Was it “Hey Ram,” “Ram Ram” or “Aah” that Mahatma Gandhi uttered when he took a hail of bullets into his stomach and chest from the gun of Nathuram Godse at Birla House on January 30, 1948?While controversy abounds about Gandhiji’s last words, his personal secretary V Kalyanam, who was standing right behind him on that fateful day, says he did not utter a word. “Besides Manu and Abha Gandhi, who were holding him on either side, I was closest to him, standing right behind him to his left. Gandhiji was in no state to say anything. He did not utter a word. Someone in the crowd must have uttered the words, “Hey Ram,” said 86-year-old Kalyanam, now living in Chennai surrounded by Gandhi memorabilia which he has saved all these years. Kalyanam is the only surviving witness to the incident, which turned the tide of history.At about 5 am in the Birla House, where daily prayer meetings were held, Gandhi, accompanied by the two great grandchildren of his cousin, and Kalyanam, walked down an open corridor, about 100 feet long, and mounted the steps into the prayer hall where about 200 people had gathered. He took a couple of steps into the hall when the assassin, Godse, shot him, first bowing before him in obeisance, recalled Kalyanam.“If Godse had shot him, standing in the middle, his bullet would have pierced Gandhi through the heart. If he had shot him from the left side, then I would have surely been killed too,” said Kalyanam. “But I am very sure, he did not utter a word,” he said, lamenting that the Commission of Inquiry that probed Gandhi’s assassination had not bothered to talk to anyone who had been standing close to him at the time of the killing.“Right from 1948, I have been saying Gandhiji did not utter a word when he died. But no one listened to me. Tushar Gandhi has not even seen his great grandfather. How can he say that Gandhi said ‘Hey Ram’ while dying?” wondered Kalyanam. “While Gandhiji had repeatedly said that his wish was to die uttering the name of Lord Ram, that was not to be. He could not say a word when he was hit by the bullets,” added Kalyanam.The debate over Gandhi’s last words were raked up again in a book titled: ‘Mahatma Gandhi: Bramhacharya Ke Prayog’ (Mahatma Gandhi: Experiment with celibacy) written by Dayashankar Shukla ‘Sagar’, a journalist working with a Hindi daily.
