Latest revision as of 20:35, 4 October 2023

[edit] Ideology

[edit] HIGHLIGHTS

February 26, 2018: The Times of India

Savarkar, who's said to have coined the term 'Hindutva', is held in high esteem by the BJP

The saffron party venerates Savarkar as a "freedom fighter", but many opposition parties say he wasn't a supporter of India's independence movement.

According to screenshots shared on Twitter, the TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh chief minister, tweeted the following around 7 am this morning: "Humble tributes to the legendary freedom fighter, Veer Savarkar ji, on his death anniversary." Soon after, the tweet was unavailable. The reason Naidu could have deleted the tweet is because the TDP's relations with ally BJP - as part of the NDA coalition - have been a bit rocky lately. Savarkar, who's said to have coined the term 'Hindutva', is held in high esteem by the BJP.

The saffron party venerates Savarkar as a "freedom fighter", but many opposition parties say he wasn't a supporter of India's independence movement. These parties, especially the Congress, cite the fact that Savarkar didn't support Gandhi's 'Quit India' movement as proof he was no freedom fighter.

In August 1942, Savarkar, who was then president of the 'Hindu Mahasabha', wrote a letter to its members titled 'Stick to your Posts'. The letter advised Mahasabha members to boycott the 'Quit India' movement.

He instructed those Mahasabha members who were also "members of municipalities, local bodies, legislatures or those serving in the army...to stick to their posts" across the country, and to not join the 'Quit India' movement at any cost, says a 2013 book, 'Hindu Mahasabha in Colonial North India, 1915-1930: Constructing Nation and History', by Prabhu Bapu.

Savarkar had been arrested in 1910 for his connections with a revolutionary group called 'India House', which used to publish an anti-colonialist newspaper, The Indian Sociologist. He was sentenced to two life terms of imprisonment - a total of fifty years - and was moved to the Cellular Jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Savarkar was released in 1921 and the Congress cites that fact to say he wasn't a freedom fighter. That's because unlike other patriots like Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Ashfaqullah, who refused to ask the British Raj for mercy even at the cost of their lives, Savarkar actually sought clemency.

Savarkar wrote in his plea to the British colonials that if he's freed from jail he will pledge to be "the staunchest advocate of constitutional progress and loyalty to the English government." He was duly released.

[edit] Bharat, India

Yashee, Sep 6, 2023: The Indian Express

The Constitution mentions both Bharat and India, with Article 1 saying: “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.” Many other names are popularly linked with the nation, such as Hindustan and the older Bharatvarsha and Aryavarta.

The row over Bharat and India comes at a time another controversy, over DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin’s remarks on Sanatan Dharma, is yet to die down. Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, in his seminal work Essentials of Hindutva, has dealt with all these topics — the names Hindustan and Bharat, and the difference between Sanatan Dharma, Hinduism, and Hindutva. Here’s what he said.

Aryans and the Sapta Sindhu

Savarkar says that the word Hindu and Hindustan best describe the people who lived between Sindhu and Sindhu — the river Indus or Sindhu in the north and the Indian Ocean in the south. He says that while the name ‘Sindhu’ was given by the Aryans, and S is replaced by H in both Persian and Prakrit, the Aryans could have possibly picked the name already being used by the local tribes living in the region — thus seeking to establish the word as firmly indigenous.

He says that while it is difficult to state when the first band of Aryans made the banks of the Indus their home, “yet certain it is that long before the ancient Egyptians, and Babylonians had built their magnificent civilization, the holy waters of the Indus were daily witnessing the lucid and curling columns of the scented sacrificial smokes and the valleys resounding with the chants of Vedic hymns — the spiritual fervour that animated their souls.”

Savarkar says the Aryans called themselves the Sapta Sindhus after the seven rivers “presided over by the Sindhu”. “Out of their gratitude to the genial and perennial network of waterways that run through the land like a system of nerve-threads and wove them into a Being, they very naturally took to themselves the name of Sapta Sindhus, an epithet that was applied to the whole of Vedic India in the oldest records of the world, the Rigveda itself.”

