Nine Men

Inside Delhi's massive 17th Century Red Fort, nine men trooped from their prison quarters last week. In a small, bare courtroom they heard themselves formally charged with the murder of Mohandas Gandhi.

Thirty-six-year-old Hindu Extremist Nathuram Vinayak Godse, who was robust and defiant the day he fired the shots, was thinner now, four months later. He stared grimly, with large, vacant eyes--sometimes at the court, more often at the floor. Most of his fellow defendants, charged with conspiring in Gandhi's death, slouched on wooden benches in the hot room, chatted among themselves, kept court attendants hopping with demands for cool drinks. The ninth man sat apart in an upholstered easy chair; it had been provided at his request. He was grave1, 65-year-old Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, an almost legendary figure in Indian politics, who had headed the once-powerful anti-Moslem (and anti-Gandhi) Maha-sabha. The prosecution charged him with instigating the murder.

Indians expected that the trials would go on for months. The man who would likely have to make the final decision for life or death was not in court. By the time the trials ended, the Governor General of India, with power to commute death sentences, would be Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari, one of the closest friends and most devoted disciples of Mahatma Gandhi. Friends thought that one of the questions in the Governor General's mind would be: What would Gandhiji do?

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