time could imagine possible.

During the last few years of his life Gandhi had for the most part lost his former wish to live out the theoretical full Hindu, 125-year lifespan;*20 and this welcoming of death had in recent months become stronger, as when he wrote to a friend, toward the end of November 1947: "Now we are daily growing more and more barbarous.... That is why I am praying within, 'O Rama, now take me away soon.'"*21

Earlier in 1947 he had told a friend, "I do not want to die... of a creeping paralysis of my faculties.... An assassin's bullet may put an end to my life. I would welcome it. But I would love, above all, to fade out doing my duty with my last breath."*22

On the day he was killed, he remarked to Manu, "Who knows what is going to happen before nightfall or even whether I shall be alive?"*23

Since he expected the assassination to happen and since he was habitually an very thoughtful and utterly dedicated politician, it seems reasonable to suppose that he would give careful thought to the matter of what his last words should be. And since he was an extraordinarily disciplined person, he might even say what he planned to say (whereas most people would probably be unable to carry out such a plan).

The purpose of preparing his last words would be to make the most effective contribution to "the service of my country and there-through of humanity".*24 He knew from experience that to harp explicitly on the "Rama, Rahim" equation in his prayer meetings would mainly annoy the fanatics. Yet even they must, he might hope, come to their senses if he were to proclaim it at the very moment of his death. Reflections in this vein might cause him, once the idea of saying "Rama, Rahim" had occurred to him, to keep it to himself until the last moment.

(3) Broadening religious identity. Already in 1909 in South Africa, Gandhi had argued, in regard to some Hindu-Moslem riots in Calcutta, that overseas Indians "must not support either side" but instead should "pray to Khuda-Ishwar" that is, to a deity at once Moslem and Hindu "in mosques and in temples to grant that there might be an end to the disputes... between our two communities."*25

Having memorized the Gita, he knew of course that it sanctions worship of the universal supreme spirit in any form: "Whatever form one desires to worship in faith and devotion, in that very form I make that faith of his secure."*26

He would sometimes mention the 15th-century religious poet, Kabir, in the same breath as his favorite religious poet since childhood, Tulsidas; he is known to have read Kabir in prison in 1922 and again (in Tagore's translation) in 1923;*27 and Kabir often equated Rahim with Rama - as when he would say: "Rama and Rahim are one and the same."*28 Kabir is thus likely to have been a source for some of Gandhi's own statements along the lines of: "By Ramarajya [the kingdom of Rama], I do not mean Hindu raj [a Hindu kingdom]... [but] the kingdom of God. For me Rama and Rahim are one and the same deity."*29 This similarity to Kabir should not surprise us, given that Gandhi's mother was raised in the Kabir-Panthi sect (which had been, Gandhi himself said, "looked upon as crypto-Moslems"*30).

It was important to Gandhi not to infer from the "Rama-rajya" slogan a Hindu nation. In 1946 he explained: "'Rama-Rajya'... is a convenient and expressive phrase, the meaning of which no alternative can so fully express to the [Hindu] millions. When I... address predominantly Moslem audiences I would express my meaning to them by calling it 'Khudai Raj', while to a Christian audience I would describe it as the Kingdom of God on Earth. Any other mode would, for me, be self-suppression and hypocrisy."*31 This was to some extent like regarding all religions as equal - which in 1932 he had described as an idea of his own devising: "Probably this view of mine about equality of all religions is a new idea. If other people also have thought about the matter along similar lines, I am not aware of the fact. For me at any rate, the idea is original and it has given me the purest joy."*32

His religious observances included non-Hindu prayers and hymns. On the last day of a fast in 1933, for instance, he told his secretary, "Better fix up the plan for tomorrow. Dr. Ansari will read something from the Koran, we might have a Christian hymn and then our song of the true Vaishnava."*33 The tendency was particularly strong in regard to Islam. A visitor around 1920 recalled, years later: "Gandhiji's prayers included readings from the Gita and the Koran. To these were later added verses from the Bible and recitations from Parsi, Sikh, and Buddhist prayers, as well as the singing of hymns from various religions."*34

Everyone knows how, in Bengal in 1946, Gandhi adopted an uncommon variant of the traditional Hindu Ramdhun prayer, with the words "Ishwar Allah tere nam" replacing "Patita pavana Sita Ram" for the second verse.*35 Soon he would declare to his Moslem listeners: "If Mohammed came to India today, he would disown many of his so-called followers and own me as a true Moslem."*36 And to the Hindus: "Anyone who says that I cannot go and offer my prayer before the Moslems does not know Gandhi.... I am ashamed of this [Hindu] gentleman who... is so terribly ignorant. When the ocean catches fire, who can extinguish it?"*37

Gandhi himself? But how?

I think any devotee of truth has to admit that we will never know which were his last words. Yet I feel also that it would be worthwhile to give serious consideration to the possibility that they may have been the ones which he said they would be.

FOOTNOTES:

*1. "Harijan", 15/ii/1948, 31. Pyarelal was not there but his account is surely based on first-hand reports.

*2. Martin Green: "Gandhi, Voice of a New Age Revolution" (New York, 1993), 386.

*3. "Gandhiji at Delhi" (in Hindi; Ahmedabad, 1966), 428.

*4. Green, loc. cit.

*5. See "Harijan", 20/iv/1947, 118.

*6. Joseph C. Manalel, "The Bible and Women's Liberation" (Vol. xxi, No. 122 of Jeevadhara; Kottayam, 1991), p. 109.

*7. "The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi" (hereafter referred to as "CWMG"), XXI, 62 and LV, 61.

*8. "Harijan", 22/vi/1940, 173.

*9. CWMG, LXXX, 77.

*10. B. R. Nanda: "Gandhi and his Critics" (Delhi, 1985), 26.

*11. "Harijan", 7/vii/1946, 213.

*12. CWMG, XLVI, 303.

*13. Pyarelal: "Mahatma Gandhi, the Last Phase", vol. I (Ahmedabad, 2nd ed., 1956), 558.

*14. CWMG, XXIX, 325.

*15. Gora: "An Atheist with Gandhi" (Ahmedabad, 1951), 40.

*16. CWMG, XXIX, 411.

*17. Gora, op. cit., 44.

*18. Op. cit, 49.

*19. Some good narratives are in Pyarelal, op. cit., vol. II (1958) and in Robert Payne: "The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi" (London, 1969).

*20. See for instance CWMG, LXXXV, 205, 370 and 455, and LXXXVII, 522.

*21. CWMG, XC, 83.

*22. Pyarelal, op. cit., vol. I, 562.

*23. Op. cit., vol. II, 767.

*24. CWMG, XXIII, 349. 25 CWMG, IX, 134

*26. Gita, VII, 21.

*27. CWMG, XXIII, 150 and 179.

*28. G. N. Das, tr.: "Mystic Songs of Kabir" (Delhi, 1996), 18.

*29. CWMG, XLI, 374.

*30. Pyarelal: "Mahatma Gandhi, the Early Phase" (Ahmedabad, 1965), 214.

*31. CWMG, LXXXV, 135.

*32. CWMG, LI, 317.

*33. D. G. Tendulkar: "Mahatma. Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi" (Delhi; 2nd ed., 1962), III, 206. (Verrier Elwin had encouraged Gandhi to include something Christian each Friday; see for instance CWMG, L, 34.)

*34. V. L. Pandit: "The Scope of Happiness, a Personal Memoir". (Delhi, 1979), 66.

*35. Manubehn Gandhi, op. cit. in note 3.

*36. "Harijan", 17/xi/1946, 405.

*37. CWMG, LXXXVII, 431.