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Hindi Play: ‘Nathuram Godse Ko Marna Hoga’
Kamlesh Tripathi
I got the opportunity to see the play staged on 23 August 2026 at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Nariman Point, Mumbai. It was a packed show. Directed by Bharat Dabholkar, a prominent name in Marathi theatre and cinema, the play is an extremely powerful theatrical experience. The performance by the main protagonist, Vikas Patil, who plays Nathuram Godse, is brilliant. Patil, a popular figure in Marathi cinema, carries the demanding central role with considerable conviction.
The other actors in the production are Bharat Dabholkar, Anant Mahadevan, Mohan Azaad, Dr Deepa Bhajekar, Sandeep Jangam, Kaustubh Savarkar and Mangesh Desai.
Nathuram Godse Ko Marna Hoga is Bharat Dabholkar’s adaptation of the Marathi play Me Nathuram Godse Boltoy (“This is Nathuram Godse Speaking”) by Pradip Dalvi. The play attempts to shed light on Nathuram Godse’s rationale behind the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The term used in the play for Gandhi’s assassination is “Gandhi Vadh.”
The original Marathi play, Me Nathuram Godse Boltoy, has reportedly been running for the last 25 years. It was first staged in 1998, while the Hindi adaptation, Nathuram Godse Ko Marna Hoga, was first staged in late 2024. The play has been refined and adapted by Bharat Dabholkar, the doyen of Marathi theatre. Dabholkar is a well-known Indian adman, actor and playwright. He has clarified that the play does not glorify Nathuram Godse. His adaptation seeks to make the presentation more balanced while delving into the motivations behind Godse’s assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and offering audiences a thought-provoking exploration of a painful chapter of history.
A lady narrator introduces the play by recalling the troubled history of its Marathi version. Twenty-five years ago, every performance required police protection. On one occasion, the bus carrying the sets and actors was attacked with a bomb. The director himself had to take precautions for his security. Earlier, the play had also been censored. Despite these difficulties and controversies, it has continued for 25 years.
At the very beginning, there is a caveat stating that the play does not support any particular group. It does not pass judgement on who is right and who is wrong. The central premise is that any hatya—any killing—is wrong.
The narrator explains why the play is being presented in Hindi after 25 years. When such a play is performed before an enlightened audience, she suggests, the audience is capable of judging for itself who was right and who was wrong.
In this sense, the play takes us on a journey into the past and brings that past into the present: “Ateet ki yatra karke use vartman mein le aate hain.” The play, it is emphasised, has no political agenda. It only portrays history. It begins at Ambala Jail.
One can hear footsteps moving towards the gallows. The face of the condemned man is covered with a black cloth, or naqab. Then a lever is pulled, and Nathuram Godse is hanged. This is followed by sad music. The next scene shows the body of Nathuram Godse hanging from the gallows. Then, dramatically, Nathuram Godse—the soul of the executed man—emerges from the jail to speak directly to the audience.
He begins with a simple “Namaskar” and tells the audience not to be afraid: ‘Don’t be afraid. I’m Nathuram Godse, and this is not a ghost story.’ He goes on to say that the elderly people may have heard about him, while many young people may not have heard much about him. They may simply know that he was hanged. To the younger generation, therefore, he may be known legally and historically as a hatyara—a murderer.
He refers to himself as “itihaas ka ek dukhad panna”—a tragic page of history.
From this point, the play begins its exploration of the man behind that historical page. Godse, speaking from beyond the grave, addresses the audience directly and attempts to explain the rationale behind his action and the circumstances that led him to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi.
The unusual device of allowing a man who has already been executed to return as a character and speak to the living gives the play its distinctive dramatic framework. The audience is not merely watching a historical event; it is being asked to listen to the explanation offered by the man who committed the act. (A unique experience).
The question running through the play is therefore not whether Gandhi’s assassination was right or wrong—the opening caveat makes it clear that killing is wrong—but why Godse believed he had reached the point at which he could commit such an act. To reveal what follows would, however, be a spoiler.
The presentation also raises the larger question of how history should be remembered. Can we examine the thinking of a historical figure without endorsing it? Can an audience listen to an argument and still make its own moral judgement?
This appears to be the space in which Bharat Dabholkar’s adaptation seeks to operate. By bringing a controversial play from the past into the present, and by placing it before what the narrator describes as an enlightened audience, the production invites viewers to revisit history and make their own assessment.
After 25 years, the play thus returns to the stage in another language not merely as a story about Nathuram Godse, but as an attempt to revisit one of the most painful and controversial episodes in modern Indian history.
Its dramatic method is to let Nathuram Godse speak for himself, while leaving the audience to listen, reflect and decide where it stands. The opening at Ambala Jail—the sound of footsteps approaching the gallows, the black-covered face, the pulling of the lever, the hanging, the sad music, and finally the emergence of Godse’s soul—creates a striking theatrical beginning. The man who has been silenced by death is brought back onto the stage to speak to a new generation.
And perhaps that is the central theatrical proposition of Nathuram Godse Ko Marna Hoga: history may contain voices we find disturbing, painful or unacceptable, but understanding how such voices emerged can also compel us to confront the past more honestly.
The play therefore leaves the audience with history in its most uncomfortable form, not as a simple story of heroes and villains, but as a difficult journey into the mind of a man whose name remains inseparably connected with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. “Itihaas ka ek dukhad panna.”
Vikas Patil, playing the role of Nathuram Godse, delivers the following lines a couple of times during the play:
‘Mujhe mere rago me behte lahu ne lalkara hai/Isi liye maine Gandhi ko Dilli ja kar mara tha/Tum chahate to lal kile me bhagwa phera sakte the/Tum chahate to Jinna ko apne charno me jhuka sakte the/Tum chahate to Bhagat Singh ki phasi rukwa sakte the,
Written and posted by Kamlesh Tripathi
Author, Poet, & Columnist
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https://kamleshsujata.wordpress.com
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