Veer Savarkar, or more correctly, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is being remembered
again in the context of the Andamans airport being named after him. Fittingly
enough, it was another controversial hero (Advani) that did the honours. In
this essay, I will try explore Savarkar's views, his actions in and out of
jail, and examine if as claimed by Advani, his contribution to our freedom
movement was as great as that of among others, Bhagat Singh. I have used
lengthy quotes from his works for they best reveal the persona behind the
public face.
In May 1904, Savarkar started the Abhinav Bharat (Young India) Society,
drawing inspiration from Mazzini's Giovanni Italia (Young Italy)
Society. While in England, he founded the Free Indian Society with a commitment
to overthrowing British rule in India. It was in England that he composed his
magnum opus on the 1857 uprising, The Indian War of Independence. He
exhorts his countrymen thus [1]: "The real glory belongs to those heroes who
thoroughly understood that foreign domination is worse than Swaraj - Swaraj,
democratic or monarchial, or even anarchial - and thus came out to fight for
independence ... Those who understood this principle, those who fulfilled
their duty to their religion and to their country ... let their names be
remembered, pronounced with reverence! Those who did not join them in the holy
war, through indifference or hesitation, may their names never be remembered by
their country. And, as for those who actually joined the enemy and fought
against their own countrymen, may their names be for ever crushed." After a
member of the Free Indian Society killed an official in India Office (London),
he was arrested and transported to the Andamans for life imprisonment. He
reached Andamans in 1910, first appealed for clemency in 1911, then again in
1913 during Sir Reginald Craddock's visit. In a stunning volte-face, he wrote
in his letter dated November 14, 1913 [2]: "... if the government in their
manifold beneficence and mercy release me, I for one cannot but be the
staunchest advocate of constitutional progress and loyalty to the English
government which is the foremost condition of that progress ... Moreover, my
conversion to the constitutional line would bring back all those misled young
men in India and abroad who were once looking up to me as their guide ... The
Mighty alone can afford to be merciful and therefore where else can the
prodigal son return but to the parental doors of the Government?"
Unfortunately, he took this pledge (of loyalty to the British) a little too
seriously so that he never again participated in the freedom movement.
Transportation to Andamans was intended to break the resolve of the political
prisoners, and Savarkar's is a tragic success story of this policy.
Conditions in the prison were no doubt harsh, but a few of the prisoners did
confront them courageously. Nand Gopal, Editor of the newspaper Swaraj (in
Allahabad), was sentenced to transportation to life for seditious writing. His
successful practice of passive resistance to work the oil-mill led to the first
strike of the political prisoners. At about the same time, Hotilal, also
affiliated with Swaraj, successfully smuggled to India his letter detailing the
atrocities on them. This letter, published by Surendranath Banerjee in The
Bengali gave a glimpse of the prison-life in the Andamans and created an
uproar. This was followed by a second general strike where among others,
Nanigopal, a 16 year old, risked caning and death to bravely continue with a
hunger-strike. Ultimately, Savarkar had to start a hunger strike to force
Nanigopal to back off. Savarkar's advice to Nanigopal is very revealing of his
mindset [3]: "Do not die like a woman; if you must needs (sic) die, die
fighting like a hero. Kill your enemy and then take leave of this world."
Two strikes in quick succession and rumours about a bomb factory in Andamans
were what prompted Sir Craddock's visit. Unlike Savarkar, who in his petition
pleaded solely for himself, Nand Gopal pleaded for a humane treatment of the
whole of the political prisoners on the grounds that [4] "If the religious
martyrdom practised by the enemies of Christianity against Christianity has not
destroyed Christianity from the face of the Globes, surely, political martyrdom
shall not extirpate the Indian nationalism from the Holy soil of Bharatvarsha.
" Trailokya Nath Chakravarthi, who was transported to the Andamans in 1916,
gives an interesting account of the reluctance of the Savarkar brothers (and a
few other seniors) to join them in their civil disobedience movement for "
they had wrung some concessions and privileges after a hard fight."
Savarkar justifies his behaviour thus [5]: "... And now to be put again in
chains and solitary confinement, to go back to bad food and expose ourselves to
caning, was to expect too much from us ... The last and the most important
reasons (sic) for my abstaining from it was that I would have forfeited thereby
my right of sending a letter to India." This and his various appeals for
clemency suggest a possible breakdown of his resolve.
An appeal for clemency per se doesn't make him any less of a hero. Maybe he was
trying to trick the British to release him so that he can once again actively
devote himself to the freedom movement, just as one of his heroes, Chatrapathi
Sivaji, tricked his enemy. Such hopes were quashed in October 1939 during his
meeting with Lord Linlithgow [6]: "But now that our interests were so
closely bound together the essential thing was for Hinduism and Great Britain
to be friends; and the old antagonism was no longer necessary. The Hindu
Mahasabha, he went on to say, favoured an unambiguous undertaking of Dominion
Status at the end of the war." Thus, his excuse for not participating in
the struggle of the political prisoners - to protect himself for participation
in the freedom struggle after release from prison - falls flat on its face. For
reasons best known to him, in one of his petitions, he also vowed to make the
Montague Chelmsford proposals of 1919, which fell way short of the demands of
the nationalists, "a success in so far as I may be allowed to do so in
future" [7].
