did u know Gandhi did not utter "HEY RAM" when he died?

Answer 1

Well, it is a matter of dispute:

"On January 30, 1948, on his way to a prayer meeting, Gandhi was shot and killed in Birla House, New Delhi, by Nathuram Godse. Godse was a Hindu radical with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha, who held Gandhi responsible for weakening India by insisting upon a payment to Pakistan.[15] Godse and his co-conspirator Narayan Apte were later tried and convicted; they were executed on 15 November 1949. Gandhi's memorial (or Samādhi) at Rāj Ghāt, New Delhi, bears the epigraph, (Devanagari: हे ! राम or, He Rām), which may be translated as "Oh God". These are widely believed to be Gandhi's last words after he was shot, though the veracity of this statement has been disputed.[16]

"Nathuram would live to have his day in court, and Gandhi would at once be revered and trivialized as the ‘Father of the Nation’. Some of his more unforgiving critics and detractors, his assassin included, would describe him as the ‘Father of Pakistan’. The hagiographers and admirers insisted that, as the bullets struck Gandhi and he fell to the ground, he uttered the phrase, "He Ram"; his foes state that Gandhi did no such thing, and that he merely gasped. When some three decades ago Nathuram Godse’s speech at his trial was finally published, his brother, Gopal Godse, averred in his introduction to the volume that Gandhi merely uttered a "feeble or faint ‘ah’" as breath left his body. (2) The now octogenarian Gopal has conducted a relentless assault on Gandhi since his release from prison in 1964, and in a recent interview that the Government of India has sought to proscribe, he claims that "the government knew that he [Gandhi] was an enemy of the Hindus, but they wanted to show that he was a staunch Hindu. So the first act they did was to put ‘Hey Ram’ into Gandhi’s dead mouth." (3) Gopal Godse was not present at the assassination, but it is apparently on Nathuram’s own authority that he describes Gandhi as having uttered "the faintest Ah!" (4)

Gandhi’s ‘final words’ have been a matter of some controversy, though the commentary has been surprisingly slim on the philosophical and political import of Gandhi’s last words, whatever they may have been. On the fiftieth anniversary of his death in 1998, the last day of his life became the focus of resolute attention in the print media. In "The Mahatma’s Final Hours", Vijay Rana stated, without describing his source, that "The apostle of non-violence could only utter ‘Hey Ram!’ before slumping on the ground" (5). The Hindu, in an unusual tribute entitled "Mahatma Gandhi: The Last 200 days", which consisted in describing the last 200 days of his life in 200 consecutive issues of the newspaper, concluded its final segment thus: "As the second and the third [bullets] hit, he sinks gently to the floor, breathing out his last two words, holy in thankfulness or supplication, ‘Hey Ram!’" (6) Yet Gandhi’s former "aide", V. Kalyanam, who claims to have been by his side when the assassination took place, recalled recently that "Mahatma Gandhi never said ‘He Ram’ when he died. It was a fiction of the imagination, of those who came later." Kalyanam admits that Gandhi often said, "I wish I could die with the name of Ram on my lips", but he denies that these words were uttered by Gandhi as the bullets struck him. (7) Kalyanam could not have been very close to Gandhi, however, since Manu and Abha were on either side of him; in the days following his last fast, moreover, Gandhi’s voice was very faint, and he was certainly further away from Gandhi than the two young women who became known as his walking sticks. Kalyanam’s testimony also stands contradicted by Manu and Abha, as one might expect. It is not unimportant that, though describing himself as an "aide" to Gandhi, Kalyanam is not mentioned in any of the noted, or even minor, biographies of Gandhi; indeed every modern-day politician has an aide, but Gandhi cannot be assimilated to the creatures who inhabit the world of modern politics. Neither is there any independent verification of Kalyanam’s whereabouts on that fateful evening.

In the midst of all this, it is important to reflect on why the last words of Gandhi have elicited some controversy, and what bearing the resurgence of Hindu militancy may have upon the attempt by his most determined foes to put into question the received view about Gandhi’s last utterance. There is also the larger philosophical consideration that a person’s entire life is presumed to be captured by the last words or moments: the very word ‘last’ betokens a finality. The ‘last words’, or the final gestures, of ‘great men’ have often been the subject of much inquiry and speculation, though seldom have these words become the pivot for oppositional world views. Beethoven’s biographers, for instance, are agreed that that when he died on the evening of 26 March 1827, thunder and lightning struck; the composer is said to have raised a clenched fist, and looked upwards "with a grave and threatening expression, as though to say, ‘I defy you, hostile powers! Away, for God is with me!’" (8) Another biographer has argued that the clenched fist appeared to convey these words, "I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, / The best and the last!" (9) The physician who attended upon him wrote, "Toward six in the afternoon came a flurry of snow, with thunder and lightning. Beethoven died. Would not a Roman augur, in view of the accidental commotion of the elements, have taken his apotheosis for granted?" (10) Beethoven’s contemporary, Goethe, is reported to have said, famously, "more light" as he lay dying: these words created a lasting impression, to the extent that Rabindranath Tagore wrote to his niece Indira, "How I cherish light and space! Goethe on his death-bed wanted ‘more light’. If I am capable of expressing my desire then, it will be for ‘more light and more space’." (11) Indeed, it is Tagore’s "space" that, in his final moments, was being violated by his admirers: as they tugged at the poet’s beard, so that each might get a specimen of the great man’s hair, Tagore is described as imploring and admonishing them with the words, "Chede dao, Chede dao", "Leave me alone! Leave me alone!"

