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Gandhi murder accomplice seeks Hindu domination

PUNE: Gopal Godse, the last surviving accomplice to the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, spends his days reliving the past and dreaming of a future when India and Pakistan are reunited.

It was the last wish of his brother Nathuram, hanged in 1949 for murdering Gandhi, to have his ashes immersed in the Indus river -- now in Pakistan -- when it became part of India again.

Nathuram, a Hindu supremacist, gunned down Gandhi at a prayer meeting in Delhi five months after India won independence from British rule on August 15, 1947. And Gopal Godse, who spent 18 years in jail for his role in the murder, continues to defend his brother's vision to this day.

“When your culture is not free, you're not really independent,” says the frail 82-year-old, speaking at his house in a sleepy quarter of the town of Pune, southeast of Bombay. “Muslim culture will not allow Hindu culture to survive.”

“The future of India is based on Hindu culture,” he adds. Nathuram, Gopal, and a group of fellow Hindus plotted Gandhi's murder for allegedly “appeasing” Muslims and allowing the partition of India to create Islamic Pakistan. About 12 percent of Hindu-majority India's one billion population is Muslim, and the country is officially secular. The Godses saw Gandhi, a Hindu who preached tolerance and non-violence, as anti-Hindu.

They finally decided Gandhi had to die when he went on a fast in January 1948 which they felt was intended to pressurise the government to pay Pakistan funds due to it from India's treasury.

India was holding back the payment, part of the partition settlements, because Pakistan had invaded the province of Kashmir. It relented after Gandhi went on the fast.

The dispute over Kashmir has continued to fester for over half a century and pushed the two nuclear rivals to the brink of war in May and June this year. “That payment allowed Pakistan to purchase bullets to kill our soldiers in Kashmir... Those bullets are being used against us still,” says Godse. Thousands died in the violence that followed partition. The Godses, high-caste Brahmins, felt Gandhi was unfair to his fellow Hindus when he exhorted them not to avenge Muslim killings. “Gandhi's message to the Hindus was: get slaughtered,” says Godse.

Ashes handed down generation: In his two-room flat, surrounded by stacks of files and books he has written on the assassination, Godse speaks optimistically of a time when his brother's ashes can be immersed. Next to a picture of himself and four other conspirators -- Nathuram, Narayan Apte, who was hanged at the same time, and Vishnu Karkare and Madanlal Pahwa, who served prison terms -- is a showcase prominently displaying a silver urn. Thea urn is a replica of another one -- now shifted to the house of Gopal Godse's son -- which contains Nathuram's ashes. “Nathuram wanted his ashes immersed in the Sindu (Indus) river when it is under our flag. We will pass on the ashes from generation to generation till this happens,” he says.

There is no flicker of emotion in Godse's grey eyes as he recalls the events of the fateful 10 days in January 1948. “We tried to kill Gandhi first on January 20. One of the conspirators, Madanlal Pahwa, exploded a bomb about 150 feet from Gandhi. The idea was to create a diversion while another among us was to shoot Gandhi,” he says. “But (Digamber) Badge could not pull the trigger. He said later it was because he saw a one-eyed man just as he was preparing to shoot and took it as a bad omen.” —Reuters

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