the spectral gandhi and so on a consideration of the sartorial gandhi would enable us to gauge his life from the clothes that he wore at different stages of his awakening and arrive at an assessment of how after he had made a decision to reduce his clothing to the bare minimum he came to embody in the most profound ways the idea of nakedness in its fullness it is as we approach the anniversary of gandhis assassination on january 30 of the martyred gandhi that i shall now speak many have argued that gandhi had a premonition of his death there had been several assassination attempts on his life in the preceding fifteen years what is unequivocally clear is that he spoke often especially in the aftermath of indian independence and the countrys vivisection of wanting to die as he told his grandniece manu after the failed attempt on his life at birla house at january 20 on this occasion i have shown no bravery if somebody fired at me pointblank and i faced his bullet with a smile repeating the name of rama in my heart i should indeed be deserving of congratulations on january 27 gandhi still recovering from the fast that brought peace to delhi and conviction to nathuram godse that the old man no longer deserved to live told the visiting american journalist vincent sheean it might be that it would be more valuable to humanity for me to die yet at other times gandhi had with equal assurance declared that he wished to live for 125 years some still dispute whether gandhi died with the name of rama on his lips the front cover of the 25 january 1970 issue of illustrated weekly of india echoes the confusion and shock experienced by all those around him unusually the revolver seems almost suspended between the assassins hands though by all accounts godse executed the task with firm and efficient resolve indian printmakers went to work almost immediately after gandhis death likening him to christ and buddha though gandhi was no founder of a religion he seemed to some of his contemporaries to have had a similar impact on those who encountered him or had some awareness of his teachings these printmakers borrowed effortlessly recognizing no cultural boundaries gandhi adored michelangelos pieta and would have been humbled by the comparison gandhi was also a world historical figure and his death was registered across the globe in the united states the eminent cartoonist d r fitzpatrick long associated with the st louis postdispatch was reminded of the assassination of abraham lincoln his cartoon martyrs of humanity points to the place that gandhi had come to occupy in the american imagination one doubts very much that the nationstate meant to gandhi what it meant to lincoln but the image provokes precisely such questions two decades later another assassination would shake the world more so perhaps than any other cartoonist bill mauldin