In Kolkata, a house named after `Mahatma' Nathuram

KOLKATA: Barely 12km from Gandhi Bhawan in Beliaghata, where Mahatma Gandhi went on a fast in 1947 to stop Hindu-Muslim riots in West Bengal, stands a house named after the man who assassinated him.

Rana Pratap Roy, a former resident of Michael Nagar near Dum Dum who was a commander in the Navy and had fought against Pakistani soldiers in Rann of Kutch, believed Godse was an icon. To him, Godse, not Gandhi, was the Mahatma. He thus christened his two-storied home ‘Mahatma Nathuram Godse House’ — a name that is still etched in golden letters on a black marble plaque.

Constructed 40 years ago, this ode to Godse went unnoticed, never sparking a debate like the one now raging over the naming of a flyover in Rajasthan after Gandhi’s killer.

"It was not out of spite but out of respect for Godse that he named his house thus," says Roy’s friend, Amitabha Ghosh. "Roy was never a blind follower or a fanatic. Instead, every decision he took was based on sound logic.

For him, Godse was the one who had the courage to voice his differences with Gandhi, something that many others felt but could not speak of," he explains.

Roy’s interest in Godse was sparked by the book ‘Gandhi and Godse’ by Belgian Indologist Koenraad Elst.

"It was not that he was opposed to Gandhi’s ideologies.

But he believed that Indians’ love for Gandhi was not reciprocated by the leader," Ghosh says.

Once when he was sailing, Roy came very close to deserting his ship while it was docked at a port in Scotland.

"It was around this time that a senior official — a Goan Christian — introduced him to Vivekananda. His life changed after that," his friend says. Roy was startled by Vivekananda’s observation on Islam and that prompted him to thoroughly study the Quran and Hadis. To test his learning, he joined debates and discussions with Muslim clerics and sold more than 1,000 Qurans among nonMuslims to make them aware of the scripture.

"He was always like this.

He carried books wherever he went and sold them to people.

He felt the best way to build the nation was by spreading knowledge," says widow Malaya Roy, who has lived in ‘Mahatma Nathuram Godse House’ for four decades.

Roy came in touch with saffron leaders like Balraj Madhok, Pravin Togadia and Prafull Goradia and eventually became a mukhya pracharak of Arya Samaj and publicity secretary of Bharatiya Jana Sangh.