The Murderer, The Monarch and The Fakir by Appu Esthose Suresh

The authors should have spent some more time on the book, even at the expense of delivering it at a later more inopportune stage.

The events are not described in a linear temporal fashion and it seems they come up like in a conversation, frequently diverging to explain how this other new factor came into the narrative. While the objective was worthy, I think the authors failed to approach the subject matter coherently. It was also an act of desperation when the participants of this crime, from Savarkar to Godse, failed to wean the masses away from Gandhi through their polarizing and misinformed messages. We have people even celebrating the murderer of the Mahatma, which, in my opinion, can only be termed as asinine, as killing a 'Fakir', who always propounded the messages of peace and non-violence, was nothing more than an act of cowardice. As arduous as the approach may seem, shedding new light now on a crime committed on 30 January 1948 was just as necessary given the present political and misinformation climate. The book is about the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, with new information from recently disclosed archival notes and documents from the Intelligence Bureau, CID and other internal security agencies. When the authors cover such historical facts, they should and very importantly include some photographs of the key figures / objects / letters, for the book to be a ‘ready reckoner’. This book is explosive and all the more an important read in the present-day for the current dispensation, stems from the same ideology that was initiated by the ‘father of Hindutva’ in V.D. I don’t want to divulge details here and get into a random squabble with the readers but the term ‘Hindu Khatre Mein Hain’ that was coined in the year 1912, has taken us to this day, that the masses are constantly implanted with this supposed apprehension, that indeed the Hindus are in perpetual danger. But was it really and the only man in Nathuram Godse, who murdered the champion of Ahimsa? The answer is clearly and beautifully explained in this book and covers the entire sequence that lead to Gandhi’s death. The world at large is aware of who killed the Mahatma.

The Murderer, The Monarch and The Fakir by Appu Esthose Suresh