Has Godse defeated Gandhi?

NATHURAM Godse killed Gandhiji at a prayer meeting in Delhi on Jan 30, 1948, and was hanged for the crime, which he told the court was an act of high patriotism. At another level, Godse has defeated Gandhi again and again, notably in Delhi in 1984, in Ayodhya in 1992, in Gujarat in 2002, and injuriously in Delhi in 2014. Other battles - in Nellie, Muzaffarnagar, Kandhamal, HaAAshimpura, the list never ends - also saw Gandhi being assassinated repeatedly. But Gandhi is also invincible, and keeps coming back to continue the fight despite being defeated or being killed. Asghar Wajahat wrote a play 10 years ago in which Gandhi survives Godse's bullets and lives to defeat him finally, through dialogue.

In the play Godse@Gandhi.Com, Gandhi recovers from his bullet injuries and Godse goes to jail. Gandhi becomes a fighter against terrible atrocities that helpless people continue to face in independent India. For this, he is sentenced to prison, and he opts to be lodged in the same cell as Godse. Their dialogue makes up the essence of Wajahat's play. It was adapted recently as a movie.

The director, Rajkumar Santoshi wrote the screenplay with Wajahat and called it Gandhi-Godse: Ek Yudh, which translates as a battle between Godse and Gandhi. The battle was one of ideas, of course. The actors were all unfamiliar faces though some were seasoned stage veterans. Chinmay Mandlekar made a powerful Godse, which would make Pathan or Tiger characters look like robots. Mandlekar went to the National School of Drama, the institution where seasoned actors like Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah received their training. It shows. Mandlekar's lines are sharp and rooted in driven nationalism. Godse's strong character is possibly what some of Wajahat's intellectual friends disapproved of. The movie has striven to move away from the tradition of labelling villains and heroes in black and white, something Hollywood war films would do with German soldiers. Then, Steven Spielberg made a hero of a Soviet spy in Bridge of Spies, not ignoring the reality that human beings can be flawed.

That apart, the dialogues given to Deepak Antani playing a superlative Gandhi are winners, each one of them. His diminutive form makes a perfect foil for the muscular Godse. For example, in the prison cell, Godse has drawn a map of his idea of Akhand Bharat, Hindutva's undivided India. The Hindu rashtra stretches from Afghanistan to Myanmar via Tibet. While Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and...