#Memoir Thread

Following the assassination of M.K.Gandhi by Godse,The Brahmin's of Maharashtra faced a hard time, and the incident I am about to share is one which my paternal Grandmother's father had written in his diary regarding the aftermath of Gandhi's assassination.

(1/n)

Adv. Retharekar(My Great Grandfather) was an advocate working in the Sangli Court. Retharekers,A Happy Brahmin family with 5 Daughters and 1 son, with quite a good home . A dharmic person and a staunch supporter of Tilak,Savarkar and the likes of them.
(2/n)

On 30th Januray 1948,Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse, in New Delhi and this news spread like a wildfire throughout the nation. Within hours of assassination, the riots were planned. The anti-Brahmin groups and the Congress were hand in hand about these riots
(3/n)

.The houses of Bramhins,were burned,the shops were torched and thousands were killed..... and in all this, they also burned the house of paternal grandmother.
(4/n)

He writes,'They came in the house, the broke everything that they saw, the opened the trunks, took the jewellery out of it and threw it in an open fire, we saw the gold ornaments melting in front of our eyes, that we had saved for the marriage of our daughters'
(5/n)

The angry mob didn't even see there were any girls or children in the house, they were hitting everyone who had a Brahmin surname, Sushila(My grandmother) was badly hurt and so were other daughters. By Parshuram's grace, nobody had fatal injuries.
(6/n)

He further writes,"We lost More than 20 Tola Gold jewellery, the Sagwan furniture has turned into ashes, the ceiling has turned black, there are pieces of glasses all over the place, we faced a loss of more than 43000 rupees"
(7/n)

After this incident, they fled Sangli for few months and when situation came back to normal they returned."The ceiling of the entire house was black" he writes and "it is now a mammoth task to restore this house"
(8/n)

"What was the mistake of my family or other 8000 families who were tortured by Congressmen after Gandhi's assassination? Were these the principles of non violence that Father of nation taught you?" He ends it here.
(9/n)

Thanks to my Grandmother that she saved this diary.I never saw my grandmother as she passed away two years before I was born, but These pages and incidents in her diaries is how we talk to each other.
(10/n)

To See the burnt house,I took a ride to the Sangli House of Adv.R.D.Retharekar, it is still standing there with doors closed, and just waiting for me to open it so that it can tell me the entire episode......
(11/n)

We Hindus need to learn lessons from our history. There are thousands of incidents out there where you will find,how we Hindus were tortured not Just by Mughals and British but also, by Political parties like Congress !

#NeverForget #NeverForgive

The House of Mr.R.D.Retharekar !