On Gandhi Jayanti, His Assassin Nathuram Godse's Name Is One Of The Top Trends On Twitter

On Friday morning, as India celebrates Gandhi Jayanti, Twitter users were left aghast by a trend in support of Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse. 

Tweets with the hashtag “nathuram_godse_zindabad” have been doing the round of Twitter, with many openly supporting him as a “martyr”. 

A Hindu nationalist, Godse assassinated Gandhi on January 30, 1948, at New Delhi’s Birla House, which is now Gandhi Smriti. Godse had shot three bullets into Gandhi’s chest in the presence of thousands of people. He was hanged in 1949.

At the time this article was being written, the hashtag naming Godse had over 66 thousand tweets. 

The word “Godse” too was trending with over 18.5 thousand tweets. 

While some tweets supporting Godse called him a “brave lion”, others asked “who is the real father of the nation”. 

Some people who were tweeting in support of Godse were also supporters of the RSS and BJP and had photos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders as their Twitter profile photos or display photos. 

Some mentioned in their bios that they were BJP supporters. 

This isn’t much of a surprise. BJP MP Pragya Thakur has openly shown support for Godse inside Parliament, creating an uproar. Earlier, when she called Godse a “patriot”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had distanced himself from the comment and asked Thakur to apologise.

Many Twitter users pointed out how this “new India”, where celebrating an assassin openly was accepted, was a scary one.