Essay About Accumulating Provocation And Hindu History

Naturam Godse
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Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu
religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely
proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free
thinking unfettered by any superstitious allegiance to any isms, political
or religious. That is why I worked actively for the eradication of
untouchability and the caste system based on birth alone. I openly joined
anti-caste movements and maintained that all Hindus were of equal status as
to rights, social and religious and should be considered high or low on merit
alone and not through the accident of birth in a particular caste or
profession. I used publicly to take part in organized anti-caste dinners
in which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars
and Bhangis participated. We broke the caste rules and dined in the
company of each other.
I have read the speeches and writings of Dadabhai Naoroji, Vivekanand,
Gokhale, Tilak, along with the books of ancient and modern history of
India and some prominent countries like England, France, America and
Russia. Moreover I studied the tenets of Socialism and Marxism. But above
all I studied very closely whatever Veer Savarkar and Gandhiji had written
and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more to
the moulding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last
thirty years or so, than any other single factor has done.
All this reading and thinking led me to believe it was my first duty to
serve Hindudom and Hindus both as a patriot and as a world citizen.
To secure the freedom and to safeguard the just interests of some thirty
crores (300 million) of Hindus would automatically constitute the freedom
and the well-being of all India, one fifth of human race. This conviction
led me naturally to devote myself to the Hindu Sanghtanist ideology
and programme, which alone, I came to believe, could win and preserve
the national independence of Hindustan, my Motherland, and enable her to
render true service to humanity as well.
Since the year 1920, that is, after the demise of Lokamanya Tilak,
Gandhijis influence in the Congress first increased and then became
supreme. His activities for public awakening were phenomenal in their
intensity and were reinforced by the slogan of truth and non-violence
which he paraded ostentatiously before the country. No sensible or
enlightened person could object to those slogans. In fact there is nothing
new or original in them. They are implicit in every constitutional
public movement. But it is nothing but a mere dream if you imagine
that the bulk of mankind is, or can ever become, capable of scrupulous
adherence to these lofty principles in its normal life from day to day.
In fact, hunour, duty and love of ones own kith and kin and country might
often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never
conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would
consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to
overpower such an enemy by use of force. [In the Ramayana] Rama killed
Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita. [In the Mahabharata],
Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight
and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the
revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor.
It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty
of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of
human action.
In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati
Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny
in India. It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill
an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life.
In condemning historys towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and
Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his
self-conceit. He was, paradoxical as it may appear, a violent pacifist
who brought untold calamities on the country in the name of truth and
non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain
enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen for ever for the freedom
they brought to them.
The accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating in his last
pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence