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Gagging Godse – A Ploy

By Murthy, BS

Book Id: WPLBN0100303710
Format Type: PDF (eBook)
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Reproduction Date: 7/24/2021

Title:	Gagging Godse – A Ploy
Author:	Murthy, BS
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Non Fiction, Gandhi, Godse, Gandhi's assassination, Indian partition, Hindutva, Hinduism Today, Indian society, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Veer Savarkar,, Political Science, Indian politics, Nehru, Indian Muslims, Indian independence, Indian freedom struggle, Muslim appeasement, , On grinding the political axe on Gandhi's assassin
Collections:	Sociology, Authors Community
Historic Publication Date:	2021
Publisher:	Self Imprint

Member Page:	BS Murthy
Citation APA MLA Chicago Murthy, B. (2021). Gagging Godse – A Ploy. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.us/

Description
Adolf Hitler had on his hands the blood of six million gas-chambered Jews besides fifty million soldiers, in the flower of their youth, and thirty million civilians of all ages, who perished in the World War II that he started, but yet he is among the most debated about worldwide. Moreover, Mein Kampf, his autobiography with an anti-Semitic slant is not ostracized either by the book world, but in a stark contrast, uttering the very name of Nathuram Godse, the man who assassinated Gandhi, a frail seventy-eight-year old man, and paid the price for his crime on the gallows, just running forty, remains a taboo in his own country for whose good he believed he did what he did, seemingly into eternity! So, sadly for him, the reality his legacy faces belies his hope, expressed in his ‘Why I killed Gandhi’ testimony; “I have no doubt that honest writers of history will weigh my act and find the true value thereof some day in future.”

Summary
How is it that any public debate on the pros and cons of the Godse ‘act’ is frowned upon and the answer is not far to seek for it is the fear of the nationalist inimical forces, the overseers of Nehruvian ecosystem, that the ‘murderer’ Godse’s sense of Indian nationalism would bring to the fore the hollowness of the ‘martyred’ Gandhi’s propensity to be ‘unfairly favourable towards the Muslims’.

Excerpt
Godse, in his own words, was “Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free thinking unfettered by any superstitious allegiance to any isms, political or religious. That is why I worked actively for the eradication of untouchability and the caste system based on birth alone,” and that should have earned him a place of honour in the pantheon of India’s social reformers. Thus, but for a quirk of fate, maybe, Godse would have rubbed ‘reformist’ shoulders with Gandhi whom he had assassinated for altruistic reasons. What had put him in the dock that led him to the gallows, again in his words, “I took courage in both my hands and I did fire the shots at Gandhiji on 30th January 1948, on the prayer-grounds of Birla House. I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus. There was no legal machinery by which such an offender could be brought to book and for this reason I fired those fatal shots. I bear no ill will towards anyone individually but I do say that I had no respect for the present government owing to their policy which was unfairly favourable towards the Muslims. But at the same time I could clearly see that the policy was entirely due to the presence of Gandhi.”