Skip to main content

Godse’s ghosts

 


Asharam Bhakt woke up in his dream. A figure that looked supernatural and possibly divine in spite of its resemblance to Nathuram Godse said, “Who controls the past controls the future.” The apparition vanished instantly but Asharam found himself standing in the Ambala jail where Godse was being readied for his execution. Gandhi’s killer looked scared to death. Asharam could see Godse’s knees wobbling.

Is this the man who fired bullet after bullet into the frail body of a man who was uttering God’s name? Asharam wondered. Not that he had any sympathy for Mohandas Gandhi. On the contrary, he was an admirer of Godse and his advocacy of the Brahmin superiority. And all the more his hatred of Muslims. If Godse were alive today wouldn’t he be pleased to see how India has become the kind of nation that he wanted it to be: an exterminator of Muslims and slow killer of the low castes?

No, Godse says to Asharam. The executioner is getting the gallows ready yonder.

What! Asharam cannot believe his hears.

It was all mistake, Godse says. His voice cracks. Is it fear or regret that moves Godse now? Asharam is not sure. I was wrong, Asharam hears Godse clearly. I was driven by hatred. Gandhi was driven by love. I was wrong. Wrong.

The executioner drops a black cover on Godse’s head.

Asharam trembled in his bed. Was it really Godse that he saw? Or was it the ghost of the man whom Asharam and his friends had lynched the other day for taking his cow home in the evening? A roar of bulldozers followed. The heart of Delhi was being bulldozed by some ghosts of history.

PS. Inspired by Indispire Edition 379: Mr Bhakt wakes up in a dream. Who controls the past controls the future, he is told. He starts rewriting history... #TwistInHistory

This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon.

Note: Not all of this is mere fantasy. Godse’s fear of death and the regrets in his last moments are recorded by none other than Justice Khosla who was part of the three-judge bench that heard the killer’s appeals. In Justice Khosla’s own words, Godse “repented of his deed and declared that were he to be given another chance he would spend the rest of his life in the promotion of peace and service of the country.”

Comments

  1. Hats off for today's write up ! I could feel every single word of this fictional truth. By, the time one repents his/ her actions, it is always a delay that can never compensate anything.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm sure towards the end everyone will realise the futility of hate and such vices and will also regret all their evil deeds. But as you say it'll be too late.

      Delete
  2. Hari OM
    Excellent stuff, sir!!! A well-imagined near reality. Oh if only this message were heard where needed... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I too wish if certain powerful people in the country today understood the most fundamental truths about life...

      Delete
  3. I have not read much about Godse but he sure seems to be an intriguing person, someone who managed to pull off such a huge thing. This was brilliantly written, I could imagine the entire episode

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Only intelligent people will go to the kind of extreme that Godse did. But his brain was perverse too. Perverse intellect is deadly.

      Delete
  4. Hello, Your blog contains useful content for humanity, we think it is a work that should be appreciated. You can participate in the web awards event organized by different categories among websites. In this way, you provide visitors to your web page through organic promotions about your website on the toplist, and you also strengthen your place in the channels where blogs gain effectiveness by creating your brand value with promotional evaluations and various social events. If you want to apply with your blog now, you can check the link where you can review the details and Join now.

    Mail: contact@blogaward.tk
    Join: www.webawards.tk
    Web: www.blogaward.tk

    ReplyDelete
  5. A creative piece, blending fact and fiction. Thoughts for everyone to ponder on.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Bihar Election

Satish Acharya's Cartoon on how votes were bought in Bihar My wife has been stripped of her voting rights in the revised electoral roll. She has always been a conscientious voter unlike me. I refused to vote in the last Lok Sabha election though I stood outside the polling booth for Maggie to perform what she claimed was her duty as a citizen. The irony now is that she, the dutiful citizen, has been stripped of the right, while I, the ostensible renegade gets the right that I don’t care for. Since the Booth Level Officer [BLO] was my neighbour, he went out of his way to ring up some higher officer, sitting in my house, to enquire about Maggie’s exclusion. As a result, I was given the assurance that he, the BLO, would do whatever was in his power to get my wife her voting right. More than the voting right, what really bothered me was whether the Modi government was going to strip my wife of her Indian citizenship. Anything is possible in Modi’s India: Modi hai to Mumkin hai .   ...

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...

The music of an ageing man

Having entered the latter half of my sixties, I view each day as a bonus. People much younger become obituaries these days around me. That awareness helps me to sober down in spite of the youthful rush of blood in my indignant veins. Age hasn’t withered my indignation against injustice, fraudulence, and blatant human folly, much as I would like to withdraw from the ringside and watch the pugilism from a balcony seat with mellowed amusement. But my genes rage against my will. The one who warned me in my folly-ridden youth to be wary of my (anyone’s, for that matter) destiny-shaping character was farsighted. I failed to subdue the rages of my veins. I still fail. That’s how some people are, I console myself. So, at the crossroads of my sixties, I confess to a dismal lack of emotional maturity that should rightfully belong to my age. The problem is that the sociopolitical reality around me doesn’t help anyway to soothe my nerves. On the contrary, that reality is almost entirely re...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...