Godse was raised as a girl wearing nose ring - he would never stop asserting his masculinity in later life

January 30, 2016, NewsCrunch

Nathuram Vinayak Godse shot Mahatma Gandhi in the chest three times at point blank range in New Delhi on 30 January 1948.

In the aftermath of partition, he thought Gandhi was weakening Hindus in their fight against Muslims and sought to eliminate him.

Many have tried to explain the different nuances of Godse’s assassination of Gandhi.

In his 1991 book, At The Edge of Psychology, Ashish Nandy looks into the mind of Godse, exploring possible influences he was exposed to, which prepared him to assassinate the Father of the Nation.

Writing in Scroll, Ajaz Ashraf provides a succinct summary of Nandy’s complex psychoanalysis of Godse.

Nathuram Vinayakrao Godse was born in a village near Pune and was named Ramachandra. Before he was born, his parents had three sons and a daughter. All three boys had died young, while the girl had survived.

Fearing for Godse’s life, his parents raised him as a girl, even having his nose pierced and making him wear a nose-ring. It was only after a younger brother was born, they switched to treating Godse as a boy.

But by then the nickname "Nathuram" (literally "Ram with a nose-ring") had stuck and would stay with him for a lifetime. His urge to get away from possible humiliating memories of childhood and assert his masculinity would be a recurring theme in his life.

He joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, only to quit as it was not militant enough. He would find his peers in Savarkar’s Hindu Mahasabha, whose other prominent members were also accused in Gandhi’s murder.

Godse started a newspaper, Hindu Rashtra, which opposed Gandhi alleging he was turning Hindus effeminate with pacifism and nonviolence.

In the all-out bloodletting during partition, Godse thought Gandhi was holding  back Hindus. So, he decided upon what he perhaps thought was a macho line of action – killing Mahatma in the open and facing the consequences for that.

He made no attempt to run after shooting Gandhi, himself shouted "police" and surrendered. During his trial, he asked the court not to show any mercy and hang him.

There were other strands of thought in Godse. He wanted to unify Hindus as a monolithic group, which would counter the perceived aggression of Islam and Christianity.

But Nandy’s psychoanalysis gives an important key to grasp his mind.

As Ashraf quotes Nandy: “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.”