Awakening of India - 1947

Delhi – The Night of January 7th-8th, 1948

The screaming started at 11:47 PM.

Colonel Sharma's secure phone shrieked through the silence of his darkened office, the sound cutting through him like a blade. His hand trembled, actually trembled, as he lifted the receiver.

"Sir... sir, you need to get here. Now. It's... Oh God, it's a massacre."

The words tumbled out in fragments from Constable Rajesh Kumar, one of the few survivors at Nehru's residence. Blood. Bodies. The Mahatma shot. Nehru dead. The assassin himself sprawled lifeless among his victims.

Sharma's world tilted on its axis.

'Mahatma? Gandhi was shot!?'

---

Twenty minutes earlier

'Major General Khan' had burst through the french doors like a man possessed by demons. The poison coursing through his veins had turned his face into a death mask, skin waxy, eyes bloodshot and wild, spittle foaming at the corners of his mouth.

In his trembling hand, the Luger pistol seemed to pulse with malevolent life.

"BASTARDS!" he screamed, his voice a raw, animalistic howl that froze everyone in the drawing room. "You killed my country! You killed my people!"

Jawaharlal Nehru rose from his chair, his face pale but determined. "Calm down sahib, please, put down the..."

The first shot exploded through the air like thunder.

Nehru staggered backward, his white kurta blooming crimson as a bullet tore through his chest. His eyes, those intelligent, compassionate eyes that had seen India to freedom, widened in shock before glazing over. He crumpled to the Persian carpet without another word.

"PANDIT-JI!" Maulana Azad screamed, scrambling toward his fallen friend.

The second and third shots caught the elderly scholar in the abdomen and temple.

Azad's frail body jerked like a marionette with cut strings before colliding with an overturned mahogany table. Books scattered everywhere, poetry, philosophy, the written dreams of a civilization, now splattered with blood.

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the towering Frontier Gandhi, stepped forward instinctively.

"Brother, stop this madness!" But bullets four and five found him too, shoulder, then grazing his skull, with him staggering back, collapsing against the wall with a sickening thud, his life or death uncertain.

And then...

Mahatma Gandhi, small and fragile in his white homespun, rose slowly from his meditation cushion. His voice, impossibly calm amid the carnage, cut through the chaos:

"Beta, what have they done to you?"

[A/N: Beta is a hindi word for Son, don't mistake it for something else.]

Those words, filled not with fear but with infinite compassion for his would-be assassin, seemed to stop time itself.

Khan's wild eyes focused on the slight figure before him. The Father of the Nation. The man who had preached ahimsa, non-violence, even as Khan's own world burned. For a moment, the pistol wavered.

"You... you let them... destroy everything..."

"Put down the gun, beta. Let us talk."

Khan's face contorted in anguish. The sixth shot rang out.

Gandhi doubled over, clutching his chest as blood seeped through his white khadi. But he remained standing, his eyes never leaving Khan's face.

"I... I forgive you, my son."

Those words, the last anyone would hear from the Mahatma for days, broke something fundamental in Khan's poison-addled mind.

He fired wildly, seventh shot, eighth and ninth, before collapsing as the toxins finally claimed him, his death rattle echoing through the devastated room.

-----------

South Block, Government Secretariat – 12:15 AM

Arjun Mehra stood motionless in his office, staring at the secure telephone as if it were a cobra. Colonel Sharma's voice came through in fragments:

"...Nehru confirmed dead... Azad dying... the Mahatma..., Prime Minister, Gandhi Sahib was there. He's been shot."

Arjun's mind, that calculating machine that had orchestrated so much death and destruction, seems to freeze for a second.

Then, as he processed the implications with cold precision. Gandhi wasn't supposed to be there, but perhaps this was better than any scenario he could have planned.

The old man's passive resistance, his endless talk of ahimsa and turning the other cheek, had always been a thorn in Arjun's side. Too soft for the realities of statecraft, too idealistic for the harsh mathematics of survival. But now...

