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A Fascist Stares at Gandhi |
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Written by Sudhanva Deshpande
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 Hindutva as nation's Doctrine
As I write these lines, a portrait of the father of Indian fascism, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), is being unveiled in the central hall of the Indian parliament. Going by reports, the portrait will be placed across the hall from a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi. Decades after their deaths, the two men will face each other in symbolic, though silent, confrontation.
It could be argued that given that the Prime Minister of the country has been affiliated to the RSS for something like 50 years, this was only to be expected. Well, perhaps. Yet the event is full of ironies, and the optimist in me wonders if his followers have not, after all, done Savarkar disservice.
They don't mean to, of course. Savarkar, the author of the term 'Hindutva', is an icon for Hindu right-wingers. More to the point, he is the one and only figure they can cite from their pantheon who had anything to do with the Indian freedom struggle. Indeed, he was given life term and sent off to that most dreaded of colonial prisons, the Cellular Jail on the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. In those days, you had to be extraordinarily dangerous to the colonial regime to be sent to the Andaman Cellular Jail.
This is how it happened. In December 1909, the District Magistrate of Nasik, M.T. Jackson, was shot dead in a theatre while watching a play. It was believed that Savarkar was behind the assassination. Savarkar was then in Paris, but gave himself up to the police in London. Subsequently, on 8 July 1910, Savarkar escaped through the porthole of the ship aboard which he was being transported to India. Though he was captured immediately, the daring escape fired the imagination of patriotic Indians. Back in India, Savarkar was sentenced to life on two separate counts and sent off to the Andamans. Since that time, an aura of romance surrounds Savarkar.
Savarkar wrote the first history of the Revolt of 1857, the largest anti-colonial upsurge in the nineteenth century. In this book, published in Marathi in 1908, he highlighted the shared struggles and sacrifices of Hindus and Muslims. Later however, in 1937, Savarkar argued that Hindus and Muslims constituted separate 'nations' who could not live together. This was the notorious two-nation theory, popularly attributed to Jinnah and the Muslim League, which formed the basis for the demand for Partition. The Muslim League, however, raised this demand only in 1940. Savarkar, then, advocated the theory a full three years before the Muslim League.
In any case, the basis for this theory was laid in Savarkar's 1923 book, 'Hindutva', which argued that only they could be considered truly Indian who had their 'fatherland' as well as 'holy land' in India. This ruled out Indian Muslims, Christians and Jews who had their holy lands in Arabia or Palestine. But this doctrine meant that other non-Hindus like Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs could be considered Indians, since their holy lands lay in India. This became the basis for the claim, routinely made by the Hindu Right ever since, that Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism are all in fact 'branches' of Hinduism.
'Hindutva' is the original text of Indian fascism - the ideological rationale for Hindu majoritarianism is drawn from it. All ideologues of the Hindu Right, from 'Guruji' M.S. Golwalkar (the second RSS supremo) to the present BJP stongman L.K. Advani, have based their rhetoric on it. Also, the term itself, 'Hindutva', was coined by Savarkar in this book. There is no previous reference to this term in any text, ancient or modern.
Now is payback time. For the past few years, the Hindu Right has been trying to install Savarkar as a nationalist hero. First, in May 2002, the airport at Andaman was named after him. Now, the installation of the portrait in Parliament.
There are two reasons why this move has been opposed.
One, it is now well-known that Savarkar applied for, and was granted, clemency after he wrote abject letters to the colonial masters begging for mercy. And he did this not once, but repeatedly. He was incarcerated in the Andamans in July 1911. His first mercy petition (the text of which is no longer available) dates from that year. He refers to it in a subsequent petition, in November 1913.
Here, he pledges that his 'conversion is conscientious, so I hope my future conduct would be. By keeping me in jail nothing can be got in comparison to what would be otherwise. 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.'
Savarkar was moved from the Andamans, first to Ratnagiri, and then to Pune. Here, in 1924, he signed a mercy petition promising that 'he will not engage publicly or privately in any manner of political activities without the consent of Government for a period of five years such restrictions being renewable at the discretion of Government at the expiry of the said term.' He also acknowledged that 'I had a fair trial and just sentence. I heartily abhor methods of violence resorted to in days gone by, and I feel myself duty bound to uphold Law and the constitution to the best of my powers . . . .'
The fourth famous mercy petition came in 1950, after India's Independence. Savarkar was detained by the police under the Preventive Detention Act. He wrote to the Bombay State Government on April 26, 1950 pleading for his release from prison. Savarkar urged that he should be released under the condition that he would not take part in current politics for any period Government might lay down.
In other words, Savarkar repeatedly apologized for his political beliefs and actions, and promised, again and again, to not take part in political agitation.
His own defence was that these were tactical moves, that he was no believer in satyagraha, that he did not see why he should waste his life in prison when he could be much more effective outside the prison. But consider this. Isn't it remarkable that among all leaders of the Freedom Struggle, including Communists, who were no great believers in satyagraha either, it is only Savarkar who tendered such abject apologies?
More damagingly, he stuck to the undertakings he gave - there is little record to show that once out of the prison, he launched into political activity. On the contrary, as in 1925 when he was hauled up by the government for an article in the paper 'Mahratta', he was at pains to show the government that he was opposed to swaraj (independence).
Two, Savarkar was one of the co-accused in the Mahatma Gandhi assassination case. In the end, he escaped conviction on a legal technicality. But there is little doubt that he was involved in the conspiracy. This is what Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Union Home Minister (and an outstanding criminal lawyer of his time), had to say to Prime Minister Nehru: 'It was a fanatical wing of the Hindu Mahasabha directly under Savarkar that (hatched) the conspiracy and saw it through.' This from Patel, one of the darlings of the RSS-BJP.
Today, Savarkar stares at Gandhi across the Indian parliament. The Hindu Right is desperately trying to dethrone Gandhi from his position as the preeminent leader of the Indian people in their struggle against colonialism, and to prop up his murderer instead.
History couldn't have been crueler to Gandhi.
In a recent email, a friend made the point that 'this invidious comparison not only debases Gandhi, it also becomes an attempt (already partially successful, one would have to say) to change historical perceptions by reducing the horror of his assassination. It is no longer the cold blooded killing of a decent old man in his 70s, who had done as much if not more than most to contribute towards the freedom of all Indians.
That he did more than his murderers is saying very little, simply because they did nothing. But with this equalization move, it now becomes a debate between "equals" in which one party had to be exterminated for the good of the country. The simple equation of Savarkar and Gandhi manages to alter historical perspective in this radical manner, turning collaborators into nationalist heroes. Talk of turning black into white!'
Yet, at the end of the day, I cannot help but think that perhaps his acolytes are doing Savarkar a disservice after all. I did my masters in modern Indian history. Those days, when the Hindu Right was still a more or less peripheral force in Indian politics, we knew very little about Savarkar. We thought he had once been a brave nationalist revolutionary who turned senile in his old age, turned against Gandhi, and was an ideological mentor to his murderers. But none of us actually spent any time investigating the truth about him.
His recent promotion by the Hindu Right has meant that a lot of very fine historical research has been devoted to bringing to light the facts about the life and times of Savarkar. And I dare say that the light that shines on his portrait today is a rather harsh one, that reveals the man in all his hideousness. That can't be such a bad thing after all.
Sudhanva Deshpande works as editor in LeftWord Books, New Delhi, India. He is also an actor and director with Jana Natya Manch, best known for its street theatre. He can be reached at
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Reprinted from http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/Content/2003-03/26deshpande.cfm |
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Friday, 29 August 2008