The Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla and the Sabarmati Ashram Memorial and Preservation Trust, Ahmedabad organized a one day meeting on 30 January 2008, at Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad to mark the 60^th anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination.

We hoped that during these six decades we had put some emotional distance between us and the event that seemed frozen in time. The meeting was an invitation to unfreeze the various meanings of the event. It was an opportunity to not only liberate ourselves from the trauma of the event, but also to look beyond the event. This looking beyond was also looking within; it was an articulation of the meaning of Gandhi’s absence. Did his assassination produce in the young nation a sense of ever-abiding sense of guilt? Did the event actually free us to invent our own morality? Or did it allow the nation to free itself from the moral constraints that the Mahatma had placed on us?

Scholars from across the country responded to our invitation and came together at the Sabarmati Ashram. Ashis Nandy, D L Sheth, Mushir-ul-Hasan, Rajiv Bhargava, Rohit Wanchoo, Rukmini Bhaya-Nayar, Sudhir Chandra, Harsh Sethi, Partha Chatterjee, Raghuram Raju, Sadanand Menon, Sujata Patel, Thomas Pantham, Ganesh Devy, Tridip Suhrud, Sudarshan Iyengar, Prakash Shah, Pravin Seth and Peter Ronald deSouza participated in the meeting. The meeting was attended by scholars and interested citizens of Gujarat.

The meeting commenced, following the Ashram tradition, with a public all-religion prayer meeting. This year’s prayer discourse was given by Ashis Nandy.

The meeting was divided in three sessions. Peter Ronald deSouza, Director of the IIAS, in his opening remarks spoke of the surreal silence that had enveloped the nation on 30 January, 1948. He urged the meeting to discuss the moral implications of the assassination. The first session was “Meanings of Assassination.” Rukmini Bhaya-Nayar and Ashis Nandy were the main speakers in this session. The second session was on the meaning of absence. Partha Chatterjee and Sudarshan Iyenagar spoke in the session. The last session was ‘reflections’ during which Sujata Patel, Thomas Pantham, Ganesh Devy, Sadanand Menon and Tridip Suhrud spoke. Each session saw deeply engaging conversation from the participants. Mushir-ul-Hasan, Rajeev Bhargava, D L Sheth and Sudhir Chandra made significant interventions during the debates.

The proceedings of the meeting will be published soon by the IIAS.