Actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan, whose party made its debut in the national election and Tamil Nadu assembly bypolls, said in his speech that the first extremist in independent India was a Hindu, but he forgot to mention that the first freedom fighter too was a Hindu, the one who divided this nation was also a Hindu. The emergence of the extreme right wing is a gift from the pseudo-liberal left wing, not only in India but also all over the world. Haasan was referring to Nathuram Godse who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. Nathuram Godse like intellectuals take gun in the hand when the nation is divided and riots kill many innocents. Though I do not endorse the killing of Gandhi but understand the plight of angry Indian who could not tolerate the brutality, where girls were raped, children killed and old were put to fire.
Godse a young learned, educated and very well cultured person belonged to Chittapavan Brahmin community in Maharashtra. But the situations and circumstances during the partition of India, the first ever riots in independent India might have irked him to take such drastic step. I don’t support what he did; also I am of the opinion that he would have shown equal anger against Britishers who were not only ruling us but subjected to cruelty. Anyway, time and again our politicians are digging the history to their advantage, be it Modi name calling and shaming Nehru or be it Haasan attacking Godse. None of them have guts to talk about presence. These so-called intellectuals do not know that for backing one religion they are harming the sentiments of other religion, which is against the principles of both intellectualism and secularism. They are trying to find religion in terrorism and when someone else does this they start preaching lessons on secularism and tolerance. And hypocrisy is that they claim themselves to be a secular free-minded people or nationalists.
While people belonging to a particular religion say that they are paragons of virtue and are victims of falsehood in spite of being in the forefront of terrorism world over, not one ‘secular’ individual in India has the guts to call them bluff. But these same individuals, in spite of being Hindus, have no qualms about calling people of their own religion terrorists to please the minority community. One remembers UPA leaders stating that saffron terror is the main threat for India even as Maoists and Jihadists were causing mayhem in the country. Hindus do not need outside enemies. The enemies are within.
Gandhiji supported the idea of a separate Nation for Muslims. In a sense, he was responsible for the creation of Pakistan. In spite of the Pakistani aggression in Kashmir, Gandhi fasted to compel the government of India to release an amount of Rs. 55 crores due to Pakistan. The hostility of Muslims was a result of Gandhi’s policy of appeasement. Scrutinised in the light of recorded history, these prove to be clever distortions to misguide the innocent. Gandhi in those days was very active in the coarse and tumbles of politics. The proposal for partition of the country and violent reaction against it generated tensions that ultimately resulted in separatist killings on a scale of extraordinary in human history. For the ethnic Muslims, Gandhi was a Hindu leader who opposed the creation of Pakistan on sectarian grounds.
Ethnic Hindus looked upon him as an obstruction to their plan to revenge the atrocities on Hindus. Godse was born out of such extremities. The assassination of Gandhi was a conclusion of decades of systematic brainwashing.
The influx of Hindus from Pakistan who were uprooted and who had suffered killings of relatives, abductio, and rape of women and looting of their belongings had created an explosive situation. The local Hindus who were outraged by the treatment meted out to their Hindu brethren and the anger of local Muslims against reports of similar outrages on their coreligionists in India made Delhi a veritable witches’ cauldron. This resulted in killings, molestation, torching of houses and properties. In such surroundings, Godse was nothing but the mindset that took birth to extremism. One can dismiss what he did, assassination by itself is not as wicked as the attempts to rationalise, justify masquerade it as a religious act. In Godse’s view, Gandhi was giving in to Muslim interests in ways that seemed unfair and anti-national. Gandhi’s blatant Muslim Appeasement has bothered many Indians.
Gandhi supported Khilafat Andolan that was in support to put an Islamic government in Turkey instead of secular govt, while in India Gandhi wanted a secular government. Gandhi never took any measure or even public stand to criticise Muslim League’s radical Islamic ideology in its initial days but he was always against Hindu Mahasabha and RSS for extreme right-wing ideology. He was always trying to placate Jinnah and Muslim League instead of calling spade a spade. Gandhi even agreed to give India’s control to the Muslim League when every Muslim league leader was openly rivaling with Hindus and Sikhs. After partition, Pakistan wanted a road corridor through India that will connect West Pakistan to East Pakistan. There is no doubt that some people belonging to Hindu faith have picked up a gun for crimes, but none of them have done it in the name of their faith. There are many Naxals who were born into the Hindu faith but picked up a gun for their Left ideology – the ideology of Stalin, Mao, Lenin. There are many insurgent groups in northeastern states but they have not, never have, and never will pick up the gun in the name of Ram, or Krishna, or Shiva. There are no Hindu groups banned by the UN for their terror activities.
There are organisations belonging to left ideology, white supremacy ideology, numerous of them belong to Islamist ideology; but not even a single one, which belongs to Hindu ideology, banned by UN. The simple reason is that the Hindus, which talk about killing innocent people in the name of religion or ideology, would support no organisation. We need to understand that Godse, who assisted Gandhi has not picked gun just because he was terrorist or Hindu, he was a citizen of India who disapproved riots and partition, in protest he assassinated Gandhi, which is condemned but today’s politicians are hell-bent on digging graves for their own interest.
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