Opinion Nathuram Godse deserves no benefit of doubt
Ram Madhav does what the Hindu Right has done for decades: Drape Nathuram Godse's crime – assassinating Gandhi – in a cultural fog
Recent textbook changes that delete Godse’s description as a “Hindu extremist” are acts of erasure. Columns like Madhav’s are the narrative arm of the same project. Culture isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card for political guilt, definitely not when it comes to Mahatma Gandhi’s murder. But Ram Madhav (‘In his last days, a dilemma the Mahatma could not resolve’, IE, January 31) repeats what the Hindu right has done for decades: Drape Nathuram Godse’s crime in a cultural fog. That he could justify a murder is an insult to our civilisation. While analysing the reasons for the assasination, the senior BJP leader seems to be digging up Gandhi’s supposed “crimes” to lighten the burden on the killer’s ideological heirs. Scrutinising the politics that produced Godse is not an attack on the Hindu faith or culture. It is an act of democratic hygiene.
Madhav throws Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Congress, the British, even M A Jinnah into a pot of “circumstances” surrounding Partition. Godse looks like someone who took things “too far” in response to a tragedy that history, supposedly, created — the Partition. Dissolving Godse’s crime into “collective circumstances” only protects the network behind it. India investigated, tried, and convicted Godse, banned the RSS, and identified groups that had systematically painted Gandhi as “anti-Hindu”. In the end, Madhav tries to comfort readers: India continues, thanks to “Gandhi’s eternal presence”. Nice words, but irrelevant to the question he asked: Were Godse’s reasons justified?
When Gandhi becomes only a martyr — like Buddha and Jesus, as Madhav suggests — his assassination stops being a political act by Hindu nationalists. Instead, it turns it into a cosmic or spiritual riddle. This reverence isn’t about honouring Gandhi — it’s about avoiding the real conversation about the killer’s ideology. The narrative — Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, letters to Nehru and Patel, the Viceroy’s proposals, meetings, anguish — is framed to answer one question: Were Godse’s reasons really wrong? The exhausted reader is nudged towards a “balanced” view: Gandhi was a tragic figure, Partition was just fate. And Godse, well, maybe he was misguided, but not totally irrational. A trained ideologue of the Hindu right, who pumped bullets into Gandhi, is buried under a sentimentalism of circumstances and dilemmas.
Culture should indeed hold up a mirror. In that reflection, Gandhi’s non-violence, pluralism, and moral courage are part of what’s best about India. But the same symbols turn into a mask when they’re used to cover up actions that betray those values. Sociologist Maurice Halbwachs showed us that collective memory is actively constructed to sustain current identities and power structures. The “story” a nation tells about its martyrs and traitors is a political choice. Others have also documented how ruling groups rewrite episodes of violence by softening the role of their ideological ancestors while amplifying opponents’ faults. Seen through this lens, recent textbook changes that delete Godse’s description as a “Hindu extremist” are acts of erasure. Columns like Madhav’s are the narrative arm of the same project.
Democratic adulthood means holding two commitments together — pride in cultural inheritance and insistence on honest political accounting. Our culture is not on trial when we say Godse’s ideology, associates, and their ecosystem must bear responsibility. If the BJP truly believes in Gandhi’s “eternal presence”, it must start by accepting the full truth about those who saw him as the principal obstacle to a Hindu rashtra. A confident civilisation does not need to flirt with the logic of its greatest assassin to affirm its pride. Gandhi’s India will not be protected by ritual tributes alone. It will be protected when every attempt to sanitise Godse’s politics is called out, as an assault on truth and on the Republic’s moral memory.
The writer is chairman, media and publicity department, All India Congress Committee
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