Nathuram Godse, the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, was a deshbhakt (patriot), the BJP’s Pragya Thakur said on Thursday creating another controversy. Pragya Thakur, who had been banned from campaigning earlier for her hate comments, had earlier found herself in the middle of a row after her comments against the former chief of Mumbai’s anti-terrorism squad Hemant Karkare and the Babri Masjid.
“Nathuram Godse was a patriot, is a patriot and will remain a patriot. People calling him a terrorist should look within. Such people will be given a befitting reply in these elections,” Pragya Thakur said.
She was asked for her response to Makkal Needhi Maiam chief Kamal Haasan’s recent speech where he had described Godse as ‘India’s first extremist’.
Nathuram Godse, a right-wing activist, had assassinated Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948. Eight men were convicted in the murder trial inside Red Fort by a special court, constituted by an order of the central government. Godse and co-conspirator Narayan Apte were hanged for the murder of the ‘Father of the Nation’ on November 15, 1949.
Pragya Thakur was last month named the BJP candidate from Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal in a surprise choice against the Congress’s former chief minister Digvijaya Singh. Pragya Thakur is facing trial in the 2008 Malegaon blast case where six people died and at least 100 were injured.
Her nomination was seen by the Congress as an effort to polarise the national elections but the choice was strongly defended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has on more than one occasion, pitched the decision as a “befitting reply to individuals who linked a whole religion and culture to terror”.