New Delhi: The world is remembering Mohan Das Gandhi on his 65th death anniversary and President of India Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Defence Minister A K Antony, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, senior BJP leaders L K Advani and Sushma Swaraj and chiefs of three services paid visit his memorial, reports Dispatch News Desk (DND).
Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, a number of central ministers, leaders of various political parties and people from different walks of life also paid homage to Gandhi. A multi-faith prayer service was organised and devotional songs were sung at the function held at 11 AM.
On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was shot while he was walking to a platform from which he was to address a prayer meeting. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a Hindu nationalist with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha (That is now converted in to Shiv Sina or BJP), who held Gandhi guilty of favouring Pakistan and strongly opposed the doctrine of nonviolence. Godse and his co-conspirator were tried and executed in 1949.
Gandhi’s ashes were poured into urns which were sent across India for memorial services while most were immersed at the Sangam at Allahabad on 12 February 1948, but some were secretly taken away. In 1997, Tushar Gandhi immersed the contents of one urn, found in a bank vault and reclaimed through the courts, at the Sangam at Allahabad. Some of Gandhi’s ashes were scattered at the source of the Nile River near Jinja, Uganda, and a memorial plaque marks the event. On 30 January 2008, the contents of another urn were immersed at Girgaum Chowpatty. Another urn is at the palace of the Aga Khan in Pune (where he had been imprisoned from 1942 to 1944) and another in the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Los Angeles.
