Meerut
\nHindu fundamentalist Ashok Sharma has devoted his life to championing the deeds of an Indian \u201cpatriot\u201d: not revered independence hero Mahatma Gandhi, but the man who shot him dead.
\nSharma is the custodian of a temple dedicated to Nathuram Godse, who 75 years ago this Monday on January 30, 1948, gunned down a figure celebrated the world over as an apostle of non-violent struggle.
\nFor generations, the young religious zealot — hanged the following year — was roundly despised as the archvillain of India\u2019s long struggle to free itself from British colonial rule.
\nBut since the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi nearly a decade ago, an alternate history forged in Hindu nationalist ideology has left Sharma no longer a \u201clone warrior\u201d in worshipping the assassin.
\n\u201cI was ostracised by everyone, including my family and friends… but today I command respect for being Godse\u2019s disciple,\u201d he told AFP at his shrine in the bustling city of Meerut, a couple of hours from New Delhi by car.
\n\u201cThere is a wind of change in the country and people have understood that Godse was the real patriot and Gandhi a traitor.\u201d
\nSharma established his unremarkable temple complex in 2015, a year after Modi took office, after several unsuccessful attempts under previous governments that saw him briefly jailed and his property seized.
\nIts inauguration was met with outrage and hand-wringing in the press, renewed in 2019 when it marked the anniversary of Gandhi\u2019s death with a staged re-enactment of the killing using an effigy that spurted fake blood.
\nNow the humble shrine, featuring small ceramic busts of Godse and his chief accomplice Narayan Apte, is visited by droves of people — some out of curiosity, but most to pay their respects.
\n\u2018Cannot stop this storm\u2019
\nSharma and his followers hold daily prayers in front of the Godse idol, chanting religious sermons that accuse Gandhi of betraying the nation despite his role in mobilising the mass protests that brought India\u2019s independence.
\nIn their view, Gandhi failed to stop Britain\u2019s colony from being partitioned into the separate nations of India and Pakistan, thwarting it from becoming a state governed by ancient Hindu scriptures.
\n\u201cIt is because of Gandhi and his ideology that India was divided and Hindus had to bow before Muslims and outsiders,\u201d said Abhishek Agarwal, like Sharma a member of the century-old radical Hindu Mahasabha group.
\nAgarwal said that Godse was denigrated by post-independence secular politicians in a conspiracy to suppress Hindu beliefs and impose democracy, a concept he claims is alien to local historical tradition.
\n\u201cBut now Gandhi is exposed and Godse\u2019s word is spreading far and wide. The secular leaders cannot stop this storm and there will be a time when Gandhi\u2019s name will be wiped out from the pious land,\u201d he told AFP.
\nPatriot or traitor?
\nGodse was born in a small Indian village in 1910, the son of a postal worker, and at a very young age joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a still-prominent Hindu revivalist outfit whose members conduct paramilitary drills and prayer meetings.
\nHe was 37 years old when he shot Gandhi at point-blank range as the latter emerged from a multi-faith prayer meeting in New Delhi.
\nAt the time, authorities briefly banned the RSS — despite its leaders claiming that Godse left the organisation before the crime — but reversed course not long before the killer was executed alongside an accomplice.
\nToday, the RSS has continued relevance as the ideological fountainhead of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which it founded to champion Hindu causes in the political realm.
\nDecades before he became India\u2019s leader, Prime Minister Modi\u2019s first role in public life was as an RSS cadre.
\n\u2018Our hate will devour us\u2019
\nModi has regularly paid respect to Gandhi as one of the 20th century\u2019s most venerated figures, visiting his spiritual retreat and speaking movingly about his ideals and legacy.
\nHe has refrained from weighing in on efforts by nationalist activists to rehabilitate the legacy of Gandhi\u2019s assassin — to the disappointment of Sharma and his acolytes.
\nBut he has also never explicitly denounced Godse or his ideology, and his government has championed the work of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, an important Hindu ideologue who served as Godse\u2019s mentor and was tried alongside him but acquitted as a co-conspirator in the assassination.
\nModi has proved adept at channelling India\u2019s growing tide of Hindu nationalism after coming to power in 2014, invoking the glorious past of India\u2019s majority religion and promising to end its \u201cpersecution\u201d.
\nHis departure from the secular values of his predecessors has been watched with dismay by Gandhi\u2019s great-grandson Tushar, an author living in Mumbai.
\nTushar told AFP that Godse\u2019s veneration was the direct result of an ideology espoused by Modi\u2019s government that risked sowing the \u201cseeds of our destruction\u201d.
\n\u201cFor too long we\u2019ve been too diplomatic and a bit generous in equating it as nationalism. It\u2019s not nationalism, it is fanaticism,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cOur hate will devour us. If we have to survive, then somewhere the venom of hate will have to be expunged.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Meerut Hindu fundamentalist Ashok Sharma has devoted his life to championing the deeds of an Indian \u201cpatriot\u201d: not revered independence hero Mahatma Gandhi, but the man who shot him dead. Sharma is the custodian of a temple dedicated to Nathuram Godse, who 75 years ago this Monday on January 30, 1948, gunned down a figure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310781,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-310762","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n