Gandhi assassin play condemned

Fri, 17 Jul 1998 | 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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