Pradeep Dalvi's play distorts history, complains scholar

MUMBAI: While Pradeep Dalvi’s play about Mahatma Gandhi’s murderer, ‘Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoy’, continues to draw audiences even on week days, it has been criticised by historians and academicians.
Dalvi has distorted and falsified facts, said city scholar Y.D. Phadke.
In his book ‘Nathuramayan’, published by Akshar Prakashan, Phadke says that in an era in which villains openly strut the political arena, it isn’t surprising that Dalvi treats Godse as a hero.
The book, which has run into a second edition, says that Dalvi is apparently encouraged by the fact that a growing number of people over the past 50 years believe that Nathuram was a courageous martyr.
When politics has been deprived of a sense of values, it is not surprising that a saintly old man who fought unarmed is dubbed a traitor and a villain is portrayed as a hero, Phadke observes.
The play, directed by Vinay Apte, opened in July 1998. It soon sparked protests in Parliament and in Mumbai, prompting the Maharashtra government to ban it.
The ban was lifted by the Bombay high court last year and has been drawing large crowds since.
But the playwright now wants the production to be banned because of his differences with the producer and director.
However, Dalvi’s charge that the production distorts his fair portrayal of Gandhi is not being taken seriously by scholars.
Phadke says that as a historian, it is clear to him that Nathuram Godse was a criminal and a hardened liar.
He points to several inaccuracies in Dalvi’s play. For example, there is a scene in which Devdas Gandhi, son of the Mahatma, shakes hand with Godse as if he approves of the murder.
In fact, no such meeting took place. Besides, Devdas Gandhi is shown to be wanting to take a brief in the court against Godse’s conviction. In fact, he was not a lawyer.
Even though Godse had nothing but hatred for Mahatma Gandhi, Dalvi portrays him as an admirer of the Mahatma in a bid to show him as objective.
If anything, Godse was an admirer of V.D. Savarkar, a proponent of Hindu nationalism and bitter opponent of Gandhi.
Then again, Dalvi depicts an inspector called Shaikh as an admirer of Godse, even though no such person existed.
The playwright shows Shaikh’s daughter Zubeda worshipping Godse by placing flowers in the place where Godse sat in court and shows her going to a mosque to pray for Godse’s acquittal.
Dalvi did not care to meet officer Narayan Sawant, who actually investigated the crime and whom Phadke interviewed four years ago.