Herbert Reiner Jr.

Reiner was born in Brattleboro, Vermont, and raised in Lancaster, Massachusetts, attending Leominster High School in Leominster, Massachusetts, and graduating in 1933. He received his bachelor's degree from Bates College, and a master's from Clark University. He served in the US Navy in World War II as a Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO) economic intelligence assistant, and was discharged in 1946 as a Lieutenant Commander. He arrived in newly independent India in 1947 as a disbursing and financial officer for the US State Department, in the US Embassy in New Delhi, with the rank of vice-consul. Reiner moved to Korea in June 1949, and during the Korean War, served as a consul general during the Battle of the Pusan Perimeter; in later years, he served as consul general in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Johannesburg, South Africa. He ended his diplomatic career in Canberra, Australia, and moved to Cape Cod in 1976. Reiner died on December 28, 1999, at his home in Cotuit, Massachusetts.

On January 30, 1948, Reiner reached Birla House after work, arriving fifteen minutes before the scheduled start of the prayer meeting at 5 p.m., and finding himself in a relatively small crowd. Although there were some armed guards present, Reiner felt that the security measures were inadequate, especially in view of an attempted bomb explosion at the same location ten days before. By the time Gandhi and his small party reached the garden area a few minutes after five, the crowd had swelled to several hundred, which Reiner described as comprising "schoolboys, girls, sweepers, members of the armed services, businessmen, sadhus, holymen, and even vendors displaying pictures of 'Bapu'". At first, Reiner had been at some distance from the path leading to the dais, but he moved forward, explaining later, "An impulse to see more, and at a closer range, of this Indian leader impelled me to move away from the group in which I had been standing to the edge of the terrace steps".

Robert Trumbull of The New York Times, who was an eyewitness, described Reiner's action in a front-page story on January 31, 1948, "The assassin was seized by Tom Reiner of Lancaster, Mass., a vice consul attached to the American Embassy and a recent arrival in India. ... Mr. Reiner grasped the assailant by the shoulders and shoved him toward several police guards. Only then did the crowd begin to grasp what had happened and a forest of fists belabored the assassin ..." Reiner too had noticed a man in khaki step into the path leading to the dais, but his further view was occluded by a party of associates following Gandhi. He soon heard sounds, though, which in his words were "not loud, not ringing, and not unlike the reports of damp firecrackers ..." and which for a moment made him wonder if some sort of celebration was not underway.

Godse was put on trial in the summer of 1948; he was sentenced to death and hanged in November 1949. Reiner left India in June 1949, moving briefly to Hungary, where he served as Assistant Attaché with the American Legation in Budapest, and later the same year to a new diplomatic service appointment in South Korea.

In early September 1947, Gandhi had moved to Delhi in order to help stem the rioting there, and in the neighboring province of East Punjab. The rioting had come in the wake of the partition of the British Indian empire, which had accompanied the creation of the newly independent dominions of India and Pakistan, and involved large, chaotic, transfers of the population between them.

Reiner began his diplomatic career in late September 1947, arriving some time thereafter as disbursing officer at the new American embassy in the Diplomatic Enclave in New Delhi. Soon after arrival, Reiner had written to his parents, expressing a wish to see Gandhi at one of his evening multi-faith prayer meetings. Gandhi had initially been staying at the scheduled caste Balmiki Temple, near Gole Market in the northern regions of New Delhi, and holding his prayer meetings there, but as the temple was requisitioned for sheltering refugees of the partition, he moved to Birla House, a large mansion on what was then Albuquerque Road in south-central New Delhi, not far from Diplomatic Enclave. Gandhi was living in two unpretentious rooms in the left wing of Birla House, and conducting the prayer meetings on a raised lawn behind the mansion.

Herbert Thomas "Tom" Reiner Jr. (September 21, 1916 – December 28, 1999) was an American career diplomat who, while on a posting in India from 1947 to 1949, played a key role in capturing Mahatma Gandhi's assassin, Nathuram Godse. Reiner was among those present when Godse fatally shot Gandhi at an evening prayer meeting in New Delhi on January 30, 1948. Moments after the shooting, while the attending crowd was still in shock, Reiner rushed forward, grasping Godse by the shoulders, and restraining him until military and police personnel took him away. In the days following, Reiner's action was reported in newspapers around the world.