The New Icon: Savarkar
and the Facts
Arun Shourie
Penguin / Viking
Rs.999
Two firm ideas were never dislodged from the heart of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966). One was that men from his talented jaati, Maharashtra’s Chitpavan Brahmins, were destined to rule over India. The other was that India’s Muslims and Christians were an unwanted presence who did not merit rights, certainly not equal rights.
A sharp writer, an eloquent speaker, and a poet whose verses about Maharashtra continue to be recited. Sarvarkar won fervent followers – Chitpavans as well others unable to tolerate the idea of equal rights for Muslims. He was undone, however, by the spirit of his times.
Twentieth century Indians, whatever their religion or caste, wanted freedom from European rule more than anything else. Moreover, the vast majority of 20th century Hindus saw tolerance and acceptance as the core values of their faith. Rejecting Savarkar, they followed Gandhi and Nehru.
Will Savarkar have better prospects in this seemingly different 21st century, where some in the world, including in India hug resentment and relish domination, preferring such mindsets to tolerance and acceptance? Arun Shourie wants today’s Hindus to know exactly what Savarkar said and wrote. Assess Savarkar through his own clear and often reiterated words, he says.
Shourie starts by underlining Savarkar’s rational opposition to practices like untouchability, caste and cow-worship. The first two practices divided Hindus. The third enabled Muslims (so claimed Savarkar) to paralyse any Hindu attack on a Muslim position by the simple tactic of placing cows in front.
‘Made-up history’
In a chapter titled “History is Made-Up”, Shourie shows that the widely believed story of how in 1910 Savarkar, then a prisoner of the British, escaped through a moving ship’s porthole and swam for liberty in the Mediterranean Sea is almost entirely fictitious. In fact the ship was stationary and parked at the port of Marseille in France when Savarkar got out through a porthole, only to be quickly recaptured.
In lectures delivered in Pune in May 1952, Four years after Gandhi’s assassination and five years after India’s independence. Savarkar claimed that Subhas Bose’s 1941 escape from house arrest in Kolkata and subsequent activities in Germany, Japan and Southeast Asia, including the joint attack on India in 1945 by Japan and Bose’s Indian National Army, were the result of a June 1940 conversation that he, Savarkar, had had with Bose. Quoting from what Bose himself had written, and also from Leonard Gordon Bose’s celebrated biographer. Shourie demolishes the tall claim.
Next, Shourie writes of Savarkar’s “self-image” as India’s destined leader, his shock at Gandhi’s emergence and rise, and his hatred of Gandhi. Quotes follow from Savarkar’s by now well-known series of about a dozen letters written between 1911 and 1920 from the Andamans’ Cellular Jail to India’s British rulers. In these letters, which are embarrassing to read, Savarkar pleads for release and offers to become “politically useful” to the Empire.
Shourie then looks at Savarkar’s assiduous efforts between 1939, when World War II began, and 1945, when it ended, for an understanding between the British and the Hindu Mahasabha (over which Savarkar presided for several successive years) that would bring Mahasabha leaders into the Viceroy’s council. The efforts failed. However, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League, both opposed to the Indian National Congress (which asked for a pledge of post-war independence as a condition for supporting the war), came together to form coalition ministries in undivided Bengal and in Sindh.
Myth and reality
An undivided India – “Akhand Hindusthan” – was the god of Savarkar, who attacked Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and the Congress for accepting partition in 1947. …..Shourie shows in fact that Savarkar viewed the subcontinent’s Hindus and Muslims as two separate and mutually hostile “nations” well before March 1940, which was when Jinnah and the Muslim League first asked for Pakistan.
The persuasiveness of Shourie’s book comes from quotes taken from Savarkar’s writings and speeches. Shourie sources the quotes to books published by Savarkar himself in his lifetime or brought out later by loyal Savarkar followers. Reminding us that in the last book that he wrote Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, Savarkar praised Hitler and Tojo, the Japanese general, as the only outsiders who helped India, Shourie also quotes Savarkar’s admiration, in that 1963 book, for projects to cull the national race by eliminating children born with disabilities.
Those wishing to admire Savarkar may be disappointed if not repelled by such remarks, and also by his prescription of “super savage cruelty” and “hyper-barbarity” against Muslims who attack Hindus unfairly or callously. Expressed in 1961, Savarkar’s preference for “a one-man rule” as against democracy in a country like India, “where the voters are ignorant” would also probably alienate today’s typical Indian.
In range, depth, and analysis, Shourie’s book is a formidable study.
Courtesy: ‘The Hindu’
