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CURRENT
ISSUE MARCH 10, 2003
THE NATION: SAVARKAR CONTROVERSY
Picture Imperfect
The Congress is pushed on the backfoot as it comes
to terms with Indira Gandhi's endorsement of Savarkar-the freedom fighter
revered by the BJP
By Lakshmi Iyer
On December
5 last year, when Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi expressed the wish to
put up a portrait of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in the Central Hall of Parliament,
Congress Deputy Leader in the Lok Sabha Shivraj Patil merely asked, "Where's
the space?" Normally, no proposal to put up a portrait or a statue
is rejected outright, "least of all when it is made by the Speaker
himself", says Patil.
WINNING MOVE: Savarkar's portrait unveiled
in Parliament
If the former Lok Sabha Speaker remained silent for form's sake, CPI(M)
leader Somnath Chatterjee also didn't resist the idea. Perhaps it was
the donation of his father N.C. Chatterjee's portrait to Parliament in
1995 that weighed on his mind. The senior Chatterjee, who succeeded Savarkar
as the Hindu Mahasabha president, represented Hoogly in the first Lok
Sabha and his portrait was unveiled in the Central Hall by the then vice-president
K.R. Narayanan.
Also silent were the Congress chief whip in the Rajya Sabha Pranab Mukherjee
and CPI's J. Chittaranjan, two of the members of the joint committee on
installation of portraits/statues of national leaders and parliamentarians
in the Parliament House Complex.
Yet, not until February 25 this year, when Congress President Sonia
Gandhi-persuaded by the CPI(M) and a group of Delhi historians-wrote to
President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to review his decision to unveil Savarkar's
portrait, did she discover that her senior colleagues had agreed to Joshi's
proposal. A peeved Sonia humiliated Patil and Mukherjee at a meeting of
the Political Affairs Committee of the Congress in Parliament.
VOICES
"Savarkar's defiance of the British government
has its own place
in the freedom struggle."
INDIRA
GANDHI,
Former prime minister
"Indira may not have been aware of Savarkar's
clemency pleas. Why should Sonia repeat her mistake?"
BIPAN
CHANDRA,
Former history professor, JNU
"You can disagree with
Savarkar's Hindutva, but you
can't brand him anti-national."
VASANT
SATHE,
Former I&B minister
"No proposal to put up a portrait in Parliament
is rejected, least of all when it is made by the Speaker."
SHIVRAJ
PATIL,
Congress deputy leader in Lok Sabha
The party's problems did not end there. A controversy began to take shape
as the BJP went about its task of revealing how former prime minister
Indira Gandhi had extended her patronage to perpetuate Savarkar's memory.
Sonia loyalists winced when informed of Indira's decision to issue a commemorative
stamp in Savarkar's honour in 1970, a private donation of Rs 11,000 to
his memorial fund a decade later, her hailing Savarkar's "daring
defiance of the British government" as having its own "important
place in the annals of our freedom movement" and even commissioning
a Films Division documentary on him.
However, Indira's endorsement of Savarkar failed to embarrass the Left
historians who had pushed Sonia to trash Savarkar. "Indira did all
that she did perhaps because she was unaware of Savarkar's numerous clemency
petitions to the British. Why should Sonia repeat her mistake?" asks
Bipan Chandra, former professor of history at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru
University. Chandra claims he himself became aware of Savarkar's mercy
pleas only two years ago when some freedom fighters opposed the renaming
of Shaheed Park in Port Blair after Savarkar.
However, the Congress-sponsored vilification of Savarkar, a hero in
Maharashtra, has upset several party leaders. "Indira Gandhi was
not a narrow-minded person," says former Union information and broadcasting
minister Vasant Sathe. In 1983, he recalls, she personally cleared the
Films Division documentary on the freedom fighter. "Savarkar's contribution
to the freedom struggle has to be viewed in totality. You can disagree
with his Hindutva, but you cannot ignore the fact that he was a great
poet and a rationalist," he says.
That is a view Sonia will not want to hear as she swings between hard
secularism and soft Hindutva. Perhaps the outcome of the Himachal Pradesh
assembly elections will decide the flavour of the coming season.
VINAYAK DAMODAR SAVARKAR
The
Bogeyman
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.
Middle Class Muscle
CURRENT
ISSUE MARCH 10, 2003
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