Gandhi assassin play condemned

Fri, 17 Jul 1998, 00:00 WIB | Source: AP

NEW DELHI (AP): A play about the man who killed Indian
independence leader Mohandas Gandhi was condemned in India's
parliament yesterday.

Speaker G.M.C. Balayogi was hard-pressed to calm angry
lawmakers after one raised for debate newspaper reports about the
play, Nathuram Godse Speaks, which has been running in the
western city of Bombay in recent weeks.

"It is a matter of indescribable shame that not only is
Mahatma Gandhi being vilified, his assassin is being glorified,"
said Saifuddin Soz, a member of parliament from northern Kashmir
state whose small National Conference party supports the
governing coalition.

Gandhi, known as the mahatma or "great soul," was assassinated
in 1948 by Godse. The Hindu nationalist Godse was enraged by
Gandhi's overtures to Moslems after the partition of Britain's
Indian empire into predominately Hindu India and officially
Islamic Pakistan.

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