When Godse is revered, it’s a crime to remember Gandhi

“A dog called Gandhi would be dead”, said one of the men in khaki knickers. If this statement stuns you into silence, then pause. Take a deep breath and read the following: “In 1948, something happened that I will never forget.

We used to play football in various parks of Mysore…next to the park, we used to see some people come in khaki knickers around five in the evening. Often, they finished their meeting and then hung around us, watching us play. Sometimes, they used to tell us stories. As small boys, of course, we used to listen to them.

“One day, they distributed laddoos to us. When we asked what the occasion was, the man said, “A dog called Gandhi would be dead”. I went home and told my mother what I had heard. She started beating me.

In Kannada, if you say something bad, you repent it by saying bidthu, bidthu (roughly, it’s a plea: “take back your words” or “don’t say such things”). The next day I got beaten up again because Gandhiji was actually assassinated! My brother heard it on the radio, he raced home and told my mother. My mother yelled at me
saying I had brought the bad news one day earlier.”

This is S Narendra’s recollection, reported in the book Independence Day – A People’s History by Veena Venugopal. Narendra, who later joined the Indian Information Service, went on to become the Principal Information Adviser to Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao. Narendra was seven
when Gandhiji was shot dead by Nathuram Godse.

It’s possible to argue that the late Narendra’s memory may have played tricks on him, but it’s difficult for a child to forget an episode that involves strangers giving him laddoos and then getting beaten up by his mother for saying something so inauspicious that he had to recant it.

Is it possible that RSS leaders in Mysuru, far away from Delhi, knew of what had been planned or was going to happen? In those days, there must have been so few homes with telephones. And even if they did, why would they share it with a bunch of motor-mouths at the Shakha level indiscrete enough to pass it on to kids playing in the park? But then, they did distribute laddoos. Someone in khakhi shorts was so overjoyed about a forthcoming event he had heard about that he decided to distribute sweets to kids he came across.

“In the first week of January 1948, I came to the conclusion that Gandhi, who had been constantly helping Pakistan, had to be killed,” said Nathuram Godse in his pre-trial statement. After one failed attempt by another would-be assassin, Godse, sometime after January 20, 1948, decided to do it himself and obtained a pistol. “Instead of looking for a third person, I decided to go personally in front of Gandhi and empty the pistol on him”, Godse said later. “It was also decided that Apte and Karkare would come along only to provide support to me”.

It’s significant that the Hindu Mahasabha office in Delhi and Savarkar Sadan in Mumbai were meeting points, and perhaps more, for the team in the days before the assassination. On one occasion, Savarkar too flew with them to Delhi, though they stayed in separate hotels.

Godse believed that he had to personally put an end to this “menace” to the Hindus. “Everywhere, Hindus are being killed but Gandhiji is always eager to start on tour in order to add a new province to Pakistan”, Godse had written in his newspaper Agrani on July 3, 1947.

Was Godse’s understanding of Gandhiji’s words and deeds correct? How did that correspond with the reality of Gandhiji’s actions and its perception by the wider community of Hindus and Muslims, other than the felt experience of refugees? Interestingly, Madanlal Pahwa, a refugee from Punjab who was initially co-opted into the plot and given the task to pull the trigger on Gandhiji, didn’t nurse so much hatred against him as Godse did, and backed out.

Did Gandhiji really arouse so much hatred against himself among Hindus? It is best to study one of his last great fasts to know the answer. In the words of his latest biographer, Ramachandra Guha, “It was 2nd September 1947, and a fresh round of rioting broke out in Calcutta. A series of stabbings were reported. As night fell, the violence reached the Hydari Manzil itself.

A crowd surrounded the house and began throwing stones at the windows…Gandhi went outside and spoke to the demonstrators, in Hindustani, a language which few of them understood. Two policemen arrived and the mob finally dispersed. As Gandhi wrote later to Vallabhbhai Patel, ‘everyone suspects the Hindu Mahasabha was behind the attack.’”

“That same evening Gandhi commenced an indefinite fast. In a press statement, he said that ‘if India is to retain her dearly won independence, all men and women must completely forget the lynch law’. His fast would ‘end only if and when sanity returns to Calcutta.’” Right from the Governor of West Bengal C Rajagopalachari to the Hindu Mahasabha leader Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and the Muslim League leader Suhrawardy pleaded with Gandhiji to end the fast.

To quote Guha again, “at 8 am on 4th September, the entire police force of Calcutta, ‘including Europeans and Anglo-Indians’, started a fast in sympathy with Gandhi. Later in the morning, a bunch of hooligans came to Beliaghata, begged for forgiveness, and placed their weapons at Gandhi’s feet. These rowdies included the Hindu leaders of the attack on Hydari Manzil.

They would, they now told Gandhi ‘submit to whatever penalty you may impose’. He asked them to ‘go immediately among the Muslims and assure them full protection. The moment I am convinced that real change of heart has taken place, I will give up my fast.’ The return of peace in Calcutta prompted Mountbatten to write to Gandhi that ‘in Punjab, we have 55 thousand soldiers and large-scale rioting in our hands. In Bengal, our force consists of one man, and there is no rioting.’”

Was Gandhiji ‘appeasing’ Muslims or was he trying to prevent a genocide from occurring on Bharat Mata’s soil? Those who worship Godse do not consider genocide a bad option.

(The writer is a former Cabinet Secretariat official)