Arun Shourie unpacks the myths of Savarkar and his role in Indian history

Did Gandhi and Savarkar stay together as ‘friends’ in London? Did Savarkar 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 of the key myths about the Hindutva leader.
Arun Shourie unpacks the myths of Savarkar and his role in Indian history
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For some, the new spotlight on Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who wrote one of the foundational texts of Hindutva politics, is an ideology’s ‘revenge’ for being a historical footnote for long. For liberal India, however, his name will forever be associated with the conspiracy to kill Gandhi. Savarkar’s followers have kept it interesting by piling myth upon myth about his role in the freedom struggle, dissembling his ideas on caste, citizenship and religion. 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 and former editor Arun Shourie, who was also 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 myths and the man, 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. Why are you interested in him 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, some of which he himself propagated, that this book hopes to rectify — of him as an anti-British crusader, about being a mentor of Subhash Bose and the INA idea?

First, he is not a person fighting the British except advocating assassinations and violence when he is very young — in his 20s. Later, he promises the British and says, ‘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…’.

(Right) Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
(Right) Vinayak Damodar Savarkar

As for Bose and the INA, Bose himself had recorded his meeting with Savarkar in a book and said that nothing can 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 said will be done because he has ‘shown the way’ to Bose, happens. India does 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 — which he said they would as he had put Hindus in the army.

Hindutva, which you summarised at the end of the book, has been 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, if you follow the sutras that Savarkar laid down for the formation of an Indian state of 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 which he said Hindus must acquire. That kind of state will make India a Pakistan, which we are becoming…. So, in the last page, I’ve put out my plea: ‘Save Hinduism from Hindutva’.

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. In this book you will find close to 600 references.

Don’t you think Savarkar’s anti-caste stance was 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 feels, is the rakshas, and untouchability, the rakshasi of our history. The very people invoking his name are refusing to look at these things he wrote and wrote repeatedly. After all, they are fanning caste in every election speech and in selecting candidates. My book asks how such a rational person goes 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 but 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.

Could you elaborate on how Savarkar’s two-nation ideas predate Jinnah’s?

Savarkar said we are not a common people (of common blood). He said you must believe in a religion founded by a person born in this area; therefore, he says Sikhs and Jains are Hindus….The third criterion is they must have the same reverence for the same epics, heroes and villains and their holy land must be this one. Therefore, the Muslim’s holy land is in Arabia, the Parsis’ in Iran. Ambedkar had said this is 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 then announce a free, united India? Savarkar’s tract is of 1923, 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 come back. And Jinnah comes to the conclusion that the way for him to become the great leader is by an extreme Islamist position, that Muslims can’t live here, because we are two nations.

You’ve 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 sheer personal jealousy?

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, he got three. The Congress wins in seven provinces and forms governments. Savarkar is enraged. He seems to think he is the heir of Tilak and Gandhi, an outsider, a Gujarati, steals the prize. His disappointment congealed into hatred, and it came to be centred on Gandhiji.

According to you what was the extent of Savarkar’s involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi?

The Kapur Commission, which examined the matter, and Sardar Patel in his letters to Nehru said it was a small group of Savarkariites in Poona who were responsible for the assassination and no doubt Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were his devoted bhakts. There is also the evidence of the approver in the trial and he says 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 it needed to be corroborated by other evidence.

The point that Patel made, and as is obvious, that once you brainwash persons, you don’t have to say, ‘Go kill X, Y or Z’, they will do it on their own.

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