JANUARY 30, 1998; Pg. A03

India's Surging Hindu Nationalism Buoys Enemy of Gandhi

He Sought Peace with Muslims. Fifty Years ago, he was Murdered for that Conviction.

By Shankar Vedantam

PUNE, India: The Hindu fanatic who helped kill Mohandas K. Gandhi 50 years ago today looks out his apartment window now and is pleased: Increasingly, India is seeing things his way.

On Jan. 30, 1948, Gopal Godse's brother, Nathuram, shot Gandhi at a prayer meeting in New Delhi for championing the cause of the Muslims of India and Pakistan. Today, the streets of New Delhi - and much of India - are convulsed by a wave of resurgent Hindu nationalism. The political wing of the organization that claimed the allegiance of the Godse brothers may even sweep to power in general elections scheduled in two weeks.

Tushar Arun Gandhi, the Mahatma's great-grandson who lives in Bombay, says simply of the people who might soon rule India: "I consider them the killers of my great-grandfather."

Yet, paradoxically, Mohandas Gandhi is revered with an adoration that religion-obsessed India usually reserves for its gods. Virtually every political party claims to be inspired by the nonviolent prophet who presided over India's struggle to freedom from British rule in 1947.

On Oct. 2, the 128th anniversary of Gandhi's birth, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, popularly dubbed the RSS - the Hindu nationalist group to which the assassin belonged - publicly claimed Gandhi as one of its patron saints. The RSS is ostensibly apolitical.

"It was the RSS who distributed sweets when the assassination was announced," said Tushar Gandhi. "How can they distance themselves from the killing now?"

The political wing of the RSS is the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP. Already the single largest party in India's British-style parliamentary system, the BJP hopes to capture an absolute majority in the elections by taking advantage of the disarray among the center-left parties that have ruled the world's largest democracy since 1947.

"It is the same brotherhood," Tushar Gandhi said of the two organizations. "They have the volatile Hindu segment, the louts who go beat up people. Then they have the impotent part of the RSS, which is the BJP, which is the pleasant face, because the rabid face is not acceptable."

The leaders of the RSS and the BJP have always distanced themselves from the Gandhi assassination, or at least have been noncommittal. The RSS chief, Rajendra Singh, recently said that assassin Nathuram Godse's intentions were good; it was just his methods that were flawed.

At his trial, Godse insisted that he had acted under orders from no one.

But the agendas of the Godse brothers and the RSS-BJP combine sound similar. And both are defined by an obsessive desire to paint India, a secular nation officially, as a Hindu state under siege from within and without. The foe? Islam.

The spectacular political gains of the RSS-BJP movement over the last 12 years are largely due to its advocacy of the destruction of a mosque in northern India. Many Hindus believe that the mosque was built at the site of the birthplace of their god Ram. A temple at the site, in the town of Ayodhya, was razed by conquering hordes of Muslim invaders from Afghanistan.

That was in the 16th century.

Now, the saffron-attired ranks of the party faithful want "justice." In 1992, a mob of supporters stormed security around the mosque and demolished it. Hindu-Muslim riots broke out all over India. India's population is about 80 percent Hindu and more than 10 percent Muslim.

In the second-floor apartment of this city that has long been a breeding ground for violent Hindu nationalism, Gopal Godse cheered the attack. He is impatient for more. Already, he has published a book saying that the Qutub Minar, an ancient tower in New Delhi that was built by the invading Mughals - and a prime tourist attraction today - is built on Hindu ground.

"Who is a Hindu?" he asked rhetorically during an interview at his home. "The quarrel with the Muslims has proved it: Anyone who receives a Muslim dagger in the stomach is a Hindu."

On Jan. 20, 1948, 10 days before his brother shot Gandhi at point-blank range, Gopal Godse and a small group of Hindus botched an attempt to kill Gandhi with bombs and grenades.

Godse returned to Pune, where he says he heard the news of the assassination over the radio on the evening of Jan. 30. The police immediately arrested him.

"We had accomplished our aim. We had to be prepared for the consequences," Godse said in the interview. He said he felt no fear. "When you have reached this feeling that, even if 10 people are to be hanged this man should not live, you get mentally prepared."

At his 1948 trial, Nathuram Godse insisted on conducting his own defense, and he used the opportunity to deliver a harangue on Hindu nationalism. Gandhi, he said, had not prevented the partition of India and the creation of Muslim Pakistan. He had chosen to protect only the Muslims during the bloody riots that followed partition, Godse claimed.

Gopal Godse has now made a book of his brother's courtroom speech, which he sells under the title May It Please Your Honor.

"I had not done anything for which I should repent," he said of the conspiracy to kill Gandhi. "If I had wanted to steal Gandhi's watch and I was caught, I would want to commit suicide. It would be shameful. We had not done anything of that sort."

Nathuram Godse was executed for his crime in November 1949. Gopal Godse was sentenced to life in prison, and was released in 1965, after serving the typical length of a "life sentence" in India. Today, he describes his jailers as "bankrupt of humanity."

He sat unrepentant in his living room in this city 150 miles east of Bombay. He wore a cream-colored shirt and loose pajamas. On the wall behind him hung a picture frame showing the six faces of his fellow conspirators: the hexagonal ring of the assassins' conspiracy.

Godse is suave and articulate. He spoke of murder with the patient manner of a schoolteacher explaining a point to a slow student. There is something birdlike about his features: His nose thrusts boldly from his face and his eyes are remote, somehow detached.

On his mantelpiece is a replica of the urn that carries his brother's ashes, now in safekeeping at another house in the city. Contrary to Hindu custom, which requires that ashes be immersed in a river, they have been preserved in order to honor the last wish of Nathuram Godse.

Ever since he was released from prison, Gopal Godse has gathered the faithful together on Nov. 15, the day his brother was executed. There were 150 people at the ceremony last year. They are the visible tip of the group of Indians who believe Nathuram Godse was a martyr, and that his murder of Gandhi was an act of supreme sacrifice.

Together, the band swears to honor the killer's last wish: "May my ashes be immersed into the river Indus when she flows under the shadow of our flag."

The river Indus today flows through Pakistan.

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