He says that the word ‘Hapta Hindu’ can be found in the Avesta, the ancient collection of Zoroastrian religious texts, and the name soon spread beyond Persia.

He then goes on to argue that the name Sindhu could be older than the Aryans, who borrowed it from the friendlier of the tribes who inhabited this land before their arrival. “…it is quite probable that the great Indus was known as Hindu to the original inhabitants of our land and owing to vocal peculiarity of the Aryans it got changed into Sindhu when they adopted it by the operation of the same rule that S is the Sanskritised equivalent of H. Thus Hindu would be the name that this land and the people that inhabited it bore from time so immemorial that even the Vedic name Sindhu is but a later and secondary form of it.”

Hindustan and Bharat

Savarkar says the word Bharat came about when the “centre of gravity” shifted from Sapta Sindhu to the Gangetic delta. “The terms Aryawarta or Bramhawarta were not so suitable as to express the vast synthesis that embraced the whole continent from the Indus to the sea and aimed to weld it into a nation. Aryawarta as defined by the ancient writers was the land that lay between the Himalayas and the Vindhya…. it could not serve as a common name to a people that had welded Aryans and non-Aryans into a common race…This necessity of finding a suitable term to express the expansive thought of an Indian Nation was more or less effectively met when the House of Bharat came to exercise its sway over the entire world.”

Savarkar says that without “entering into speculation as to who this Bharat was, the Vedic Bharat or the Jain one or what was the exact period at which he ruled”, it is enough to know that “his name had been not only the accepted but the cherished epithet by which the people of Aryawarta and Daxinapatha delighted to call their common motherland and their common cultural empire.”

However, he goes on to argue, “But this new word Bharatavarsha could not altogether suppress our cradle name Sindhus or Hindus nor could it make us forget the love we bore to that River of rivers.” Foreigners, too, he says, continued to identify the land with Sindhu.

He cites a more defined description given by Shalivahan, the grandson of King Vikramaditya. “The best country of the Aryans is known as Sindhusthan whereas the Mlecch country lies beyond the Indus.”

He then argues that while Emperor Bharat is gone, the Sindhu lives on forever. “The most ancient of the names of our country of which we have a record is Saptasindhu or Sindhu. Even Bharatvarsha is and must necessarily be a latter designation besides being personal in its appeal… The name that associates and identifies our nation with a river like that, enlists nature on our side and bases our national life on a foundation, that is, so far as human calculation are concerned, as lasting as eternity.”

Savarkar On Sanatan Dharma, Hindu dharma, and Hindutva

Savarkar describes the followers of Sanatan Dharma as those who recognise the authority of Shruti, Smriti and Puranas. Shruti and Smriti both refer to Vedic literature, Shruti is first-hand knowledge, that which was heard (Vedas, Upanishads, etc.), while Smriti is that which is written down from memory (Upvedas, Tantras, etc.)

“The majority of the Hindus subscribes to that system of religion which could fitly be described by the attribute that constitutes its special feature, as told by Shruti, Smriti and Puranas or Sanatan Dharma. They would not object if it even be called Vaidik Dharma. But besides these there are other Hindus who reject either partly or wholly, the authority—some of the Puranas, some of the Smritis and some of the Shrutis themselves. But if you identify the religion of the Hindus with the religion of the majority only and call it orthodox Hinduism, then the different heterodox communities being Hindus themselves rightly resent this usurpation of Hindutva by the majority as well as their unjustifiable exclusion,” he writes.

He makes the distinction clearer by saying: “The religion of the majority of the Hindus could be best denoted by the ancient accepted appellation, the Sanatan dharma or the Shruti-smriti-puranokta Dharma or the Vaidik Dharma; while the religion of the remaining Hindus would continue to be denoted by their respective and accepted names Sikha Dharma or Arya Dharma or Jain Dharma or Buddha Dharma. Therefore the Vaidik or the Sanatan Dharma itself is merely a sect of Hinduism or Hindu Dharma, however overwhelming be the majority that contributes to its tenets.”

