What the Veneration of Gandhi’s Killer Says About India
Imagine Americans putting up statues of the man who shot Lincoln. The equivalent is happening in India today.
Imagine an America in the not-so-distant future. A right-wing populist politician has just been reelected president of the United States, stirring a wave of ethnonationalism not seen since the Trump presidency. Amid the country’s nativist turn, a cult of personality forms around John Wilkes Booth, the actor who fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre just days after the end of the Civil War. Members of the president’s party hail Booth as a champion of the Confederate cause. Statues and memorials are erected in his honor. Although the president still pays lip service to Lincoln and his legacy, he is politically aligned much
