Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi's Asthi, (the Indian name for the ashes removed from the funeral pyre), was conveyed by a special train from Delhi to Allahabad for immersion at the Sangam, the confluence of the Ganges, Jamna, and the mythical Saraswati rivers. The train left Delhi at 6.30 a.m. on February 11 (Editor's note: the year is 1948), and reached Allahabad the next day at 9 a.m. The rake of the special consisted of five freshly-painted third class bogies, of which the centre coach had been modified suitably to carry the copper urn containing the Mahatma's ashes.

Another report

A newspaper report

Shenoi, a civil engineer and MBA, rose to the rank of Deputy Director-General of Works in the Indian Defence Service of Engineers. He has also been a member of HUDCO’s advisory board and of the planning team for Navi Mumbai. After retirement he has been helping NGOs in employment-oriented training, writing articles related to all aspects of housing, urban settlements, infrastructure, project and facility management and advising several companies on these issues. His email id is mpvshanoi@gmail.com.

Assassination

30 Jan 1948. The news stunned the world. Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead while he was on his way to his evening prayer meeting. The assassin was Shri Nathuram Godse. Like Gandhi, Godse was a Hindu.

Godse was a well-educated man. Godse felt that Gandhi's policy of nonviolence and appeasement was harming Hindu interests. He had seen for himself in refugee camps, and elsewhere, the victims of atrocities meted out to Hindus on the Pakistan side of the border: hands cut off, noses chopped off, little girls raped. Hindu families had lost properties, savings, and relatives.

Much has been written since then in support and against him and his beliefs.

Photographs of The Satyagraha House,Mahatma Gandhi's house in Johannesburg, South Africa.The house has recently been restored and is now open to receive visitors at its museum, and guests for stay.

Raja Ramanathan was born in Independent India, in Calcutta. He has spent the last sixty years or so growing up in different parts of the world, Singapore, England, India, the Middle East, and, in the last twenty years, Canada.

Before Independence, Reuters functioned in India as the Associated Press of India (API). Soon after we got freedom, it became Press Trust of India, or PTI, as we now call it.

When Gandhiji was imprisoned in the Aga Khan palace, in Poona, between 1942 and 1944, my uncle, P S Gopalan, was assigned by API as the reporter to attend Gandhiji's daily press conference. My uncle later become PTI's Chief Editor.

Only the Brits would do something so crazy, arrest a person for alleged anti-Empire activities, imprison him in a palace, and allow him a daily press conference where leading news agencies sent their reporters. Can you think of any political power doing that today? The deepest and dirtiest dungeon is where they would throw their critics.

Shenoi, a civil engineer and MBA, rose to the rank of Deputy Director-General of Works in the Indian Defence Service of Engineers. He has also been a member of HUDCO’s advisory board and of the planning team for Navi Mumbai. After retirement he has been helping NGOs in employment-oriented training, writing articles related to all aspects of housing, urban settlements, infrastructure, project and facility management and advising several companies on these issues. His email id is mpvshanoi@gmail.com.

The year was 1956. I had graduated in Civil Engineering in 1955 from National Institute of Engineering, Mysore. I wanted to appear in the Combined Engineering Services Exams, which recruited engineers for Central Government departments like Railways, Central Public Works Department, Military Engineer Services, Telecom services, etc. The Exams were conducted by the Union Public Service Commission, India. All young Engineering graduates who were ambitious aimed at appearing in this selection examination, which was considered prestigious. If you got selected, you would have a steady career. Moreover, Government was the largest construction agency in those days.