https://indianpedia.org/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=Godse%27s_Children%3A_Hindutva_Terror_in_IndiaGodse's Children: Hindutva Terror in India - Revision history2026-08-01T19:02:54ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.45.4https://indianpedia.org/index.php?title=Godse%27s_Children:_Hindutva_Terror_in_India&diff=500713&oldid=prevIZinePro at 07:35, 18 February 20262026-02-18T07:35:14Z<p></p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>{{short description|2011 Indian political history book by Subhash Gatade}}<br />
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2025}}<br />
{{Use Indian English|date=April 2025}}<br />
{{Infobox book<br />
| image = File:Godse's Children, Hindutva Terror in India.png<br />
| editors = Subhash Gatade<br />
| country = India<br />
| language = English<br />
| publisher = Pharos Media & Publishing<br />
| pub_date = 2011<br />
| isbn = 978-8172210526<br />
}}<br />
<br />
'''''Godse's Children: Hindutva Terror in India''''' is a 2011 Indian political history book by Indian journalist Subhash Gatade that focuses on the phenomenon of [[Hindutva terrorism]].<ref name=Hensman>{{cite journal |last=Hensman |first=R. |date=2012 |title=The Spectre of Fascism [Review of Godse's Children: Hindutva Terror in India; The Saffron Condition: Politics of Repression and Exclusion in Neoliberal India, by S. Gatade] |journal=Economic and Political Weekly |volume=47 |issue=9 |pages=34–36 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/23214471 |jstor=23214471}}</ref><br />
<br />
==Narrative==<br />
<br />
In the 2011 book, which has been labelled "contentious", Gatade introduces [[Mahatma Gandhi]]'s murderer [[Nathuram Godse]] as "the first terrorist in independent India" and the [[assassination of Mahatma Gandhi]] "as the first terrorist activity".<ref name=Andrean>{{cite book |chapter=Nathuram Godse in Perspectives: The Cult of an Assassin in the Indian English Writings |last=Abdul Hameed |first=P. A. |pages=202–214 |title=Ruminations: The Andrean Journal of Literature 2013 |date=28 June 2018 |publisher=St Andrew's College of Arts, Science and Commerce |chapter-url=https://standrewscollege.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Nathuram-Godse-in-Perspectives-The-Cult-of-an-Assassin-in-the-Indian-English-Writings.pdf |url=https://standrewscollege.ac.in/ruminations-2013-2/}}</ref> In a 2012 review of Gatade's work, reviewer Rohini Hensman concurred that if terrorism is defined as violence in pursuit of a political goal, then the assassination of Gandhi "could indeed be seen as a terrorist act".<ref name=Hensman/><br />
<br />
Gatade depicts Godse as neither "just a representative of the Hindutva forces in whose hands he was a mere pawn", and focused not on the assassination itself by Godse as "a symbol of terrorism, a preamble of a wider politics of Hindu domination, a harbinger of Hindutva terrorism in India".<ref name=Andrean/><br />
<br />
In the book, Gatade also narrates how investigations into the [[2006 Mumbai train bombings]] in India had "progressively revealed a unified or coordinated network of conspirators, all implicated with the [[Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh|RSS]]", centered on [[Indore]].<ref name=Banaji>{{cite speech |last=Banaji |first=J. |title=Trajectories of Fascism: Extreme-Right Movements in India and Elsewhere |series=The Fifth Walter Sisulu Memorial Lecture |work=[[Jamia Millia Islamia]] |date=18 March 2013 |url=https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/16825/1/Jamia%20lecture%20(fascism).pdf}}</ref> He asserts that the RSS has a strategy of outsourcing tension, while publicly disowning it, but that this subterfuge is "not vastly more credible than its disowning of Godse himself".<ref name=Banaji/><br />
<br />
A further thrust of the work is about shortcomings in India's law enforcement agencies, which Gatade contests "entertain institutional bias against Muslims",{{sfn|Gatade|2013|p=285}} being "forthcoming in implicating innocent Muslim youths" and engaging "in communal witch-hunts and extra judicial killings".<ref name=Ansari>{{cite thesis |last=Ansari |first=K. |date=2016 |title=Hindu Nationalism in Theory and Practice |work=[[Duke University]] |url=https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/12020/Khalid%20Ansari%20-%20Hindu%20Nationalism%20V2.1.pdf}}</ref> India's media is also chastised for "pushing forward the Muslim terrorist narrative"<br />
and distorting events, including by notably giving little heed to stories where the innocent victims of wrongful arrests have been acquitted by the courts.<ref name=Ansari/><br />
<br />
Gatade asserts that "while full fledged fascism may by the preserve of the [[Sangh parivar|Sangh Parivar]]", the softer communalism of other parties, such as their hostility to religious conversion, also nurtures extremism.<ref name=Hensman/><br />
<br />
==Critical reception==<br />
<br />
In his remarks on the author's delivery, Hensman notes that "Gatade belong[s] to the small section of left-wing writers and activists who take the task of combating the growth of fascism in India seriously".<ref name=Hensman/><br />
<br />
==References==<br />
{{reflist}}<br />
<br />
===Sources===<br />
*{{cite book |title=Godse's Children: Hindutva Terror in India, 2nd edition |first=Subhash |last=Gatade |date=2013 |isbn=9788172210557 |page=41 |publisher=Pharos Media & Publishing |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eSjumAEACAAJ}}<br />
<br />
{{Authority control}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:2011 non-fiction books]]<br />
[[Category:Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi]]<br />
[[Category:Hindu terrorism]]<br />
[[Category:Indian non-fiction books]]<br />
[[Category:Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh]]<br />
[[Category:Encounters in India]]<br />
[[Category:Islamophobia in India]]<br />
[[Category:Fascism in India]]<br />
[[Category:English-language non-fiction books]]<br />
[[Category:Books about Hindutva]]<br />
[[Category:History books about India]]</div>IZinePro