Sunday, October 22, 2000		Article

INDIANS know a lot about Mahatma Gandhi but very little about the man who killed him. Never mind that two years ago the Maharashtra government banned the play Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoy, which translates into I’m Nathuram Godse speaking. The irony is that India’s most infamous assassin was brought to life not by an Indian but by two foreigners, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, in their best-selling book Freedom at Midnight.

Nathuram Godse’s life makes for fascinating reading. The son of a Brahmin postman, earning Rs 15 a month, Nathuram was brought up in the strictest Hindu orthodox tradition. He was forced to learn and recite daily in Sanskrit verses of the Rig Veda and Bhagavadgita but he revelled in his strict Hindu upbringing. To the astonishment of his household, he displayed a capacity for a rare form of worship, the Kapalik Puja. This consisted of Nathuram applying fresh cowdung to one wall of the family house. Then he mixed soot with oil and spread the resulting paste over a circular lead platter which in turn was leant against the wall before a spluttering lamp. The 12-year-old Godse would squat in front of that platter in a kind of trance, which caused his family to imagine that he was destined for a life great achievement.

Those hopes weren’t justified by anything about Godse’s young manhood. He failed English on his matriculation and did not get into a university. Out of school, he drifted from one job to another, nailing packing crates, peddling fruit, retreading tyres, and finally became a tailor. His real passion was politics. Ironically, he became a rabid follower of Gandhi and even went to jail when the Mahatma gave a call for civil disobedience. In 1937, however, Godse abandoned Gandhi’s movement to follow another political master, Veer Savarkar.

In 1944, Godse became editor of the Hindu Rashtra. In his private life, he was an ascetic. He lived in a monk’s cell opposite his tailor shop. The only peice of furniture in it was a rope charrpai. He rose at 5.30 every morning, and apart from a fondness for Perry Mason detective stories and films of violence and adventure, Godse never indulged himself. He had few friends.

And he hated women. With the exception of his mother, he could not bear their physical presence. One day, admitted to hospital for one of his excruciating mirgraine headaches, Godse woke to find himself in a ward serviced by nurses. He leapt from his bed and, pulling a sheet around him, ran from the hospital rather than allow female hands to touch him. At the age of 28, Godse took a vow of Brahmacharya, the voluntary renunciation of sex in all its forms.

After India was partitioned, while Hindu-Muslim rioting raged, Godse gave a fiery speech to a crowd in Pune. The motherland has been vivisected, the vultures are tearing her flesh, the chastity of Hindu women is being violated ...... while the Congress eunuchs watch this rape committed. How long, oh, how long can one hear this?

Meanwhile, Gandhi was appealing to Hindus in India not to hurt a Muslim. This enraged Nathuram so much that he and his brother Gopal, and three other co-conspirators, Narayan Apte, Vishnu Karkare, and Madanlal Pahwa decided that the Mahatma must pay with his life. On January 20, 1948, they made an unsuccessful bid to kill him by exploding a bomb in Delhi. Pahwa was arrested, he split the beans, and now, Nathuram, Gopal, and Apte were on the run. Finally, meeting up at Thane railway station outside Mumbai, Nathuram said with quiet confidence that he would kill Gandhi. A vivisected India called out for an avenging spirit. He was going to be that spirit.

Unable to buy a gun in both Bombay and Delhi, Nathuram and Apte went to Gwalior on January 27, 1948. There they managed to get a blunt, black baretta automatic and 20 bullets. Next day, they headed for a forest behind the famed Birla Mandir in New Delhi. Out there, Apte picked out a tree and used a knife to make marks on it at a height where Gandhi’s head would be. Nathuram drew away to a range of about 20 to 25 feet. From there, he fired at the target — four times. His aim was perfect. They returned to a retiring room at Old Delhi railway station and at night went out for a vegetarian dinner. Nathuram read a Perry Mason before going off to sleep.

The next day at 5.17 in the evening, Nathruram accomplished his mission. Stepping towards Gandhi as if in obeisance, with one hand he thrust aside Gandhi’s accompanying grand-niece, and with the other he pumped three shots into Gandhi’s chest. Nathuram made no effort to resist arrest. Along with Narayan Apte, Nathuram was sentenced to death. And on November 15, 1949, both were hanged. Godse was 39.

Godse declared in his last will and testament that the only possession he had to leave his family was his ashes. He asked that those ashes should not be immersed in a river but be handed down instead, from generation to generation, until they could be sprinkled into an Indus river flowing through a subcontinent reunited under Hindu rule. On November 15 every year, the anniversary of Nathuram’s execution, Gopal in Pune lights a lamp in front of Nathuram’s ashes placed before an enormous map of the entire Indian sub-continent outlined by glowing light bulbs.