Vinayak Damodar Savarkar:The Bogeyman

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>[bJP News] Vinayak Damodar Savarkar:The Bogeyman

>Sat, 8 Mar 2003 17:58:50 -0800 (PST)

>

>Title: VINAYAK DAMODAR SAVARKAR: The Bogeyman

>Author: Swapan Dasgupta

>Publication: India Today

>March 10, 2003

>

>On February 26, 1966, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar died in

>Mumbai at the age of 83. Two days later, distinguished

>CPI parliamentarian Hiren Mukherjee rose in the Lok

>Sabha after question hour to suggest that the House

>pay homage to Savarkar in recognition of his services

>to the nation. The Speaker agreed to write to the

>family, conveying the feelings of the House. Earlier,

>the entire political class joined President S.

>Radhakrishnan in paying homage to Savarkar. Prime

>minister Indira Gandhi described him as a "byword for

>daring and patriotism" and CPI leader S.A. Dange

>called him "one of the great anti-imperialist

>revolutionaries".

>

>

>

> Last week, Congress President Sonia Gandhi

>boycotted the function in Parliament to unveil

>Savarkar's portrait. The leftist Delhi Historians

>Group, dominated by discarded textbook writers, dubbed

>Savarkar "anti-national" and the pro-CPI(M) Sahmat

>termed the installation of the Hindu Mahasabha

>leader's portrait a "disgrace".

>

>

> What has changed in these 37 years? Politics.

>When Savarkar died, he was a fringe figure, out of

>active politics since 1948 when he was implicated but

>acquitted in the Mahatma Gandhi murder case. He had a

>reputation as a Marathi litterateur and was also

>honoured for first describing the upheaval of 1857 as

>a "war of independence". Even among the charmed circle

>of Hindu nationalists, he was peripheral. Savarkar had

>charisma but the Hindu Mahasabha was history.

>

>

> It is different today. Hindutva, the term

>Savarkar first popularised from prison in 1923 is, by

>L.K. Advani's admission, "the ideological mascot" of

>the ruling BJP. Savarkar's definition of the Hindu as

>one who regards India as his fatherland and holy land,

>has moulded those seeking to extricate Indian

>nationhood from Nehruvian clutches. For the new

>generation of "political Hindus", impatient with the

>RSS' over-emphasis on organisation, the agnostic and

>rationalist Savarkar is a key inspiration.

>

>

> The extent to which Savarkar's concerns of

>yesterday shape the discourse of today is remarkable.

>An extract from his 1937 presidential address to the

>Hindu Mahasabha in Ahmedabad has been cited by the

>Congress to suggest that he was the protagonist of the

>two-nation theory.

>

>

> The claim doesn't withstand scrutiny. In that

>speech, Savarkar said, "The solid fact is that the

>so-called communal questions are a legacy handed down

>to us by centuries of cultural, religious and national

>antagonism between the Hindus and the Muslims ... Let

>us bravely face unpleasant facts as they are. India

>cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and

>homogeneous nation, but on the contrary there are two

>nations in the main: the Hindus and Muslims in India."

>Indeed, Savarkar spent much of the 1940s warning of

>the imminence of Congress capitulating to Muslim

>separatism. He spoke of the Congress'

>"pseudo-nationalism" just as four decades later the

>BJP was to sneer at its "pseudo-secularism".

>

>

> Savarkar led a chequered life. As a daring

>revolutionary and prisoner in the Cellular Jail, he

>enjoyed iconic status between 1911 and 1924 comparable

>to Bhagat Singh in the 1930s. As leader of the

>Mahasabha from 1937 to 1948, he earned the respect of

>many Hindus, but never secured their loyalty. Even

>this respect turned to notoriety after his close

>disciple Nathuram Godse killed Gandhi. In life,

>Savarkar was very famous but never very influential.

>

>

> Power came posthumously. The attack on his

>reputation is actually a proxy battle against his

>ideas.

>

>

>

>

>

 

 

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