WHITE-WASHING CRIMES OF 'VEER' SAVARKAR!

 

WHITE-WASHING CRIMES OF VEER SAVARKAR!

The biography of Savarkar titled SAVARKAR AND THE MAKING OF HINDUTVA [Princeton, 2024] by Professor Janaki Bakhle of University of California is part of campaign of rehabilitation of VD Savarkar as Indian nationalist, nationalist historian, rationalist, a social reformer, and crusader against Untouchability. It is first time after Dhananjay Keer’s official biography of Savarkar titled VEER SAVARKAR (1950) that primary Marathi resources have been relied. Professor Bakhle passes Savarkar with faith in Hindutva or Hinduness, which was nothing but Hindu separatism, as a great role model of Indian nationalism. As a flag-bearer Hindutva he refused to accept Muslims and Christians as part of Indian nation. Interestingly, Jinnah and Muslim League (ML) were rightly declared as opponents of Indian nationalism because they did not believe in an all-inclusive Indian nation.

About other credentials of Savarkar as narrated by Professor Bakhle one wonders how these could be true when he criticized Shivaji for not allowing rapes of Muslim and Christian women (‘Perverted conception of virtues’ in Six Glorious Epochs, p. 450), as a diehard Casteist he declared Manusmriti as most worshippable after Vedas (‘Women in Manusmriti’). I wish Professor Bakhle had gone through Hindu Mahasabha (HM) presidential addresses of Savarkar in which he declared Hindus and Muslims as two ‘antagonistic nations’ living in India (1937 HM session at Ahmedabad), justified running of coalition governments with Jinnah led ML in 1942 (1942 HM session at Kanpur), sided with the colonial masters in suppressing Quit India Movement 1942 (Kanpur session) and joined the British war efforts in the World War II when Subhash Chander Bose was trying to organize liberation army from abroad (Kanpur session).

Author for reasons known to her only did not take note of a crucial primary source material, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s Whirlwind Propaganda: Extracts from the President’s Diary of his Propagandist Tours Interviews from December 1937 to October 1941, published by HM. It is a must-read work for anybody who wants to know the real Savarkar. It was published in 1941 and was edited by A. S. Bhide, a close confidant of Savarkar. This book, according to its Preface, was “primarily meant to serve as an authoritative text and faithful guide to the propagandists, workers and leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha movement in particular, and the Hindu public in general, enlightening the lines of practical application of the fundamental ideology of the Hindu Sangathan Movement to the various detailed questions and problems which face the Hindus today”. In this record we find Savarkar proposing to the British Queen that if Britain planned to relinquish power it should hand over India to the Nepal King as he was the king of all Hindus of the world. This Diary contains Savarkar’s letters to Sanatani Hindus that HM would never support law for compulsory entry of Sudras in Hindu temples or support laws which would interfere in the personal laws of Hindu brethren. Sadly, this work has disappeared from libraries, but I can provide a copy.

Lastly, this work is completely silent on the 1911, 1913, 1914 1918 and 1920 Mercy Petitions of Savarkar in which he begged for release from the Cellular Jail as a ‘prodigal son’ who wanted to return to the ‘parental doors of the Government', thus securing a remission of almost 40 years out of 50 years' conviction.