Place · Gandhi assassination memorial · India
Gandhi Smriti, New Delhi
Also known as Birla House, Gandhi Smriti, Gandhi Smriti — Birla House, Gandhi's assassination, Gandhi's assassination (1948), New Delhi
The Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti) at Tees January Marg in New Delhi — the private mansion of the Birla industrial family (built 1928 by Ghanshyam Das Birla), where Mahatma Gandhi lived his last 144 days from 9 September 1947 to 30 January 1948. Gandhi had come to Delhi after the Partition riots to try to prevent further communal violence through fasts and public prayer. On 30 January 1948 at 5:17 pm, Nathuram Godse (a Hindu nationalist former RSS member) shot Gandhi three times at close range as the Mahatma walked to his evening prayer meeting on the Birla House lawn. Gandhi's last words were 'He Ram'. The house was converted to the Gandhi Smriti museum in 1973. The martyrdom spot in the garden is marked by a stone pillar. The exact footsteps Gandhi took to the prayer ground are preserved. The adjacent museum displays Gandhi's charkha, letters, and the clothes he wore at death.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 28.599, 77.214
Connections (2)
- Same eventRajghat, New Delhi
Gandhi was shot at Birla House on the evening of 30 January 1948 on his way to the prayer meeting, and cremated the next day at Rajghat before a crowd estimated at a million. The two sites are three kilometres apart. He had been fasting a fortnight earlier to stop the communal killing in Delhi and to force the payment of Pakistan's share of the treasury, which is part of why Godse shot him.
- Site withinDelhi
Gandhi Smriti, New Delhi sits inside Delhi and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Gandhi Smriti”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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