Ashok Sharma has dedicated his life to defending the actions of an Indian “patriot”—not the famed freedom hero Mahatma Gandhi, but the person who killed him.
Sharma is in charge of maintaining a shrine to Nathuram Godse, who was assassinated on January 30, 1948, and is known around the world as an advocate of nonviolent resistance.
The young religious zealot, who was hanged the following year, was vilified for years as the antagonist of India’s protracted campaign to rid itself of British colonial domination.
Sharma is no longer a “lone fighter” in his devotion of the assassin, however, thanks to an alternate history produced in Hindu nationalist ideology since the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi over ten years ago.
At his temple in the thriving city of Meerut, some two hours’ drive from New Delhi, he told the AFP news agency, “I was shunned by everyone, including my family and friends, but today I command respect for being Godse’s student.”
People have realized that Godse was the true patriot and Gandhi a traitor, and there is a wind of change blowing through the nation.
After multiple failed attempts under earlier administrations that resulted in him spending time in jail and having his property seized, Sharma finally succeeded in building his unimpressive temple complex in 2015, a year after Modi took power.
In 2019, when it commemorated Gandhi’s death with a staged re-enactment of the killing using an effigy that spurted fake blood, the fury and hand-wringing over its inauguration were renewed.
Now, throngs of people visit the modest shrine, which contains tiny ceramic busts of Godse and his main accomplice, Narayan Apte. Some do so out of curiosity, but most come to pay their respects.
While singing religious speeches that accuse Gandhi of forsaking the nation despite his part in organizing the widespread rallies that led to India’s freedom, Sharma and his followers conduct daily prayers in front of the Godse idol.
They believed Gandhi failed to prevent the division of Britain’s colony into India and Pakistan, preventing it from becoming a state controlled by ancient Hindu scriptures.
Abhishek Agarwal, a member of the extreme Hindu Mahasabha organization that has been around for a century, agreed with Sharma that Gandhi and his ideology were to blame for the division of India and the requirement that Hindus submit to Muslims and outsiders.
Agarwal claimed that Godse was disparaged by secular politicians after independence in a plot to repress Hindu faiths and impose democracy, a notion he believes is in odds with local historical tradition.
“But now that Gandhi has been made public, the knowledge about Godse is getting out there. Gandhi’s name would eventually be eradicated from the holy land since the secular politicians are powerless to halt this storm, he told AFP.
Godse, the son of a postal worker, was born in a small Indian village in 1910. At a young age, he joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a prominent Hindu far-right organization whose members hold paramilitary exercises and prayer gatherings.
He shot Gandhi at point-blank range as the latter left a gathering of people of all faiths in New Delhi when he was 37 years old.
Authorities at the time momentarily outlawed the RSS, despite claims from its leaders that Godse had quit the group before the murder, but they soon changed their minds before the murderer and an accomplice were sent to death.
The RSS is still relevant today since it established the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the current government, to advance Hindu causes in politics.
Prime Minister Modi’s first position in the public eye came many years before he became the leader of India: he was an RSS cadre.
Gandhi is one of the most revered individuals of the 20th century, and Modi often shows his gratitude by paying him visits to his spiritual retreat and speaking movingly about his legacy and goals.
To the dismay of Sharma and his followers, he has stayed silent over moves by nationalist groups to restore the reputation of Gandhi’s killer.
While his government has supported the work of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a significant Hindu ideologue who acted as Godse’s guru and was prosecuted with him but acquitted as a co-conspirator in the killing, he has also never outright endorsed Godse or his ideas.
Since taking office in 2014, Modi has demonstrated his skill at directing India’s rising tide of Hindu nationalism by evoking the great past of the country’s dominant religion and making promises to remove its “persecution.”
Gandhi’s great-grandson Tushar, a novelist who lives in Mumbai, has observed his slide from the secular ideas of his forefathers with dismay.
According to Tushar, the philosophy promoted by Modi’s administration ran the potential of sowing the “seeds of our ruin,” which is why Godse was held in such high regard.
We have been too diplomatic and kind in linking it with nationalism for a long time. Fanaticism, not nationality, he claimed.
“Our hatred will eat us alive. The venom of hatred must be eliminated someplace if we are to survive.
