Goa controversy over Godse play

What are the limits of 'free speech'? How should a nation-state deal with challenges to the legacy of its foremost heroes, even as counter-ideologies seeks to re-define what is acceptable?  In early October, tiny Goa became the unlike battlefield to debate these issues. 

Sensitive to the potential fallout, Goa quickly backtracked and cancelled plans to stage a play that allegedly glamourises Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi.  This came after protests on Facebook by a politician and a freedom fighter. 

To aggravate the situation, the play had been scheduled -- either by oversight or deliberately -- for October 2, the 144th birth anniversary of Gandhi. It was to have been staged at Ravindra Bhavan, Margao, a prestigious government-funded and state-controlled cultural centre in the South Goa district headquarters of Margao, some 30 kms from state-capital Panjim. 

Goa's vocal freedom fighters, the active core of which is a tiny group but some of whom are still active, raised a howl in protest. Before the issue could snowball into news, in a BJP-ruled State, news reports on October 1 promptly announced the cancellation of the play. 

'Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoy' (I am Nathuram Godse Speaking) is a two-act play written by Pradeep Dalvi, of Maharashtra.  It was to be staged, reportedly without tickets, by a little-known local theatre group from the mining-belt of Bicholim in north-east Goa. 

Nathuram Vinayak Godse (1910-1949) was the sole assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, who shot him thrice in the chest on January 30, 1948.  From Pune, Godse is believed to have resented what he considered was Gandhi's partiality to India's Muslims.  He was hanged after trial. 

The state-run Ravindra Bhavan is known to 'co-organise' a range of functions with cultural and private groups.  But the ominous timings caused some suspicion, perhaps aggravated by the fact that the Ravindra Bhavan is also currently headed by local BJP politician, Damodar 'Damu' Naik. 

Independent MLA Vijai Sardesai said he would be taking up the issue in the local assembly, and demanded an inquiry about whether it was "officially organised" or not. 

Those supporting the ideological slant of the play have portrayed it as an enactment of Godse's "defence plea" or a presentation of Godse's "point of view".  But Gandhians who have analysed its script have faulted it on grounds of inaccuracies, fabrications and propaganda in favour of the assassin who killed India's most noted political leader. [See http://www.mkgandhi-sarvodaya.org/godse.htm] 

There are unanswered questions here: Should a play have dramatic license anyway? Or is political propaganda, and possibly even hate speech, being camouflaged as a stage production? 

Initially, the play was denied permission to be staged in 1989 in Maharashtra.  Under a changed political dispensation, it was staged for the first time in 1997.  Later the governments of Kerala and Maharashtra banned the play.  Court appeals in 1998 saw the high court and supreme court allowing the staging of the play in 2001 and thereafter. 

Protests by the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party greeted the play in Thane in April 2001. One count says over six hundred shows of the controversial play have been staged. 

The BJP’s run in Goa 

The BJP government has ruled Goa since March 2012, and some of the Congress Opposition leaders have sought to keep the BJP on the mat on grounds of communalism, just as the BJP earlier spared no opportunity to blast the Congress for corruption. 

For its part, in the 2012 elections the Parrikar government surprisingly managed to get a group of dark horses - minor Catholic politicians - elected to shore up its numbers in the assembly, and come to power here some 19 months ago. But, caught in Goa's real politik, the party has also found itself in some controversies related to religion, community and caste. 

Recently, a lawyer-campaigner accused the Parrikar government of appointing as its Chief Information Commissioner, a bureaucrat who allegedly had links with the controversial Sanathan Sanstha sect, whose name has been dragged into controversies including the killing of rationalist Narendra Dhabolkar in Pune.

In this situation, the media has also found itself polarised and takes sides between the Congress and BJP.  Some former student activists, produced in the ferment that Goa saw in the 1970s and 1980s, have ironically also come to play crucial roles in pro- or anti-BJP camps currently.