UPDATING TRIUMPH OF THE WILL:

The film offers a counterfactual history in which Godse's assassination attempt fails and he gets an opportunity to duke out his ideological disagreements with Gandhi--particularly Gandhi's vision of a pluralistic India that respected the equal rights of all faiths. Its purpose seemingly is to present Godse and Gandhi as intellectual and moral equals.

To appreciate just how repugnant this exercise is, imagine if a confederate sympathizer and a Lincoln skeptic made a film Abe Lincoln-John Wilkes Booth: A Debate. Gandhi's great grandson has already condemned Santoshi and vowed not to see the film because, he points out, in 2002, Santoshi made a film about Bhagat Singh, a revered freedom fighter (whom the British had executed in 1931), that also "demolished" Gandhi. But Santoshi's latest film deserves to be taken seriously because it offers a revealing glimpse into the tactics and arguments that the Hindu nationalist movement is deploying to ditch the country's founding ideals and impose its alternative illiberal vision under which Hinduism is the official religion of the country and faiths it considers "non-indigenous"--read Islam and Christianity--are relegated to second class status. That would mean that over 200 million Indians who belong to these faiths would have less space to practice them if not face outright discrimination.

However, to accomplish its ends, Hindutva--as Hindu nationalism is called--needs to rewrite history to knock down India's founding liberal heroes and build up its nationalistic alternative icons. The timing couldn't be better for this exercise, given that the movement has at its disposal the powerful weapon of internet-driven propaganda and a poorly educated, susceptible young population--nearly half of India's population is under 25--that is easily brainwashed.

And Indian cinema seems eager to assist.

Indeed, since Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an avowed Hindu nationalist, arrived on the scene, the Indian movie industry has changed considerably. In the pre-Modi era it delighted in tedious message-movies like Amar, Akbar, Anthony that spouted interfaith platitudes. Now, just as much of India's news media has become unabashedly jingoistic and pro-government, many mainstream filmmakers have fallen in line with Modi's aims as they churn out nonsensical pseudo-patriotic fare. Santoshi's celluloid comeback is in that company.

From the preview and reviews, it seems that Santoshi is attempting a clever trick in Gandhi Godse. He does not reject Gandhi, he simply builds up Godse. But Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party has not been that subtle in the past. When the party was last in power in the mid-1990s as part of a coalition government, a play called Mi Nathuram Godse Boltoy (I'm Nathuram Godse Speaking), staged in Gujarat, channeled the feelings of many Hindus that Godse was a patriot who did the right thing in killing Gandhi. It presented Godse as sticking up for their rights while Gandhi traitorously handed over the country to Muslims during India's partition. It was a calculated effort to present Godse's case in the best possible light in his defense trial. (India has the death penalty and Godse was executed in 1949.)

Likewise, within a year of Modi's election as prime minister in 2014, the BJP-ruled state of Rajasthan considered naming a bridge after Godse. In 2019, Pragya Singh Thakur, a BJP member of Parliament and a militant Hindu accused of terrorism, who recently counseled her fellow Hindus to keep sharp knives at hand to "cut off the enemy's head," called Godse "a patriot."

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