India Seizes Time Magazine to Censor Remarks About Gandhi

India seized 3,000 copies of Time magazine’s upcoming edition in order to black out an interview with the brother of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s assassin because it could hurt national prestige and cause riots, a senior customs official said Friday.

The article “contains a lot of derogatory and defamatory remarks on Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, which is injurious to national prestige,” said Sumit Dutta Mazumdar, commissioner of customs in Calcutta.

“The article also contains statements that have all the ingredients of sparking communal disharmony,” he added.

Mazumdar said that he had stopped delivery of the Feb. 21 editions of the magazine and that they would be released once the article had been blacked out.

Indian customs law, he said, allows the government to prevent dissemination “of documents containing any matter that is derogatory to national prestige and maintenance of public order.”

Michael Fathers, Time’s New Delhi bureau chief, said: “One man in Calcutta is acting as an arbiter on what 2 million Indians should read or not read.”

The interview with Gopal Godse, brother of Nathuram Godse, was conducted last year, when Time was considering naming Gandhi its “Man of the Century.”

A Hindu nationalist, Nathuram Godse was enraged by Gandhi’s overtures to Muslims after the partition of Britain’s Indian empire. He assassinated Gandhi in 1948.

In the interview, Gopal made clear that he subscribed to the view that Gandhi helped Muslims at the expense of Hindus. Gandhi’s peace principle was “bogus,” Gopal said, and “he was encouraging the Muslims to kill Hindus.”