I came across this sometime back. Read it, it makes you think...


Nathuram Godse's self-prepared defense in the court



Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu
religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely
proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free
thinking unfettered by any superstitious allegiance to any isms, political
or religious. That is why I worked actively for the eradication of
untouchability and the caste system based on birth alone. I openly joined
anti-caste movements and maintained that all Hindus were of equal status as
to rights, social and religious and should be considered high or low on merit
alone and not through the accident of birth in a particular caste or
profession. I used publicly to take part in organized anti-caste dinners
in which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars
and Bhangis participated. We broke the caste rules and dined in the
company of each other.

I have read the speeches and writings of Dadabhai Naoroji, Vivekanand,
Gokhale, Tilak, along with the books of ancient and modern history of
India and some prominent countries like England, France, America and'
Russia. Moreover I studied the tenets of Socialism and Marxism. But above
all I studied very closely whatever Veer Savarkar and Gandhiji had written
and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more to
the moulding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last
thirty years or so, than any other single factor has done.

All this reading and thinking led me to believe it was my first duty to
serve Hindudom and Hindus both as a patriot and as a world citizen.
To secure the freedom and to safeguard the just interests of some thirty
crores (300 million) of Hindus would automatically constitute the freedom
and the well-being of all India, one fifth of human race. This conviction
led me naturally to devote myself to the Hindu Sanghtanist ideology
and programme, which alone, I came to believe, could win and preserve
the national independence of Hindustan, my Motherland, and enable her to
render true service to humanity as well.

Since the year 1920, that is, after the demise of Lokamanya Tilak,
Gandhiji's influence in the Congress first increased and then became
supreme. His activities for public awakening were phenomenal in their
intensity and were reinforced by the slogan of truth and non-violence
which he paraded ostentatiously before the country. No sensible or
enlightened person could object to those slogans. In fact there is nothing
new or original in them. They are implicit in every constitutional
public movement. But it is nothing but a mere dream if you imagine
that the bulk of mankind is, or can ever become, capable of scrupulous
adherence to these lofty principles in its normal life from day to day.
In fact, hunour, duty and love of one's own kith and kin and country might
often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never
conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would
consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to
overpower such an enemy by use of force. [In the Ramayana] Rama killed
Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita. [In the Mahabharata],
Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight
and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the
revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor.
It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty
of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of
human action.

In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati
Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny
in India. It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill
an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life.
In condemning history's towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and
Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his
self-conceit. He was, paradoxical as it may appear, a violent pacifist
who brought untold calamities on the country in the name of truth and
non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain
enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen for ever for the freedom
they brought to them.

The accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating in his last
pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence
of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately. Gandhi had done very
good in South Africa to uphold the rights and well-being of the Indian
community there. But when he finally returned to India he developed a
subjective mentality under which he alone was to be the final judge of
what was right or wrong. If the country wanted his leadership, it had to
accept his infallibility; if it did not, he would stand aloof from the
Congress and carry on his own way. Against such an attitude there can be
no halfway house. Either Congress had to surrender its will to his and had
to be content with playing second fiddle to all his eccentricity,
whimsicality, metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on
without him. He alone was the Judge of everyone and every thing; he was
the master brain guiding the civil disobedience movement; no other
could know the technique of that movement. He alone knew when to begin
and when to withdraw it. The movement might succeed or fail, it might
bring untold disaster and political reverses but that could make no
difference to the Mahatma's infallibility. 'A Satyagrahi can never fail'
was his formula for declaring his own infallibility and nobody except
himself knew what a Satyagrahi is.

Thus, the Mahatma became the judge and jury in his own cause. These
childish insanities and obstinacies, coupled with a most severe austerity
of life, ceaseless work and lofty character made Gandhi formidable and
irresistible. Many people thought that his politics were irrational
but they had either to withdraw from the Congress or place their
intelligence at his feet to do with as he liked. In a position of such
absolute irresponsibility Gandhi was guilty of blunder after blunder,
failure after failure, disaster after disaster.

Gandhi's pro-Muslim policy is blatantly in his perverse attitude on
the question of the national language of India. It is quite obvious
that Hindi has the most prior claim to be accepted as the premier
language. In the beginning of his career in India, Gandhi gave a great
impetus to Hindi but as he found that the Muslims did not like it, he
became a champion of what is called Hindustani. Everybody in India
knows that there is no language called Hindustani; it has no grammar; it
has no vocabulary. It is a mere dialect, it is spoken, but not written.
It is a bastard tongue and cross-breed between Hindi and Urdu, and
not even the Mahatma's sophistry could make it popular. But in his
desire to please the Muslims he insisted that Hindustani alone should be
the national language of India. His blind followers, of course,
supported him and the so-called hybrid language began to be used.
The charm and purity of the Hindi language was to be prostituted to
please the Muslims. All his experiments were at the expense of the
Hindus.

