HEY have killed Mahatma Gandhi at last. Ten days ago they tried with a hand-grenade and failed; yesterday [ Jan 30] they left nothing to chance. Thus has fallen one of the world`s greatest men a martyr to his convictions. Thus has ended the life of the greatest Hindu of modern times at the point of a Hindu`s revolver.

Gandhi has died for the cause of his country which he was determined to save from relapse into primitive savagery on the morrow of freedom. Gandhi has died, too, for the Muslim minority of India on whom that savagery was being practised with increasing relentlessness. He was dismayed to find that in spite of his life-long preaching of non-violence the forces of violence were beginning to gain the upper hand. Many who paid outward homage to him and lip service to his teachings had themselves been instrumental in letting loose these evil forces.

Mahatma Gandhi communed with himself and made his choice.

In 1942 he had given his followers the motto `do or die`. In 1948 he chose it for himself in a final bid to stop the rot. The world sees to its sorrow that the life of even Gandhi, sainted and deified by so many Hindus, was of little value to the Frankenstein that others had raised. Gandhi could not `do`; so he has paid his life`s forfeit in fulfillment of his pledge. In his own words, he has achieved `glorious deliverance`.

But history records that many great men accomplished by their death what they failed to accomplish while living. Men`s minds all over the world, stirred by news of this terrible tragedy, will ask: Will the monster of violence which Gandhi failed to control during his life be laid by his death? Will the maniacs who were so demented by their lust for violence be shocked into sanity by the very foulness of their deed? Not only the Muslim minority in India, for whom Mahatma Gandhi in the last few days of his life had stood out so fearlessly, but all Muslims in Pakistan are also bowed with grief at the ghastly ending of so great a life. Should the Mahatma`s supreme self-sacrifice in the cause of peace and amity lead to a genuine stirring of the conscience of the Hindus of India, Muslims on this side of the frontier will not fail to respond with all sincerity.•