In this picture taken on January 25, 2023, Indian author Tushar Gandhi, who is the great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, speaks during an interview at his home in Mumbai. (Photo by Sujit Jaiswal / AFP)
By Agence France Presse
Jan 30 2023
India’s rising tide of Hindu nationalism is an affront to the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, his great-grandson says, ahead of the 75th anniversary of the revered independence hero’s assassination.
Gandhi was shot dead at a multi-faith prayer meeting on January 30, 1948, by Nathuram Godse, a religious zealot angered by his victim’s conciliatory gestures to the country’s minority Muslim community.
Godse was executed the following year and remains widely reviled, but author and social activist Tushar Gandhi, one of the global peace symbol’s most prominent descendants, says his views now have a worrying resonance in India.
“That whole philosophy has now captured India and Indian hearts, the ideology of hate, the ideology of polarisation, the ideology of divisions,” he told AFP at his Mumbai home.
“For them, it’s very natural that Godse would be their iconic patriot, their idol.”
Tushar, 63, attributes this tectonic shift to the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Read full news in LiCAS.news.
