Spectres of Savarkar

Did Gandhi and Savarkar stay together as ‘friends’ in London? Did he pledge to be politically useful to the British? What kind of Hindu Rashtra did he want? Arun Shourie’s latest book, 'The New Icon', unravels some myths about the Hindutva fountainhead .
 Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
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6 min read

For some, the new spotlight on Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who wrote one of the foundational texts of Hindutva politics, is an ideology’s ‘revenge’ on being a historical footnote for long. For liberal India, his name will forever be associated with the conspiracy to kill Gandhi.

Many of his revisionist biographers have, of late, claimed to have discovered his many unknown parts. Some have said he had an interest in Hindu-Muslim unity in his youth; some have focused on his caste reformism, and some on his poetry.

Veteran journalist Arun Shourie, who was a minister in the third BJP-led NDA government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has in his latest book, The New Icon: Savarkar and the Facts (Penguin), based on Savarkar’s speeches, essays and statements, sought to steer the reader’s attention towards the man, the myths, and a ‘Project Savarkar’, which he says, is an attempt to erase Gandhi.

Excerpts from a conversation:

Why is your book’s title The New Icon when Savarkar is the ‘grand old man’ of Hindutva?

Savarkar is the person who is being resurrected now as part of a project to erase Gandhiji. Otherwise, he was a forgotten figure.

Many books on Savarkar are being written. What got you interested, and why do you think it is important now?

Yes, and I’ve scanned through them. I felt they just regurgitated many of the myths he propagated about himself, about Hindus, about history, about religion….

He was a great myth-maker. But some of his ideas are very good. He was a great rationalist regarding the practices and beliefs of Hindus.

The rulers today are invoking his name without reading him.

What are the Savarkar myths that this book hopes to rectify?

First, he was not a person fighting the British, except advocating assassinations and violence when he was very young — in his 20s. Later, he promised the British and said, ‘I will be useful to you, I pledge I will be grateful to you, no one will be as politically useful to you as me….’

As for [Subhas Chandra] Bose and the INA, I have shown in the book that Bose himself had recorded his meeting with Savarkar in a book and said that nothing could be expected from this man…. Savarkar’s claim that he provided the INA blueprint, which he claimed in three lectures he gave in Poona for the organisation Abhinav Bharat, is not true.

The INA’s formation predates the meeting between the two. And not one of the things that he claimed would be done because he had ‘shown the way’ to Bose happened. India did not rise in revolt. The INA soldiers were not given important jobs by the Japanese. Indian soldiers in the British Indian army did not defect.

Hindutva, which you have summarised at the end of the book, was the foundation of the movement that led to a BJP-led NDA government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee…

This is not a book on Hindutva. So, in this last page, I have said that if you follow the sutras that Savarkar laid down for the formation of a Hindu Rashtra, it will become an Islamic state in saffron — of the kind of cruelty that Savarkar associated with the Islamic state, with the super cunning, super deceit, which he propagated and said Hindus must acquire. That kind of state will make India a Pakistan, which we are becoming…. So, in the last page, I have put out my plea: ‘Save Hinduism from Hindutva’.

 Subhash Chandra Bose
Subhash Chandra Bose

Has this always been your position?

My position has always been the Express position: always the facts and nothing but the facts. So, if it was a question of Shah Bano’s case, I studied Islamic law, and wrote on Islamic law not from the Hindu-Hindutva point of view. In Savarkar’s case, he is being resurrected today, and I will only examine the facts. We should look at the record. In this book, you will find close to 600 references.

Was Savarkar’s anti-caste stance more a pragmatic attempt to forge an anti-Muslim Hindu bloc than about an abolition of the caste system?

No. He was sincerely against caste. Caste, he felt, was the rakshas, and untouchability, the rakshasi of our history. The very people invoking his name are refusing to look at these things he wrote repeatedly. My book asks how such a rational person could go off the rails in political and strategic matters and so on.

According to Savarkar, what should Hindus and Muslims do and abide by in a Hindutva state? How have these thoughts panned out under various Indian governments?

Muslims, he felt, should live in India as second-class citizens. I don’t remember any other government before this one that invoked the thoughts of Savarkar. Yes, for Maharashtra politics, a stamp was issued in his honour during Indira Gandhi’s time and a portrait was unveiled in Parliament during Vajpayee’s time, but his thoughts weren’t discussed.

Arun Shourie
Arun Shourie

Could you elaborate on how Savarkar’s two-nation idea predates Jinnah’s?

Savarkar said we are not a common people [of common blood]. He said one must believe in a religion founded by a person born in this area; therefore, he said Sikhs and Jains were Hindus…. The third criterion was that they must have reverence for the same epics, heroes and villains and their holy land must be this one. The Muslims’ holy land is in Arabia, the Parsis’ in Iran. [B R] Ambedkar had said this was a definition carefully crafted to exclude people like Muslims and Christians, and this benefited the British, who said, ‘You people are not agreeing, so how can we announce a free, united India?’ Savarkar’s tract was of 1923, about 20 years earlier than Jinnah’s.

Jinnah’s transformation happened after the 1937 elections, because the Muslim League was wiped out. He was a Congressman, and a great champion of Hindu-Muslim unity, but he went to England because he felt he had no future here, because he had no future in the Congress. Muslim leaders in England urged him to return. Jinnah came to the conclusion that the way for him to become the great leader was by an extreme Islamist position, that Muslims can’t live here, because ‘we are two nations’.

You have written about how Savarkar was competitive with regards to Gandhi. How much of that was an ideological ‘family feud’ — Savarkar’s militant Hindutva vs Gandhi’s benign Hinduism — and how much of it was personal rivalry?

Gandhi was repelled by Savarkar’s advocacy of violence, and the dividing of communities. Savarkar was enraged that everyone had flocked to Gandhi, that it was Gandhi who was considered the leader of nationalist movement, that Gandhi was considered the embodiment of everything Hindu, while he was the one talking about Hindutva. In the 1937 elections, as I mention in the book, 1,540 seats were contested, Savarkar got three. The Congress won in seven provinces and formed governments. Savarkar was enraged. He seemed to think he was the heir of [Bal Gangadhar] Tilak, but Gandhi, an outsider, a Gujarati, stole the prize. His disappointment congealed into hatred, and it came to be centred on Gandhiji.

What was the extent of Savarkar’s involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi?

The Kapur Commission, which examined the matter, and Sardar [Vallabhbhai] Patel, in his letters to [Jawaharlal] Nehru, said it was a small group of Savarkariites in Poona that was responsible for the assassination. And no doubt, Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were Savarkar’s bhakts. There is also the evidence of the approver in the trial… he said when Apte and Godse came down to meet Savarkar, and came to Delhi to kill Gandhiji, he overheard them say, ‘Now that Savarkar has blessed us, we will definitely succeed.’

Savarkar was let off as this needed to be corroborated by other evidence. The point that Patel made, and as is obvious, is that once you brainwash people, you don’t have to say, ‘Go kill X, Y or Z’, they will do it on their own.

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