About Hindutva, he says, “Hindutva is not a word but a history. Not only the spiritual or religious history of our people as at times it is mistaken to be by being confounded with the other cognate term Hinduism, but a history in full. Hinduism is only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva.”

[edit] Ram, Akbar, Buddha, Christianity, ‘the Hindu race’

Nov 21, 2022: The Times of India

Savarkar is a much-debated figure. But what is agreed upon is that he was among the foremost ideologues of Hindutva, defining the term in his treatise, 'Essentials Of Hindutva'. Here are Savarkar's views on various subjects, in his own words.

Savarkar is a much-debated figure, as he took hardline as well as rational positions on various subjects. His views on the cow being just a useful animal are cited as going against the conservative Hindutva stand. His mellow attitude towards the British post his release from Andaman’s Cellular Jail are used to question his credentials as ‘veer’ (the title he used for himself, meaning brave) and as a freedom fighter. But what is agreed upon beyond debate is that he was among the foremost ideologues of Hindutva, defining the term in his 1923 treatise, ‘Essentials Of Hindutva’.

In the book, Savarkar elaborates on his views on a variety of subjects. Here are some excerpts.

‘Hinduism is a derivative of Hindutva’

Arguing that Hindutva is different from Hinduism, Savarkar asserts the importance of using the right names in certain contexts.

“Jesus died but Christ has survived the Roman Emperors and that Empire. Inscribe at the foot of one of those beautiful paintings of ‘Madonna’ the name of ‘Fatima’ and a Spaniard would keep gazing at it as curiously as at any other piece of art; but just restore the name of ‘Madonna’ instead, and behold his knees would lose their stiffness and bend his eyes their inquisitiveness and turn inwards in adoring recognition, and his whole being get suffused with a consciousness of the presence of Divine Motherhood and Love!”

Saying Hinduism is just a fraction of Hindutva, Savarkar adds, “To this category of names which have been to mankind a subtle source of life and inspiration belongs the word Hindutva, the essential nature and significance of which we have to investigate into….Forty centuries, if not more, had been at work to mould it as it is. Prophets and poets, lawyers and law-givers, heroes and historians, have thought, lived, fought and died just to have it spelled thus… Hindutva is not a word but a history. Not only the spiritual or religious history of our people as at times it is mistaken to be by being confounded with the other cognate term Hinduism, but a history in full. Hinduism is only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva.”

‘Ram’s conquest of Ceylon real birth-day of Hindu people’

Tracing the history of Aryans as the ‘sapt-sindhu’ (seven sindhus) spreading over the Indian subcontinent, Savarkar writes that thanks to the expansion, the name ‘Hindu’ was overshadowed. “As time passed on, the distances of their new colonies increased, and different settlements began to lead life politically very much centred in themselves. The new attachments thus formed, though they could not efface the old ones, grew more and more pronounced and powerful until the ancient generalizations and names gave way to the new. Some called themselves Kurus, others Kashis or Videhas or Magadhas while the old generic name of the Sindhus or Hindus was first overshadowed and then almost forgotten.” However, he claims, the “great mission which the Sindhus had undertaken of founding a nation and a country, found and reached its geographical limit” with Ram’s victory over Ceylon.

“…the valorous Prince of Ayodhya made a triumphant entry in Ceylon and actually brought the whole land from the Himalayas to the Seas under one sovereign sway. The day when the Horse of Victory returned to Ayodhya unchallenged and unchallengeable, the great white Umbrella of Sovereignty was unfurled over that Imperial throne of Ramchandra, the brave, Ramchandra the good, and a loving allegiance to him was sworn, not only by the Princes of Aryan blood but Hanuman, Sugriva, Bibhishana from the south-that day was the real birth-day of our Hindu people. It was truly our national day: for Aryans and Anaryans knitting themselves into a people were born as a nation.”

