Defending Savarkar’s Bharat

Since 1925, Savarkar clashed swords with orthodox Hindus over temple-entry rights of ‘‘untouchables’’. ‘‘He is not God who can be desecrated’’ was his epigrammatic reply to orthodox Hindus. Removal of untouchability, he held, implied purification and salvation of misguided orthodox ‘‘touchables’’. He transformed the Ganesh Festival started by Tilak into a pan-Hindu festival. By and by, the orthodox hold slackened and ‘‘untouchables’’ were allowed to enter the hall of Vithoba temple, the most important shrine in Ratnagiri. During that time, Savarkar was the only leader who intrepidly and whole-heartedly supported the Dalit liberation movement launched by Ambedkar.

In 1929, when Ambedkar was in Ratnagiri in connection with a murder trial, Savarkar invited him to address a public gathering at Vithoba temple. But Ambedkar received a telegram demanding his immediate presence in Bombay. Thus people lost an opportunity of hearing Savarkar and Ambedkar on the same podium. Again on November 13, 1935, Savarkar wrote to Ambedkar inviting him to preside over a sah-bhoj (pan-Hindu dinner). Ambedkar appreciated Savarkar’s social work but declined the invitation since he was extremely busy with his Law College activities.

Savarkar censured the idea of depressed classes changing religion for that was pregnant with devastating implication for the nation. Is it not for the same reason that Ambedkar who said, ‘‘I was born a Hindu, but will not die as a Hindu,’’ chose to convert to Buddhism, a religion of Indian origin rather than to Christianity or Islam. Though they admired each other, they differed on Hindu history. Ambedkar said that Hindus were sick men and their history was one of continuous defeat. Savarkar explicitly pointed out some glorious chapters from Hindu history (see his Saha Sonari Panne) and said it was the duty of a noble son to turn even defeats into victory and bring glory to his ancestors. If Savarkar would have been an apologetic of Manu he would not have composed the Marathi song in 1929: The impurity of ages is gone/Scripture-born stamp is torn/The age-long struggle is ended/The net of enemies shredded/The slave of ages hoary!/Now is a brother in glory.

Savarkar’s social reformation activities gained wide recognition. He was never content as a policymaker. With his band of volunteers he visited slums and squalid dens, hamlets, hills and villages where untouchables lived. It’s true that his social activities were restricted to Ratnagiri. But this was so because of the internment imposed on him till 1937. After all, unlike Udit Raj, the British were not dismissive about Savarkar and held him as a grave threat to the empire. And the end of internment coincided with his entry into hectic political and organisational activities on national level.

Like Savarkar, Ambedkar, modern India’s archetype Buddhist convert whom Udit Raj claims to follow, was forthright about Islam. But his phony successors would live in a country run on the pluralistic tradition of Hindutva and make a career out of anti-Hinduism. Before the coming of British and a brief interlude of Maratha-Sikh-Jat rule, most parts of Hindustan saw unstinted Islamic rule. The Islamic kings surely did not read Manusmriti. Why then was this not the golden age of Dalits, especially as Islam believes in egalitarianism. Dalit leader Jogendra Mandal was the sole Hindu minister in newly-created Pakistan. He was an ardent Muslim Leaguer but failed to protect his community in East Pakistan during the 1950 riots. He himself had to flee with his family into ‘‘fascist and casteist Hindu India’’ where he became a free citizen.

Savarkar was no religious Hindu. In his last will and testament he said that he should be cremated in an electric crematorium without any religious rites. It wasn’t the Manusmriti, his only scripture of Hindutva was the history of Hindus — from Chandragupta Maurya’s time to India’s freedom struggle.

(Balbir K. Punj is a Rajya Sabha MP and convenor of BJP’s think tank)