Please note, I am not very deeply involved in politics. I am just referencing some part of it to make a point. Based on recent incidents related to internet censorship in India, I am not sure how Indian Courts/Government will perceive this post in near future. So before my medium of expression is taken away, I would like to put some food for thought.
I was not particularly studious in school time, but If I am right, we never had detailed history of India after freedom. We had a great freedom fight that ended on 15 Aug 1947 and then Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar had lion's share in writing our constitution, some issues about Kashmir, Hindu-Muslim Riots. And I distinctly recall the description of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination in my text book. "३० जानेवारी १९४८ रोजी नथुराम गोडसे नावाच्या एक "माथेफिरू" तरुणाने त्यांची हत्या केली" [Means - on 30 January 1948, a 'mad' guy named Nathuram Godse killed Mahatma Gandhi]. History books were merely narration of sequence of incidents. It never explained any background behind it. Probably, our teachers are supposed to explain it to us. May be he did and I never listened or he didn't. 15 years later, when I am probably more mature to understand this, I wonder why the quoted word appeared in the sentence.
माथेफिरू doesn't exactly mean mad, but I don't know the correct word for it. In Marathi context, it is a little close to psychologically challenged. Any normal student would never care to go beyond this justification. "Okay, there was a mad guy, named so and so, he killed him on so and so date , at so and so place. I will be only be asked questions about the date, place and person in exam anyway". I may even have cleared history subject with excellent score, but I highly doubt that. ;)
Few days back, I saw a bunch of tweets for Nathuram Godse. And in much positive sense. It was his 'n'th birthday. During that 15 years gap, I had heard a lot of good things about a Marathi play - "मी नथुराम गोडसे बोलतोय" (I am Nathuram Godse), but never actually got a chance to watch it. So I started googling, found a bunch of good Youtube videos. Started reading more about him. Turns out, he was never a psychologically challenged person, but had a total different philosophy towards the whole matter. He was not happy the way Gandhi agreed for partition and giving a huge amount of resources to Pakistan. In fact, he was a huge Gandhi admirer before the incident.
The whole play leaves a very deep impact in the end and probably that is the reason it was banned by Indian (Or better we call it Congress) Government. But some recorded version of it is out there on internet. Still there are people watching it, tweeting about it, thinking about it. That day, I learned a point that I missed in my academics and many such points will keep coming. Internet has given us the true freedom of speech. Without that, I would just be a Chinese Guy! So, long live free Internet !!
