On Sunday last week, in a nondescript building in the Indian city of Gwalior, 322km south of Delhi, a large crowd of men gathered. Most wore bright saffron hats and scarves, a color evoking Hindu nationalism, and many held strands of flowers as devotional offerings.
They were there to attend the inauguration of the Godse Gyan Shala, a memorial library and “knowledge center” dedicated to Nathuram Godse, the man who shot Mahatma Gandhi. The devotional yellow and pink flowers were laid around a black and white photograph of Godse, the centerpiece of the room.
On Jan. 30, 1948, Godse stepped out in front of Gandhi and shot him three times at point-blank range.
Photo: AFP
A fervent believer in Hindu nationalism, Godse thought Gandhi had betrayed India’s Hindus by agreeing to partition, leading to the creation of Pakistan, and by championing the rights of Muslims. In 1949, Godse was hanged for Gandhi’s murder.
In the following decades, Godse was widely decried as a terrorist and traitor, the murderer of the “father of India.”
Yet, in the past few years, as Hindu nationalism has moved from an extremist fringe to mainstream Indian politics — the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has a Hindu nationalist agenda at its core — Godse’s public reputation has steadily shifted from being condemned as traitor to being venerated as a misunderstood Indian patriot.
Meanwhile, Gandhi’s vision of a secular India with equal rights for all religions has been eroded and subjugated since the BJP came to power in 2014.
“Godse did the right thing by killing Gandhi,” said Devendra Pandey, 53, national secretary of Hindu Mahasabha, the Hindu nationalist party behind the memorial library.
He was vocal in his belief that India should be declared “a country rightfully for Hindus” and that its 200 million Muslims should move to Pakistan.
“Godse considered Gandhi as his father, so to kill him must have caused him great pain, but he had a very real reason,” he said. “Godse took action because Gandhi betrayed India — this library will teach the next generation how Godse was a true nationalist martyr.”
The library is just one of many efforts to memorialize and revere Godse’s image.
Hindu Mahasabha, to which Godse belonged and which has about 750,000 members across India, has erected several Godse statues and attempted to set up temples in his name.
The organization celebrates Godse’s birthday in May as a holy day.
In the Madhya Pradesh city of Pune, a silver vessel that supposedly contains Godse’s ashes, following his dying wish for them not to be scattered until India and Pakistan were reunited, has become a popular place of pilgrimage, while videos of sermons by extremist Hindus glorifying Godse have spread across social media.
Pandey said that the Hindu Mahasabha plans to open several similar education and memorial centers dedicated to Godse across India.
However, there is still much resistance to the glorification of Gandhi’s killer. Two days after the Godse memorial library was opened, it had to close on the orders of the local magistrate, and members of Hindu Mahasabha have been arrested for attempts to erect Godse memorials and hold ceremonies in his honor.
“This reverence of Godse and the glorification of violence is all tied to the ascendancy of the BJP,” said Audrey Truschke, assistant professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “It began emerging in the last decade and has been accelerating to the point where a greater percentage of people in India are now willing to accept this; and it is shaping, and reshaping, people’s views of Mahatma Gandhi in decidedly unhelpful ways.”
Ramachandra Guha, a historian who wrote a biography of Gandhi, said it was unsurprising that, as the BJP pushed forward its Hindu nationalist agenda, including a citizenship law seen to directly discriminate against Muslims, Godse’s legacy was being revived in India.
Godse had been a member of the RSS, the extremist Hindu nationalist cultural organization that is seen as a BJP umbrella group. Most senior figures in the BJP government, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have held positions in the RSS.
“Privately, the BJP has always disliked and mistrusted Gandhi, and there has always been some admiration for Godse among members,” Guha said. “The BJP dislike Gandhi for being effeminate, they believe his nonviolence movement made India weak, they distrust him for agreeing to partition and, above all, hate that he believed in equal rights for Muslims. The dislike runs deep, so it’s not surprising that now the BJP are so powerful, both politically and socially, that it has risen to the surface.”
Guha said that the debate around Godse “takes you to the heart of what’s happening in India today.”
“This worship of Godse is symptomatic of a really dangerous transformation in our political life, in our public life, in our institutional life and in our cultural life,” he added. “It raises the question of India’s future: Are we now the Hindu majoritarian nation that Godse always wanted?”
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS