SAVARKAR STORY
REVISITED
The Wire, a media
venture supposed to be a “joint venture in the public sphere between
journalists, readers and a concerned citizenry” relying
principally on contributions from readers and concerned citizens. For me it is
a Leftist scumbag producing and circulating nasty things about Hindus, India
ruled by the NDA, Narendra Modi, BJP RSS, and the so-called Sangh Parivar.
So when the wo/men holding
poison pens published an article “How Did Savarkar, a Staunch Supporter of
British Colonialism, Come to Be Known as ‘Veer’?”I was not worried. What got my
goat was a respectable media person I thought had good reading and some sense
of proportion in spite of being a “millionaire Marxist” type, forwarded the
piece to me. I wrote a reply which I reproduce here as it is important to know
how certain associations can destroy anybody’s credibility. I quote:
I hope you know there
is a portrait Of Veer Savarkar (just V D Savarkar if you wish) a Hindu
Mahasabha leader, in the Central Hall of the Parliament House, right across the
alcove which bears the picture of Mahatma Gandhi unveiled by President Abdul
Kalam in February, 2003. Pranab Mukherjee and Shivraj Patil, were part of the
panel that had cleared the portrait proposal along with former CPM veteran
Somnath Chatterjee.
The man was arrested
in London in 1910 on charges of sedition for writing a book called The First
War of Independence, 1857, shipped to India, sentenced to life imprisonment and
transported to the Cellular Jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands where he
spent 11 years in solitary confinement. In 1937, he was elected president of
the Hindu Mahasabha and remained so till his death in 1966. Although not a
member of the RSS, the Sangh and later the BJP adopted Savarkar as an
ideological icon. I should remind you that in 1966 when Savarkar passed away,
Indira Gandhi and Zakir Hussain, then the Vice-President, had eulogised him as
a “classic and inspirational revolutionary” in separate tributes.
Some of the
observations in the Wire article are absolute lies. For example, while Savarkar
believed that the original system of the four varnas was based on the qualities
(guna) and actions (karma) of individuals, the categories were not supposed to
be hereditary. He therefore propagated that the then existing caste system was
a mockery of the original system of four varnas (chaturvarnya) and should be
abolished. It is therefore said that while many freedom fighters had invited
only the wrath of the British, Savarkar had to face hostility of the society as
well as that of the Government. Those who have read Savrkar’s social
philosophy, know that he had identified that the Hindu society was bound by
seven shackles ( bandi ): 1) Restrictions on touch (sparshabandi) of certain
castes.2) Restrictions on inter-dining. (rotibandi) 3) Restrictions on inter-marriages
(betibandi) 4) Restrictions on pursuing certain occupations (vyavasayabandi) 5)
Restrictions on crossing the sea (sindhubandi) 6) Restrictions on rites
sanctioned by the Vedas (vedoktabandi) 7) Restrictions on re-conversion
(shuddhibandi)! The last would pinch “secular” people who support conversions
and oppose “ghar vaapasi”!
Savarkar who founded
the Free India Society to organise Indian students studying in England to fight
for independence, and maintained that “Our movement must not be limited to
being against any particular law, but it must be for acquiring the authority to
make laws itself. In other words, we want absolute independence”! The article
mentions “Savarkar helped the colonial government recruit lakhs of Indians into
its armed forces” an unpardonable inversion of truth. In an earlier post to
you, I had mentioned that while Hedgewar agreed with Gandhiji that Indians
should not cooperate with British in their recruitment to Brtish army, Savarkar
proposed that the Hindu nationalist youth stood to gain by the military
training to fight the British in the evnet they wnet back on their promise to
free India after the war!
Even assuming that
Savarkar pleaded for mercy to be removed from the Cellular Prison in Andamans
(I would have pleaded every day, had I been in one of those cells in solitary
confinement and other tortures!) Savarkar was sentenced in 1911 to
Transportaton for Life twice and confiscation of property. He was released from the Yerawada Jail, Pune
in 1924, on the following conditions: 1) He should live within the Ratnagiri
District and 2) He should not participate in political activities. The
restrictions initially stipulated for five years were extended from time to
time to 13 years. In 1937, the Congress
won the elections to the Bombay Legislative Assembly but declined to form a
government. To resolve this constitutional deadlock, Governor Sir George Lloyd, invited Sir Dhanjishah
Cooper, to form the ministry. Barrister Jamnadas Mehta, of Lokashahi Swarajya
Paksha, a Tilakite Party, too had been elected as member of the Bombay
legislative Assembly. He agreed to join the Cooper Ministry, provided all
restrictions on Savarkar were revoked. The Governor accepted this proposal and
hence Savarkar was freed from all restrictions in May 1937.
The article agrees
that he was more against Christianity (obviously because the British came here
with “a Bible in pocket and a gun in the other”) and wanted Hindus and Muslims
to join the fight against the British. The founding of the All India Muslim
League in 1906 and the British India government's creation of separate Muslim
electorate under the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909 was a catalyst for Hindu
leaders coming together to create an organisation to protect the rights of the
Hindu community members to form a political entity called the Hindu Mahasabha.
It is true that the Hindu Mahasabha didn’t participate in the Quit India
Movement, so did the Communist Party of India!
The Hindu Mahasabha
joined hands with the Muslim League and other parties to form governments, in
certain provinces after the 1937 elections. Such coalition governments were
formed in Sindh, NWFP, and Bengal. He was dissuaded from trying to continue
this alliance because the Muslim League started showing its fangs by then. They
went closer to the British, unlike sections of the Hindu Community. Gandhiji
tried to forge a Hindu-Muslim alliance against the British later, even
supporting the Khilafat movement and failed! Though the Hindu Mahasabha
identified India as "Hindu Rashtra" (Hindu Nation), it broadly
supported the Indian National Congress in its efforts to attain national
independence. But HM criticised the Congress commitment to non-violence and
secularism, as well as its efforts to integrate Muslims and engage in dialogue
with the separatist All India Muslim League,(having tried it earlier and
failed!) which the Mahasabha thought as appeasement. So, as a Hindu Mahasabha
leader, Savarkar was in politics, and Somnath Chatterjee’s father Nirmal
Chandra Chatterjee, a jurist served as
president of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha and was Burdwan MP of the party
which Somnath won when his father expired in 1971! As I mentioned in the case
of RSS, Hindu Mahasabha was not a watertight compartment in India politics;
many of its leaders joined Congress. Shyamaprasad Mukherjee started the Jan
Sangh!
Savarkar wrote an
autobiography as a biography? I really don’t know. I suppose that is a level
higher than Nehru writing article using a pen-name, sometimes criticising
himself! However, I don't believe it because a Communist author wrote so in a book. They are capable of writing anything to buttress their views and such observations only reveal what is called "confirmation bias"!
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