A new play titled He Ram Nathuram has led to a rise of a massive controversy surrounding the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, Nathuram Godse’s sexuality after MLA and the member of the Nationalist Congress Party, Jitendra Awhad challenged the renowned Marathi actor Sharad Ponkshe who is playing Godse’s character in the play, to depict every aspect of Nathuram’s life which includes his ‘sexuality’.
The play which is directed and produced by Sharad Ponkshe is based on the circumstances that led to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Nathuram Godse. It aims to identify various sides of the entire event. Sharad Ponkshe has played the character of Nathuram Godse in the play.
“His brother Gopal Godse has written about Nathuram’s homosexuality, so why is it not there in Ponkshe’s play?” Mumbai Mirror quoted Awhad as saying. The play has invited criticism from several quarters of the society with people including the politicians have claimed that it shows Mahatma Gandhi in the poor light.
There has been a lot of conjecture surrounding Nathuram Godse’s sexual orientation. In a book written by Manohar Malgaonkar titled, The Men Who Killed Gandhi, the author claimed that Nathuram was raised a girl in his childhood and even wore a nose ring. ‘His left nostril was pierced to take a nath or nose ring,’ the author wrote in his book.
In another book titled At The Edge of Psychology, the author said, “Perhaps it was given in the situation that Nathuram would try to regain the lost clarity of his sexual role by becoming a model of masculinity.”
The play enjoys the support of the Shiv Sena party in Maharashtra. Ponkshe believed that Nathuram’s story deserved to be shown in a better light. The NCP leaders have staged a number of protests across Maharashtra and have called for a ban on the play.
Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Tushar Gandhi, has also claimed that the facts shown in the play bare no truth to the actual facts.
