Godse a 'nationalist, not a traitor', says BJP lawmaker Sakshi Maharaj

Stirring a political hornet's nest, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of Parliament Sakshi Maharaj on Thursday said that Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Vinayak Godse was equally a patriot and a nationalist, and should not be seen as a traitor or considered as one.

"I believe Nathuram Godse was also a nationalist and Mahatma Gandhiji also did a lot for the nation. I don't have any detail of what event is being organized," Sakshi Maharaj told ANI here after reports surfaced about the birthday celebrations of Godse in Nagpur.

"If for some reason he committed a mistake, he was not a traitor," he added while emphasizing that Godse also had pain in his heart.

Godse assassinated Mahatma Gandhi by shooting him in the chest thrice at point-blank range on January 30, 1948 in New Delhi. After a trial that lasted over a year, Godse was sentenced to death on November 8, 1949 and was subsequently hanged a week later.

Commenting on the ongoing row generated by the recent religious conversions in Agra, the BJP MP reiterated that there was a basic difference between conversion and 'ghar vapasi' (homecoming).

"On the issue of conversion, we have always maintained that there should a law in this regard that there should be no conversions. But there is a basic difference between conversion and 'ghar vapasi'. If a child runs away from home and comes back in the evening and you accept the child back, it's not conversion," he said.

Around 200 people were reportedly converted to Hinduism in a ceremony in Agra by groups linked to the BJP's ideological mentor RSS.

Bajrang Dal and Dharam Jagran Manch, the groups that performed the mass conversions, reportedly claimed that the families were originally Hindus and converted to Islam around 30 years ago.