The Flame Burns Yet

Like his epilogue to Nathuram Godse's Why I Assassinated Mahama Gandhi, Gopal Godse mayhave been a footnote in the infamous event of 1948. But from the time he served a sentencefor conspiring to kill Gandhi, to this day he continues to play the greater role ofkeeping alive his brother’s views. Age has done little to impede Gopal Godse’swork in the fields of literature, architecture and science. For, at 75, his pursuitscontinue to be riveted to the cause that took his eldest brother, Nathuram Godse, to thegallows.

 "One day we will recapture Sindh. ‘Sindhu’ is one of our sacredrivers, it is mentioned in every Hindu mantra, so it should be a part of Hindustan,"says he, a lone survivor among the four Godse brothers. The talk of greater India and"Sindhu" are very much a part of the Godse family parlance. Gopal Godse and hisfamily preserve Nathuram’s ashes in keeping with his wishes to have them immersed inthe Sindhu river when Pakistan becomes a part of India.

Unabashed by the deed that made the name ‘Godse’ infamous inhistory, Gopal Godse continues to focus his interests around the extreme Hindu nationalismthat his brother, a devoted lieutenant of Veer Savarkar, espoused. His publishedcollection of poetry, Jai Mrityunjay, is on Veer Savarkar. His Gandhi Hatya Ani Me(Gandhi’s Assassination and I), published in 1967, is in its 12th edition.

Gopal Godse’s interests are often directed towards unearthing aHindu past in monuments that history dates to Mughal times. His most controversial claimis that the Taj Mahal, which he calls the "temple at Agra", was actually a Shivatemple built in 1156 by a Hindu King.

Though his range of interests is wide, from Vastushastra toteaching architects and engineers and writing poetry, the core remains the same. And as inthe past, unacceptable. To Godse this smacks of the bias the authorities have consistentlyshown towards him. Says he: "The people have shown regard for my book onGandhi’s assassination. The government banned it." But like the memories of theMahatma that live on, Godse says he will do his bit to keep alive Nathuram’s legacy.