Preface to my review: I do not support murder. It is wrong and should be punished.
"Why I Killed Gandhi" is the final statement Nathuram Godse gave to the Punjab High Court after assassinating Gandhi. Reading it, it's easy to see why India's first prime minister (a man whose main claim to the office was having been hand-picked by Gandhi) chose to ban its publication.
In his speech, Godse comes across as measured and rational, not the frothing fanatic our history textbooks portray. He explains what drove him to kill Gandhi, and why, even knowing it would destroy his life, he felt he could not let a "violent pacifist" like Gandhi, surrounded by sycophants, dictate the direction of newly independent India. The statement also reveals a man who was proud, well-read, and genuinely invested in his country's reform and progress. He speaks in support of anti-caste measures, and repeatedly invokes heroes from India's medieval past who took actions we'd deem violent today in order to secure their kingdoms' futures.
I believe a fuller classroom discussion of Gandhi's legacy requires engaging with Godse's views on him. Three generations of Indians have grown up believing in a near-divine Gandhi who could do no wrong.
Even though it's clear by now that I'm no great admirer of the father of our nation, I still feel like I am somehow blaspheming by calling him just "Gandhi" instead of "Gandhi ji" or "Mahatma." Interestingly, even Godse calls him "Gandhi ji".
History remembers Gandhi as a saint and Godse as a madman, but this speech makes that perspective hard to hold on to.