Gandhi’s Last Words

Gandhi Samadhi: The spot where Gandhi was cremated.

I have a theory that ever since his assasination in 1948, the world has misunderstood the meaning of the words Gandhi said as he died. Gandhi said “Hai Ram” as he fell. The words resonated throughout India, and have become etched into India’s fabric. They are encrusted on his ‘samadhi’. These two words by themselves can evoke the events and emotions of that day.

Yet I think we misunderstood what he meant. Here is why:

Martin Luther King Day falls in the month of January. In my kids’ school, they are asked to write a report about a humanitarian. They get to pick among people like MLK, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Ceaser Chavez and Clara Barton. My grandmother and grandaunt were Gandhi’s “camp followers”, so when my daughter, like her brother before her, picked Gandhi to write about, I was delighted. As it happens, Gandhi was killed on the 30th of January, 1948.

We dug around the web and read some of the books we had lying around the house, and finally we watched the movie “Gandhi.” The children’s books about Gandhi that are written in India are really terrible. They are full of facts. I suspect they are written by PhDs who work in dusty government offices who see the books as a way of getting a promotion. We really need children’s books about Gandhi that are written for children. The interesting thing about Gandhi is that we know a lot about him because he wrote a lot about himself.

For her presentation, my daughter picked out things that a child would identify with. Gandhi was afraid of many things, the dark, snakes and burglars. My daughter might be afraid of them too. Gandhi’s family had a maid, who told him that the way to overcome fear was to invoke the name of the god Ram. Gandhi latched onto this and said the name to himself many times. As he faced challenging situations throughout his life, he continued to rely on this simple homily to give him courage.

Another thing that my daughter picked up on was that Gandhi was very quick witted and many of the things he said were quite funny. For example, when he went to Champaran in Bihar, a large crowd met him. A small group of policemen pushed their way through the crowd and stopped him. Their officer told Gandhi that he was not wanted there. Gandhi gestured to the crowd and said “They seem to want me.”

The final thing my daughter picked out was that Gandhi was afraid of death. He said that even though he was afraid of dying, he would if he had to.

A few days before Gandhi was assassinated, there was another attempt at his life. A bomb was detonated close to where he was but he was uninjured. A few days later, the final assassination attempt succeeded. When he was shot at point blank range, he said “Hai Ram” and collapsed. He probably died in seconds. For years we have assumed that this was something like “oh no”. In the movie “Gandhi”, Attenborough translates this to “Oh God!”

After helping my daughter with her report, I came to a different conclusion. Gandhi knew that people were trying to kill him because of the bomb attack. He was very quick witted, very intelligent, and in the split seconds that the bullets hit him, he knew he was going to die. He was afraid, and he retreated to his homily from childhood, and called out to Rama.