Can Rahul Gandhi prove Godse is ‘RSS people’?

Today, it's hard to prove RSS was responsible for Mahatma Gandhi's assassination. Ironically, that was taken as a given in 1948

WrittenBy:Deepanjana Pal
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Almost 70 years after Nathuram Godse was sentenced to death for assassinating Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, an old problem has resurfaced. Godse pulled the trigger, yes, but who is really responsible for Gandhi’s murder?

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Back in 1948, during the trial, Godse had said that he had acted independently. “After having fully considered the question, I took the final decision in the matter, but I did not speak about it to anyone,” he stated in court. The problem is, no one quite believed him.

The prevailing belief at the time was that Savarkar had guided Godse’s hand, but both men claimed they were merely passing acquaintances. Savarkar was acquitted because the court decided there just wasn’t enough corroborated evidence to connect him to Godse and the plot to kill Gandhi. Today, thanks to the discovery of letters that were exchanged between Godse and Savarkar as well as the accounts of one of Savarkar’s guards, we know the men were understating how well they knew each other. (Not only was Godse a regular visitor to Savarkar’s home just before he killed Gandhi, the Hindu Mahasabha leader had previously donated Rs 15,000 to Godse’s newspaper Angrani.) There’s enough evidence that Godse visited Savarkar on January 27, 1948, and had Savarkar’s blessings.

What will have to be proven in 2016 is something that was almost taken for granted in 1948 — Godse’s connection to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

In 2014, at a Congress rally in Bhiwandi, Maharashtra, Rahul Gandhi said, “RSS people killed Gandhiji, and today their people talk of him…”. A complaint was filed by the secretary of a local RSS unit, claiming criminal defamation of RSS by Rahul. Yesterday, the case reached the Supreme Court bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Rohinton F Nariman, who rapped Rahul on his knuckles. “Why did you make a sweeping statement against the RSS, painting everyone associated with the organisation in the same brush?” asked the bench. “Why he [Rahul Gandhi] made a speech quoting wrong historical fact?” Later, the bench said, “To say Godse killed Gandhi is one thing, but to say RSS killed Gandhi is different…you cannot make collective denunciation.”

The Congress has said that it will prove the connection between Godse and the RSS to the Supreme Court.

Back in 1948, this contention was not one that required proof. It was well known that Godse had long been a member of the RSS, having joined a shakha as a teenager, and that this lay at the root of him pulling out a gun and shooting Gandhi, point blank, was but obvious. Although RSS has strenuously distanced itself from Godse ever since January 30, 1948, few believed their stand. In his memoirs, Pyarelal Nayyar wrote that in some places, RSS members were told to tune in to the radio to hear ‘good news’ at night before Gandhi was killed. Afterwards, when Gandhi’s death had been confirmed, sweets were distributed by RSS members, Nayyar alleged. Soon after Gandhi was killed, RSS was banned. “A communiqué issued from the Ministry of Home Affairs says that the cult of violence sponsored and inspired by the Sangh claimed many victims — the latest and most precious to fall was Mahatma Gandhi himself,” wrote one newspaper, dated February 4, 1948.

RSS has never denied Godse was a member — since Godse declared this in court, it would be difficult to — but what it points out is that Godse also ‘left’ RSS and officially joined the Hindu Mahasabha in 1944. Godse supposedly found the RSS too moderate and joined Hindu Mahasabha, becoming a “shishya” of Savarkar. However, as we can see in his letters to Savarkar, Godse had been closely in touch with the Hindu Mahasabha before 1944 too. Also, his affection and loyalty to RSS could stand shoulder to shoulder with his ambitions for Hindu Mahasabha. In a letter dated July 10, 1938, Godse told Savarkar that RSS was “the only organisation in Maharashtra as well as in all of Hindustan that is capable of uniting all Hindus.” In another (dated February 28, 1938), Godse wrote,

“Sir, your goal is the achievement of the Hindu Rashtra. There are 50, 000 disciplined RSS cadres who carry the same aspiration in their hearts. These swayam sevaks are spread from Punjab to Karnataka. What they lack is your leadership and guidance and are waiting for it.” 

What comes through in these letters is Godse’s vision of a unified Hindu Mahasabha and RSS, working together for the Hindutva cause. Godse’s brother, Gopal, told Frontline in an interview published in January 1994 that the claims of leaving RSS were fiction. “He said it because [Madhav Sadashiv] Golwalkar and the RSS were in a lot of trouble after the murder of Gandhi. But he did not leave the RSS,” Gopal had insisted.

The way RSS washed its hands off Godse and insisted that it should not be considered an ally or an extension of the Hindu Mahasabha has riled the Hindutva brigade for decades. As recently as 2015, when RSS’s MG Vaidya gave a press statement saying Godse was not a hero but a murderer, the vice-president of Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha said this:

“The RSS is the biggest traitor that has betrayed not only the country but also the Hindus … after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, RSS leaders severed all ties with the Hindu Mahasabha and joined hands with Nehru and tried to distance themselves from Gandhi’s killing. These are the real traitors who abandoned the Hindu Mahasabha when it was being persecuted for killing Gandhi.”

In the same Frontline interview quoted above, Gopal — who spent 18 years in jail after being found guilty of conspiring with this brother to kill Gandhi — said that all four brothers were RSS members.  “You can say we grew up in RSS rather than in our home. It was like a family to us,” he told Frontline. The interviewer (Arvind Rajagopal) asked Gopal how he felt about LK Advani saying Godse had nothing to do with RSS. Gopal replied bluntly described it as an act of “cowardice”. “You can say that RSS did not pass a resolution saying that ‘go and assassinate Gandhi’. But you do not disown him,” he’d said.

And therein lies the rub for Rahul Gandhi’s counsel. To prove the statement that Rahul made in Bhiwandi is factually correct, his lawyers will have to not only prove Godse was an RSS man, but also provide evidence that RSS was involved in the plot to kill Gandhi. The latter won’t be easy, especially since existing evidence suggests Savarkar was the mastermind and he wasn’t on particularly cordial terms with his contemporaries in RSS. Neither will it be straightforward to prove that Rahul accusing RSS of killing Gandhi meets “the test of public good”, which is one of the requirements posed by the Supreme Court to Gandhi’s lawyers.

Will this case be a redux of the 1948 trial and offer new insights and information about Godse’s assassination of Gandhi? Or will it help to define the far more contemporary issue of how we define defamation, which is a criminal offence and is punishable with two years in jail and a monetary penalty? Whichever route Rahul’s counsel opts for, this case is likely to hold up a mirror to our present-day anxieties. And hell, it may even force Team Rahul to crack open a history textbook or two.

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