In fact, it was only last year that when Bhilare Guruji (November 26, 1919 – July 19, 2017) died, who had saved Gandhi in one of such attempts, the whole debate was once again revived. ******************************************************************************************************************************* It was a very crucial juncture in the nation’s history when independence was approaching, and Gandhi was to play an important role in the unfolding developments. The year was 1944 when Gandhi was visiting Panchagani, a hill station near Pune (May 1944), where a young crowd of 15-20 young people came in a chartered bus. They had organised a day-long protest demonstration against him, but refused to talk when Gandhi invited them – when the said attack occurred.

Anyone familiar with that period of history can decipher that all these allegations of RSS and other Hindutva Outfits against Mahatma Gandhi are malicious and factually incorrect also. In fact, the idea of communal amity which Gandhi upheld all his life was a complete anathema to the exclusivist, Hindu supremacist worldview of the members of the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha. And, while the nation was a racial/religious construct in the imagination of the Hindutva forces, for Gandhi and the rest of the nationalists, it was a territorial construct or a bounded territory comprising different communities, collectivities living there. ******************************************************************************************************************************* On closer scrutiny, one discovers that during the last 14 years of his life – which stretched from 1934 to 1948 – there were more than five unsuccessful attempts on Gandhi’s life, which makes it clear that the conspiracy to eliminate him was conceived much earlier than the ‘successful accomplishment’ thereof. The grounds advanced for such a heinous crime could be seen as clever rationalisation to hoodwink the gullible.

How did the killers of Gandhi tried [try] to rationalise their criminal act? According to them, Gandhi supported the idea of a separate state for Muslims; thus in a sense, he was responsible for the creation of Pakistan. Secondly, the belligerence of Muslims was a result of Gandhi’s policy of appeasement. Thirdly, 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.

“We plan to lay the foundation stone of a temple for Akhand Bharat Mata and Godseji on January 30. We also plan a big congregation of people where the ashes of Godse ji, currently kept in Pune, will be brought to this temple in Sitapur. We are working towards creating a Hindu Rashtra and an undivided Bharat is our dream. We will immerse his ashes only after his dream has been realised,” Hindu Mahasabha’s working president Kamlesh Tiwari told Headlines Today.

It is also a fact that the campaign to glorify Godse and demonise Gandhi has caught speed with the ascent of a right-wing government at the centre (since 2014).Remember how BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj stirred a huge controversy when he called Godse a nationalist and a patriot on the floor of the house. In October 2014, a Malayalam mouthpiece of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh had said that Nathuram Godse should have killed former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and not Gandhi. The writer was none other than a BJP leader who had contested Lok Sabha elections. Forget taking any action against this glorification of Godse, RSS tried, rather unsuccessfully, to distance itself from this article saying that it was his ‘private opinion’. We also know that moves are even afoot to build this “great patriot’s” temples all over the country. The Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, whose most prominent leader Savarkar was the main conspirator in Gandhi’s assassination (thanks to the painstaking investigation done by Jeevanlal Kapoor Commission), had made elaborate plans to establish Godse’s busts at different places in the country.

Investigations in the infamous Nanded bomb blast (April 2006), when two Hindutva activists, Himanshu Panse and Rajeev Rajkondwar, lost their lives while making bombs, had revealed to the Anti-Terrorist Squad that senior leaders of Hindutva fraternity were in touch with these bomb-makers and this fanatic duo, along with other likeminded people, used to organise events on 'Godse Martyrdom Day' regularly.

Everybody knows that Dr Pandey is not the first person from the Hindutva fraternity to call Nathuram a 'patriot'. Anyone conversant with Hindutva politics can share how formations, people close to the right wing Hindutva politics have been engaged in praising Godse surreptitiously or not so surreptitiously since decades. Fringe Hindutva groups have been formally organising programmes on November 15 – the day Godse was hanged for his crime – in Maharashtra and parts of Western India. Reports of public programmes held in Mumbai and Pune to commemorate Godse's 'legacy' have time and again appeared in the newspapers also.

The latest to join this 'Glorify Godse' club happens to be a mathematics professor from Agra, Dr Pooja Shakun Pandey, from UP's Meerut. National Secretary of Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha (ABHM), and lady judge of the self-proclaimed first 'Hindu Court' in UP's Meerut, which has supposedly been established as a 'reaction' to the news of Sharia court. Dr Pandey said that if she would have born ahead of Nathuram Godse, she would have herself killed Mahatma Gandhi with 'her own hands'. Blaming Gandhi for the 'partition of the country' and 'killings of lakhs of Hindus', she even threatened that she 'would shoot anyone' if s/he tries to be another Mahatma. For her, Godse was a 'devout patriot', and it is time that the 'wrong history taught to the students, which glorified Gandhi and demonised Godse, should be dumped and Gandhian philosophy should be banned.

Well, you can be easily prosecuted legally for spreading hate or disaffection between communities (Section 153A etc.), and can possibly languish in jail for at least two years. Those in doubt can imagine a fanatic Sikh or a radicalised Muslim saying some obnoxious thing and then how the upholders of law and order would unleash on him and his entire family. ************************************************************ It is a different matter that when it comes to someone from the Hindutva family – especially when it wants to express its fascination for Nathuram Godse, aptly called as the first terrorist of independent India – things suddenly start unfolding a bit differently, despite the fact that de jurewe are still a secular country.

Is it permissible to glorify Nathuram Godse, a convicted terrorist and the conspiracy hatched by him/her, and also claim that if opportunity had come her/his own way, s/he would have loved to execute the same act with similar valour?

“I want the Brahmins to realize that the Dravidian people today are very much hating those who cunningly cheated them with absurdities. They are now aware of the particular community making a living by spreading the foolishness. People have begun to hate god, religion, caste, mythologies (puranas) and so on.” ― Periyar E.V. Ramasamy

"While all men are born as equals, to say that Brahmins alone are the highest and all others are low as Pariah or Panchama is sheer nonsense. It is roguish to say so. It is a big hoax played on us." - Periyar

"In other lands, knowledge alone is respected and trusted and held as the basis of everything, but in this country, men believe only in rituals and ceremonies, in God, in religion and such other rubbish." - Periyar

"Foreigners are sending messages to the planets. We are sending rice and cereals to our dead fore-father through the Brahmins. Is it a wise deed?" - Periyar

"Man does not grow by merely accepting whatever others have said. However, do listen to others, but later think with the help of your reason. Accept and try to follow what appears right to you." - Periyar

"That which enslaves you to customs of the world to orthodoxy, to the rigours of religion, contrary to your rationality and awareness of truths of experience, is what I shall describe as antagonistic to self-respect." -Periyar

"I express, plainly and openly, thoughts which occur to me, and which strike me as right. This may embarrass a few; to some this may be distasteful; and a few others may even be irritated; however, all that I utter are proven truths and not lies." - Periyar

"Men’s ‘endeavour’ for the emancipation of women only perpetuates woman’s slavery and hampers their emancipation. The pretence of men that they respect women and that they strive for their freedom is only a ruse to deceive women. Have you ever seen anywhere a jackal freeing the hen and the lamp, or the cat freeing the rats, or the capitalists freeing the workers?" -Periyar

"The way man treats women is much worse than the way landlords treat servants and the high-caste treat the low-caste. These treat them so demeaningly only in situations mutually affecting them; but men treat women cruelly and as slaves, from their birth till death." -Periyar