'In the interest of the nation'
Conspirator in Gandhi assassination unrepentant a half-century later

Story by Rukmini Callimachi

Pune, MAHARASHTRA - From a tiny walk-up apartment, stuffed with mementos from his role in India's most notorious assassination, Gopal Godse has kept alive the flame of Hindu extremism.

Gopal Godse still has a following among a small fraction of hardline Hindus.

"You are talking with Gopal Godse," he says softly but firmly, as soon as the microphone is placed before him. "I happen to be the brother of Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Gandhi."

The 83-year-old man's hands tremble as he serves his guests tea. His demeanor belies the fact that his brother was hanged and that he himself spent 17 years in prison for the 1948 assassination of Mohandas Gandhi, India's prophet of nonviolence.

Godse was spared execution because, even though he tried to assassinate Gandhi, he froze and was unable to pull the trigger. Today, he is the last of the six conspirators still living.

"I do not regret it in the least," Godse said. "I might regret it if I had gone to steal Gandhi's pocket watch. That would be a most disgraceful act. What we did was in the interest of the nation."

Gandhi had to die because he betrayed Hindus by backing the creation of Pakistan, Godse said. The last straw came when Gandhi threatened a hunger strike in 1947 to force the Indian government to pay Pakistan a 550 million rupee debt.

Godse set off from Pune by train, carrying two grenades, two guns and a homemade detonator. He met up with the five others in New Delhi on Jan. 19, 1948.

Half a century later, Godse still is embarrassed at his own failure. He was supposed to shoot Gandhi, but it proved difficult to reach him. The window ledge where Gandhi was leading a prayer meeting was too high.

In the end, he lost his nerve. Godse fled back to Pune, about 130 miles south of Bombay, without ever speaking to the other five.

He was at home on Jan. 30 when he and the rest of India heard Gandhi had been killed in New Delhi on his way to evening prayers.

Nathuram Godse had approached Gandhi, his hands folded as if in prayer, hiding a pistol.

"That was for whatever good Gandhi had done for the nation," said Gopal Godse. His brother bent down to touch the Mahatma's feet, then fired.

Gopal and Nathuram were reunited in the New Delhi jail.

In a glass case in his living room, Godse keeps a ceremonial urn ‹ a replica of the one that holds his brother's ashes. Nathuram's real ashes are in a vault ‹ he asked that they be immersed in the Sindh River, which now courses through Pakistan, when Pakistan is returned to Indian control, and "the two broken halves of India are reunited."

In the half century that followed, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ‹ which the Godse brothers belonged to when they were younger and which was banned by India for 18 months after the shooting ‹ worked hard to reinvent itself. In 1998 the group claimed Gandhi as a patron saint.

Gandhi's grandson, Arun Gandhi, is having none of it.

Arun Gandhi, who now lives in Memphis, Tenn. where he runs the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, says simply: "These are the same people who killed my grandfather. They have the same ideology. They just refined it. It was the RSS who handed out sweets after he died ‹ how can they deny it now?"

One of the quiet inspirations behind the resurgence of extreme Hindu nationalism has been Godse, who still has the blood-splattered shirt his brother wore. Every year on the anniversary of his brother's execution, the faithful gather in Pune to pray before the shirt.

Gopal Godse's light blue eyes are ringed with a halo of cataracts. He pushes a plate of biscuits forward and says sweetly, "If America takes it upon itself to wipe out Islam, it will save humanity also."