New Delhi — Early February 1948
The mourning lasted three days.
The danger began on the fourth.
Delhi learned how to be quiet.
Not the peaceful kind—no prayers whispered in courtyards, no radios humming softly through open windows. This was a heavier silence, one that pressed against walls and lingered in alleys. Shops opened without enthusiasm. Trains arrived without announcements. People spoke in half-sentences, as if full ones might summon something they were not ready to face.
I watched it all from behind files.
Condolence letters stacked neatly on my desk, some handwritten, some stamped, all careful. Foreign leaders spoke of loss and legacy. Newspapers printed black borders thick enough to swallow headlines.
And beneath it all, the reports continued.
Retaliatory whispers.Calls for revenge.Groups mistaking grief for permission.
The country was waiting.
Not for healing.
For direction.
The first briefing of the day arrived before sunrise.
Arrests made overnight. Interrogations ongoing. Names floated without weight until they settled into patterns.
The assassin was dead.
That did not end anything.
"Public anger is fragmenting," the Home Secretary said carefully. "Some demand restraint. Others demand demonstration of strength."
Demonstration.
That word had teeth.
"Communal tensions?" I asked.
"Contained," he replied.
For now.
I stood and walked to the window.
From this height, the city looked deceptively calm. Smoke curled lazily from chimneys. A rickshaw moved down the street, its bell ringing once, then not again.
History would later compress this week into a paragraph.
The nation mourned.
That was a lie of omission.
The nation debated what kind of nation it wanted to be now that its conscience was gone.
The cabinet meeting was tense before anyone spoke.
Patel sat straighter than usual, jaw set, eyes sharp. Others avoided looking directly at him, as if proximity might force a decision.
"This is a turning point," Patel said finally. "If we hesitate now, we invite chaos."
"Or we invite restraint," I replied.
He looked at me.
"We've tried restraint," he said. "It did not save him."
The room held its breath.
No one disagreed.
"We must act decisively," he continued. "Ban extremist organizations. Expand preventive detention. Show the country that violence has consequences."
I felt the historian inside me stir—uneasy, alert.
I knew this argument.
I knew how easily it won.
"What kind of country do we become if our first response to loss is fear?" I asked.
Patel did not flinch.
"What kind of country do we become if our first response is paralysis?" he countered.
There it was.
The choice history loved to pretend was simple.
Voices rose.
One minister argued for sweeping arrests.Another cautioned about civil liberties.Someone mentioned international optics.
I said nothing.
I was listening—not to the words, but to the current beneath them.
Everyone was afraid.
Fear made democracy impatient.
The decision, when it came, was narrow.
Targeted bans.Focused arrests.No blanket emergency powers.
A line drawn in pencil, not ink.
Patel accepted it without comment.
That worried me more than if he had protested.
Later that evening, alone in my study, I read a letter that had been set aside for me.
No stamp. No signature.
Just a single sentence written in careful hand:
If even Gandhi could not survive this country, what chance do the rest of us have?
I folded it slowly.
This was the question grief asked when it grew tired of mourning.
Outside, a small crowd had gathered.
Not in protest.
Not in celebration.
Just people standing quietly, looking toward the Prime Minister's residence as if proximity might grant reassurance.
I did not step out.
Leaders who appeared too often became symbols.
Symbols shattered easily.
That night, sleep refused to come.
My mind returned again and again to the same thought:
History would say Gandhi's death hardened the Indian state.
Or it would say it didn't harden it enough.
Either way, it would judge.
But judgment was not what frightened me.
What frightened me was something far simpler.
The realization that the country no longer had a moral anchor.
Only laws.
Only leaders.
Only choices.
I opened my notebook.
The page stared back, empty and patient.
I wrote:
"Grief demands action.""Wisdom asks which actions outlive the grief."
I closed the book.
Tomorrow, the country would move on.
It always did.
The question was—
what it would become while doing so.