BJP MP Sakhshi Maharaj's remark a few days back has created a lot of outrage among the “Secular Brigade” of India.
They are twisting the whole statement of the BJP MP to give an impression that
Nathuram Godse was an enemy of our nation and that Sakhshi Maharaj was equating
him with Gandhi as well as justifying the killing of Gandhi. But if we check the statement of Sakhshi
Maharaj, we find that nowhere he justified the killing but just said that Godse
was a nationalist and patriot who loved India though killing of Gandhi was
wrong. His exact statement is as follows - "Godse was a nationalist, Gandhi ji
also did a lot for nation. Godse was an aggrieved person. He may have done
something by mistake but was not an anti- national. He was a patriot”.
Mahatma Gandhi - the most influential
Indian - Godse initially admired Gandhi but later become disillusioned with his
ideas like a lot of other Indian at that time. Mahatma Gandhi who once famously
said “I won't let the partition happen, if it does one must tear apart my
body" was seen to be silent and inactive when the decision of
partition of India was taken. Direct
Action Day, Noakhali genocide had shifted bargaining power to Jinnah from
Congress and partition was becoming more inevitable by the day. Committee
comprising of Mountbatten, Jinnah, Nehru and Gandhi discussed the matter. Later
Gandhi left for Bengal as he feared that Hindus may resort to violence against
Muslims. In his absence, Mountbatten Plan assenting partition was passed. Therefore,
when it happened disillusioned Indians blamed him for inaction. Records show
that Gandhi had helped Pakistan further. According to the partition plan, India
owed final payment of Rs. 55 crore to the newly formed Pakistan before Indo-Pak
relations on the Kashmir border deteriorated. Nehru & Patel argued that
this money would help Pakistan buy weapons and froze the transaction upsetting
Jinnah and Pakistani population. But in the name of humanitarian principles,
Gandhi started a fast unto death till this money was released to Pakistan . He
also fasted against killing of Muslims in Bengal and Delhi, but not even once
to stop killings of Hindus in other parts. During these fasts, chants of "let Gandhi die" was heard
frequently from the disillusioned and devastated Indians. It needs to be
accepted that Gandhi failed to gauge the country's emotions and in an attempt
to do everything righteous ended up making a big mess of the Indian state and
its future. Should we blame Godse for feeling strongly about such injustice? I
believe essentially Godse's action was conscious but nonetheless it was an
outburst of rage that some sections of Indians felt because of Partition of
India for which they held Mahatma Gandhi responsible. For them Pakistan was an
illegitimate country born out of political opportunism and when Gandhi fasted for Rs.55 Cr to be paid to this 'illegitimate'
Pakistani state, it was outrageous for these sections of Indians including Godse. Godse must have felt that
Gandhi's idealism was doing much injustice to the nascent Indian state and its
majority of people.
But that doesn't mean I support what Godse did. Which patriotic person
would like his motherland to be split? The motherland is bigger than any
individual or apostle. India was not Gandhi's “Jagir” for him to decide if
partition should have happened. He had all rights to fight for freedom and lead
the freedom struggle, but he had no right to give consent to divide the nation.
The nation was not his alone but belonged to all Indians. The magnitude of
Godse's contribution to the freedom struggle may be miniscule compared to that
of Gandhi, but his angst was justified. Though Gandhi might be the greatest leader
that India has had in recent history, there is no point in being in denial
about the blunders committed by him and its consequences. Godse once said
"Gandhiji may be a saint, but he's not a politician".
However I feel, Gandhi was indeed a politician portrayed as a saint.
Nathuram Godse did not try to escape after assassinating Gandhi and
was arrested immediately. The trial, which was held in camera, began on May 27,
1948 and concluded on February 10, 1949. He was sentenced to death. Godse made his last statement before the
Punjab High Court, then in session at Simla, on 5th May, 1949. Such
was the power and eloquence of his last statement that one of the judges, G. D.
Khosla, later wrote in his book named
“Murder of the Mahatma” - “I have, however, no doubt that had the audience of
that day been constituted into a jury and entrusted with the task of deciding
Godse’s appeal, they would have brought a verdict of ‘not Guilty’ by an
overwhelming majority”.
I think Godse was a Nationalist, who loved
his country to the core of his heart, who needs to be seen and understood in
the right context. Following is the complete text of Godse’s last statement and
I request all to read it fully (though it’s quite long) and then comment if you
think Godse was an enemy of our nation.
WHY I KILLED GANDHI - By Nathuram Vinayak Godse (19 May 1910 – 15 November 1949)
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. I openly joined RSS wing of anti-caste movements and maintained that all
Hindus were of equal status as to rights, social and religious and should be
considered high or low on merit alone and not through the accident of birth in
a particular caste or profession.