In 1942, after the launch of the Quit India movement, when Gandhiji asked
people to renounce their government jobs, Savarkar ordered [8]: "I issue
this definite instruction to all Hindu Sanghathanists in general holding any
post or position of vantage in the government services, should stick to them
and continue to perform their regular duties."
Worse still was his support of the Nazis. In August 1938, he spoke thus to a
crowd of 20,000 in Pune: "Germany has every right to resort to Nazism and
Italy to Fascism and events have justified that those isms and forms of
governments were imperative and beneficial to them under the conditions that
obtained there ... But it should be made clear to the German, Italian, or
Japanese public that crores of Hindu Sanghatanists in India whom neither Pandit
Nehru or nor the Congress represents, cherish no ill-will towards Germany or
Italy or Japan or any other Country in the World simply because they had chosen
a form of Government or constitutional policy which they though (sic) suited
best and contributed most to their National solidarity and strength." And
in March 1939: "Only a few socialists headed by Pandit J. Nehru have created
a bubble of resentment against the present Government of Germany, but their
activities are far from having any significance in India. The vain imprecations
of Mahatma Gandhi against Germany's indispensable vigour in matters of internal
policy obtain but little regard in so far as they are uttered by a man who has
always betrayed and confused the country with an affected mysticism." So
maniacal was his obsession with the idea of dictatorship of the majority that
inspite of supporting the Nazi holocaust of Jews, he also proclaimed [9]: "
If the Zionists' dreams are ever realized - if Palestine becomes a Jewish state
and it will gladden us almost as much as our Jewish friends ..."! Unlike
Savarkar, Subhash Chandra Bose's alliance with the Axis powers was solely due
to nationalistic fervour. When asked how he could ally with the Nazis, he said
[10]: "It is dreadful, but it must be done. It is our only way out. India
must gain her independence, cost what it may. Have you any idea, Mr. and Mrs.
Kurti, of the despair, the misery, the humiliation of India? Can you imagine
her suffering and indignation? British imperialism there can be just as
intolerable as your Nazism here." There was never any convergence of views
between the Nazis and Netaji. Believed as he did in an armed struggle,
circumstances forced him to (temporarily) ally with the more amenable
imperialists.
There has been a lot of controversy regarding Savarkar's position on the
two-nation theory. Way back in 1923, 17 years before the Muslim League adopted
its infamous Pakistan resolution in Lahore, he had sown the seeds of discord
[9]: "But besides culture the tie of common holyland has at times proves
stronger than the chains of a Motherland. Look at the Mohammedans. Mecca to
them is a stronger reality than Delhi or Agra. Some of them do not make any
secret of being bound to sacrifice all India if that be to the glory of Islam
or could save the city of their prophet ... History is too full of examples of
such desertions to cite particulars. The crusades again, attest to the
wonderful influence that a common holyland exercises over peoples widely
separated in race, nationality and language, to bind and hold them together.
" Savarkar defines a Hindu as one "who regards this land of Bharatvarsha,
from the Indus to the Seas as his Father-Land as well as his Holy-Land that is
the cradle land of his religion" [11] and goes on to caution "So with
the Hindus, they being the people, whose past, present and future are most
closely bound with the soil of Hindusthan as Pitribhu (fatherland), as Punyabhu
(holyland), they constitute the foundation, the bedrock, the reserved forces of
the Indian state. Therefore even from the point of Indian nationality, must ye,
O Hindus, consolidate and strengthen Hindu nationality; not to give wanton
offence to any of our non-Hindu compatriots, in fact to any one in the world
but in just and urgent defence of our race and land; to render it impossible
for others to betray her to or subject her to unprovoked attack by any of those
'Pan-isms' that are struggling forth from continent to continent" [12]. In
July 1939, he dropped strong hints on the impossibility of co-existence of
Hindus and Muslims: "Nationality did not depend so much on a common
geographical area as on unity of thought, religion, language and culture. For
this reason the Germans and the Jews could not be regarded as a nation".
Later that year, in the 21st session of the Hindu Mahasabha, he laid all doubts
to rest with his comment: "...the Indian Muslims are on the whole more
inclined to identify themselves and their interests with Muslims outside India
than Hindus who live next door, like Jews in Germany". In August 1943, he
confirmed his support for the two-nation theory: "I have no quarrel with Mr
Jinnah's two-nation theory. We, Hindus, are a nation by ourselves and it is a
historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations." The obvious
conclusions are:
Ra Ravishankar
June 6, 2002