…Government have, however, noticed
with regret that in practice members of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh have not
adhered to their professed ideals.
“Undesirable and even dangerous
activities have been carried on by the members of the Sangh. It has been found
that in several parts of the country individual members of the Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh have indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery,
dacoity and murder and have collected illicit arms and ammunitions. They have
been found circulating leaflets, exhorting people to resort to terrorist
methods, to collect firearms, to create disaffection against the government and
suborn the police and military.”
(The government communique of February 4, 1948,
announcing the ban on RSS after Gandhi’s assassination)
On Nathuram Godse, (19 th May 1910 –
15 th Nov 1949) Advani asserts that Godse had “severed links with RSS in 1933…
had begun to bitterly criticise the RSS”. This was flatly contradicted by none
other than Godse’s brother Gopal, who was also an accused at the trial for
conspiracy to murder. He published his book Why I Assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in December 1993. Speaking in New Delhi on the
occasion of the release of his book, Gopal Godse revealed what many had
suspected—they had both been active members of the RSS (The Statesman; December
24, 1993).
(Ref : Whitewashing Godse is part of
the Sangh Parivar’s sordid game, From: Frontline, January 26, 2013)
What could be said to be the first act of terrorism
in independent India?
Everybody would agree that killing of Mahatma
Gandhi by a Hindu fanatic Nathuram Godse constitutes the first terrorist act in
independent India. Godse, a Maharashtrian Brahmin, hailing from Pune was
associated with Hindu Mahasabha at the time of Mahatma’s assassination and had
his initial forays in the world of politics with the RSS. During his tour of
the area Hedgewar, the first supremo of RSS, use to be accompanied by Nathuram
, the future assassin of Gandhi. Godse had in fact joined the RSS in 1930,
winning prominence as a speaker and organiser.
The world at large knows how the Hindu fanatics had
planned the murder of the Mahatma and how the likes of Savarkar and Golwalkar,
the second Supremo of RSS could be held to be responsible for creating the
ambience of hate which culminated in the gruesome act. Sardar Patel’s
letter to Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, who was then member Hindu Mahasabha and who
later formed Bharatiya Jansangh with RSS’s support provides enough details
about the background (18 th July, 1948)
… our reports do confirm that, as a result of the
activities of these two bodies, particularly the former (the RSS), an
atmosphere was created in the country in which such a ghastly tragedy
(Gandhiji’s assassination) became possible. There is no doubt in my mind that
the extreme section of the Hindu Mahasabha was involved in this conspiracy. The
activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of government
and the state. Our reports show that those activities, despite the ban, have
not died down. Indeed, as time has marched on, the RSS circles are becoming
more defiant and are indulging in their subversive activities in an increasing
measure
If somebody poses before you another simple query
relating to similar episodes in the sixty plus year trajectory of independent
India – then what would be your response. Perhaps you would like to add the
death of Indira Gandhi – killed by her Sikh bodyguards , killing of Rajeev
Gandhi – who fell to a suicide attack by a Tamil Hindu woman, or for that
matter demolition of the 500 year old Babri mosque by the marauders of the
RSS-VHP-BJP-Shiv Sena. If one follows the debate further you would like
to underline the 1984 riots ( actually genocide of Sikhs mainly
perpetrated by Hindu lumpen elements instigated by the then ruling Congress
Party with due connivance of Hindutva brigade), emergence of Khalistani
terrorists movement or the eight year old Gujarat genocide executed with
military precision allegedly by the RSS and its affiliated organisations led by
one of those Hindu Hriday Samrats.
Compare all these major episodes in the history of
Independent india – which encompassed many a terrorist acts within them -
with the mental image which conjures up in your mind or which finds prominence
in the media when one listens to any terrorist act in any part of the country.
Does it have any resemblance with the image of a member of the majority
community or one of those minority communities ? You would agree that the
mental image/projected image has features specific to one of the religious
minorities in our country. If in the late eighties or early nineties it would
have been the image of a turbaned Sikh, the end of first decade of the
21st century has found its replacement with a bearded Muslim.
Question naturally arises why is it that despite
their participation in many a gruesome incidents, the role played by them in
instigating riots (as noted by many a commissions of enquiry) or there
[their]admission before camera about the planning which went in making a
genocide happen (courtesy Tehelka sting operation or the interview given by
Keka Shastri to rediff.com) the Hindu fanatic has not become a part of our
social common sense. Why when someone called Sadhvi Pragya or Major Purohit or
Dayanand Pandey or for that matter Swami Aseemanand are found to be engaged in
conspiring and executing terrorist acts and police decipher their certain
involvement in similar sinister operations earlier as well, we are ready to
call them ‘exception’ and when a completely innocent Muslim youth is arrested
by the police, the media is ready to paint him the real mastermind of few
terrorist acts. Why the slogan coined by one of the majoritarian formations
‘All Muslims are not terrorists but all terrorists are Muslim’ does not receive
broadest possible condemnation which it deserves.
