Seventy-seven years ago, on January 30, 1948, three bullets struck down Mahatma Gandhi at a prayer meeting in Birla House. The gunman, Nathuram Godse, was a Chitpavan Brahmin from Pune. It was however no simple act of homicide. It was the Brahminical ideology that sought to exterminate Gandhi’s plural, inclusive vision of India as an obstacle to a project of Hindu supremacy and a nostalgic yearning for a restored Peshwai order.The assassin did not act in isolation. He was backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Hindu Mahasabha, and blessed by V. D. Savarkar the father of Hindutva. After the assassination, the RSS sought to distance itself from Godse. But historians like D.N. Jha demolished that claim. In his memoir, Godse’s brother Gopal Godse himself confessed that all the Godse brothers had been associated with the RSS at the time of the murder.Public anger followed reports that RSS members had celebrated the murder by distributing sweets in parts of Maharashtra provoked public attacks on Brahmin houses at many places. .Ideological dispositionThe historical disposition of Brahminical ideology has been to secure and preserve supremacy over the religio-social and cultural order, rather than to exercise political power directly. Within the varna hierarchy, rulers who wielded temporal authority were placed below Brahmins, their legitimacy dependent on rituals, codes, and moral sanction controlled by them. This deeply entrenched hierarchy shaped Brahminical attitudes towards political power, particularly when external forces entered the subcontinent. As a social group, Brahmins were rarely opposed to being ruled by outsiders; instead, they tended to accommodate and even support the dominant power, provided it guaranteed the preservation of their social hegemony.There is no sustained historical instance of Brahmins as a community organising resistance to an external ruling power merely on the grounds of foreignness. Even under Muslim rule – so relentlessly vilified in contemporary Hindutva discourse – Brahmin elites adapted, served as advisers, administrators, and intellectual intermediaries, and secured their privileged position within the social order. This pattern repeated itself under British rule.The only moment of collective Brahminical rage was provoked not by colonial domination per se, but by the defeat of the Peshwai in Pune – the singular historical instance of direct Brahmin political sovereignty. The subsequent rebellions, including participation in the events of 1857 (later romanticised by Savarkar as the “First War of Independence”), were driven less by a universal anti-colonial vision than by the desire to restore lost Brahmin rule. Even here, the acceptance of Bahadur Shah Zafar’s nominal leadership illustrates a familiar strategic flexibility: political alliances were negotiable, so long as the deeper structure of social dominance could ultimately be reclaimed.Birth of Hindu consolidationIn Indian history, most external groups that entered the subcontinent eventually settled, assimilated, and made India their home. The British – and other Europeans – were different. They arrived as merchant capitalists, captured political power to secure commercial interests, and never intended permanent cultural integration. This distinction mattered. For Brahminical elites, the real historical disruption had come earlier from large-scale conversions of marginalised castes to Islam, which weakened their demographic and cultural monopoly. Islamic civilisation posed a sustained challenge to their authority, creating a deep, if often tacit, resentment toward Muslim rule.When the British defeated the Muslim powers, they were naturally happy. The British, unlike earlier rulers, were expected eventually to depart. By the mid-nineteenth century, it became clear that preparations had to begin for reclaiming political authority by exterminating Muslims as the competitors.This shift is traceable to eastern Bengal, where Brahminical elites felt threatened by Muslim numerical strength and by colonial policies that empowered Muslim peasantry. Religion was increasingly mobilised to consolidate Hindu identity against the “Muslim other.”The intellectual fountainhead of this turn was Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838–1894). In his later novels – Anandamath, Devi Chaudhurani, and Sitaram – Bankim articulated a vision that cast Muslim rule as civilisational darkness and imagined Hindu regeneration through militant unity. Anandamath (1882) depicted Hindu ascetics rising violently against Muslim authority and introduced Vande Mataram, equating the nation with Hindu goddess imagery, implicitly excluding Muslims and Christians from the imagined community.Bankim’s project was clearly anti-Muslim. British rule was portrayed as a one that had ended Muslim dominance and thus as benefactor. Thinkers such as Ahmed Sofa later observed that Bankim was among the first to articulate the dream of a Hindu Rashtra. Organisationally, this vision was seeded through movements like the Hindu Mela of 1867, led by figures such as Debendranath Tagore, Nabagopal Mitra, and Rajnarayan Basu. These gatherings, often described as “national,” were explicitly Hindu in character, defining Indian identity through religious symbolism and excluding Muslims from the cultural imagination. The ideological seed had been sown.The birth and shaping of the RSSReform currents within Hindu society arose along two tracks: Western-educated reformers seeking modernisation, and orthodox revivalists seeking a return to scriptural “originals.” The most influential of the latter was the Arya Samaj, founded by Dayanand Saraswati, a Gujarati whose movement found its strongest base in Punjab. After his death in 1883, its followers decided to establish Hindu Sabhas, culminating in the foundation of Punjab Hindu Sabha on December 16, 1906 under leaders such as Lal Chand, U.N. Mukerji, and Lala Lajpat Rai.This consolidation of Hindu organisational politics was mirrored among Muslims. On December 30, 1906, Muslim elites gathered in Dhaka to found the All-India Muslim League under figures including Khwaja Salimullah, Aga Khan III, and Hakim Ajmal Khan, to articulate Muslim socio-economic and political concerns. While the Muslim League evolved into a political counterweight to the Congress – widely seen as the majority organisation – the Hindu Mahasabha made little headway beyond a largely upper-caste constituency.In the interwar years, the rise of fascism in Italy under Benito Mussolini impressed sections of India’s right wing. Marathi journals associated with Bal Gangadhar Tilak praised European nationalist icons such as Giuseppe Mazzini. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and his brother Ganesh had earlier founded Abhinav Bharat, inspired by Mazzini’s Young Italy. Though Savarkar once influenced revolutionary circles in England, his incarceration in the Cellular Jail marked a turn: he submitted mercy petitions to the British and later articulated Hindutva as a political doctrine for Hindu consolidation.B.S. Moonje, a Savarkar associate and mentor to K.B. Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS drew organisational lessons from Mussolini’s youth brigades and shaped RSS as a secretive militant organisation. The RSS, from its inception, kept itself aloof from the anti-colonial struggle.Myths and falsehoodsThe Hindutva movement is deliberately founded on the myths and falsehoods. It follows the Goebbelsian dictum that “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.,” The propaganda machine assumes bigger importance in this than the truth. The RSS followed this dictum in its tenacious spread.At his trial, Nathuram Godse read a 92 page hand-written statement justifying killing of Gandhi. Each reason he cited rested on a selective or false reading of events.Partition of India: Godse blamed Gandhi for “vivisecting” the nation. In fact, Gandhi opposed Partition to the end and held no executive authority; the decision emerged from negotiations among the British, the Congress leadership, and the Muslim League amid spiralling communal violence.“Muslim appeasement”: He claimed Gandhi “privileged Muslims over Hindus”, citing Gandhi’s fasts and support for Hindustani. Those fasts in Calcutta and Delhi sought to stop retaliatory killings and restore civic peace for all citizens, while Hindustani was proposed as a bridge language in a deeply divided society.Release of Rs 55 crores to Pakistan: Godse treated this as Gandhi’s betrayal. The transfer was a Cabinet decision honouring financial commitments made at Independence; Gandhi’s fast pressed for communal peace in Delhi, not for overriding state policy.Non-violence (ahimsa): Godse argued that Gandhi’s creed weakened Hindus. Gandhi’s non-violence was a mass political strategy against colonial rule and communal hatred, not a denial of a state’s right to maintain order or defend citizens.Undue influence on government: Godse portrayed Gandhi’s moral authority and fasts as coercion outside democracy. Gandhi held no office; his interventions were appeals to conscience in moments of breakdown, not instruments of state power.Long before January 30, 1948, Gandhi had faced a string of threats and failed attempts by Hindu extremists. A bomb was hurled at his motorcade in Pune on June 25, 1934 during his Harijan tour against untouchability; in May and September 1944 at Panchgani and Sevagram, Nathuram Godse himself was stopped while trying to attack Gandhi with a dagger and released when Gandhi refused to press charges. In June 1946, boulders placed on a rail track near Nerul – Karjat derailed the train carrying him; a bomb planted at a Bombay venue in September 1946 exploded prematurely; and on January 20, 1948 a grenade was thrown at Birla House to create confusion for an assassination attempt that failed.This record predates both Partition and the Pakistan payment controversy, undercutting claims that these were the motive. The earliest attack was clearly against Gandhi’s anti-untouchability campaign after the Poona Pact, suggesting their Opposition to Gandhi’s social reform agenda and hatred for the Dalits. Rather, the Hindutva hostility toward Muslims, Christians, and Communists – articulated by M. S. Golwalkar – can also be read as reflecting a deeper hatred for the lower strata of Hindu society, whch formed the bulk of these targeted groups.Gandhi might seem an odd target for a Hindu assassin. He proclaimed himself a sanatani Hindu, invoked Ram Rajya, drew on bhajans and epics, and for much of his life accepted varna and even caste as moral ideas. What Godse and the Hindutva camp opposed was not Gandhi’s religiosity but the political use he made of it; his vision of inclusivity. Using Hindu idiom to argue for coexistence and caste reform, he undercut the project of Hindu consolidation.It was antithetical to Godse’s worldview: Gandhi blocked the idea of India as a Hindu nation, humanised Muslims amid communal fury, and redefined Hindu virtue away from revenge and dominance. He was dangerous not because he was insufficiently Hindu, but because his moral politics hollowed out the case for Hindu majoritarianism.The attitude returns: From Gandhi to GauriAlthough moral censure curbed its open expression, Hindutva ideology did not disappear; it receded and endured. Its subdued existence is reflected in the permission for Godse to read out his long justification for his crime though Justice Khosla was inclined to bar it as irrelevant. Over decades, this current moved from the margins toward state power, culminating in 2014 with a former RSS pracharak becoming the prime minister.In the run-up to the 2014 elections, a high-octane campaign backed by the RSS was