NEW DELHI: The era of Savarkar has arrived in the country after 2014, Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh supremo Mohan Bhagwat said, asserting that the Hindu Mahasabha leader’s vision for the nation was now being realised.
At a book release on Tuesday, Bhagwat said Savarkar had envisaged national and strategic interests as same, which, he claimed, after 2014 is becoming visible. “Savarkar’s vision for Independence had envisaged all being equal, and convergence of the national and strategic interests. We can say that Savarkar era has arrived in the country,” he said after releasing a book on Savarkar by Uday Mahurkar and Charayu Pandit.
Bhagwat asserted Savarkar was a social reformer, and added that B R Ambedkar too had acknowledged his works for social amity in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra. Defence Rajnath Singh exhorted the role of Savarkar in India’s freedom struggle and added that he was vilified by vested interests. Singh said the repeated claims that the Hindu Mahasabha leader had signed a mercy petition to the British government for release from life term were part of the motivated campaign orchestrated by the “Marxist and Leninist groups”.
“The fact is the mercy petition was submitted on the exhortation of Mahatma Gandhi,” Singh said, describing Savarkar as a social revolutionary as well as a hardcore nationalist. Savarkar had forewarned that the demand for the right to self-determination would lay the seeds of the partition of the country, he said.
“Savarkar had been portrayed as a Nazi and Fascist, which he wasn’t, by the vested interests after Independence. He believed in healthy democracy, while believing that the nation is a cultural entity, and all are equal in duties and rights,” the minister added.