Most strikingly, perhaps, one can understand the importance historically ascribed to the ‘last words’ by considering the manner in which the gospels attempted to imprint a portrait of Jesus as the Savior by imputing to him a final utterance that would been characteristic of his teaching. Jesus was nailed to the cross, and some women offered him drugged wine, which he refused to take — most likely because he wanted to die fully conscious. According to Matthew, "Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit" (27.45); and Mark similarly agrees that "Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last" (16.37). Both agree that sometime before he cried out loudly, Jesus said with evident anguish, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27.46; Mark 15.34) This may well have been imagined by Jesus’s disciples, since none of them were present at the crucifixion, or if they were, which is exceedingly unlikely, they could not have been close enough to Jesus to discern his last words. Indeed, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me", is a quotation from the Old Testament (Psalms 22.1), and was almost certainly inserted to make the prophecy of the appearance of the Messiah seem to come true. However, in the public imagination, it is the words which Luke ascribes to Jesus, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (23.34), which are most often viewed as Jesus’ last utterance, though the evidence for supposing that these words were inserted into the gospels much later, perhaps several decades after the death of Jesus, is compelling. (12) If the messianic view of Jesus had to prevail, doubtless something more than a "loud cry" had to be attributed to him as he was about to breathe his last. (13)

Gandhi’s reputed last words, "He Ram!", I wish to suggest, take on an exceedingly complex politics. Writing in December 1947, as if in anticipation of his death, he wrote: "In the end it will be as Rama commands me. Thus I dance as He pulls the strings. I am in His hands and so I am experiencing ineffable peace." (14) Gandhi had often expressed a desire to die with the words "He Ram!" on his lips (CWMG 90:489), and in his last prayer meetings he often described "Ramanama", or the constant invocation of the name of Ram, as the "best medicine". In his childhood, Gandhi had been taught to repeat Ramanama, but his enthusiasm then was short-lived; and it is not until he began to engage in various social and spiritual experiments, such as fasting, and returned to a close perusal of Tulsidas’s Ramacaritmanas, that he began to view it as an "infallible remedy." (15) Since at least 1924 (CWMG 23:302-3), Gandhi had been recommending the practice of Ramanama to his friends and acquaintances, but for nearly two years before his death, he had taken to advocating it enthusiastically to a wider public as an "unfailing remedy." (16) When he turned to a village-based natural health-care system in March 1946, after having realized that a nature-care clinic in an urban setting could not meet the needs of the villagers, he prescribed a regimen of mud packs, massage, sun baths, and the recitation of Ramanama for the patients; and yet, aware how the recitation could be debased to a mere mechanical exercise, Gandhi always cautioned against uttering the name of Rama except as part of a process of self-realization or as an effort to call forth the divinity within oneself (CWMG 83:107-8, 184-86, 336-7). Recognizing, as well, the weaknesses to which human beings are liable, Gandhi conceded that communion with God could in the beginning be "just lip repetition of his name even disturbed by impure thoughts. But ultimately what is on the lips will possess the heart. . . . We are monarchs in the Domain of Effort. God is the sole Monarch in the Domain of Results." (17) He even likened Ramanama to a "mathematical formula", thereby suggesting that its efficacy extended from well beyond the individual to society as a whole, transcending the barriers of space and time alike.

With belief in the efficacy of Rama, and with the desire to have the name of Rama on his lips when he should die, Gandhi commenced the walk from the interior to the garden of Birla House. If indeed he uttered the words, "He Ram!", as he slumped to the ground, he would appear, from the standpoint of Gopal Godse and his other detractors, to have outfoxed them — yet again. "


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Answer 2

Jai Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Ram.

Answer 3

No ... I didn't.
But I think I have correct knowledge and he did say "Hey Ram" before he died.

Answer 4

Well it is still a debated one.... but then not worth debating, i feel.

Answer 5

no