Freedom fighter? Armed revolutionary? Hindutva bigot? Imperialist collaborator? As the debate over his political legacy rages, historian Bindu Puri puts Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in perspective
"But the Muslims remained Muslims first and Muslims last and Indians never "- Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, quoted in Veer Savarkar, by Dananjay Keer
Savarkar was born in 1883 in a small village near Nasik. His involvement with politics began while he was still a high school student. He was the moving force behind Abhinav Bharat, comprising young militants committed to absolute independence through an armed revolt. He participated passionately in the swadeshi movement against the partition of Bengal. By the age of 22 he had become a vocal opponent of British rule in India. In 1906, he went to London, to qualify as a barrister, on a scholarship from Shyamji Krishna Varma. While in England, he started the Free India Society. From among the members he formed an inner circle of young men who believed in his revolutionary methods. They learnt the art of making and using explosives. They got a booklet on bombs from a Russian exile. Copies of the booklet reached India and one was found at the house of his eldest brother Babarao that led to his sentence — deportation for life.
In 1909, in London, Madanlal Dhingra, who was a member of the Free India Society and a close friend of Savarkar, shot and killed Sir Curzon Wyllie. About the same time in Nasik, Kanhere shot and killed AMT Jackson to avenge the sentence passed on Babarao. The discovery that the pistol used had been dispatched by Savarkar led to his extradition and imprisonment for 50 years, in 1910. In 1924, he was granted conditional release and in 1937 all restrictions on his movements were finally removed. A man of formidable courage, he had spent 14 years in different jails.
Savarkar then joined the Hindu Mahasabha and became its president. Savarkar’s book Essentials of Hinduism (1924) had been influential in the formation of another militant Hindu organisation, the rss. However, his relationship with the rss founder, KB Hedgewar, was tense. When, in 1951, the rss decided to support the formation of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee tried to persuade Savarkar to join. He, however, declined since he was outraged at the Sangh’s decision to allow entry to members from all communities.
Nathuram Godse was a disciple of Savarkar. He met him in Ratnagiri in 1929 as a young man of 19. He also served as a secretary to Savarkar till 1931, when his family moved to Sangli. In 1937, Nathuram rejoined Savarkar’s staff and went with him to Poona to work with the Hindu Mahasabha. Due to this association, Savarkar was one of the accused in the Gandhi murder trial. However, he was later acquitted.
Savarkar was also a writer and poet. His works evidence the evolution and gradual change in his ideas. In 1907, he had written The First War Of Indian Independence-1857. Here, he projected the ability of Hindus and Muslims to forget their old animosities and offer resistance to the British. In 1924, he wrote his first novel, Mopla, which was intended as an indictment of Hindu caste prejudices and a warning against the imminent possibility of conversion to Islam. In 1927, he wrote Ushap, a play about the evils of untouchability and again about the Muslim threat to Hindu survival. Kala Pani, published in 1937, follows the same thematic thread.
"But the Muslims remained Muslims first and Muslims last and Indians never "- Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, quoted in Veer Savarkar, by Dananjay Keer
Savarkar was born in 1883 in a small village near Nasik. His involvement with politics began while he was still a high school student. He was the moving force behind Abhinav Bharat, comprising young militants committed to absolute independence through an armed revolt. He participated passionately in the swadeshi movement against the partition of Bengal. By the age of 22 he had become a vocal opponent of British rule in India. In 1906, he went to London, to qualify as a barrister, on a scholarship from Shyamji Krishna Varma. While in England, he started the Free India Society. From among the members he formed an inner circle of young men who believed in his revolutionary methods. They learnt the art of making and using explosives. They got a booklet on bombs from a Russian exile. Copies of the booklet reached India and one was found at the house of his eldest brother Babarao that led to his sentence — deportation for life.
In 1909, in London, Madanlal Dhingra, who was a member of the Free India Society and a close friend of Savarkar, shot and killed Sir Curzon Wyllie. About the same time in Nasik, Kanhere shot and killed AMT Jackson to avenge the sentence passed on Babarao. The discovery that the pistol used had been dispatched by Savarkar led to his extradition and imprisonment for 50 years, in 1910. In 1924, he was granted conditional release and in 1937 all restrictions on his movements were finally removed. A man of formidable courage, he had spent 14 years in different jails.
Savarkar then joined the Hindu Mahasabha and became its president. Savarkar’s book Essentials of Hinduism (1924) had been influential in the formation of another militant Hindu organisation, the rss. However, his relationship with the rss founder, KB Hedgewar, was tense. When, in 1951, the rss decided to support the formation of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee tried to persuade Savarkar to join. He, however, declined since he was outraged at the Sangh’s decision to allow entry to members from all communities.
Nathuram Godse was a disciple of Savarkar. He met him in Ratnagiri in 1929 as a young man of 19. He also served as a secretary to Savarkar till 1931, when his family moved to Sangli. In 1937, Nathuram rejoined Savarkar’s staff and went with him to Poona to work with the Hindu Mahasabha. Due to this association, Savarkar was one of the accused in the Gandhi murder trial. However, he was later acquitted.
Savarkar was also a writer and poet. His works evidence the evolution and gradual change in his ideas. In 1907, he had written The First War Of Indian Independence-1857. Here, he projected the ability of Hindus and Muslims to forget their old animosities and offer resistance to the British. In 1924, he wrote his first novel, Mopla, which was intended as an indictment of Hindu caste prejudices and a warning against the imminent possibility of conversion to Islam. In 1927, he wrote Ushap, a play about the evils of untouchability and again about the Muslim threat to Hindu survival. Kala Pani, published in 1937, follows the same thematic thread.
