“Savarkar’s place in history and stature in freedom struggle is no less than that of Gandhi.” These are opinions, the saffronists want to create and it has been practiced in an article in ‘Antim Jan’ written by Vijay Goel. Antim Jan is not the BJP’s official organ but a magazine published by the Gandhi Smiriti and Darshan Samiti (GSDS). The projection of Savarkar is applied with the significance of an exclusive issue by an organisation which is expected to keep up as much as to the noble principles of Gandhi comparatively.
Seema Chishti, a journalist based in Delhi says, “Vinayak Savarkar was a central figure in Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination trial. Savarkar was let off for lack of adequate corroborative evidence.” But the Jivanlal Kapur Commission set up in the 1960’s (after the release of the convicts, sentenced for life imprisonment including Gopal Godse, the younger brother of Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi in January 1949) concludes : “All these facts together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group.” Based on this observation, no further proceedings were initiated since Savarkar died in 1966.
The ideological advocates of the RSS are in power at the Centre, led by the BJP and the RSS progeny governments in the States. During the BJP rule of A.B.Vajpayee as the Prime Minister, the portrait of V.D.Savarkar was unveiled in the premises of Indian Parliament, where the portrait of Mahatma Gandhi had already been displayed. What an irony indeed! The display of portraits of both the Father of the Nation and the judicially unproved but the kingpin of the assassination of Gandhi, which is nothing but to prove contradictions as harmony at the beginning. Later the successive saffron rulers have been placing Savarkar officially on a high pedestal contrary to the historical happenings. Saffronists have been projecting him as a great patriot- in fact he was a person who didn’t participate in any freedom struggle, but regularly set precedence by seeking many pardons from India’s British Rulers to serve as a loyal servant to the British royals, in order to free himself from prison before the end of the sentence period.
Ms. Seema Chishti points out in her analysis of political events thus : “The lionising of Savarkar and the diminution of Gandhiji has implications in terms of the essence of India’s future.
Continuous appreciation of Gandhiji’s assassin Godse by public representations espousing the Hindutva ideology has grown much louder in the past four years.
In recent years, replay of Gandhi’s assassination is enacted in public places by the saffronists. The dealings of such miscreants and the statements made by them proves that the law and order authority does not act in strict terms but only in a superficial manner.
Gandhi emphasised religious tolerance and religious neutrality, while moving the resolutions of Fundamental Rights at the open session of the Congress in Karachi in 1931.
Strategically, of course with ideological adherence, the saffronists seek to diminish Gandhiji, weakening the diversities in respect of culture and language that prevail among Indians. The saffronists try to establish the theory of one country, one faith, one language for which demolishing the existing diversity – structures is their main mode of articulation and action.
The ideals of Gandhi are reduced to the level of mere extrication of Gandhi’s glasses to prop up the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan, a call to cleanliness but the diversity ideals of Gandhi are being undermined. Savarkar’s Hindutva and the framework for its practice as propounded by the founder of the RSS, M.S.Golwalkar are rooted in a now discredited and failed idea of states in the European imagination of the 1930’s. When India with a majority of its citizens remains subjugated and is in need of liberation from social clutches and indignity, the Hindutva forces are emerging with a committed saffronist agenda with the established support of scriptures and mythology. It has to be accepted that Constitution could not spell out a way to overcome structural rigidities sanctioned by the scriptures.
A strategic tokenism is periodically displayed from the marginalised, symbolising those who are loyal to rulers who have fallen prey to the saffronist rhetorics to the high position in governance. Placing a single person hailing from an oppressed class on a high pedestal and ignoring the causes of the collective oppression and its continuance are systematically carried out by the present BJP rulers. Lack of awareness on the part of majority of marginalised people must be wiped out. Lack of unity in this noble task continues to remain advantageous to the saffronists.
Compiled by: nietzsche