A Tryst With Villainy -- Gopal Godse

Villainy is often perceived in black and white, sans shades of grey. And the relationship between the antagonist and protagonist is almost always linear, with them at the two ends of a spectrum of good and bad. It becomes all the more dramatic when it came to legendary real-life “baddies”.

India’s mythology and national history are strewn with such supposedly diabolical characters – individuals, groups and even ideas. Ravana, Duryodhana, Taimur, Mohammed of Ghazni, Aurangzeb, the British, General Dyer, colonialism, reservation… the list is indeed long.

Dyed in such narrative wool that I was by my post graduate days (2002-04), it was with a great sense of awe that I set out to meet Gopal Godse, then the only living symbolic and real villain of the legend of Mahatma Gandhi.

After days of tracking him, I found the 86-year old younger brother of Nathuram Godse – Gandhi’s assassin – in a frugal apartment in the old quarters of Pune. He was surrounded mostly by books and a handful of loyal friends and relatives. While most in the milling crowd outside his home would hardly recall the historic figure, Godse was, however, a revered personality for some.

Dwarfed forever by his elder brother’s deed, Gopal’s own failed attempt at killing Gandhi got relegated to the footnotes of the yellowing pages of history books. Not that the man himself cared. The ultimate mission was, after all, brutally accomplished. And he was one of the infamous five convicted for the conspiracy.

As the frail old man began talking to me slowly, deliberately, spiritedly, about his ideas, he oozed conviction, however skewed. And he took off on a note that baffled.

“We all had great respect for the man (Gandhi). That is why my brother made it a point to touch Gandhi's feet before shooting him,” Godse told me, his failing eyes as steady as ever.

“What we were against were his stand on Pakistan and his appeasement of Muslims as a community. We decided he had to go if Hindus had to be saved. We did away with somebody who was not just satisfied with the creation of Pakistan; he wanted to see Pakistan progress too. He was in fact the father of Pakistan,” the cold reasoning went on, with the kind of control and confidence one would expect of him on the topic.

But if the passion was unmistakable, so was the warmth once we were off topic. Offering me refreshments, accompanied by delicious crumbs of history, Godse was impeccable in his usage of idioms and symbolism that reeked of Hindu nationalist/supremacist moorings. His dogged usage of the samskrit name “Arbasthan” for Arabia and “Sindhudesh” for Sindh said a lot about the man.

A 28-year-old storekeeper at the Indian Army barracks in Pune at the time of the January 30, 1948 assassination, Gopal Godse faced government apathy and social boycott even after his release from 16 years of jail.

But for the concern for bystanders’ lives, which stopped him from throwing a grenade at Gandhi, Gopal would perhaps have been the better known Godse brother today. Indeed, he and his fellow conspirators did detonate explosives on January 20, 1948, near Birla House where the 78-year-old Gandhi then stayed.

“We then fled the scene and I returned by train to Pune. I met my brother again in Bombay a few days later and then returned to my duties,” he recalled, speaking in impeccable English.
Nathuram then proceeded towards New Delhi for his date with destiny.

“I heard nothing more from my brother until the radio announcement of the assassination. I instantly knew I too would be hounded. I was released only after (Jawaharlal) Nehru died in 1964. If he were alive I would still have been in jail,” he said.

Godse gave me two books he had published with utmost difficulty: “Why I Assassinated Gandhi” and “May It Please Your Honour” – both based on Nathuram’s deposition in court. For all his standing in history, one couldn’t help pity the man when he said, “I am sorry I am in no position to give you these books for free. This is my only source of income.”

Till the very end, he believed Pakistan and India would one day merge into “Akhand Bharat”. His faith may sound ridiculous. But faith it was. Faith as represented by the silver urn on a pedestal that carried his brother's ash. According to Nathuram's wishes, the ash is to be thrown into the waters of the Sindhu (Indus) flowing through “Akhand Bharat”.

He rubbished the biggest fallacy about the historic killing -- that Gandhi’s last words were “Hey Ram”.

“Gandhi didn’t have the time. They were point blank shots at a 78-year-old man just recovering from a recent bout of severe fasting. Forget saying anything, he wouldn’t have had time to even think. It (the ‘Hey Ram’ twist) was a Congress gimmick to win the sentiments of Hindus,” he explained.

And just when I thought, Gopal Godse was getting into his elements, he left me stumped again with his simple but ironic message to the current crop of Gandhi-bashers: “If you have to hate Gandhi, you must understand him first. For that you should have lived in those times.”

Godse, who claimed to have been an ardent Gandhi follower before he got proselytised, said: “People who denigrate Gandhi today do not know what it is to live in turbulent times.”

I returned, all the more mystified by history. But my notions of good and bad had certainly taken a thorough beating by then.