Savarkar seemed to have changed his stance from opposition to the British to an understanding of the Muslims as a greater threat to Hindu survival. In fact, as he recounted in a letter to his younger brother, Bal, from jail (21-9-1919), he petitioned the British government to release him. “The statement sent to the government is exactly like what I wrote to you in my letter last year…I believe that as soon as the reforms are effected and if they be soon effected and at least the Viceregal Councils are made to represent the voice of the people then there would be no hesitation on my part — infinitestibly humble though it be — to make the beginning of such a constitutional development a success, to stand by law and order which is the very basis of society in general and Hindu polity in particular.’’
Savarkar (1883-1966) is remembered today as a spokesman of the militant Hindu rashtra. Indeed, the last 40 years of his life were spent in a crusade to unite the Hindus into a homogenous solidarity. As Dananjay Keer, his biographer, records, towards the end of his life he wished to be remembered not so much as a swatantrayavee but as the “organiser of the Hindus”.
Savarkar (1883-1966) is remembered today as a spokesman of the militant Hindu rashtra. Indeed, the last 40 years of his life were spent in a crusade to unite the Hindus into a homogenous solidarity. As Dananjay Keer, his biographer, records, towards the end of his life he wished to be remembered not so much as a swatantrayavee but as the “organiser of the Hindus”.
To understand what exactly Savarkar intended by his commitment to Hindu survival, one needs to understand his vision of what makes up the Hindu identity, Hindu rashtra and Indian State. Savarkar made a distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva. As he said, Hinduism was concerned with “the salvation of life after death, the concept of God and the universe”, with the specifically religious beliefs of the Hindus. Hindutva was, however, a wider term and related to the socio-cultural linguistic markers of the Hindu race. According to Savarkar, religion was only one part and not even the dominant part of Hindutva, the other aspects were equally, if not more, important. While Hinduism was private to each individual, Hindutva existed as a public persona. For Savarkar, “Every person is a Hindu who regards and holds this Bharat Bhoomi…. as his fatherland and holy land, the land of the origin of his religion and the cradle of his faith.” This meant that territorial occupation alone could not make a Hindu. Only those were Hindus whose cultural religious heritage was located in Bharat.
Savarkar argued that by virtue of their commonality the Hindus constituted the Hindu rashtra. This nationalism was exclusive as communities who could not accept India as the source of their religion could not make the nation. However, though this was so, the minorities could form a political state with the Hindus. The Indian State so formed would be primarily a Hindu State. This State, Savarkar carved along modern western lines. He envisaged a democratic State based on one-man one-vote, where science would lead to material progress and the spread of rational scientific temper. Such a State would basically be committed to defend Hindu nationalism in order to safeguard the Hindu identity. Given the distinction between Hindutva and Hinduism, it would be a State where there would be an aggressive defence of the language, culture, history, politics etc, of the Hindus. However, as far as specifically religious beliefs were concerned — God-Salvation-Universe — Savarkar felt that these were the private domains of individuals and in their place there should be the inculcation of modern scientific temper. Interestingly, the position of Savarkar paradoxically amounted to a situation where the Hindu State would develop scientific temper in place of religiosity. Yet, in terms of secular spaces, such a State would be non-secular, sectarian and decidedly, unilaterally, Hindu. It would then ideologically work towards a state of affairs where Hinduism would be replaced by enlightened rational modern scientific temper and Hindutva would be aggressively established.
The Hindutva ideology theoretically suffers from this serious lacuna. Its distinction between Hindutva and Hinduism disperses Hinduism and espouses Hindutva. A commitment to Hindutva gathers strength from the religious argument, yet it only pretends to be a religious movement whereas ideologically it is a cultural, socio-linguistic and political movement. Yet, this clarity is not given even to a thinker like Savarkar who assumes that Hinduism will simply happen, no matter if the means adopted work at the destruction of all its specific religious beliefs. Witness the problematic in his vision: “A Hindu is most intensely so when he ceases to be a Hindu, and when a Shankar claims the whole earth for a Benaras…”. Yet, he fails to see that a Hindu cannot become truly a Hindu with a vedantic sense of oneness if he paradoxically and aggressively espouses all his socio-linguistic and cultural aspects in a defensive, exclusive, one-dimensional Hindu rashtra.
In Gandhi, there was a powerfully alternative understanding of the Indian identity and Hindu self, which, as it was a part of the same tradition which Savarkar had sought to appropriate completely, was all the more damaging to his view. Gandhi built up the Hindu self using the concepts of truth and ahimsa from the same tradition. He spoke of Ram as an embodiment of self-sacrifice in sharp contrast to Savarkar who said that Ram established righteousness but only after slaying Ravana. This conversation which Gandhi and Savarkar had in Nazimuddin’s Indian restaurant in Bayswater in London at a Dussehra dinner, as early as 1909, really exemplified their powerfully polarised visions. And, this argument between them was lived out through their vastly different lives.
In Gandhi, there was a powerfully alternative understanding of the Indian identity and Hindu self, which, as it was a part of the same tradition which Savarkar had sought to appropriate completely, was all the more damaging to his view. Gandhi built up the Hindu self using the concepts of truth and ahimsa from the same tradition. He spoke of Ram as an embodiment of self-sacrifice in sharp contrast to Savarkar who said that Ram established righteousness but only after slaying Ravana. This conversation which Gandhi and Savarkar had in Nazimuddin’s Indian restaurant in Bayswater in London at a Dussehra dinner, as early as 1909, really exemplified their powerfully polarised visions. And, this argument between them was lived out through their vastly different lives.
Bindu Puri has edited ‘Gandhi and His Contemporaries’ and written ‘Gandhi and the Moral Life’
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