Celebrating Hindu Rashtravad

On being convicted, V.D. Savarkar petitioned the authorities for clemency. As convict No. 32778, he was classified 8216;D8217; 8212; for Dangerous 8212; and subjected to the most inhuman treatment. Therefore, after two years in jail, he revived his clemency petition and begged the intervention of the Home Member of the Government of India in a plea dated November 14, 1913 8212; ironically, Jawaharlal Nehru8217;s 24th birthday 8212; pointing out that 8220;my conduct during all that period was exceptionally good8221; and that he was now a reformed man. 8220;If the Government in their manifold beneficence and mercy8221; were to release him, he promised to be 8220;the staunchest advocate of constitutional progress8221;. More than that was his 8220;loyalty to the English government which is the foremost condition of that progress.8221; He went on to offer 8220;to serve the Government in any capacity they like8221; and to prove this he asserted that 8220;as my conversion is conscientious, so, I hope, my further conduct would be.8221; He concluded: 8220;where else can the prodigal son return but to the parental doors of the government?8221;

Asked by a passing tourist who was this freedom fighter after whom the airport is named, the answer will not be Subhas Chandra Bose, who unfurled the flag of the Azad Hind Fauj on the same land, but a 8220;freedom fighter8221; who regarded himself as a prodigal son ready to serve the Imperial authority in any capacity they chose because he believed that it was only loyalty to the English government that could secure the constitutional progress of our enslaved land. Cut to Gandhi8217;s plea to the sessions judge in Ahmedabad 1922 to inflict the maximum punishment on him because he could not but break unjust laws even as the judge could do no more than uphold them.

Savarkar8217;s conversion from revolution to Hindutva appears, from his Story of my Transportation for Life, translated by V.N. Naik from the Marathi original, Majhi Janmathep, to have had its origins in the 8220;large number of wicked warders8221; who were 8220;Mussalmans from Sindh, Punjab and the NWF Province8221; who 8220;persecuted8221; the 8220;Hindu prisoners8221;. There is much that is admirable about the way Savarkar and his colleagues coped with the hopelessness of their situation, but his description of these travails needs to be balanced against the account of a fellow-prisoner, Trailokya Nath Chakravarty, who came to the Cellular Jail several years after Savarkar and his brother. Chakaravarty in his Bengali book, Jele Tris Bachar Thirty Years in Jail, published in 1938, says, 8220;the Savarkar brothers had wrung some conveniences and privileges after a hard fight and were now favourites of the Superintendent8221;. Savarkar, therefore, did not come to the aid of Chakravarty and other recent arrivals.

On his release on May 10, 1937, Savarkar joined the Hindu Mahasabha where he denounced the notion of an 8216;Indian Nation8217; as a 8216;mirage8217;. He said 8220;the original political sin8221; lay in not understanding that 8220;we are Indians because we are Hindus and vice versa8221;. 8220;Nationalism,8221; he held, to be a 8220;perverse conception8221; which 8220;amounts to the betrayal of the Hindu cause8221;. The duty of the patriotic Hindu he held was to 8220;free Hindudom from the grip of the so-called 8216;Indian National8217; Congress8221; Savarkar8217;s punctuation!. The whole Muslim community, said Savarkar, 8220;is communal8221;. He went on to urge Hindus in free India to 8220;take great care to see that the northern frontiers of India are well and truly guarded by staunch and powerful Hindu forces to avoid the possible danger of the Indian Muslims going over to the alien Muslim nations across the Indus8221;. Savarkar advocated that when Congressmen come asking for votes, the voters should reply, 8220;Sirs, Congressmen, you are Indian nationalist but I am a Hindu and this is a Hindu electorate8221;.

As President of the Hindu Mahasabha, Savarkar re-wrote its constitution to say: 8220;The aim of the Hindu Mahasabha is the maintenance, protection and promotion of the Hindu Race his caps!, Hindu culture and Hindu civilisation and the advancement and glory of the Hindu Rashtra8221;. He called this 8220;Hindu Rashtravad8221;. This, however, did not stop Savarkar from encouraging the Hindu Mahasabha members of the NWFP assembly to join Aurangzeb Khan of the Muslim League in forming a coalition government in 1943: Savarkar8217;s circular instructions dated 10/6/43 may be seen in Home Political file 18/3/1943, FR NWFP. Nothing came of this because Aurangzeb would not agree to Mehar Chand Khanna being named Speaker. But Hindu Mahasabha members joined Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah8217;s Muslim League government in Sind and stayed on in the government even after the Sind Assembly became the first in India to pass a 8216;Pakistan resolution8217;.

Nathuram Godse met Savarkar at Savarakar Sadan, Bombay before each of his two journeys to Delhi to assassinate Gandhiji. After Gandhiji8217;s assassination, Savarkar was among those arrested and charged. He was let off for want of 8220;evidence beyond doubt8221;, but is this patron of Nathuram Godse 8220;No leader8221; say Collins and Lapierre in their Freedom at Midnight, 8220;ever had a more devoted acolyte8221; the right person to honour as Gujarat burns? Or is this Advani8217;s contribution to turning Gandhi8217;s Gujarat into Godse8217;s Gujarat?