On Akbar and ‘moral victory’

Savarkar writes that as the “sword of Islam” overran nation and civilisations, India stood as a lone bulwark. “But here fur the first time the sword succeeded in striking but not in killing. It grew blunter each time it struck, each time it cut deep but as it was lifted up to strike again the wound stood healed,” he writes. Savarkar claims that Akbar coming to the throne and Darashukoh’s birth was a moral victory.

“Day after day, decade after decade, century after century, the ghastly conflict continued and India single-handed kept up the fight morally and militarily. The moral victory was won when Akbar came to the throne and Darashukoh was born. The frantic efforts of Aurangzeb to retrieve their fortunes lost in the moral field only hastened the loss of the military fortunes on the battlefield as well,” he writes.

On Buddhism

Savarkar writes that the “political consequences of the Buddhistic expansion” were “disastrous to the national virility and even the national existence of our race”, although he asserts his respect for Buddha and Buddhism multiple times.

“The reaction against universal tendencies of Buddhism only grew more insistent and powerful as the attempt to re-establish the Buddhist power in India began to assume a more threatening attitude. Nationalist tendencies refused to barter with out national independence and accept a foreign conqueror as our overlord,” Savarkar writes.

And, in opposition to this expansionism, “…And thus we find that institutions that were the peculiar marks of our nation were revived: – The system of four varnas which could not be wiped away even under the Buddhistic sway, grew in popularity to such an extent that kings and emperors felt it a distinction to be called one who established the system of four varnas. Reaction in favour of this institution grew so strong that our nationality was almost getting identified with it.”

However, Savarkar does assert, “We yield to none in our love, admiration and respect for the Buddha-the Dharma-the Sangha. They are all ours. Their glories are ours and ours their failures.”

On inter-caste marriages

Savarkar addresses the claim that because of the caste system, Hindus could not really be called a race.


“We are well aware of the not unoften interested objection that carpingly questions ‘but are you really a race ? Can you be said to possess a common blood ?’ We can only answer by questioning in return, ‘Are the English a race ? Is there anything as English blood, the French blood, the German blood or the Chinese blood in this world? Do they, who have been freely infusing foreign blood into their race by contracting marriages with other races and peoples possess a common blood and claim to be a race by themselves ?’ If they do, Hindus also can emphatically do so.”

On the caste criticism, he says, “For the very castes, which you owing to your colossal failure to understand and view them in the right perspective, assert to have barred the common flow of blood into our race, have done so more truly and more effectively as regards the foreign blood than our own… Even a cursory glance at any of our Smritis would conclusively prove that the Anuloma and Pratiloma marriage [marriage between a man and a woman of different castes] institutions were the order of the day and have given birth to the majority of the castes that obtain amongst us…”

“All that the caste system has done is to regulate its noble blood on lines believed-and on the whole rightly believed-by our saintly and patriotic law-givers and kings to contribute most to fertilize and enrich all that was barren and poor, without famishing and debasing all that was flourishing and nobly endowed,” he adds.

[edit] Urdu poetry, Islamic metaphor

RAKHSHANDA JALIL/ How Urdu Poets Raged Against British Atrocities in The Cellular Jail of Andama/ 29 Dec 2022

Savarakar [wrote] in Urdu in his prison diary a copy of which is proudly displayed in the Cellular Jail museum; it is remarkable for its immaculate Urdu and its reference to Meraj, the journey the Prophet Muhammad is said to have undertaken to the high heavens:

Abhi meiraj ka kya zikr, yeh pehli hii manzil hai

Hazaron manzilen karni hain tai hum ko kathin pehlay

(Why talk of Meraj now, this is the first stage of the journey

We have to travel through thousands of difficult destinations.)

[edit] Other parties and Mr Savarkar

[edit] CPI MPs, Feroze Gandhi spoke up for him

Shyamlal Yadav, April 2, 2023: The Indian Express

The Congress has sought to put a lid on the heat generated by Rahul Gandhi’s remarks concerning Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, after this threatened to scald attempts to forge Opposition unity. After Congress ally Shiv Sena (UBT), worried about its Maharashtra base, raised the matter with Rahul and Sonia Gandhi, an agreement was reached to cool off on Savarkar for now.

