Godse indeed was a nationalist!

Sakshi Maharaj is right, Godse was not an anti-national!

Chaddiwala MP Sakshi Maharaj may not have realized the profundity of the partial truth in his statement. This is what PTI quotes Maharaj as saying: “He (Godse) may have done something by mistake but was no anti-national.”

Even accounting for the continuing attempts to rehabilitate Godse – and with him, chadditva itself – among mainstream Indians, Maharaj’s stand that Godse was no anti-national is an undeniable truth. Godse was a nationalist.

In fact, that was the problem; that he was a nationalist. Like all nationalists – including Godse’s ideological progeny who run this country today -- his sense of identity was etched in black and white. There was no place in it for “the other”.

Nationalism disallows or refuses to recognize shades of grey, fringe areas and multiple identities. You got to pick and choose and stick to one no matter what your persuasion or attitudinal intensity is towards that chosen identity.

Ironically, Godse, brought up as a girl by his parents, grappled with a deep identity crisis himself. And he thought Gandhi’s philosophy would render India effete. That’s some kind of projection, an amateur psychoanalyst would assume.

So, while for public consumption feku sings paeans to Gandhi, giving his busts a fresh coat of saffron paint, feku’s merry men continue overtly and covertly to crusade against an allegedly “effete” Bharat mata born out of Gandhi’s worldview.

Bhakts -- including the neoconverts -- either don't understand this or they pretend not to.