Who killed Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi? Or the Mahatma (Great Soul) as India's millions still call him?

That may sound a somewhat inappropriate first question to ask on the birth anniversary (October 2) of the tallest leader of India's anti-colonial freedom struggle. We must ask it, because others have just raised again questions about the martyrdom of the great man.

It is no subject really for a whodunit! The Mahatma fell to bullets fired by a fellow-Indian at the venue of a mass prayer meeting in New Delhi. The fitting end to a non-violent fighter's life came on 30 January 1948. It came within six months of India's independence that he had striven for and of the Partition of the subcontinent (into India and Pakistan) that he had striven against.

The assassin, Nathuram Godse, proudly confessed the crime. No mystery shrouded the motive either. Gandhi had enraged Godse and other Hindu-chauvinist activists by pleading for India's good relations with Pakistan, now that it had come into being. By calling upon the rulers of independent India to make the magnanimous gesture of offering a compensation of 550 million rupees to Pakistan for losses suffered during the violent Partition. By walking into riot-torn areas and bringing peace back though his mere presence or fasts-unto-death that made the rioters drop arms. By continuing to work for Hindu-Muslim unity, as he had always done.

Gandhi had enraged a political and ideological camp, one that had paved the way for the Partition by identifying the nation with the religious majority. That had undertaken minority bashing as a sacred mission. A far right camp that was to turn fascist in power or in proximity to it.

Godse's political camp was no closed secret. Until a while before the assassination, he belonged to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), misleadingly meaning National Volunteers' Association. Many see no mystery, too, about the motive behind Godse's formal exit from the RSS on the eve of the assassination, with which it had been denying any association.

It did so again recently, when Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh said in a public speech that the "greatest achievement" of the RSS was the murder of the Mahatma. The RSS sprang to self-defence at the sarcastic observation. It threatened to sue Singh for defamation. This drew from him the clarification that the atmosphere of hate, an RSS creation, led to the assassination.

No journalist in his or her right mind rushes to endorse a minister. But Singh was right in this instance. It was a fascist ideology that moved the finger that, in turn, pulled the trigger. It was fascist violence that felled a frail giant.

The ideology lives. So does the RSS, the patriarch of what India's far right calls its 'parivar' (family). They have continued to kill the Mahatma or what he stood for. The most outrageous of these assassinations took place in 2002 in Gandhi's home state of Gujarat. The RSS and its entourage, including the infamous Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), have been defending the state-aided pogrom, which claimed about 3,000 Muslim lives. The RSS even pulled up former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, ever a loyal member of the 'parivar,' for daring to suggest that the massacre might have had something to do with the far right's defeat in the last general election.

The defeated Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has now declared its resolve to return to its "roots," without the restraints imposed by office. This amounts to a warning that the Mahatma may die many a death again in the land he sought to deliver.

(Courtesy: The Asian Age)