NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 18: As Kamal Haasan's revisionist take on MahatmaGandhi, Hey Ram, hits theatres nationwide on Friday, the man who shot theFather of the Nation at Birla House can still stir emotions. On Wednesdayevening, about 3,000 copies of the February 21 issue of Time magazine weredetained by customs officials in Calcutta for carrying an interview of GopalGodse, Nathuram Godse's brother.The interview, titled `Gandhi's principle was Bogus' by Time's New Delhicorrespondent Meenakshi Ganguly had, according to customs officials, thecapacity to ``incite communal violence''. The Customs Department reportedlytold local distributors in Calcutta (the magazine comes into India fromSingapore) that copies of the magazine would be released only afterblackening the pages containing the interview. Ganguly describes the wholeexercise as ``pointless.It was an innocuous interview. Gopal Godse is an old man and what he has tosay is of historical import. Also, I was curious and wanted to know whatwould drive someone to kill Gandhi''. In the interview, the Pune-based Godsecalled Gandhi ``shrewd''. He said: ``Gandhi was shrewd to use his sainthoodfor politics. After his death, the government used him.The government knew that he was an enemy of Hindus, but they wanted to showthat he was a staunch Hindu. So their first act was to put `Hey Ram' intoGandhi's mouth.'' Godse also called the Mahatma, ``the most cruel person forHindus in India. The most cruel person. That's how I term him.'' Hedescribed Gandhi's principle of peace ``bogus. In any free country, a personlike him would be shot dead officially because he was encouraging theMuslims to kill Hindus''.The interview, however, according to Ganguly had been done ``a long timeago. This was when Gandhi was listed for the Man Of The Century,'' she said.``At that time, we were preparing the files for the final selection. WhenGandhi didn't make it and was a runner-up, there was a smaller amount ofspace for him, so the interview wasn't used.'' That's when the interview wasput on Time magazine's online edition instead. ``There was a tremendousresponse when it was put on the web. That's when we decided to carry it inthe magazine,'' says Ganguly.Time magazine's General Manager (South Asia) Deepak Purie said this wasn'tthe first time this had happened: ``A customs official in Calcutta hadblackened a story which Meenakshi Ganguly had done on the extinction oftigers. Before this, we haven't had any problems. Of course, sometimes theywould stop the magazine at the airport if we carried the wrong map of India.They would just stamp across it, label it as `not authentic' and that wasabout it. Nothing like this.'' Gopal Godse's reactionIn Pune's traditional Sadshiv Peth, octogenarian Gopal Godse is surprised atreports that Time has been seized. Recalling the interview he gave to themagazine's correspondent, he says: ``The Government should not act likethis, it is not the Congress government. They are the ones who have lied tothe nation in the name of Gandhi.'' He does not remember the exact date ofthe interview, but the topic remains crystal clear. Gandhi, Godse says,``hijacked the nation 52 years ago''. Why: ``Because he threatened to killhimself if the Indian government did not give Rs 55 crore to feed his baby,Pakistan. By threatening to kill himself, Gandhi inflicted a violence on thepeople of India. His treachery was brought to light by Nathuram and throughthe documents of the Indian government which the government hid as thatwould have created sympathy for Nathuram.''Gandhi's death, Godse says, was important for the Congress government.``Thevery moorings of the government depended on the popularity of the deadGandhi. All that talk of truth and non-violence is nonsense. I know becauseI have seen how Gandhi fooled the people by discarding Subhash (Bose) andtried to take away the people's attention from his army (the Indian NationalArmy).''
