Retribution

"In hanging the assassin," said Gandhi's old newspaper Harijan, "there is something which positively takes away from the glory of the Mahatma . . . Granting of life to murderers . . . would be an act . . . of which only a government trained by Gandhi might dream of doing . . ."

One morning last week, Nathuram Vinayak Godse, the young fanatic who shot Gandhi (TIME, Feb. 9, 1948), drank his last cup of prison coffee. While jailers waited, Godse and his accomplice, Narayan Dattatraya Apte, recited from the Hindu Holy Writ, the Bhagavad-Gita ("Fight, and have no fear. The foe is yours to conquer"). They walked to the scaffold, clutching their Gitas between the palms of their tied hands.

Then they were hanged by the neck until dead.

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