All about the revised Green India Mission to increase forest cover, address climate change
International Yoga Day: Why is it hard to pinpoint the origin of yoga?
QA::Why Madhya Pradesh CM's wish to count snakes and rear king cobras is unfeasible
What new Registration Bill says, why it was introduced
On Thursday (November 28), Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said that his party condemns any philosophy that refers to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, as a patriot. Singh added that Gandhi’s philosophy will remain relevant and act as a guide for the nation.
Thakur made the comment when DMK member A Raja cited Godse’s comment on why he killed the Mahatma while participating in a debate about the Special Protection Group (SPG) in Parliament.
Since then, the BJP has condemned Thakur’s remarks and party working president J P Nadda has recommended that she be removed from the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Defence.
Rightwing nationalists, especially the Hindu Mahasabha, have repeatedly portrayed Godse as a patriot who held Gandhi responsible for Partition, and believed that the policies of the government at that time were “unfairly favourable towards the Muslims”.
He referred to Gandhi as the “Father of Pakistan” in a speech that he delivered during the assasination trial that lasted for over a year. This speech was later published as a book titled “Why I killed Gandhi”.
In the beginning of his speech Godse says, “All this reading (of Marxism, socialism, writings of Dadabhai Naoroji, Gandhi, Savarkar, Swami Vivekananda and Gopal Krishna Gokhale among others) and thinking led me to believe it was my first duty to serve Hinduism and Hindus both as a patriot and as a world citizen.”
He also said that “in condemning history’s towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit”.
“He (Gandhi) was, paradoxical as it may appear, a violent pacifist who brought untold calamities on the country in the name of truth and nonviolence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen forever for the freedom they brought to them.
“The accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating in his last pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately.”
On the evening of January 30, 1948, Godse shot Gandhi in the chest three times outside his room in Birla House in New Delhi.
“I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack, 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,” Godse said.
Godse was sentenced to death, and was hanged in Ambala jail on November 15, 1949.
Thakur has been a serial offender on this count.
In May, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, she said, “Nathuram Godse was a ‘deshbhakt’ (patriot), is a ‘deshbhakt’ and will remain a ‘deshbhakt’. People calling him a terrorist should instead look within, such people will be given a befitting reply in these elections.”
Thakur had apologised subsequently, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said: “The remarks made about Gandhiji or Nathuram Godse are very bad and very wrong for society… She has sought an apology but I would never be able to forgive her fully.”
In 2013, Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece Saamna in an editorial said that “Pandit” Nathuram Godse had not come from Italy, instead he was a “staunch patriot”.
In 2015, BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj referred to Godse as a patriot.
In 2017, the Hindu Mahasabha installed a bust of Godse in their Gwalior office amid fanfare.
Earlier this year, six Hindu Mahasabha activists were held for celebrating Godse’s birth anniversary at a temple in Surat. Subsequently, the Mahasabha demanded that the statement Godse made in court during the assassination trial be made part of school syllabi.
This month, Godse was “worshipped” by Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha leader Rajyashri Choudhary, who is also a grandniece of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Following this, Gwalior police registered a case against Mahasabha spokesman Naresh Batham under IPC Section 153-A for distributing leaflets glorifying Godse and holding Gandhi responsible for Partition.
Don’t miss from Explained: How BJP’s NRC, TMC’s contrition delivered Didi’s bypoll clean sweep in Bengal