Perhaps there is no simple answer to this query.
One will have to delve deep into our past, take a dispassionate look at the
anti-colonial struggle and also the tragic phase of partition riots.
Simultaneously we will have to discern the threads of our present, understand
for ourselves the role of different actors as well as the role of ideologies to
reach any tentative understanding. It is for everyone to see that in a
multi-religious, multilingual country like ours the complexities of the
situation are itself immense. We find ourselves in a situation where while
‘communalism’ of the majority community could be construed as ‘nationalism’,
every assertion by the minority community on genuine demands tends to be
seen with a ‘communal’ colour. And it follows from this that ‘terrorism’
unleashed by the majoritarians is easily disguised under the bursting of
‘pent up anger’ against the minorities whereas ‘terrorist acts’ committed
by minorities of different kinds are construed as the biggest danger facing the
nation.
What follows here is an attempt to move beyond the
social common sense around ‘terrorism’ where we are witness to continuous
stigmatisation of a particular community for actions of its lunatic
fringe. This is an understanding which has received a new boost in the
aftermath of 9/11 and the ‘war against terror’ unleashed by the US regime, to
further its imperialist ambitions.
The need of the hour is to understand that
‘terrorism’ cannot be the monopoly of a particular community. And it is a
product of the typical circumstances which societies encounter or find
themselves in and the nature of the dominant or dominated forces in operation
in those societies and their larger worldview.
In this connection the most important lesson, which
should be remembered, is that the law and order machinery should be even handed
in its approach in unearthing the truth behind every terrorist incident or act.
It should not repeat its earlier folly of stigmatizing the whole community,
which it is alleged to have engaged in during last few years after similar
terrorist acts. It should also not be seen going soft on Hindu militant
formations for fear of providing political capital to Hindutva organizations.
II
Very few people know the animosity maintained by
Hindutva fanatics towards Gandhi which was evident in four attempts on his life
before Nathuram Godse’s final attempt. (Chunibhai Vaidya, a leading Gandhian
from Gujarat talks about total six attempts. Apart from the details of various
attempts mentioned below he talks about an attempt on his life in Sept 1946
also.)
The first one happened in Pune (25 th June 1934)
when Mahatma Gandhi was going to Corporation auditorium to deliver a speech.
Kasturba Gandhi, his wife was also accompanying him. Incidentally the car in
which Gandhis were travelling developed some snag and was delayed whereas the
other car which was in their motorcade reached the venue where a bomb was
thrown at the car. The explosion caused injuries to some policemen and ordinary
people.
The second attempt on Mahatma Gandhi’s life also
involved his future assasin namely Nathuram Godse. Gandhi was visiting
Panchagani, a hill station near Pune (May 1944) where a young crowd of 15-20
young people came through a chartered bus. They organised a daylong protest
demonstration against him but refused to talk when Gandhi invited them. During
the prayer meeting in the evening Nathuram rushed towards Gandhi with a dagger
in his hand where he was overpowered by others.
The third attempt happened when Gandhi’s talks with
Jinnah started in Sep 1944. When Gandhi was leaving for Mumbai from Sevagram
Ashram, a group of fanatic Hindu youth led by Nathuram Godse tried to stop
him.Their contention was that Gandhi does not travel to Mumbai to hold talks
with Jinnah. Nathuram was again found in possession of a dagger.
The fourth attempt on Gandhi’s life (20 th January
1948) involved roughly the same group namely Madanlal Pahwa, Shankar Kistaiya,
Digambar Badge, Vishnu Karkare, Gopal Godse, Nathuram Godse, and Narayan Apte.
The plan was to attack Mahatma Gandhi and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy. In this
failed attempt Madanlal Pahwa placed a cotton ball enclosing a bomb on the wall
behind the podium in Birla Bhavan, where Gandhi was staying. The bomb went off
without creating any panic, although Madanlal Pahwa was caught. Other members
of the group who were assigned to shoot Gandhi in the ensuing melee developed
cold feet and did not act.
And the last one happened on 30 th January at 5:17
p.m. when Nathuram Godse approached him and shot him three times in his chest
at point blank range. All those involved in the crime were arrested and were
tried in a court which attracted lot of media attention. Nathuram Godse and
Narayan Apte were sentenced to death by the courts and others were awarded life
imprisonment. As far as Savarkar was concerned he was acquitted and set free
due to lack of evidence. It was worth noting that Jawaharlal Nehru as well as
Gandhi’s two sons, who felt that the two men were merely pawns of top Hindutva
leaders, demanded commutation of their death sentence as they sincerely felt
that executing the assassins would in fact dishonour their father’s legacy who
was a staunch opponent of death penalty. Nathuram Godse as well as the other
conspirator Narayan Apte were hanged at Ambala Jail on November 15, 1949.