But it was neither the first time, nor the last, that the Congress has struggled with how to view the Hindu Mahasabha leader, who fought the British but is identified now more with fashioning Hindutva as a political ideology, and has been adopted by the Sangh Parivar as one of its icons.

Post-2000, amidst the rise of the BJP and its glorification of Savarkar, the Congress view has hardened, with the party targeting him as a “coward” who had pleaded with the British for forgiveness.

The comments by Rahul that led to the recent controversy also were along the same lines. Asked whether he could have apologised to escape the defamation conviction, which led to his disqualification as an MP, Rahul said: “I am not Savarkar that I would apologise. I am a Gandhi and a Gandhi does not apologise.”

Savarkar the person

While studying in the UK, Savarkar joined other Indians abroad who had leant their efforts to fight the British rule back home. In March 1910, a 27-year-old Savarkar was arrested over these activities. While being extradited back home, he escaped from a steamer near the coast of France, and swam ashore. As that episode made headlines, Savarkar was rearrested and handed over to the British.

At the age of 28, Savarkar was sentenced to two life terms and sent to Cellular Jail in the Andamans. The prison was meant to break the most hardened of prisoners, and Savarkar also faced torture and brutality.

He was released from jail in 1924 following contested “mercy petitions” and a promise to not participate in political activities.

A new chapter in his life started with his election as President of the Hindu Mahasabha at Ahmedabad in 1937. He continued in the role until 1943.

After Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination in January 1948 by Nathuram Godse, who was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha, Savarkar was tried, but was acquitted by court.

Savarkar and politics

On November 22, 1957, during proceedings in the Lok Sabha, Raja Mahendra Pratap, an Independent MP from Mathura, moved a Bill “to recognise the service to the country of certain persons, namely, Shri Vir Savarkar, Shri Barindra Kumar Ghose (brother of Shri Aurobindo Ghose) and Dr Bhupendra Nath Datta (brother of Swami Vivekananda)”.

The Deputy Speaker allowed the Bill to be introduced, but objections were raised by Congress members. Finally, there was a division of votes, with 48 votes in favour and 75 against the introduction of the Bill. Mahendra Pratap walked out, declaring: “I hope every Bengali and every Maratha will also walk out.”

Support for Mahendra Pratap came from unexpected quarters: CPI MP and Left stalwart A K Gopalan. The Kasaragod MP said: “There was a discussion whether this Bill can be introduced. Then the Deputy Speaker gave the ruling that it can be introduced. After that, it was opposed. This is a very unusual thing that even at the very introduction a Bill is being opposed.” Gopalan’s argument in turn found another supporter: Feroze Gandhi, the grandfather of Rahul Gandhi. “This action of opposing the introduction of the Bill by the government amounts almost to a vote of no-confidence in the Deputy Speaker,” Feroze Gandhi said.

In 1965, when Savarkar was critically ill, the Congress government led by Lal Bahadur Shashtri released Rs 3,900 for his help from the Home Minister’s fund, and later gave another Rs 1,000. The Maharashtra government, also led by the Congress, granted Rs 300 per month relief to Savarkar from September 1964 until his demise on February 26, 1966.

By that time, Indira Gandhi had taken over as leader of the Congress and government. With the passing of the baton from leaders forged in the fires of the freedom struggle, the nature of politics had already started changing.

Two days after Savarkar’s death, some members of the Bhartaiya Jana Sangh (the predecessor of the BJP) and Praja Socialist Party requested the Lok Sabha Speaker (Akali Dal-turned-Congressmen Hukam Singh) for a reference of condolence. The Speaker rejected this, saying it “would be creating a new precedent because we usually do not make such a reference to such personalities and dignitaries. Therefore, however great our respect for the departed person, we should avoid breaking the precedents that have been set up.”

Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Satya Narayan Sinha backed the Speaker.

