Face trial, Rahul Gandhi, instead of apologising to RSS

On 10 April, 1917, Mahatma Gandhi landed in Motihari to launch an agitation on behalf of farmers of the region. Fearing unrest and protests under his leadership, the British arrested the Mahatma and produced him in front of a magistrate. In his eponymous film on Gandhi, Richard Attenborough describes what happened next: Magistrate: You have been ordered out of the province on the grounds of disturbing the peace. Gandhi (defiantly): With respect, I refuse to go. (The magistrate stares. The journalists write. The clerk swallows.) Magistrate (sternly): Do you want to go to jail? Gandhi (not giving him an inch): As you wish. (The clerk lowers his eyes to his pad. The magistrate searches the distant wall, the top of his desk and his twitching hands, for an answer.) Magistrate (as much sternness as he can muster): All right. I will release you on bail of one hundred rupees until I reach a sentence. Gandhi: I refuse to pay one hundred rupees. (Again the magistrate stares. And so do the journalists. The magistrate wets his lips.) Magistrate: Then I – I will grant release without bail – until I reach a decision. I have narrated this incident for the benefit of Rahul Gandhi in the aftermath of a Supreme Court directive to him to either apologise or face trial for his remarks on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. [caption id=“attachment_2732222” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. PTI[/caption] If Rahul has an iota of Gandhi in him, if he has imbibed even a trace of the Mahatma’s ideals or courage, the trait of being defiant in the face of adversity, he should learn from the Motihari episode. Instead of apologising and backing down, he should face the consequences of his words and actions. The court has asked Rahul to face trial or apologise for his alleged reference to the RSS in connection with the Mahatma’s assassination. At a rally in Thane during the 2014 election campaign, Rahul had reportedly said: “RSS people killed Gandhiji and today their people (BJP) talk of him…They opposed Sardar Patel and Gandhiji.” Apart from proving his own integrity, intelligence, leadership and courage, this is a court-sent opportunity for Rahul to discuss a subject that has been mired in controversy, rumours, canards and propaganda: The Sangh’s role (or its absence) in Gandhi’s assassination. Let facts come out and the debate begin. Eight persons faced trial for Gandhi’s assassination on 30 January, 1948. They were: Nathuram and Gopal Godse, Narayan Apte, Madanlal Pahwa, Vinayak Damodardas Savarkar, Vishnu Karkare, Dattatraya Parchure and a servant of Digambar Badge, a co-conspirator who turned a witness for the state. Except for Savarkar, all of them were convicted and sentenced. (Parchure’s conviction was later reversed.) Nathuram Godse, a rigid, celibate, drifter who had started out as a follower of Gandhi, was the man who pulled the trigger of the Beretta M 1934 that was used to kill Gandhi. He was sentenced to death. Apte, the man who accompanied Godse to the gallows, was fond of the good life, whiskey and, as Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre write in Freedom At Midnight, most of the other pleasures life offered. “For years he (Apte) had taught mathematics at an American mission high school in Ahmedabad. His real interest there had been introducing his female students to the erotic massage of the Kama Sutra rather than the principles of Algebra,” write Collins and Lapierre. Badge, the state witness, was accused of crimes ranging from murder to robbery. He was arrested 37 times before being charged for Gandhi’s murder. On 20 January, 1948, Pahwa exploded a bomb close to Gandhi during his morning prayer. His accomplices, Gopal Godse and Karkare, fled after the failed bid on the Mahatma’s life. Pahwa was caught and grilled by cops. But the enquiry progressed at such a slow rate that it allowed the other assassins to mount another successful bid on Gandhi’s life just a few days later. All this, including the fact that Godse was Savarkar’s devoted disciple, is well established. It is also undisputed that Godse and his co-conspirators were members of the Hindu Mahasabha and proponents of Hindutva. The question is: Did RSS have a role in the plot? Were Gandhi’s assassins its members? Though the RSS was banned by the BJP’s current poster boy and the then home minister Vallabhbhai Patel, after Gandhi’s assassination no clinching evidence was found to link the assassins to the organisation. The Jeevanlal Commission that probed Gandhi’s murder noted that the “RSS and militant Hindu Mahasabha leaders” created “conditions… conducive to strong anti-Gandhi activities including a kind of encouragement to those who thought that Mahatma Gandhi’s removal will bring about a millennium of Hindu Raj.” But it acquitted the RSS of charges of direct involvement. In a piece titled RSS and Godse for the Frontline, AG Noorani says Gandhi’s secretary Pyarelal was convinced of the Sangh’s role in the conspiracy. “…members of the RSS at some places had been instructed beforehand to tune in their radio sets on the fateful Friday for the ‘good news’, and sweets were distributed by the members at many places,” Noorani quotes the secretary. Then there was the quote attributed to Gopal Godse: “All the brothers were in the RSS. Nathuram, Dattatreya, myself and Govind. You can say we grew up in the RSS rather than in our home. It was like a family to us. Nathuram had become a baudhik karyavah [intellectual worker] in the RSS." At the launch of his book, Godse was quoted saying he had never left the RSS but the organisation disowned them because its leaders were scared after Gandhi’s assassination. The RSS maintains that Godse had left the organisation in 1933 and had in fact starting despising the organisation. All this shows that Rahul is not the first Indian to have linked the RSS to Gandhi’s assassination. Several attempts have been made in the past to connect the organisation to the conspirators and murderers. The RSS has challenged all these versions, calling them lies and malicious propaganda. Is it right to cast aspersions on an entire organisation just because of the acts of certain individuals? This questions can be debated later. But, there needs to be some clarity on the ideological and political roots of the men who killed Gandhi.