Kamal Hassan & Godse : Differentiating Between Assassin , Extremist and Terrorist
Rajiv Upadhyay 
Tamilnadu’s famous actor Kamal Hassan has got anticipatory bail from Madras High Court on his statement that Nathu Ram Godse was the first hindu terrorist . The statement was entirely avoidable and its timing was bad .
Addressing an election rally in Aravakurichi last week, Haasan had said, “Free India’s first terrorist was a Hindu, his name is Nathuram Godse. There it (terrorism, apparently) starts.”
Godse killed Mahatma Gandhi.
An FIR was filed against Haasan on May 14, following which he moved court seeking anticipatory bail, saying his speech was about Godse only and not about Hindus as a whole.
Even if it is accepted that Kamal Hassan was speaking only about Godse , it is pertinent to ask whether Lee Oswald who assassinated Kennedy or John Booth who assassinated Lincoln were just assassins or terrorist . Like Gandhi allegedly favouring muslims , Lincoln and Kennedy too were accused of favouring blacks . Both Lincoln and Kennedy were Christians so were their assassins . Does that make Lee Oswald a ‘Christian Terrorist ‘. No one coined that phrase in all these years . Why should Kamal Hassan put his foot in his mouth in an election rally .
An assassin is just a murderer whose motive may be dislike of an individual due to his views ,deeds or policy .
A terrorist kills innocent civilians who have no connection with events or policies like Ajmal Kassab who just fired and killed randomly in Mumbai .
An extremist is like Naxalite who are sworn to an extreme idealogy and use killings to propagate that idealogy . Their targets are people opposing that idealogy or perceived road blocks like landlords . Islambouli who killed Sdat was an extremist because he was acting on an idealogy and on a Fatwa to kill Sadat . Hitler could be an extremist in his hatred of Jews .
Analysis of Godse actions reveals that he killed no civilian or any one else so he certainly was not a terrorist . He was just an individual assassin like Lee Oswald . His religion was unimportant just as Lee Oswald’s .Hindu Maha Sabha or RSS had not approved of his plan to murder Gandhi . So one cant even call him an extremist .
Kamal Hassan must know that his popularity as an actor is just due to his acting . It does not make him either knowledgeable or entitle him to make any random statement in political meetings . From a political aspirant one expects more maturity and restraint .He will face music for his ill thought utterances and no one has sympathy for him .
His popularity will evaporate without a trace with comments like this .