Again, it was a CPI MP, H N Mukherjee (Calcutta Central seat), who objected. “The passing away of Vir Savarkar is a matter of such national importance that Members of Parliament sitting on a day when that happens ought to register our feelings. We do not do it; it’s something unheard of and unthinkable. If rules preclude us from condoling the death of a very great man merely because he did not have the dubious distinction of having been a member of the Central Legislative Assembly where Shri Satya Narayan Sinha was a luminary, this is something I cannot comprehend.”

In response, Sinha conceded: “We can do it (offer condolence).”

There were also demands and suggestions from different quarters after his death for a memorial to be set up in his memory and issuing of a postage stamp. Records show that during January-May 1967, at least eight special/commemorative postage stamps in addition to six public postage stamps in the new definitive series were issued, but the government said it could not issue one in the name of Savarkar in 1966 or 1967, “due to the limited capacity of the Security Press and shortage of adhesive paper, which is imported”.

But after repeated requests from many quarters, the first such stamp in his memory was issued, on May 28, 1970, when Indira Gandhi was the PM.

Not much later, on December 1, 1972, during a reference to those who favoured the extremist line in the Independence movement struggle, Congress MP from Nizamabad M Ram Gopal Reddy told the Lok Sabha: “Netaji Subhash Bose adopted that path, Aurobindo Ghose took that path, and Vir Savarkar also followed the same path, so we need not feel ashamed of it.”

The same day, Deputy Home Minister F H Mohsin told the House that the government had received proposals to rename Port Blair after Savarkar.

On March 7, 1973, in reply to a question in the Lok Sabha on whether the government considers Savarkar a freedom fighter, Minister of Home Affairs Umashankar Dikshit of the Congress said the government had taken a decision to accord the status of freedom fighter to Savarkar. However, on the issue of Savarkar’s property in the UK that was confiscated by the British, Dikshit said the said property was auctioned and it was acquired by a third party, “It has not been found feasible and legally practicable to restore that property to his heirs.” In August 1985, another Congress MP, Chandra Shekhar from Khalilabad in UP, told the Lok Sabha: “We cannot ignore his (Svarkar’s) great contribution to the freedom struggle. Therefore, I would appeal to the Honorable Home Minister to rename Port Blair as Savarkar Dham after the name of India’s brave son.”

Both Jana Sangh MP Balraj Madhok and CPI MP Ramavatar Shashtri had earlier called for renaming Port Blair as “Vir Savarkar dweep”.

Post-2000

As the Ram temple movement drew fresh battle lines between parties, the Left completely distanced itself from the Jana Sangh with which it had earlier allied and shared power in states; with the BJP and Left both supporting the Janata Dal government in 1989. Meanwhile, the Congress hardened its stand on Savarkar.

During the NDA government of Atal Behari Vajpayee, a profile of Savarkar was published to mark his death anniversary by the government in February 2003, and a portrait of his installed in the Central Hall of Parliament by President A P J Abdul Kalam on February 26, 2003. The Left parties and Congress boycotted the function.

Then Congress president Sonia Gandhi wrote to Kalam against installing Savarkar’s portrait, saying it would be a “great tragedy if the Central Hall is utilised” for it.

When the UPA government of Manmohan Singh was in power, in August 2004, there was an uproar in the House as BJP and Shiv Sena MPs alleged that a plaque at the newly built Swatantrata Jot (flame of independence) at the Cellular Jail in the Andamans had been removed on the instructions of then Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyer, who had inaugurated the memorial.

During the 2019 Assembly polls in Maharashtra, in which it could not get a majority, the BJP’s promise included asking the Central government to confer Bharat Ratna on Savarkar. However, the BJP-led Central government is yet to do the same.

[edit] ‘Son of Portugal’?

[edit] The controversy, as in 2019

May 28, 2019: The Times of India

Former Rajasthan education minister Vasudev Devnani o flayed the state Congress government for affixing “son of Portugal” to R S S ideologue Vinayak Damodar’s description in class 10 social science textbooks.

Recently, the Congress government constituted a textbook revision committee in the school education department. Based on the committee’s findings, the department revised a short biography of R S S ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar introduced by the previous BJP government.