I used publicly to take part
in organized anti-caste dinners in which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins,
Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars and Bhangis participated. We broke the caste rules
and dined in the company of each other. I have read the speeches and writings
of Ravana, Chanakiya, Dadabhai Naoroji, Vivekanand, Gokhale, Tilak, along with
the books of ancient and modern history of India and some prominent countries
like England , France , America and Russia . Moreover I studied the tenets of
Socialism and Marxism. But above all I studied very closely whatever Veer
Savarkar and Gandhiji had written and spoken, as to my mind these two
ideologies have contributed more to the moulding of the thought and action of
the Indian people during the last thirty years or so, than any other single
factor has done.
All this reading and thinking
led me to believe it was my first duty to serve Hindudom and Hindus both as a
patriot and as a world citizen. To secure the freedom and to safeguard the just
interests of some thirty crores (300 million) of Hindus would automatically
constitute the freedom and the well-being of all India , one fifth of human
race. This conviction led me naturally to devote myself to the Hindu
Sanghtanist ideology and programme, which alone, I came to believe, could win
and preserve the national independence of Hindustan , my Motherland, and enable
her to render true service to humanity as well.
Since the year 1920, that is,
after the demise of Lokamanya Tilak, Gandhiji’s influence in the Congress first
increased and then became supreme. His activities for public awakening were
phenomenal in their intensity and were reinforced by the slogan of truth and
non-violence which he paraded ostentatiously before the country. No sensible or
enlightened person could object to those slogans. In fact there is nothing new
or original in them.. They are implicit in every constitutional public
movement. But it is nothing but a mere dream if you imagine that the bulk of
mankind is, or can ever become, capable of scrupulous adherence to these lofty
principles in its normal life from day to day.
In fact, honour, duty and love
of one’s own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard
non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance
to an aggression is unjust. I would consider it a religious and moral duty to
resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force. [In the
Ramayana] Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita.. [In the
Mahabharata], Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to
fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the
revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my
firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the
Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action.
In more recent history, it was
the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and
eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India . It was absolutely
essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing
which he would have lost his own life. 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 was, paradoxical as it may
appear, a violent pacifist who brought untold calamities on the country in the
name of truth and non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain
enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen for ever 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. Gandhi had done very good in South Africa to uphold the rights and
well-being of the Indian community there. But when he finally returned to India
he developed a subjective mentality under which he alone was to be the final
judge of what was right or wrong. If the country wanted his leadership, it had
to accept his infallibility; if it did not, he would stand aloof from the
Congress and carry on his own way.
Against such an attitude there
can be no halfway house. Either Congress had to surrender its will to his and
had to be content with playing second fiddle to all his eccentricity,
whimsicality, metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on without
him. He alone was the Judge of everyone and every thing; he was the master
brain guiding the civil disobedience movement; no other could know the
technique of that movement. He alone knew when to begin and when to withdraw
it. The movement might succeed or fail, it might bring untold disaster and
political reverses but that could make no difference to the Mahatma’s
infallibility. ‘A Satyagrahi can never fail’ was his formula for declaring his
own infallibility and nobody except himself knew what a Satyagrahi is. Thus,
the Mahatma became the judge and jury in his own cause. These childish
insanities and obstinacies, coupled with a most severe austerity of life,
ceaseless work and lofty character made Gandhi formidable and irresistible.
Many people thought that his
politics were irrational but they had either to withdraw from the Congress or
place their intelligence at his feet to do with as he liked. In a position of
such absolute irresponsibility Gandhi was guilty of blunder after blunder,
failure after failure, disaster after disaster. Gandhi’s pro-Muslim policy is
blatantly in his perverse attitude on the question of the national language of
India . It is quite obvious that Hindi has the most prior claim to be accepted
as the premier language. In the beginning of his career in India , Gandhi gave
a great impetus to Hindi but as he found that the Muslims did not like it, he
became a champion of what is called Hindustani.. Everybody in India knows that
there is no language called Hindustani; it has no grammar; it has no
vocabulary. It is a mere dialect, it is spoken, but not written. It is a
bastard tongue and cross-breed between Hindi and Urdu, and not even the
Mahatma’s sophistry could make it popular. But in his desire to please the
Muslims he insisted that Hindustani alone should be the national language of
India . His blind followers, of course, supported him and the so-called hybrid
language began to be used. The charm and purity of the Hindi language was to be
prostituted to please the Muslims. All his experiments were at the expense of
the Hindus.