Now Gandhi the martyr would be infinitely more useful than Gandhi the living saint. This changed everything. This made everything possible.

"Is he...?"

"Alive. Barely. Willingdon Hospital. It's chaos here, Prime Minister. The servants are hysterical, the security detail is in shock. Half of Delhi's going to be awake within the hour."

Arjun's fingers drummed once against his desk, the only outward sign of the wheels turning within. When he spoke, his voice was steady, controlled.

"Secure the scene. Full media blackout until I give the word. And Colonel, make sure our people are the first to brief the press when the time comes."

-----------

All India Radio Broadcasting House – 6:00 AM

The studio was tomb-quiet except for the soft hum of broadcasting equipment.

Arjun sat before the microphone, his usually immaculate appearance slightly disheveled, a calculated touch of humanity in this moment of national tragedy. Dark circles under his eyes, his voice slightly hoarse. The grieving leader, bearing his nation's pain.

Outside, Delhi was already stirring with the first whispers of what had happened. Soon, three hundred million Indians would know that their beloved Pandit-ji was dead, that the Mahatma lay dying, that Pakistan had revealed its true, barbaric face.

Arjun closed his eyes, took a breath, and began:

"My brothers and sisters of India...

Last night, as our great leaders sat in peaceful discussion, seeking, as always, the path of righteousness and wisdom, a Pakistani assassin crept into their midst like a serpent in the garden.

Jawaharlal Nehru, our beloved Pandit-ji, the architect of our freedom, lies dead. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, our guiding light of learning and faith, has been torn from us. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, that great warrior of peace, fights for his life.

And our Bapu... our beloved Mahatma... the Father of our Nation... lies wounded, his precious blood spilled by Pakistani hatred."

His voice began to crack, a calculated touch, practiced in the mirror during sleepless nights when he'd prepared for every contingency. Even this one, though he'd never imagined it would involve Gandhi himself.

The irony wasn't lost on him.

The man who had preached endless patience with Pakistan's provocations, who had fasted to stop Hindu-Muslim riots, who would have opposed every strong measure Arjun might have wanted to take, that same man would now become the perfect rallying cry for the very war he had opposed.

"They came for our teachers of peace. They came for our prophets of non-violence. They came for Gandhi Ji himself, the man who taught the world that truth and love could triumph over hatred and brutality.

And in doing so, they have shown us who they truly are."

Now his voice began to rise, the studied emotion perfectly calibrated:

"Some of you may ask, how should we respond to this? Should we turn the other cheek, as our Mahatma has taught us? Should we seek dialogue with those who answer peace with bullets?

I say to you, there comes a time when even the most peaceful must defend the sacred. There comes a time when ahimsa itself demands that we stop those who would destroy all that is good and holy in this world.

Our enemies understand only the language of force. They have shown us that. When faced with the apostle of non-violence himself, they reached for their guns. When confronted with teachers and poets and men of God, they chose murder.

We did not seek this war. We sought partition, painful though it was, to end the cycle of violence. We sought peace, even as they plotted our destruction. We extended the hand of brotherhood, and they answered with assassination.

No more."

His fist came down on the desk, the sound echoing through radio speakers across the subcontinent:

"Today, we fight not just for territory or political advantage. We fight for the very soul of civilization. We fight so that never again will a Mahatma lie bleeding because of Pakistani brutality. We fight so that the sacrifice of Nehru and Azad will not be in vain.

Let Pakistan know, let the world know, that India's patience has limits. We are the children of ahimsa, yes, but we are also the children of Arjuna, who took up arms when dharma itself was threatened.

The lion of India has been wounded. But wounded lions, my brothers and sisters, are the most dangerous of all."

Static crackled through the silence that followed. Then, slowly, Arjun's voice returned, softer now, almost tender:

"Go now to your temples, your mosques, your gurudwaras. Pray for our fallen. Pray for our beloved Bapu, that he may yet return to us. And pray that we may have the strength to do what must be done.