launched against the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) II government on patently false alibi but it succeeded. The defeat of the Congress at the polls appeared certain. From 2013 onward, a grim pattern re-emerged: public intellectuals marked, tracked, and shot at close range for what they wrote and said. Narendra Dabholkar was killed in Pune on August 20, 2013. His work against superstition and for scientific temper made him a target. Govind Pansare was shot outside his home on February 16, 2015 after challenging sectarian readings of history and organising workers. M. M. Kalburgi was murdered at his doorstep in Dharwad on August 30, 2015 for his critique of blind faith and Brahminical practices. Gauri Lankesh was gunned down in Bengaluru on September 5, 2017 for her relentless journalism against hate politics. As the investigations revealed they were planned and executed by Hindutva outfits – Sanatan Sanstha and the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti.These killings reflected the same animus that once marked Gandhi as an obstacle, now marking rationalists, scholars, and journalists who stand in the way of a Hindu Rashtra vision.Godse’s DeificationAfter 2014, Nathuram Godse – long confined to the margins of public memory – began to surface in ways that would have been unthinkable in earlier decades. The shift did not come through official endorsement, but through a loosening of taboos in parts of the public sphere: fringe groups openly praising him, attempts to install his busts, small shrines dedicated in his name, and social media campaigns recasting him as a “patriot” rather than an assassin. What had earlier been whispered in closed circles started appearing in rallies, local commemorations, and online networks.Elected representatives from the ruling ecosystem occasionally made statements praising Godse or calling him a nationalist, triggering controversy but also revealing how far the moral boundary had moved. Each episode followed a pattern – outrage, tactical distancing by party leadership, and then quiet return of the same sentiment in another form. The cumulative effect was to normalise public ambivalence toward Gandhi’s assassin in a way that steadily eroded the earlier national consensus that treated the act as a civilisational shame.Digital media accelerated this rehabilitation. WhatsApp forwards, Facebook pages, and YouTube channels circulated selective readings of Godse’s courtroom statement, stripped of context, presenting it as heroic testimony.This cultural re-framing did not require state proclamation. It flourished in an atmosphere where majoritarian assertion, grievance politics, and hostility to dissent had become mainstream. In that climate, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi could be reimagined not as a warning from history but as an icon for the present.Millions of Godses Murdering IndiaWhat is alarming today is not an isolated act of violence but the gradual social production of a mindset in which hostility is moralised and prejudice is recast as patriotism. The outlook once identified with Nathuram Godse now circulates through a broad ecosystem of schooling, cultural work, and media messaging that presents India as exclusively Hindu, treats minorities with suspicion, and brands dissent as betrayal.This reproduction happens across channels. Institutions linked to the RSS, thousands of schools and hostels where cultural instruction shades into ideological orientation. Curricular revisions soften or omit difficult histories – Gandhi’s assassination context, caste oppression, communal violence – while elevating civilisational pride. Social media sustains a flow of grievance narratives, misinformation, and selective hero-making; parts of broadcast media echo majoritarian frames and stigmatize critics as “anti-national.” Even fringe attempts to memorialise Godse, though not mainstream, signal how far the moral threshold has shifted.Gandhi’s murder cannot be viewed merely as an event of the past. It marked the beginning of an ongoing project. January 30, 1948 was not an end; it was the first shot in a long war against pluralism, secularism, and constitutional democracy in India. The forces that killed Gandhi are today in power. They are no longer rebels but the rulers of the state. The danger, therefore, has multiplied many times over. Every attack on minorities, every killing in the name of cow protection, every hate speech, every communal riot, every attempt to erase composite culture – these are all part of the same project that killed Gandhi. The incidents may appear separate, but the ideology behind them is coherent.Millions of Godses are at work to destroy India in body and spirit. Bodily India is being disfigured by their regime through silence over or the lies about the effective loss of control on vast lands along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh at Galwan, Depsang and Hot Springs. Simultaneously, India is being devastated daily by flattening of hills, ecological damage, diversion of forest lands, devastation of environment and destruction of rivers through policies that favour big capital. All facilitations for rich and wealthy at the cost of the people are being sold as development and people are being intoxicated with religion and silenced with free rations and occasional freebees. India is being killed in spirit through systematic destruction of her history, disfiguration of its archaeology, culture, and trampling upon all the values embodied in the Constitution.In this, we must acknowledge our own responsibility. By remaining silent, by treating all this as ‘normal,’ and by viewing each incident in isolation, we too have become complicit with Godses’ projects.Anand Teltumbde is former CEO of PIL, professor of IIT Kharagpur, and GIM, Goa. He is also a writer and civil rights activist.