 Minutes before he faced the gallows in Ambala jail, Nathuram Godse had
his will testified by the magistrate presiding over his execution. "My ashes,"
he instructed his elder brother Dattatraya, "may be sunk in the holy Sindhu river
when she will again flow freely under the aegis of the flag of Hindustan ... It hardly
matters even if it took a couple of generations for realising my wish. Preserve the ashes
till then ..." After cremation, the ashes
of Godse and Narayan Apte were not handed over to their families. Jail officials took the
urns to a railway bridge and dropped the ashes into the Ghaggar river. Later in the
afternoon, one of them narrated the experience to a shopkeeper in the bazaar. The
shopkeeper in turn hurriedly whispered the information to Indrasen Sharma, a local Hindu
Mahasabha worker employed by The Tribune. Sharma, accompanied by two fellow Mahasabhaites,
immediately left for the spot. "The river was only six inches deep," says
Sharma, now living in retirement in Delhi, "and we managed to collect half a matka of
ashes." That matka was handed over to Om Prakash Kohal, a lecturer in a local
college, who in turn passed it on to one Dr L.V. Paranjape in Nasik. There it lay in safe
custody until it was handed over to Gopal Godse in 1965 after his release from prison. It
is now preserved, as per Godse's wishes, in a silver urn in a residential flat in Pune.
 Each November 15, since 1950,
Godse's "martyrdom day" is observed in Pune. First, the portraits of Godse and
Apte, inset in a map of akhand Hindustan are garlanded. Then, lamps -- the numbers
signifying the years since his death -- are lit and an aarti performed. Finally, the
audience takes a collective pledge to work towards fulfilling Godse's dream of a united
India. "It took the Jews 1,600 years to recover Jerusalem," says Gopal Godse,
"and each year they took the pledge -- next year, Jerusalem."
The gatherings are small -- though the number of Godse
ceremonies across India has actually grown in recent years -- but to the committed, Godse
remains the symbol of a cause. "Those of us who were young and believed in the Hindu
Mahasabha ideology did feel that Gandhi deserved to die for his anti-national
activities," says Vikram Savarkar, whose uncle Veer Savarkar was the ideological guru
of Godse and Apte. "There is a part of the samaj that realised the significance of
Nathuram's act," says Gopal Godse. "There was sympathy but people were also
afraid."
The fear was understandable. After Gandhi's death, the ire of
Congress workers was directed at the Brahmins of Pune. There was organised rioting and
Pune was under curfew for a week. Later, many were detained by the police because of their
links with the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha. "It was a difficult time," recounts
Sindhu Godse, Gopal's wife. "Our house was looted and we were teased and harassed.
That was Gandhism." Sindhu was even advised by many well-wishers to revert to her
maiden name. She refused. "I was married into the Godses. Even if I fall down, I will
remain a Godse. I proudly said I was Nathuram's sister-in-law."
"My confidence about the moral side of my action has not
been shaken even by the criticism levelled against it on all sides," Godse told the
Appeals Court confidently. That sense of righteousness has rubbed off on the Godse and
Apte families.
Champutai Apte was only 14 when she married the dashing and
chain-smoking "Nana" Apte. By 31 she was widowed, and a year later lost her only
child. Today, she lives in the attic of her father's ancestral house, her only luxury an
old alarm clock kept in a glass case. Her only reminder of her husband is an old
photograph and her mangalsutra that she continues wearing -- "He told me not to live
like a widow". Always aloof from politics, she only got to know of Apte's involvement
in the Gandhi murder after his arrest in Mumbai. Was she angry? "I was not angry. He
has given his life for the nation. I am living a proud life. What regret?"
That reassurance has come from the support of Pune's closely
knit Chitpavan Brahmin community. In the vanguard of revolutionary nationalism, the
light-eyed Chitpavan Brahmins were among the first to embrace Hindutva, an ideology they
perceived as the logical extension of the legacy of Shivaji, the Peshwas and Lokmanya
Tilak. Out of place in both the social reform movement of Mahatma Phule and the mass
politics of Mahatma Gandhi, large numbers of them looked to Savarkar, the Hindu Mahasabha
and finally, the RSS for inspiration. The Godse cult stems from this mindset and time has
only proved a partial healer.
Godse was a familiar figure in Pune in the 1940s and Apte's
father was a respected scholar involved in charitable work. They were part of the old
city's Brahmin establishment. Their role in the Mahatma's murder may have shocked the
city, but the act didn't make the Godses and Aptes social outcasts. Sindhu Godse ran a
small engineering business while Gopal was in prison and Champutai retired as a nursery
schoolteacher. "My children never suffered in school," says Sindhu. "The
teaching community was very understanding." Adds Champutai: "I too never
suffered. The community was very supportive."
That supportiveness did not stem from a belief that Gandhi
deserved to die. The murderers of India's greatest son were nurtured in an ambience where
Gandhism was equated with effeteness. These were modern India's early elites who prospered
under the Peshwas, benefited from English education, supported the early nationalists and
got lost in democracy. For this they held Gandhi responsible. |