Now, in the textbooks it is mentioned Savarkar had described himself as “son of Portugal” when seeking clemency from the British government in 1910-11.

In a series of tweets on Monday, Devnani said the state government should take inspiration from former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who had described Savarkar as the “byword for daring and patriotism.”

“Former PM Indira Gandhi recognised and hailed the legacy of great freedom fighter Veer Savarkar. The then government had issued a commemorative stamp on Veer Savarkar in 1970.

“Indira Gandhi had donated a sum of Rs 11,000 from her personal account to Savarkar Trust and ordered the films division to produce a documentary on his life,” Devnani tweeted.

The former state minister said calling the freedom fighter “son of Portugal” is an insult. He alleged the Congress government had the single-point agenda of insulting heroic characters and eulogising only one family.

In response, Rajasthan education minister Govind Singh Dotasara said the changes were made by the experts committee. PTI

[edit] The view of Chaudhary Charan Singh…and others

Shyamlal Yadav, May 29, 2023: The Indian Express

Charan Singh, who formed the first non-Congress government in Uttar Pradesh in 1967, became UP CM for the second time on February 18, 1970, in alliance with Congress (R) headed by Indira Gandhi. That year, on May 27, a day before Savarkar’s birth anniversary, Bhartiya Jan Sangh leader Krishan Swarup from Badaun asked in the Assembly whether the government was planning to celebrate Savarkar’s birth anniversary and whether any committee was going to be constituted. Then Minister of Information Genda Singh replied there had been no such proposal.

When Swarup kept raising the issue, Charan Singh said he had earlier received the request from the Jan Sangh leader and that had already responded with his views. In the letter to Swarup, Charan Singh had written that his suggestion was a good one but that it was not possible to plan the celebrations in such a short period. When Swarup asked if the government could celebrate Savarkar’s birth anniversary from the following year (1971), the CM said, “As far as Savarkar’s sacrifices are concerned, it is beyond any doubt. There is no doubt that we all have taken much inspiration from him in our youth. Several others also had sacrificed. The question is the birth anniversary of how many (such people) will be celebrated at the government level? Everyone made supreme sacrifices. The government can help if any non-governmental body does this work. But, as of now, we have not considered this.”

When Jan Sangh MLA Nityanand Swamy, who later became Uttarakhand’s first chief minister, asked if Charan Singh would propose celebrating Savarkar’s birth anniversary in his personal capacity, Chief Minister reiterated, “I told you about the problem. There are many great people and perhaps Savarkar is in the category of the greatest, but I spoke of the government’s difficulties. I have no problem celebrating it but the question is of the whole country, not only of our state. Then demands will be raised about Rani Lakshmibai and Tatya Tope etc.”

There was a massive protest in 2003 when Savarkar’s oil painting was installed in the Central Hall of the old Parliament building. At the time too, several parties boycotted the event.

When current UP CM Yogi Adityanath opened a picture gallery in the Legislative Council in January 2021, one of the oil paintings was that of Savarkar. Adityanath’s grand guru Mahant Digvijaynath had been the state president of the Hindu Mahasabha when Savarkar was heading the organisation nationally.

[edit] Biopic(s)

[edit] 2023: A critique

VAIBHAV PURANDARE, June 4, 2023: The Times of India

“Gandhi wasn’t a bad man,” goes one of the opening lines of the new trailer of a Hindi biopic on Veer Savarkar. “But,” it continues, “if he hadn’t stuck to his insistence on non-violence, India would have got freedom 35 years earlier. ” That is, in 1912.


But Gandhi was in South Africa at that time and was yet to bring his ideas to India; he returned to India only in 1915. Savarkar himself was in the Andamans, serving out his 50-year prison sentence from 1911 onwards. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, then India’s tallest leader, was in Mandalay prison in Burma, and the national spirit was down because of a massive crackdown by the British Raj from 1907 onwards and a series of repressive laws such as the Seditious Meetings Act and the Press Act. There was no mass uprising, and those who could bring about such an uprising — ‘Lokmanya’ Tilak more than anyone else — were shut away in jail. So how would India have got Independence “35 years” before 1947?