How did the killers of Gandhi tried [try] to
rationalise their criminal act. According to them Gandhiji supported the idea
of a separate state for Muslims, thus in a sense he was responsible for the
creation of Pakistan. Secondly, belligerence of Muslims was a result of
Gandhiji’s policy of appeasement. Thirdly, in spite of the Pakistani aggression
in Kashmir, Gandhiji fasted to compel the government of India to release an
amount of Rs. 55 crores due to Pakistan.
Anyone familiar with that period of history can
decipher that all these allegations are malicious and factually incorrect also.
In fact, the idea of communal amity which Gandhi upheld all his life was a
complete anathema to the exclusivist, Hindu Supremacist world view of the
members of RSS, Hindu Mahasabha. And while nation was a racial/religious
construct in the imagination of the Hindutva forces, for Gandhi and rest of the
nationalists it was a territorial construct or a bounded territory comprising
of different communities, collectivities living there.
And looking at the fourteen year old history of
unsuccessful attempts on his life, it becomes clear that the conspiracy to
eliminate Gandhiji was conceived much earlier than the successful
accomplishment thereof. The grounds advanced for such a heinous crime could be
seen as clever rationalisation to hoodwink the gullible.
III.
The issue of Nathuram Godse’s connections with RSS
(if any) still remains far from settled. In fact, any discussion on Mahatma
Gandhi’s assassination has always led RSS and its affiliated organisations to
adopt a very ambivalent stand vis-a-vis Nathuram Godse and his team. On the one
hand they are found to be making extra efforts to exhibit that neither of them
have had any association with him at least at the time of murder. Of course
they have not forgotten to argue that one needs to understand the frustration
felt by people over Gandhi’s actions.
Look at what L.K. Advani, the then senior leader of
BJP said :
‘Nathuram Godse was a bitter critic of the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. His charge was that the RSS had made Hindus
impotent. We have had nothing to do with Godse. The Congress is in the habit of
reviving this allegation against us when it finds nothing else.’ ( The Times of
India,November 22, 1993)
As everybody knows people closely associated with
Nathuram Godse, who themselves were party to the conspiracy to kill Gandhi,
have a different take on the whole relation.
In his book ‘Why I Assassinated Mahatma Gandhi’
(1993) Gopal Godse says unambiguously: “He (Nathuram) has said in his statement
that he left the RSS. He said it because Golwalkar and the RSS were in a lot of
trouble after the murder of Gandhi. But he did not leave the RSS.” In the same
book he also characterises Advani’s denial of Nathuram’s membership of the RSS
at the time of the murder as “cowardice.”
In an interview to ‘Frontline’ (January 28, 1994,
Interview by Arvind Rajgopal) Gopal Godse repeats what he had to say :
Q . Were you a part of the RSS
A. All the brothers were in the RSS.
Nathuram, Dattaaatreya, myself and Govind. You can say we grew up in the RSS
rather in our homes. It was like a family to us.
Q. Nathuram stayed in the RSS ? He
did not leave it ?
A. Nathuram had become a baudhik
karyavah (intellectual worker) in the RSS. He said in his statement that he
left the RSS. He said it because Golwalkar and the RSS were in a lot of trouble
after the murder of Gandhi. But he did not leave the RSS.
Q. Advani has recently said that
Nathuram had nothing to do with RSS.
A. I have countered him, saying it is
cowardice to say that. You can say that RSS did not pass a resolution, saying
that, ‘go and assassinate Gandhi.’ But you do not disown him (Nathuram). The
Hindu Mahasabha did not disown him.
In 1944 Nathuram started doing Hindu Mahsabha work
when he had been a baudhik karyavah in the RSS.
Discussing his brothers’ last moments before the
hanging, Gopal Godse tells us in his above mentioned book : on reaching the
platform he cited a verse of devotion to the Motherland; the verse in question
was as follows:
Namaste sadaa vatsale matribhume
Tvya hindubhume sukhamvardite hum,
Mahamangle puney bhume tvdharthe
Patitvesh kaayaa namaste namaste.
Anyone who has closely watched the daily routine at
the RSS Shakha s/he would reveal that the above comprises the opening verse of
the RSS prayer sung in every shakha.
IV.
“Yashasvi hohun ya (Be successful and
return).”
—V.D. Savarkar’s parting shot, quoted in police
records, to Gandhi assassin Nathuram Godse and co-conspirator Narayan
Dattatreya Apte
It is on record that in his deposition before the
court in the Gandhi murder case, Nathuram Godse was conscious to distance
himself from RSS as well as from Savarkar. It is a different matter that
archival records show that Godse worked closely with Savarkar since 1935.
The assasin’s and his other collobrators strategy definitely saved Savarkar
from getting convicted in the assasination case despite playing a key role in
the conspiracy (as later enquiries revealed).
