Return of Savarkar:
Is it South Asia’s Ethnic Cleansing
N
M Sampathkumar Iyangar
OPPOSITE
A portrait of Mohandas K Gandhi that hangs in the Central Hall
of the Indian Parliament in New Delhi was unveiled on Feb 26,
a new portrait, of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. A host of dignitaries
were present to hail the inclusion of Savarkar among the pantheon
of recognized ‘freedom fighters’ and statesmen. Representatives
of the more than twenty constituent parties of the ruling NDA
graced the gala occasion.
"Today
the picture is there -- the ideology will follow; this is just
the beginning,” quipped Vikram, nephew of Savarkar, the
author of the 1923 book "Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu?”
The Washington Post commented (See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7915-2003Feb26.html),
“Homage to Hindu Nationalist Reflects Change in India.”
These comments lucidly summarize the apprehensions the ceremony
brought about not just in the minds of Muslims and other minorities
of the country. Neighboring Capitals of New Delhi too were disturbed
at the development. And not without basis.
Savarkar is credited with coining
the term “Hindutva” to represent Hinduness and showcasing
it as the national trait. The term has acquired sinister connotations
in the last few years. It has come to symbolize a militant, obscurantist
movement that is almost terrorist in nature. And, Feb 26th happened
to be just a day short of the day when the trigger point for bloody
riots in the State of Gujarat had been provided in 2002. More
than 50 boisterous Hindu volunteers returning from Ayodhya had
been roasted alive in their rail coach by a Muslim mob near Godhra
in Gujarat after they allegedly misbehaved with Muslim vendors.
In a precisely conducted reprisal-violence, Muslims and their
establishments in the state were systematically attacked and looted.
More than 1000 people were slaughtered by rampaging mobs owing
allegiance to BJP. The carnage was publicly justified by Narendra
Modi, the BJP Chief Minister, as just a backlash and “equal
and opposite reaction to action.”
Former science bureaucrat and head
of the country’s space and guided missile program APJ Abdul
Kalam, recently elevated to the ceremonial post of the President,
unveiled Savarkar’s portrait. He was easily the most noticed
of the dignitaries but his presence raised no eyebrows. After
all, he had let himself be paraded like a Pomeranian, flanked
by Modi and the Gujarat Governor SS Bhandari, in the streets of
Ahmedabad after the pogrom. Bhandari, is believed to have been
planted by BJP as Governor to convert Gujarat through State-sponsored
terror against minorities into a “laboratory” of strategies
for ushering in Hindu Rashtra. The parading of Kalam, his masterstroke,
produced the desired results for BJP in the elections. Mercifully,
both Modi and the boss did not grace the occasion. They had confined
themselves to Gujarat during the “anniversary” of
the carnage. The function was totally boycotted by opposition
politicians.
Vinayak Savarkar had been accused,
along with Nathuram Godse and five others, as the mastermind and
motivator of the successful plot to assassinate Gandhi on Jan
30, 1948. He was let off due to “lack of corroborating evidence”
as the judge felt that convicting him “would be unsafe".
It is also on that he had pleaded for mercy from the British government
while under penal detention for ordering the assassination of
an official. These are used by some politicians to paint a gory
picture of Savarkar as a criminal zealot while the other section
hails him as a freedom fighter and “Savior of Hindu pride.”
An
objective analysis of recent history of the subcontinent reveals
that both these images are far removed from the reality. For one,
the British-educated lawyer had much more in common with the sophisticated,
no-nonsense intellectuals Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Bhimrao Ambedkar
than with either the khadi-clad crooks of the Congress or the
saffron sadhus of Hindu Mahasabha. Even before Jinnah,
he pioneered the idea of establishing a culturally homogeneous
nation of Hindus when the British wanted to depart from the South
Asian colony.
Advocating cultural homogeneity can
by no means be equated with barbarism. That artificial unification
of heterogeneous societies cannot last for long has been made
evident by the break up USSR, Yugoslavia etc. Countries like Saudi
Arabia, Singapore, Israel etc can, by no stretch of imagination,
accused of locking out other people although they advocate cultural
homogeneity.
