Question

why was gandhi assassinated

Answer 1

To fathom Nathuram Godse’s patriotism and love for India, we must delve into aspects of his personal history. It is important to comprehend the psychology of a boy who was named Ramachandra Godse but who came to be known as Nathuram. Before he was born, in a small village of the Bombay-Pune belt, his parents had three sons, all of whom died in infancy. To ensure death did not claim Ramachandra as well, they brought him up as a girl, had his nose pierced, and made him wear the nose ring or nath until they had yet another son. It was because of the nose ring he wore that Ramachandra became Nathuram.

Godse may have defied the jinx of death haunting his family, but the role of girl he was made to play must have bred in him immense confusion and a complex about his sexuality. In a fascinating psychoanalysis of Godse, political psychologist Ashis Nandy in his book, At The Edge of Psychology, wrote, “Perhaps it was given in the situation that Nathuram would try to regain the lost clarity of his sexual role by becoming a model of masculinity.”

This was, as Nandy showed in his book, most likely the source from which sprang his opposition to the Gandhian ideas of pacifism and nonviolence. Unable to vanquish the ideas which Godse thought were emasculating the Hindus and turning them effeminate, he killed the man who propagated them.