On January 30, 1948, 78-year-old Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated, just a year after he achieved his lifelong goal of winning independence for India. Before 1947, India was part of the British Empire and had seen many unsuccessful attempts to end British rule. Gandhi employed a unique approach that ultimately proved to be much more successful.

Unlike other advocates for self-rule, Gandhi advocated using only peaceful civil disobedience. He and his followers refused to obey British rule but declined to resist them violently. The British occupiers had no such compunctions against using violence, and the international outcry that arose at the sight of British troops using violence against peaceful Indian protestors eventually forced Britain to withdraw from the country, giving it its independence.

In January of 1948, Gandhi traveled to New Delhi to participate in prayer groups and a fast for peace. Several hundred of his followers gathered there with him. As he left the house where he had been staying, Nathuram Godse approached him from the crowd, greeted him, and then shot him three times. Although mortally wounded, Gandhi made the Hindu gesture of forgiveness to his attacker. He died shortly afterward. A tributary of the sacred Ganges river cremated him. Thousands attended his funeral.

Godse, his assassin, was a Hindu fundamentalist who was outraged that Gandhi had wanted peace and compromise with the country’s Muslim minority. At his trial, he confessed and said that his murder of Gandhi was wholly political. He and one of his accomplices were sentenced to death. Six other accomplices were sentenced to life in prison.