Bourgeois parliamentary politics in India has added one more example of its filth, hypocrisy and unscrupulousness. On the eve of elections in Maharashtra, an important state on parliamentary counts, a Congress Minister of the latest installed UPA government at the Centre announced removal of the plaque in the name of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar from the front of the cell in the Cellular Jail of Andaman and Nicobar Islands where he had been imprisoned for more than a decade by the British imperialists in early days of the independence movement of the country. BJP, the mainstay of the former NDA government , jumped upon the issue, for it was them who had placed the plaque, named Port Blair airport after Savarkar, or even hanged his portrait in the Parliament Hall. The issue created uproar among these parties and their allies; proceedings of the parliamentary sessions were disrupted and the issue was dragged into a national topic. In such a situation it demands some discussion; people ought to know who Savarkar was, what were his socio-political views or where he stands in the history of Indian independence movement . We present this brief note in that regard.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was a front-ranking Hindu Mahasabha leader, with close connection with RSS. He began his life, however, on a different note. In fact, right from the early days of his life, Savarkar came up with contradictory traits. He was born of an aristocrat family of Maharashtra in which religion and traditionalism on one hand, and politics, on the other, influenced its members. The ambience of traditionalism and casteism moulded even his tender mind so much so that only at an age of ten, in 1893, he, organized a few playmates to attack a mosque in his village in retaliation of communal riots in Uttar Pradesh and Mumbai (the then Bombay) (See: Savarkar and His Times 1950; Veer Savarkar 1966-both written by Dhananjay Keer) . At the same time, he and his family, were inspired by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, one of the front-ranking leaders of the freedom movement. And we find, in 1899, when he was just 16, Savarkar founded an organization, ‘Mitra Mandal’ with the aim of achieving freedom, if necessary, by armed rebellion ( See : Makers of Modern India : published by the Indian Council of Historical Research, 1973). He is also said to have inspired the three Chapekar brothers of Pune, who were among the early martyrs of the independence movement.



Savarkar’s brief support to armed struggle ended in seeking clemency and giving birth to thoughts of Hindutva

In 1906, Savarkar moved to London and associated himself with political campaigning for armed rebellion, building up organization like Free India Society, training with arms and such other activities. He became a follower of Krishna Varma, an ardent proponent of armed struggle against British rulers. Reportedly, Savarkar also arranged smuggling of arms to India. His book on Sepoy Mutiny entitled The Indian War of Independence, reflected his the then views (See: Revolutionary or not? : Letter to the Editor: The Statesman : 23 September 2004, MH Kidwai, former MP). There he recognized Maulana Ahmadullah and Bahadur Shah Zafar as national heroes along with Nana Saheb, Tantya Tope, Rani Laxmi Bai and Mangal Pandey. He cautioned against having any enmity towards Muslims and spoke high of the valiant five-day struggle in Delhi during this war, in which Hindu and Muslim fought hand-in-hand against the British. The book was, however, ‘deeply rooted in Hindu mythology’. The British government proscribed the book, arrested him on several charges of sedition in London in 1910 and sent him back to India. He was immediately sentenced to life imprisonment on his return to India. And, here started his turnaround. In just an year, in 1911, Savarkar wrote his first letter of apology and undertakings of loyalty to the colonial government. Subsequently, he wrote two more such letters , in 1913 and 1925 respectively. In his letter of 1913 ( November 14), he wrote : “…I remind your honour…the petition for clemency, that I had sent in 1911…if the Government in their manifold beneficence and mercy release me I for one cannot but be the staunchest advocate of constitutional progress and loyalty to the English Government which is the foremost condition of that progress…I am ready to serve the Government in any capacity they like…. The Mighty alone can afford to be merciful and therefore where else can the prodigal son return but to the parental doors of the Government?” [See : Penal Settlement in Andamans by R.C.Majumder, 1975, p.211-214]. His letter also made it clear that he was yielding to the pressure of imprisonment and so was pleading to the government for clemency.

The British government could not trust his words outright, though their attitude was apparent in the report from the Home Member of the British Government Rejinald Craddock. On 23 November 1913, he wrote about Savarkar “… he affects to have changed his views, urging that the hopeless condition of Indians in 1906-07 was his excuse for entering upon a conspiracy… Mercy to him would, he said, have a calming effect upon those who still conspire against British rule, and he was willing and anxious to send an open letter to the native press…” [ibid] The British with their hawkish eyes, thus identified his weaknesses, promoted him to the rank of Foreman in the Cellular Jail and finally released him from the Andamans in 1920. He, however, was kept under detention in different jails of the main land India till 1923. After release, he was interned till 1933 in Ratnagiri of Maharashtra.

Seeking clemency was not the only change in Veer Savarkar. There were others , too, going on in him. He had eulogized Muslim leaders of the Sepoy Mutiny in his book referred above. But in about two years in Andaman, he started working for the ‘Suddhi’ or ‘purification’ movement for converted Hindus and dalits. Gradually, but surely, he started nurturing his own idea of ‘Hindutwa and Hindu- padpatshahi ( Hindu overlordship/ suzerainty)’ (See: Hearts all a-flutter : Hindustan Times : 9 September 2004, Praful Bidwai). He defined nationhood on so-called ‘ cultural nationalism’ in ‘punyabhu ( holyland) as well as pitribhu (fatherland)’, where everybody would have Hindu blood flowing in him. In his scheme, Hindus alone had the right to be nationals of the country and Muslims and Christians could not be part of Hindustan. These views of him, he published in 1923 in his book ‘Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?’ written in Marathi. They clearly reflected an attitude towards Muslim, that was the same as Hitler’s attitude towards Jews. (See: Veer Savarkar: Itihaser Aloy (in Bengali) : Ranjan Gupta, 2003) Here we must also add that this very theme was taken up enthusiastically and was resounded, may be in different words, later by Hedgewar, Golwalkar and other Hindu Mahasabha and RSS leaders and their followers of the recent times, the BJP-RSS-VHP leaders. These formed the ideological basis on which Savarkar identified Indian nation to be divided into two. On 30 November, 1937 Savarkar in his presidential address for Hindu Mahasabha at Ahmedabad said, “India can not be assumed today to be a Unitarian and homogeneous nation. But on the contrary, there are two nations in the main, the Hindus and the Muslims. These two antagonistic nations are living side by side in India.” BJP-RSS call Savarkar a ‘Veer’, but keep mum about these naked truths, that Savarkar sought clemency for his role in freedom struggle, articulated his ideas of the ‘two-nation’ more than a decade earlier, that is in twenties, than when Jinnah worded that phrase in 1939! He was thus the father of the idea, which later Jinnah could make use of to bring about partitioning of India on the basis of religion.

His fanatic Hindu communal views with fascist traits as well as capitulation to the British rulers ran side by side. During the second world war, Savarkar offered his full cooperation to the British. In 1941, as the President of the Hindu Mahasabha session, he declared , “ our national best interest demands ¾ so far as India’s defence is concerned Hindustan must ally unhesitatingly, in spirit of responsive cooperation with the war efforts of the Indian government by joining the army, navy and aerial forces in as large a number as possible.” (See Ranjan Gupta, op.cit.) So, one time proponent of armed struggle against the British rulers was advocating for joining the imperialist army of the same rulers, forgetting about freeing his own country from their clutches !

Again during Quit India movement in 1942, Savarkar as the Hindu Mahasabha leader instructed all members of his organization, working in government offices or elected to local and regional legislative bodies, to attend their office and cooperate fully with the British government. The slogans he raised were ‘Hinduization of politics’ and ‘Militarization of Hindutva’. They were nothing but admixture of call for cooperation with the British and rabid anti-Muslim feelings. By that time, however, Muslim League had also come up with its similar views and activities: cooperation with the British and rabid anti- Hindu feelings. So here was the tragic figure of Savarkar, who started his life with a view to freeing his country through even ‘armed rebellion’, but was drawing close to end it with theories and practices of fanatic Hindu communalism and capitulation to the British imperia-lists who held India in subjugation.



Savarkar’s turnaround judged on the anvil of history

To understand why this happened, why Savarkar could not or did not hold on to his stand of uncompromising struggle barring for a brief period of his life, why he made a complete turnaround, bearing contradictory traits virtually all through life, we should critically judge some characteristics of the history of Indian independence movement.. For that purpose, we have the valuable analysis of Comrade Shibdas Ghosh , the great Marxist thinker and the founder General Secretary of our party, SUCI. With its help we would find that, historically and ideally, processes of emergence of different modern nations of the western world during the days of the Renaissance, united people of a geographic territory with the common aim of fighting against the disarticulated, localized feudal order. It was only through this fight fought uncompromisingly, that people of these nations could get over the divisions centring round religion, races, languages and such others and thus could give rise to the modern, democratic, national states. This was the process through which also emerged the concept of secularism and secular state; it hinged on non-recognition of any supernatural entity, which latter was ingrained in religion and feudal thoughts. Thereby a secular state overcame the divisions and barriers of religion of its people, in one and all affairs pertaining to the activities of the state. In India, the nation-building process was released at a time when capitalism, as a world system, had lost its progressive role. The system that once had fought uncompromisingly against feudalism for democracy, freedom and secularism, was in the stage of imperialism curtailing democracy and freedom of other countries. Indian nation was emerging with the country under such an imperialist rule. The Indian bourgeoisie that led the nation-building process, thus, lacked the revolutionary fervour of the days of the Renaissance and suffered from the fear-complex of working class revolution. They maintained a reformist oppositional, compromising role against both feudalism and British imperialism, the two forces they confronted and could not wage uncompromising struggle to uproot the seeds of division within the society, like religion, caste system, race etc. to unite people getting over these. As a result, the protagonists of anti-feudal, anti-imperialist struggles could not free themselves of the influence of religion. Even the fervent revolutionaries of the independence movement, who stood for uncompromising armed struggle against the British rulers, took oath of freedom struggle with Geeta, the sacred Hindu religious scripture in hand. Right from the start of growth of Indian nationalism, there were organizations like the “Hindu Mela” and such others that sought to delve into the glorious past of the Hindus to crystallize and rouse the nationalist feelings in people. Thus, as Comrade Shibdas Ghosh pointed out, “Indian nationalism. was basically religion-oriented” manifesting itself “in the form of Hindu religious revivalism”. As an outcome of this Hindu orientation in the nation-building process and independence movement, there were no serious and pervasive efforts, on the part of the Indian bourgeoisie to win over the vast masses of religious minority, for instance the Muslims, or so-called lower castes and draw them into the mainstream of the independence movement, knowing fully well that they lagged quite behind culturally and on questions of education and others. The British rulers, on the other hand, used this weakness of our nation-building process, to generate and foment bitter communal hatred and enmity. The Indian bourgeoisie, in their haste of wresting the political power from the imperialists to establish their own class rule to freely exploit the Indian masses, “ could not and did not carry out the tasks of social and cultural revolutions essential for the democratization of the society..” In course of the political movement against imperialism, that is the independence movement, “the Indian people became a nation politically, but for failure on the part of the leadership of our national liberation movement…the Indian people remained socially and culturally divided into different communities disunited by religion, caste, language, race etc.”. In reaction to this Hindu revivalist Indian nationalism, the non-Hindu masses, like the Muslims or even the socially backward strata of the Hindu community, who suffered from social and cultural suppression by the upper caste Hindus, rather kept themselves away from the national independence movement. Among the Muslims, on the other hand, even those who were against the colonial rule of the British, kept themselves away from even the English education, thereby actually shutting themselves and people of their community off from modern democratic and secular thoughts. Leaders like Gandhi did try to unite people across the divisions of religion, caste etc.. But even that was on the wrong premise; they wanted to tie people on religious thought itself. Thus communal and casteist feelings prevailed in social life (All the quotations and paraphrasing are from On Communal Problem by Shibdas Ghosh, 1964).

Needless to say, Savarkar, stemming from such an ambience, was obviously influenced by this Hindu religion-oriented nationalism. But whereas many others, in spite of their having been influenced by the same trend, could stand firm on the question of independence of the country or of fighting the British, Savarkar failed that test. His downfall started as soon as he was put to pressure and it went to the extent that he gave birth to his ideas of Hindutwa, a rabid communal ideology, and from there to conceiving a theory reflecting attitude to the Muslims that can be compared only to those of the Nazi fascists, thus providing the ideological basis that could be used by Jinna to lead to partitioning of India on the basis of religion. Starting his life as a freedom fighter for a brief period of time, he ended in a leader of a communal force that fought for freedom from ‘foreigners’, but those foreigners were Muslims, and not the British, who were directly ruling at that time. To give effect to this fight he shamelessly capitulated to the imperialists whom he had once chosen as the enemy to fight against. There was no trace of a patriotic freedom fighter in his instance for the greater part of his life, that really determined his role in Indian history.



Savarkar involved in Gandhi assassination

But the matter did not end here. It is now an established fact, an undisputed part of history that Savarkar was the mentor of Nathuram Godse, the assassinator of Gandhi, as also his other accomplices and was himself involved in the conspiracy of assassination of Gandhi. Justice J Kapoor, in-charge of the investigating commission concluded in his report “ All these facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group” (See Bidwai, Hindustan Times, op.cit.). Even Ballabbhai Patel, the then Home Minister wrote to Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister on 27 February 1948 : “it was a fanatical wing of Hindu Mahasabha directly under Savarkar that hatched the conspiracy and saw it through”. (See Kidwai in The Statesman, op.cit.) All this proved to what depth could Savarkar go down from his rabid anti-Muslim outlook.

But here again, in the face of pressure, Savarkar betrayed his already displayed traits. He came out with two letters of apology, in 1948 and 1950, to the Indian government, reacting hastily to prove his innocence and giving undertaking to behave:. “…I wish to express my willingness to give an undertaking to the Government that I shall refrain from taking part in any communal or political public activity for any period the Government may require in case I am released on that condition.” (See Ranjan Gupta, op.cit.). He could evade conviction, not from his innocence, nor on any recommendation, but only because ‘one critical approver’s (Digambar Bagde) evidence could not be independently corroborated.’. But the fact remained : This was how the ‘Veer’ behaved. He hatched conspiracy , incited a number of accomplices , and when he faced the consequences, his role having been exposed, he apologized, pleaded innocence.

We may mention another instance that exposed Savarkar further. He had been the front-ranking leader, even the President, of the Hindu Mahasabha that had decided not to hoist the Tricolour, the National Flag on the 15th August of 1947. Savarkar, a party to that decision, however, violated it and wrote to the Commissioner of Police on 22 February 1948 “On the 15th of August last I accepted and raised on my house our new National Flag even to the embarrassment of some of my followers”.

It is thus clear from an unbiased, critical examination of historical facts that though Savarkar had started his life in the line of armed struggle against the British rulers, he succumbed in a short time to fall down to rather lowly depths of rabid communalism and capitulation to the imperialists, of conspiring to assassinate leaders like Gandhi. He cannot be placed, in any way, in the position he has been put to by the BJP-RSS; nor his portrait can be placed in the Parliament where those of the valiant fighters and glorious leaders of our independence movement are hanged.

It is not difficult to understand why apparently the BJP-RSS raises the hue and cry with Savarkar. They have to combat criticisms that RSS had been not just anti-Muslim, even anti-national during the independence movement against British imperialists. Posing Savarkar as the great revolutionary in our freedom movement they wanted to cover this truth. Facts stand against them and their claim was not nicely received by people either. But there is much more beneath it and that is why we raise the issue. The Savarkar issue is not just an isolated one, it is a part of a broader design, a determined effort of the BJP-RSS combine. Immediately after they had assumed the power in the Centre, they started to give effect to this design of theirs that smacked of fascistic falsehood. In a planned manner, they started to present a distorted history based on the views and thoughts of the RSS. They tried to dump aside the memories and history of struggles of the real illuminaries of the freedom movement and project the false figure such as Savarkar was. For instance, brushing aside the names of thousands of martyrs, they chose Savarkar’s to name the Port Blair airport, who could get his terms condoned, seeking clemency from the British rulers themselves.

We must also add that Congress does not stand at any different position. They raised the issue on the eve of the Maharashtra election to get hold of the minority support as also to divert people’s attention from the reality, from the real burning problems of their life, that are aggravating every day with the UPA government in the power, just as it had been with BJP in the rein. But even that was a lip-service to the truth, which became evident when prominent leaders of the party tried to cover up words and deeds of the concerned minister. Congress, thus stands as the birds of the same feather as the BJP-RSS combine, in the design of distortion of history.

We are strongly of the opinion that this design must be thoroughly exposed and thwarted through an all-out fight against it. And this is the point at which we are concerned most.