Why I Killed Gandhi  by Nathuram Godse

Gandhi was assassinated in 1948.  In most movies, the assassin is portrayed as a deranged bearded scary-looking fanatic. (In one, Horst Buchholz played the role.  His character was closer to the real assassin).  Some of those words might well be justified, but we are never told that the assassin was an exceptionally well educated, well-read reformer, someone who hated the caste system and looked forward to a modern India.  His name was Nathuram Godse.  He was tried for Gandhi’s murder and hanged.  He knew from the beginning that he would be executed for his action, but he did it anyway.  He saw himself as a patriot for his people.

During the year or so that he was waiting for his trial, he wrote a lengthy statement discussing his life and his philosophy and his reasons for what he did.  During his trial, he was allowed to read a shortened version of that longer text.  This is the text I am going to read for you during this podcast.

I hope you will forgive my bad pronunciation of some of these Indian names.  They are new to me, and all I can do is pronounce them in a phonetic way, phonetic as I understand them.  Below are a few of the names and terms but there were others – for example intellectuals and political leaders – that I did not include.  I suspect if we read their writings we would understand much more than we understand now, but that will have to wait for another time.

My students considered this a shocking document.  It was not shocking because this person killed Gandhi – we knew that --  but because it was logical.

Some of you know from another podcast, my Rules of Good Studenting.  In a class where we deal with political movements and ideologies that may offend, two of the most shocking Rules are these:

“Until you can understand an argument well enough to explain it to the satisfaction of someone who holds that view, and defend it from its critics, you do not understand it well enough to know if you agree or disagree. “  Well, that excludes maybe 90 % of the people who get into arguments.  But my students found it liberating, that they were allowed to understand arguments that offended and terrified them.

A second Rule is this one:  “If you were there, you would be there.”  Or as I put it to my students, every single thing we will encounter in this class, no matter how shocking or offensive, you would quite possibly do if you were in the condition of the person who did it and had experienced all the things that person had experienced.   Again, that is distressing.  You would kill and even participate in a massacre?   Yes, you would.  And if you think you would not you are not thinking deeply enough.

I recommend you listen to that podcast:  The Rules of Good Studenting.   Don’t expect to like it.

My students considered this one of the most disturbing things we read during the whole semester, that the person who assassinated the saintly Gandhi  was a thoughtful intellectual who made sense (even if we disagree with him).

Some terms

Hindutva --  Hindu nationalist ideology.  Linked to the BJP party of Prime Minister Modi.

Mahatma (term of respect for Gandhi)

Moghul Empire (Muslim conquerors of India)

Satyagraha:  Gandhi’s philosophy of active, non-violent resistance

Hindi and Hindustani   A “real” language and a bastard language created to mollify Muslims

Mohammed Ali Jinnah – founder of Pakistan

Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India