From August 1946 onwards the private armies of the Muslim League began
a massacre of the Hindus. The then Viceroy, Lord Wavell, though
distressed at what was happening, would not use his powers under the
Government of India Act of 1935 to prevent the rape, murder and arson.
The Hindu blood began to flow from Bengal to Karachi with some
retaliation by the Hindus. The Interim Government formed in September
was sabotaged by its Muslim League members right from its inception,
but the more they became disloyal and treasonable to the government of
which they were a part, the greater was Gandhi's infatuation for them.
Lord Wavell had to resign as he could not bring about a settlement and
he was succeeded by Lord Mountbatten. King Log was followed by King
Stork.

The Congress which had boasted of its nationalism and socialism
secretly accepted Pakistan literally at the point of the bayonet and
abjectly surrendered to Jinnah. India was vivisected and one-third of
the Indian territory became foreign land to us from August 15, 1947.
Lord Mountbatten came to be described in Congress circles as the greatest
Viceroy and Governor-General this country ever had. The official date
for handing over power was fixed for June 30, 1948, but
Mountbatten with his ruthless surgery gave us a gift of vivisected
India ten months in advance. This is what Gandhi had achieved after
thirty years of undisputed dictatorship and this is what Congress party
calls 'freedom' and 'peaceful transfer of power'. The Hindu-Muslim
unity bubble was finally burst and a theocratic state was established
with the consent of Nehru and his crowd and they have called 'freedom
won by them with sacrifice' - whose sacrifice? When top leaders of
Congress, with the consent of Gandhi, divided and tore the country -
which we consider a deity of worship - my mind was filled with direful
anger.

One of the conditions imposed by Gandhi for his breaking of the fast
unto death related to the mosques in Delhi occupied by the Hindu
refugees. But when Hindus in Pakistan were subjected to violent attacks
he did not so much as utter a single word to protest and censure the
Pakistan Government or the Muslims concerned. Gandhi was shrewd enough
to know that while undertaking a fast unto death, had he imposed for
its break some condition on the Muslims in Pakistan, there would have
been found hardly any Muslims who could have shown some grief if the
fast had ended in his death. It was for this reason that he purposely
avoided imposing any condition on the Muslims. He was fully aware of
from the experience that Jinnah was not at all perturbed or influenced
by his fast and the Muslim League hardly attached any value to the
inner voice of Gandhi.

Gandhi is being referred to as the Father of the Nation. But if that
is so, he had failed his paternal duty inasmuch as he has acted very
treacherously to the nation by his consenting to the partitioning of it.
I stoutly maintain that Gandhi has failed in his duty. He has proved
to be the Father of Pakistan. His inner-voice, his spiritual power and
his doctrine of non-violence of which so much is made of, all crumbled
before Jinnah's iron will and proved to be powerless.

Briefly speaking, I thought to myself and foresaw I shall be totally
ruined, and the only thing I could expect from the people would be
nothing but hatred and that I shall have lost all my honour, even more
valuable than my life, if I were to kill Gandhiji. But at the same time
I felt that the Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would surely
be proved practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful with
armed forces. No doubt, my own future would be totally ruined, but the
nation would be saved from the inroads of Pakistan. People may even
call me and dub me as devoid of any sense or foolish, but the nation
would be free to follow the course founded on the reason which I consider
to be necessary for sound nation-building. After having fully considered
the question, I took the final decision in the matter, but I did not
speak about it to anyone whatsoever. I took courage in both my hands
and I did fire the shots at Gandhiji on 30th January 1948, on the
prayer-grounds of Birla House.

I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action
had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus.
There was no legal machinery by which such an offender could be
brought to book and for this reason I fired those fatal shots.

I bear no ill will towards anyone individually but I do say that I had
no respect for the present government owing to their policy which was
unfairly favourable towards the Muslims. But at the same time I could
clearly see that the policy was entirely due to the presence of Gandhi.
I have to say with great regret that Prime Minister Nehru quite forgets
that his preachings and deeds are at times at variances with each other
when he talks about India as a secular state in season and out of
season, because it is significant to note that Nehru has played a
leading role in the establishment of the theocratic state of Pakistan,
and his job was made easier by Gandhi's persistent policy of
appeasement towards the Muslims.

I now stand before the court to accept the full share of my responsibility
for what I have done and the judge would, of course, pass against me
such orders of sentence as may be considered proper. But I would like
to add that I do not desire any mercy to be shown to me, nor do I wish
that anyone else should beg for mercy on my behalf. My confidence about
the moral side of my action has not been shaken even by the criticism
levelled against it on all sides. I have no doubt that honest writers of
history will weigh my act and find the true value thereof some day
in future.