June 18th, 2002
How do we understand cult figures like Sarvarkar? Was he a freedom fighter? What does the record say? When cult figures made out to be above temptation and beyond reproach are found to have feet of clay how should the followers react?
We have two examples from here and now. Some priests of the Catholic Church, the oldest established corporation in the world and a trans or multinational one at that have been found guilty of Child abuse or pederasty. The Roman Catholic Church has accepted the evil in its body and apologized to the victims. Action has been promised against the evildoers.
At home in India the ruling party’s greatest hero Vinayak Damodar Savarkar has been exposed as one who sought release from the Cellular Jail Andamans by pleading for mercy. The RSS was founded in 1925 and is yet to be a century old. It’s reactions lack maturity and sophistication. All its critics are treated as enemies and attacked viciously.
Thus Murli Manohar Joshi himself an undistinguished academic calls the respected historian, Romila Thapar a ‘terrorist’. She is subjected to a shower of hate mail including on the internet and obscene phone calls for pointing out that there is no evidence of the horse in the Indus Valley period of Indian History and stating that the Hindus ate beef in antiquity.
Even the so-called mild and liberal Atal Behari Vajpeyi does nothing about the horror that is the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and terms those who oppose the naming of Port Blair as ‘Veer Savarkar’ ‘criminal’.
These self proclaimed Hindus refuse to address facts and want to continue to live in a world of make believe and fantasy in which the most important issue is to redress the alleged wrongs committed by Muslim rulers of India from 950 A.D. to 1757 A.D.
Thus what makes V.D. Savarkar a hero is not his fight for freedom. This glorious chapter alas! came to an unhappy end in 1910. What makes Savarkar a hero for the RSS is the pathological hatred he nursed for Muslims.
The recent (30th April 2002 in The Asian Age) publication of the Savarkar mercy petition of 14th November 1913 and its being raised in the Lok Sabha has elicited angry and irrational responses from the parivaar. They cannot deny this most inconvenient fact. The letter exists and is quoted in full on pages 211, 212 and 213 in the Gazetteers Unit Department of Culture publication ‘PENAL SETTLEMENT ANDAMANS’. They therefore attack the people who expose Savarkar at any level whatsoever.
The Savarkar story does not begin and end with the 14th November 1913 letter. The other facts in the publication quoted above are placed before the reader to give an in depth view..
Sir Reginald Craddock Home Member of the Governor General’s Council visited the Andamans in October 1913
‘A few prisoners were called out to meet him. Questions were put and answered. Some were told that they were enemies of government and deserved nothing short of death. Others were told that they should never talk of being sent out, for they were sentenced for high treason and they had conspired against the King. When they asked for proof they were told that though they could not prove. They knew enough of it’
The next para reads
“Craddock however spoke to Savarkar in quite a different tone. Savarkar has reproduced in his book, at some length, the gist of the conversation, which shows that while Savarkar had changed his views the Government view remained as before. Savarkar, for example said ‘that if Gokhale’s resolution on compulsory education in the Legislative Council is accepted by the Government and if such measures of progress are assured to the Indians that they may rise as a nation, then all revolutionaries will turn to the path of peace’. ‘If we advance definitely through methods of peace, it is immoral for us to enter on methods of violence’. Craddock replied ‘I am sorry you are entirely wrong there, for they are still advocating terrorism and they still swear by you. In India and in America your followers are busy with their plans of secret societies and revolutionary activities’.
When Savarkar told Craddock the full story of sufferings in the Cellular Jail the Chief Commissioner interposed
‘But you political prisoner, have you not murdered? Are you not violent? Have you not conspired to destroy the government in power? It is your good fortune that you are under the British who are treating you leniently. If Russia were ruling here they would all be sent to Siberia or straightaway shot in the back’
To this Craddock added ,’Your Hindu Rajas would have treated you much worse than we are alleged to be treating you now. Do you not know how they tied rebels to the feet of elephants and crushed them?
The net result of the visit was Craddock’s note and the mercy petition of Savarkar
( Convict No 32778) dated 14th November 1913 is one of the attachments/enclosures.
The British accepted a conditional release for Savarkar only in 1924. There is no evidence of his fighting the British for India’s freedom after 1910. This does not erase the pre 1910 record and Savarkar is to be respected for that alone. His anti-Muslim prejudiced diminished him as it continues to distort and diminish his followers.