The trailer’s other claims that Savarkar inspired Khudiram Bose and Subhas Chandra Bose also call for a factcheck.

Though London-based revolutionaries like Savarkar did send explosive material and manuals clandestinely to India, which helped the Bengali revolutionaries, he did not directly inspire Khudiram. Bengal had its own revolutionaries like Aurobindo Ghose to spur him on. As for Bose leaving India to lead a revolution from abroad because Savarkar asked him to do so at a meeting at his residence in 1940, that’s wrong too. Bose didn’t leave India on Savarkar’s suggestion. He did indeed meet Savarkar at the latter’s Shiva ji Park home in 1940, but after the meeting, Bose criticised Savarkar and said he was, like Jinnah, unable to understand the international situation. There’s no way Bose would have made that statement if Savarkar had given him the idea of going abroad.


Yet, if the film turns out to be merely an extension of what we’ve seen so far, it would hardly be the first. Most Indian filmmakers, regardless of language, are not dependable when it comes to portraying history and biography. They trot out creative licence as argument, but there’s a line that divides that licence from falsification. Our filmmakers cross that line effortlessly and proudly so that suspension of disbelief turns into suspension of inherent logic, destroying credibility. 
The latest case is unfortunate because Savarkar, as one of the most fascinating figures in modern Indian history, deserves a good biopic. A man of extremes who evoked extreme reactions, his life is so filled with drama and controversy — his five tumultuous years in London culminating in the assassination of a British official, his decade of ‘kaala paani’, his social reform initiatives at the risk of alienating conservative Hindus and his later arraignment in the Gandhi assassination case — that a filmmaker has no need for embellishment. Rajkumar Santoshi’s 2002 biopic of Bhagat Singh was an example of how the drama inherent in a man’s life can be brought out and the context of his actions illuminated. Recently, a biopic on Udham Singh won accolades for its slow-burn treatment. India’s freedom movement is, in fact, packed with compelling film-worthy material, if only filmmakers were to eschew dubious sensationalism for candid storytelling. In Savarkar’s case alone, it’s notable that he inspired the likes of Madan Lal Dhingra, VVS Aiyar, Anant Kanhere and was a hero to a generation of revolutionaries, including those from Bengal like Ullaskar Dutta and the Ghadarites from Punjab, and that the ‘Gandhian’ Aruna Asaf Ali, who unfurled the Tricolour to launch the Quit India movement, joined the freedom stir after reading Savarkar’s writings on 1857. Why does Savarkar have to be drawn into the Gandhi-Nehru-Bose orbit when his story throws light on how India’s fight for political liberation had multiple, fascinating strands?

At the same time, are filmmakers alone to blame when India’s dialogue on politics and history is so messed up? Look at the outburst by those who will deny Savarkar’s contribution to the cause of India’s freedom only because he advocated, in the second phase of his political career, the ideology of Hindutva. Bose’s daughter Anita Bose-Pfaff says the only thing in common between Bose and Savarkar was their religion. Really? Despite their varying political ideologies, Bose had enormous respect for Savarkar as a revolutionary and when Savarkar was released from internment in 1937, Bose said there would hardly be any Indian who would not be happy to know that Savarkar, who had sacrificed so much, was finally a free man. Others like Ambedkar and Jinnah also saw him as a political equal. Savarkar was a central figure in India’s freedom struggle, whether Anita Bose-Pfaff likes it or not.

Nuance is thus not lost on filmmakers only. India’s ideological divide is ugly; it thrives on intellectual dishonesty; and the likes of Savarkar, Bose and Bhagat Singh are caught in the middle. The blinkered far right will embrace nothing but Savarkar’s Hindutva (without its resistance to ritualism and orthodoxy), and sham liberals and an intolerant Left will seek to willfully negate his sacrifice. At least in that perverse sense, movies act as a mirror to Indian society.