Jai Hind."

---------

Willingdon Hospital – 8:30 AM

The corridors buzzed with controlled chaos. Doctors rushed between rooms, their white coats stained with blood and exhaustion. Outside, crowds had begun to gather, thousands of Indians who had heard the news and come to be near their wounded Mahatma.

Arjun walked these halls with measured steps, his mind already three moves ahead.

Through the window of Gandhi's room, he could see the tiny figure on the hospital bed, tubes and wires connecting him to machines that beeped with mechanical persistence. So small, so fragile. Yet around that bed, the perfect opportunity was crystallizing.

The old man had always been an obstacle, well-meaning but naive, beloved by the masses but dangerously soft when it came to Pakistan's aggression. His survival would complicate everything. His death... well, his death would simplify a great deal.

Dr. Sitaram looked up as Arjun approached, his face grave. "Prime Minister... the bullet missed the heart by centimeters. He's stable, but..."

"But?"

"He's asking for you, sir. He's been asking for you."

A flicker of something, not quite guilt, but perhaps the ghost of the idealistic young man he'd once been, stirred in Arjun's chest. He pushed it down ruthlessly. Sentiment was a luxury India couldn't afford.

He pushed open the door.

Gandhi's eyes opened as Arjun approached the bed. Those eyes, still bright with intelligence and infinite compassion, even as his body failed him.

"Arjun beta," Gandhi whispered, his voice like autumn leaves. "You came."

"Bapu-ji..." Arjun knelt beside the bed, his face a masterwork of controlled grief. "I'm so sorry this happened. The security failure is unforgivable."

Gandhi's thin hand found his. "The young man who shot me... he was in such pain, beta. Such terrible pain. What we have done to each other... what we continue to do..."

There it was. Even lying shot and broken, the old man was talking about understanding the enemy, about shared responsibility.

Arjun felt that small, buried part of himself, the part that had once believed in Gandhi's way, twist with something that might have been shame. But that feeling was quickly smothered by cold pragmatism.

"Promise me something," Gandhi continued, his grip surprisingly strong. "Promise me that whatever you do next, you will remember that they are our brothers too. Even those who hate us. Even those who would kill us. They are our brothers."

Brothers. The word almost made Arjun laugh. Brothers who massacred trains full of refugees. Brothers who raped women and threw children down wells. Brothers who had just put bullets in the three greatest leaders of independent India.

But Gandhi's eyes, those damned, knowing eyes, seemed to see straight through him. Arjun wondered, not for the first time, how much the old man actually knew about the darker necessities of statecraft.

"I promise, Bapu-ji," he said, the lie coming easily now. He'd been lying to many members of the party who weren't put on house arrest, who were true nationalists. Only a handful knew about his true plans.

Gandhi smiled then, and for just a moment, Arjun felt the genuine weight of that trust. The old man believed him. Had always believed in the possibility of redemption, even for those who had strayed far from the path of righteousness.

Perhaps that was the tragedy, not that Gandhi had been shot, but that such faith could exist in a world that would inevitably betray it.

"Good beta. Now go. Your people need you. And they need to see that their leaders can still choose hope over hatred."

As Arjun left the hospital, stepping into the blazing Delhi morning, he could hear the crowds chanting: "Mahatma Gandhi ki jai! Bharat Mata ki jai!"

The die was cast. The serpent had struck, and now the lion would roar.

Behind him, in that sterile room, the conscience of a nation fought for breath, while ahead of him stretched a path that would either lead to glory or damn them all.

But as Arjun climbed into his official car, one thought dominated all others: for the first time since partition began, he had everything he needed to finish what Pakistan had started.

The war for India's soul had begun. And Arjun Mehra intended to win it.

[A/N: Well, well, well, someone's cooked for real, thanks to our master puppeteer Arjun Mehra]