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Seventy-five years after his assassination, Gandhi — the man who led India out of British rule, revered in the West as the exemplar of nonviolent protest — has become a casualty of India’s lurch toward Hindu nationalism. The Mahatma is now reviled by extremists for failing to establish a Hindu government in India when he had the chance. Instead, Gandhi advocated Hindu-Muslim unity in one secular state.

Meanwhile, on Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube, Godse, the assassin, has a newfound fan base that portrays him as a hero. Executed by hanging in 1949, he had tried to kill Gandhi twice before he succeeded: once with a knife, once with a dagger. In both cases, Gandhi declined to press charges, so the young man was released despite openly threatening the leader. The third time he used a gun. He blamed Gandhi for the loss of Pakistan during partition (although Gandhi opposed partition), felt Gandhi was pro-Muslim and feared that Hindus would continue to lose ground if Gandhi remained as an influence on the government.

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Godse was a member of the Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is the ideological fountainhead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). And since Modi was first elected in 2014, the narrative blaming Gandhi has taken hold. On Colaba, a bustling, touristy street in Mumbai, a seller of memorabilia across from the Taj Mahal Palace hotel was not impressed when I picked a bronze souvenir depicting Gandhi on the 1930 Dandi March, protesting Britain’s tax on salt. He said the only people who buy things like that are “White foreigners.”

The merchant, who hails from Gujarat, did not wish to be named but told me that a new generation of Indians has a different opinion of the man referred to as “the father of the nation.” He tells me that Gandhi partitioned India to appease Muslims and appear as a humanist to the world. “The world loves to put pseudo-secularists like him on a pedestal but we are now aware of his reality,” he said.

This school of thought is not an aberration. Modi has referenced M.S. Golwalkar, who led the RSS at the time of the assassination, as a major inspiration. It was Golwalkar who had stated at a rally of the Hindu right wing on Dec. 7, 1947, that “Mahatma Gandhi wanted to keep the Muslims in India so that the Congress [party] may profit by their votes at the time of election … We have the means whereby such men can be immediately silenced, but it is our tradition not to be inimical to Hindus. If we are compelled, we will have to resort to that course too.” A month later, Gandhi was killed.

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At the Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat, one of the homes of the Mahatma, I encountered teenagers posing for selfies and picnicking on the lawn. When I asked questions about Gandhi, they seemed uninterested; one remembered that his face is on the Indian rupee. A college student mocked Gandhi, writing him off as merely the grandfather of “Pappu” (a derogatory term coined for Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, who is not in fact related to the Mahatma).

Gandhi has never been this unpopular. The 1982 Richard Attenborough biopic about him won eight Academy Awards and introduced a new generation to the Indian independence fighter. As recently as 2006, a Bollywood blockbuster “Lage Raho Munnabhai” (“Carry On, Munna Bhai,”) saw Gandhi become cool again on the streets of India. The film depicts a small-time con man who in an attempt to win back his lost lover goes through a........

© Washington Post