In a play on Godse, lessons on the dangers of extremism

In the 154th year of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth, the story of his assassin, Nathuram Godse, is drawing in the crowds at London’s prestigious National Theatre. Anupama Chandrasekhar’s play The Father and the Assassin, directed by Indhu Rubasingham, is being staged here till October 14, with Hiran Abeysekera as Godse and Paul Bazely as Gandhi. The play’s opening, with three bullets being pumped into Gandhi’s chest, is not just a reckoning with an epoch-making moment of world history, but also with the ideals that founded a new nation. In the death of Gandhi was the birth of Godse in India’s history and public imagination – one that is now revived on the London stage.

The play is an imaginary biography of Godse based on known facts of his life, such as his being raised as a girl child by superstitious parents who feared the curse of death that befell their elder male children, and his encounter with Hindu nationalist ideologue VD Savarkar in the 1920s. In the 39 years of Godse’s life is traced the parallel history of the birth of India and Pakistan. Through a clever interweaving of history and fiction, Chandrasekhar creates the complex, neurotic energy of a tortured psyche projected on a social and historical plane, which has earned the play the Edgerton Foundation New Plays Award. As with her earlier work, Chandrasekhar does not shy away from controversy as she uses oblique commentary to broach the contemporary revivals of Godse in India through commemorative statues and films.

Godse’s biography is also Gandhi’s biography. But this origin story will not be “like that fawning Attenborough film”, the diminutive Godse warns the audience who expect to see an extraordinary villain on stage. Flashbacks reveal a childhood ridden with guilt and anxieties, having been dressed up as a goddess’s oracle who is worshipped by villagers, until Godse runs away from home and encounters his hero Gandhi, who sees him for who he really is – a spirited young boy. His rebellion and growth into a young man happens at a time of political turmoil depicted through moving tableaus of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the Civil Disobedience Movement and the Partition of India. The turning point in the play is Godse’s shift from his hero-worship of Gandhi to his falling under the spell of Savarkar’s seductive Hindu fundamentalist rhetoric.

One clever subtext in the play, as presented on the London stage, is its subtle engagement with masculinity in relation to ideas of nationhood. Godse’s fluid gender identity and its performative nature (in learning masculine behaviours from a burly school watchman, and the latent homoerotic tension with his co-conspirator Narayan Apte) underline his motivations – perhaps as a commentary on the hypermasculine fascist tenor of Savarkar’s militant nationalism as opposed to the effeminacy of Gandhi’s non-violent approach. The divide has continued to echo in Hindu nationalist politics in India till today.

There is also a latent tragedy in the impressionable Godse’s earnest desire for social purpose, which cements his transformation from devotee to murderer. The vaunted great men of history may well be flawed individuals – Gandhi’s own fraught relationship with one of his sons is brought up by Godse. This completes the psychological identification of a disappointed and defiant ‘son’ (Godse) with his absent father (Gandhi). Godse is a symbol of youth without direction, a man who is plagued by personal failures and societal let-downs. He remains a passive spectator (even on stage) to the big decisions made by leaders like Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah and Patel, when he wants to be himself actively involved in the process of nation-building.

Abeysekera, as Godse, is commendable in his able fusion of hysteria and humour (although the belaboured Indian accent is tedious), but it is Bazely who stands out for his body language, diction and consistency in depicting an ageing Gandhi. The stage design by Rajah Shakiry deserves special mention, especially for the backdrop of homespun khadi (symbolic of Gandhian values), whose woven and unwoven threads allow for the drama of history to play out. The narrative itself could be tighter, particularly in the drawn-out scenes of Godse’s childhood.

While the performance garners applause, and even standing ovations, from a largely white audience and London’s South Asian diaspora, it raises questions about the relevance of colonial history to the present (spelt out in the play as precipitating contemporary border conflicts and nuclear anxieties which resulted from a “hard Brexit” in 1947). As Godse finds no glorification in the immediate aftermath of Gandhi’s murder, he is confident that he will be remembered as a hero in the future. The Father and the Assassin is compelling not just for the performances, the storytelling and the spectacle, but also for the difficult lessons of history and the dangers of extremism it points to.

The Father and the Assassin is on at the National Theatre, London, until October 14.

Amrita Ajay is a joint doctoral researcher at King’s College London and the National University of Singapore. She is also the co-editor of a volume of essays on contemporary South Asian visual cultures.