The Indus valley had been the site
of a fully developed civilization as far back as the 3rd millennium
BC. It had collapsed around the 18th century BC when Aryan invaders
conquered the northern part of the country. It was first consolidated
within the Asoka's Buddhist Empire and then the Hindu empire of
the Gupta dynasty. Much of the Indian subcontinent was united
under a Muslim sultanate based on Delhi from the 12th century
AD. The sultanate was incorporated in the Mogul empire in the
16th century. The decline of Mogul power in the late 17th century
coincided with increasing European penetration. British-owned
East India Company acquired the right to administer Bengal in
1765 and afterwards other parts. The Crown took over the Company's
authority in 1858 and eventually triumphed over other colonial
rivals.
A system of diarchy was established
in 1919 and under the provisions of the Government of India Act,
limited autonomy was granted. British governors headed provincial
governments consisting of British-appointed councilors and Indian
ministers selected by governors from locally elected officials.
Opposition to this system led to full provincial autonomy in 1935.
The British were all set to withdraw after transferring power
to the autonomous provinces and principalities whose rulers had
earlier accepted the Crown's sovereignty.
However, politicians who fronted
for the wealthy mill-owners and traders, led by Mohandas Gandhi,
were keen on wresting the power. To facilitate this, it was proposed
to create a distinct entity named Pakistan out of mainly Muslim-inhabited
territories separated by more than 1000 miles in the northeast
and the northwest. Winston Churchill was opposed to it had warned
of serious consequences this premature partition would lead to.
He predicted “rogues, rascals, freebooters and men of straw”
would ascend to power and the common man would suffer perpetually.
He could not prevent the premature emergence of an entity known
as India in 1947 in New Delhi. The entity came to control the
enormous gold reserves accumulated during the War.
Partition understandably inflamed
emotions. An orgy of violence and genocide followed and turned
a few million people into refugees. In hindsight, bisecting of
the subcontinent was indeed a premature and incomplete affair.
The eastern part of Pakistan seceded in 1971 with military help
from India and became Bangladesh. However, the new country was
never comfortable with the "big-brotherly" attitude
of New Delhi.
On closer examination, what Gandhi,
Nehru, Patel et al did during 1942-47 appears to be nothing different
than the activities of obscurantist Hindutva bigots sixty years
later. The genocide and arson during the partition was not very
different from the massacres wreaked in Gujarat in 2002. An angry
activist named Nathuram Godse who could not reconcile to the insanity
and accept Mohandas Gandhi as a 'Mahatma' (Great soul) assassinated
him in 1948.
The Indian National Congress then
had mounted a campaign to demand that the British do exactly what
they anyway were keen on doing (Quit India). But, it wanted that
the power be handed over to the gang of politicians and not to
the original feudal lords. Obscurantist elements in the BJP now
want the Muslims of India to do what they are anyway reconciled
to (being second-class citizens).
To hold Savarkar responsible either
for the assassination of the so-called father of the nation or
for the rise of bigots advocating a barbarian brand of Hindutva
is definitely an unsound argument. One thing is worth pondering.
Had only thinkers like Vinayak Savarkar not been marginalized
by crooked politicians, perhaps there would have arisen no occasion
to smart under a weird street-urchin brand of Hindutva being advocated
by lumpen elements today.
May be the Indian subcontinent could
have emerged as a true commonwealth of several culturally homogenous
nations. May be they would have evolved into what Europe is trying
to become. It would be in order of things if the return of Savarkar
does turn out to be “just the beginning” of a radical
review of the unsustainable arrangement of 1947 and scrapping
of the constitution of the most populous (not popular) Republic
of the world. It happens to be the most bizarre also.
There
is no place in the 21st Century for an instrument that seeks to
impose State-control on the personal choices of the people on
what to eat (beef-eaters are cannibals!) or what to drink (consumption
of alcohol downgrades character!). Or perpetration of caste-based
reservations that has played havoc with merit. Or attempts to
impose one language at monstrous cost on everyone.
The
writer is an Indian technocrat specializing in the development
and manufacture of sophisticated precision-machined components
for nuclear and aerospace applications.
