This author's book debunks several myths associated with Mahatma Gandhi's assassination
Godse was a pawn in a larger politico-ideological battle, according to Belgian Indologist Koenraad Elst.
In his acclaimed book, The Road to Sarajevo, Yugoslav historian Vladimir Dedijer enumerates 90 major political assassinations between 1792 and 1914 to showcase how most assassins had been lone wolves, with hardly any political conspiracies involved.
While examining the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Habsburg throne, at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, by Serbian student Gavrilo Princip, which heralded the beginning of World War I, Prof Dedijer says that nearly all chroniclers of the event had inherently been biased in favour of the Austrians, one of the most dominant powers of the era, so much so that one German historian forged documents to prove Serb complicity. Mahatma Gandhi's assassination at the hands of a Chitpavan Brahmin from Maharashtra evokes similar sentiments when one reads Koenraad Elst's book, Why I Killed the Mahatma: Uncovering Godse's Defence, which debunks several myths associated with the January 30, 1948 assassination.
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Myth 1: The Mahatma was killed by a Hindu fanatic associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The fact is, says the Belgian scholar, Nathuram Godse was hardly a Hindu fanatic. "The conflict between Gandhi and Godse was not one between secularism and communalism. If we scrutinise their lives, Gandhi and Godse appear quite unlike how they are popularly projected. Godse seems more secular than the Mahatma himself," says Elst.
The Belgian scholar quotes Godse to tell that the assassination was "exclusively political" in nature. Far from being a Hindu fanatic, he found merit in Gandhi honouring the religious texts of Hindus, Muslims and others. "Godse, as a matter of fact, did only once publicly criticise Gandhi for reading the Quran in a Hindu temple, but he soon mend his ways after being rebuked by Savarkar," reminds Elst.
It's interesting to note that this self-confessed secular nationalist blamed the British for the Pakistan movement. "He saw no role for the exclusivist nature of Islam in India's Partition," says the author. Here Godse's thinking, reminds Elst, appears similar to that of "India's current lot of secularists" vehemently denying the claims of Islamist ideologues that Pakistan came into existence the day Mohammed bin Qasim entered Sindh in 712 AD.
Myth 2: RSS was behind the assassination of Gandhi. According to Elst, there are irrefutable evidences that link Godse with RSS, but to say that the Hindu outfit was hand in glove in the Mahatma's killing is deeply flawed on the one hand, and academically fraudulent and politically mischievous on the other, as he recalls Congress president Rahul Gandhi blaming the Sangh for Gandhi's assassination as recently as during the 2017 Gujarat elections. "Godse had unequivocally confessed his association with RSS, but this doesn't in any way prove the latter's complicity in the crime. Godse, in fact, downright denied the Sangh's role in the killing." Yet, the charge refuses to get unstuck. This despite the fact that the RSS not just distanced itself from the killing but also publicly refused to take an ideological position of criticising Gandhi's disastrous policies vis-a-vis Muslims and Pakistan. The Mahatma overnight became an ideal figure whose death the Sangh mourned for 13 days "out of respect and sense of sorrow at the tragic demise of Mahatmaji", but also gave speeches in his praise. Elst believes the RSS should have made a distinction between the assassination and the Mahatma's ideological stand.
The author punches gaping holes in the RSS's alleged role in the killing when he says that the Mahatma's policies vis-a-vis Muslims in general and Pakistan in particular had only been helping the Sangh gain new grounds in the country. If anything, Godse's crime came as a body blow for not just the Sangh as an organisation but also helped subside Hindu rage against Partition and the violence associated with it. "Gandhi's death sent a shock wave through India which stopped the anti-Muslim agitation completely and ushered in a period of relative communal peace which was to last well into the 1960s," says the Belgian author.
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Myth 3: When a big tree fell on January 30, 1948, the earth below didn't shake. Elst's study shows how the murder initiated a wave of revenge which hit the Hindu Mahasabha, RSS and most of all, the Chitpavan Brahmins. A New York Times article soon after the assassination put the number of mortal victims in Bombay (now Mumbai) alone, and on the very first day, at 15. Elst believes the death toll "may well run into several hundreds", but sadly no study has been done so far on the violence which soon took a casteist turn as the Marathas joined the killers' bandwagon to settle historical scores with the Brahimins. For Elst, however, the 1948 killing was far more sinister than the one witnessed in 1984 when another big tree fell in Delhi, "in the sense that they were conveniently flushed down the memory lane". No one has looked into the killings of Chitpavan Brahmins just because they happened to be the caste men of Godse.
SO, GODSE is for Elst what Princip was for Dedijer: A reminder that history writing is as much about the past as it is about the current political milieu. And in post-Independence India, as Gautam Sen writes in the 'Foreword' of the book, one of the ideological certainties embraced by our eminent historians "has been the imputation of mythical status to an alleged threat of Hindus extremism and its unforgivable complicity in assassinating Mahatma Gandhi". Godse became a pawn in this larger politico-ideological battle. The book is a stark reminder to that.