(MENAFN- Kashmir Observer) In India, there has been an overwhelming debate on patriotism over the years. Since the BJP has come to power, the idea of terming Nathuram Godse as a patriot has become mainstream. Certain sections of the NDA have started manipulating history in an attempt to glorify Nathuram Godse.
Now who is nathuram godse?
A right wing Hindu extremist and Independent India's first terrorist who killed Gandhi.
Pragya Thakur, a terror accused, contesting from bhopal under the BJP ticket, termed Godse as a patriot.
A terror accused is glorifying the first terrorist of India, by this one can easily infer the morphology and methodology of politics that's taking place in India what sort of largest democratic election it is?
Rahul Gandhi is continously asked to tender an apology whenever his aide makes some awkward statement, but here none of media houss is running hot over Pragya ji's absurd remark, they should equilantly ask Narendra Modi or Amit Shah to tender apology for the same. This somehow justifies the fear and hoodwink approach of media fraternity.
This is not the first time a BJP contestant has made such a disguised remark, earlier during the five years of The BJP regime, there have been multiple such attempts to magnify the patriotic valour of Nathuram Godse by putting up imperfect arguments.
The affection of the Hindu Mahasabha Madhya Pradesh for Mahatma Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse is well-known. Six months after setting up a Godse temple in Gwalior, the right-wing group celebrated his birth anniversary on 19 May in Bhopal.
The Godse worshippers gathered under a railway overbridge called Veer Savarkar Setu in the state capital with a garlanded picture of Gandhi's murderer and were distributing sherbet (sweetened drink) to the people passing by.
It is also a fact that this 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 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.
"it's very disturbing for Indias integrity that such insane attempts to reclaim the pseudo Patriotism, and to establish a terrorist, calling him a patriot.
Why such disguised remarks, and what lead Nathuram Godse to assassin Mahatma ghandi?
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.
Anyone familiar with that period of history can decipher that all these allegations are malicious and factually incorrect. 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.
I don't know where India is heading, but these erroneous statements to demonise Mahatma ghandi and to rectify Nathuram Godse and his idea of patriotism, and soft approach of the ruling regime, which amounts to their endorsement of such attempts, clearly unnerves the new idea of India which is far away from what Mahatma Ghandi and Mr Nehru dreamt of.
T K Nandanan
Kochi
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