Rahul for once forces  BJP, RSS on the defensive

A Belgian admirer of India's saffron brotherhood, Koenraad Elst, said in his book, "Mahatma Gandhi and His Assassin," that the murder caused a huge setback to the Hindu nationalists. Sundar Singh Bhandari, a pracharak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), who was the Governor of Gujarat at the time of the 2002 riots, said that the "propaganda related to Gandhi's assassination went on for 50 years. In the same way, people will continue to talk of Godhra," which is a "black stain on the BJP."

That the "propaganda" is continuing can be seen from Rahul Gandhi's reference all over again to the role of the RSS in the Mahatma's killing, undeterred by the Supreme Court's call for an apology. Notwithstanding the flip-flop evident in his initial observation that he blamed only those associated with the RSS for the death and not the organisation itself, and his subsequent statement that he stood by his earlier direct condemnation of the RSS, there is little doubt that the battle lines have been drawn between the not-so-young prince and the Nagpur patriarchs.

Gandhi has even taken his confrontation with the RSS a step further by withdrawing his petition to the Supreme Court seeking the quashing of the defamation proceedings against him filed by the RSS and asserted that he is ready to face trial. There is little doubt that, as the admirers of the RSS like Elst and Bhandari have acknowledged, the assassination has been haunting the parivar ever since Nathuram Godse fired the shots on January 30, 1948.

Nor is Godse persona non grata for the saffron camp for his crime. While the Shiv Sena's Bal Thackeray once said that Godse's statues will replace those of Gandhi, Rajendra Singh or Rajju Bhaiya, who was the RSS sarsanghchalak between 1993 and 2000, said that Godse's "intention was good but he used the wrong methods."

It is this adulatory view of the assassin which was recently expressed by the BJP MP, Sakshi Maharaj, when he described Godse as a patriot. He was quickly silenced by his party, which has now donned a moderate mask. But the revelation of the parivar's high regard for the Mahatma's killer only outed a "secret" which is generally known.

It is also the BJP's weak point. Not surprisingly, the fact of the assassination and the name of the killer were omitted from a "history" book being written in 2002 during the phase of saffronisation of education under the then Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi. The writer, Hari Om, purportedly a professor, explained that the constraints of space and time and the font size led to the omissions which were like writing the life of Christ without mentioning the crucifixion.

Inadvertently or otherwise, Gandhi has hit a sore point of the Hindutva brigade, whose political potential can prove to be useful for the Congress and the BJP's other opponents. It will also be wrong to assume that the BJP's political clout will be visibly diminished if the taint of the assassination darkens the image of the RSS since, to many, it is an old and familiar story.

From this standpoint, the trial will be more of shadow-boxing than a substantive exercise. However, the political fallout may see the BJP and the RSS to be more on the defensive, especially if the parivar's hotheads in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal use the occasion to praise Godse and excoriate Gandhi.