Godse's Last Speech

A friend mailed me Godse’s last speech. I made a Google search, and sure enough, the speech was there. I have read it with great interest – an interest borne out of curiosity alone - because I tried to fathom from Godse’s address whether there was any rational basis for his hatred for Gandhi. I must confess I got nowhere.

What was the freedom and the “just interests” of some thirty crore Hindus that Godse was trying to safeguard that were not already there? From the little that I have read of India’s economic history the Hindus were clearly more prosperous and better educated than the Muslims. Where (meaning in what journal or speech) did Gandhi dub Ram, Krishna and Arjun as “guilty” of violence? Similarly, where did Gandhi condemn Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots?

I really would like to know this from an academic perspective because we need to get our history right; not just a biased view trotted out for decades, but a detached vision of what happened.

I seriously doubt if Gandhi considered himself “infallible”. Time and again he swayed from one point of view to another depending upon the circumstances and the reasons put forward by the protagonists. In fact, Gandhi himself was quick to admit that he was wrong when another better point of view was put across. One could at times call Gandhi wishy-washy, but infallible? I seriously doubt that. On the contrary, Godse established his own twisted sense of “infallibility” by doing the ultimate act of a person who thinks he can never be wrong – he simply shot the person he disagreed with.

By grudgingly admitting that “Either Congress had to
surrender its will to his and had to be content with playing second
fiddle to all his eccentricity, whimsicality, metaphysics and
primitive vision, or it had to carry on without him”, Godse acknowledges Gandhi’s towering leadership. Need one say more? And what kind of a leader is one who does not show the way? Gandhi did, and millions followed. Not many takers for Godse’s thoughts, I must add.

Godse’s diatribe against Hindustani is again as irrational as his dislike for Gandhi. Indeed, the way a language is spoken undergoes a change every few kilometres. The Tamil spoken in Madras is different from the Tamil spoken in Sri Lanka. The same with Arabic spoken in Morocco and in Dubai. The Marathi spoken is Poona is different from what is spoken in Nagpur and Bombay. And English is not the same in England, the US, Canada and Australia. Every language is influenced by a local colour. So what really is Godse’s problem with Hindustani, which is a mix of Urdu and Hindi? Urdu is a mish-mash of Persian-Arabic and Hindi. Hindi itself is far removed from its ancestor Sanskrit. So what really is Godse’s objection? That Gandhi was a communicator par excellence? Besides, do we ourselves talk any pure language today? And what would he have said to the fact that we are communicating today in English! A big question-mark on Godse’s beliefs.

Just about the only thing that I can agree with Godse is when he says that Gandhi “was the master brain guiding the civil disobedience movement; no other could know the technique of that movement. He alone knew when to begin and when to withdraw it”. Now, I cannot make out from his defence speech what Godse had against the civil disobedience movement. Did Godse and Co. have any means to wrench independence by violent means? Did he even try to secure independence, like Bhagat Singh, Bose, and the others did? Hollow beliefs, I must say. But he had the courage to rain bullets on the one person he knew would ‘turn the other cheek’ and not retaliate. Bravo, Mr. Godse! What an act of courage!

The civil disobedience movement was unique in history. It attained its objective with the minimum loss of lives and property. It was successfully implemented by Mandela and to a great extent by Martin Luther King.

Now let us look at the flip side. Other colonies attained independence too, through violence – Algeria and Viet Nam from the French, Congo from Belgium, Angola from Portugal, etc. The cost? Enormous, both in terms of lives and material. Can one give any example of any freedom fighter from these countries being accorded a welcome by cheering crowds in the colonial country PRIOR to independence? Gandhi was welcomed so in England, particularly in Liverpool – not by the few Indians residing there but by hordes of Englishmen. Was Godse envious of Gandhi’s steamrolling popularity? Maybe, maybe not. England, I believe, is India’s biggest trading partner. Wonder what Godse would have had to say about that!

It has become fashionable to run down Gandhi. Not surprising, for as an icon he towered far above the rest despite his five-foot nothing frame, and to bring down an icon gives us great satisfaction.

Mr. Khosla’s observations that an open trial would have fetched the judgment of “Not Guilty” is neither here nor there. Not Guilty of what? I simply cannot understand how Mr. Khosla says so. Godse shot Gandhi in broad daylight in a public prayer meeting, and the assassination was witnessed by the scores of people present. Above all and most important, Godse – like Pravin Mahajan in recent times - made no attempt to shirk off his act. Godse stood his ground instead of running away. He is reported to have said, “No one should think that Gandhi was killed by a madman”. Godse was not a common criminal, but a highly motivated individual who did what he did for his beliefs, parochial and skewed as they may have been. In fact, it brings the judge Mr. Khosla to disrepute for not having had the moral courage to hold Godse “Not Guilty” at the time, if he thought so.

As for Godse, he will forever enjoy the same status as John Wilkes Booth – the assassin of Abraham Lincoln – did: as a footnote in history.