In fact, the trial judge in the case Atma Charan
had framed the first charge against all eight accused, including
Savarkar, that they had conspired to commit Gandhi’s murder. Curiously,
he convicted all others but let off Savarkar on the technical ground that there
was no corroborative proof to confirm approver Digambar Badge’s evidence who
became prosecution’s key witness. Yet, the trial judge found Badge to be a
trustworthy witness.
Badge happened to be a Hindu Mahasabha worker who
had supplied the gun cotton slab to Godse and others and which was used by
Madanlal. He told the court many important facts about Savarkar’s involvement
in the assassination plot. According to a report in ‘Outlook’ (‘The Mastermind
?’, Rajesh Ramchandran, 6 Sep 2004) which discusses snippets from the National
archives to see if RSS icon (namely Savarkar) had any role in Gandhi’s
assassination or not.
Badge told the police about the
motive of the assassins. “Apte asked whether I was willing to accompany them to
Delhi. I enquired for what purpose, whereupon Apte said that ‘Tatyarao’ meaning
Savarkar decided that Gandhiji, Jawaharlal Nehru and Suhrawardhy should be
finished and that this work had been entrusted to them.”
…”I was asked to remain downstairs ..
and both of them, i.e., Apte and Godse went upstairs to take darshan of
Savarkar. After five or 10 minutes, they both came down and as they were
getting down the stairs, Savarkar followed them down the stairs and said to
them ‘Yeshasvi hohun ya (be successful and return)’. On the way back from
Savarkar, Sadan Apte told Badge that, ‘Tatyarao had predicted that Gandhiji’s
100 years were over…. ‘
It is worth noting that DCP Jamshed Nagarvala of
the Bombay Presidency, who was asked by Morarji Desai, then Bombay’s home
minister to put a close watch on Savarkar’s house and his movements after the
bomb incident on 20 th January involving Madanlal Pahwa, clearly explains the
reasons behind this action in his crime report : “”The source informed that it
was at the direct instigation and instance of Savarkar that this conspiracy was
hatched and plan prepared to take the life of Mahatmaji, and his pretense to be
ill and out of politics was a mere cover…. Hence it was decided to immediately
put a watch on the house of Savarkar.” And when Savarkar’s lawyer questioned
this move by the police in the trial court and asked the home minister to
respond, Morarji Desai is reported to have countered : “ Shall I give my
reasons ? It is for Savarkar to decide whether I should answer. I am prepared
to give my reasons.” Upon this. Savarkar’s lawyer said : “I withdraw my
question.” ( See J.C.Jain, The Murder of Mahatma Gandhi : Prelude and
Aftermath, Chetna Ltd, Bombay, 1961,p.104)
Exactly sixteen years after Gandhi’s assassination
a public furore forced the then government to take a fresh look at the
conspiracy and also to look into the fact that whether there was any deliberate
dereliction of duty on the part of people in high authority or not. It got
precipitated after a public programme was organised in Pune to celebrate the
release of the conspirators from jail after the expiry of their sentences (12
th Nov 1964) and where some of the speakers revealed that they had they had prior
information about the murder. Under pressure of 29 members of parliament and
public opinion the then Union home minister Gulzarilal Nanda, constituted a
commission led by Jeevanlal Kapur, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, to
conduct the inquiry.
Kapur commission also examined Savarkar’s role in
the assassination. As things had unfolded in the trial court of Atma Charan,
Godse had claimed full responsibility for planning and carrying out the attack,
in absence of an independent corroboration of the prosecution witness. Here
Badge’s testimony was not accepted as it lacked lacked independent
corroboration. This was later corroborated by the testimony of two of
Savarkar’s close aides – Appa Ramachandra Kasar, his bodyguard, and Gajanan
Vishnu Damle, his secretary, who had not testified in the original trial but
later testified before the Justice Kapur commission set up in 1965. Kasar told
the Kapur Commission that they visited him on or about January 23 or 24, which
was when they returned from Delhi after the bomb incident. Damle deposed that
Godse and Apte saw Savarkar in the middle of January and sat with him
(Savarkar) in his garden. Justice Kapur concluded: “All these facts taken
together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by
Savarkar and his group.”
(Excerpts from the book ‘Godse’s Children :
Hindutva Terror in India’ 2 nd Edition, 2013)
Postscript : It is not generally known
that the day Godse died – 15 th November – is celebrated by Hindutva fanatics
as ‘martyrdom’ day in different parts of the country. In parts of western
India, such programmes are organised publicly. A play on the life of Nathuram –
Me Nathuram Boltoy ( I Nathuram Speak) which looks at those events from the
perspective of a Hindutva fanatic runs into packed houses in Maharashtra.
Time to remember
that Godse might be dead but the danger of Godse’s worldview gaining further
legitimacy exists.
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