March 28th, 2001
26th March 2001 was the first day of the Vikram Samvat 2058 and 27th March the first day of the Al Hijri year 1422. Itihaas wishes readers a Happy New Year. These dates are ignored by the Government of India although the RSS are in power at the centre. This shows an ignorance and forgetfulness which we call ‘India illiteracy’. It is unforgivable especially for those swearing by Hindutva an ideal propagated by Vishnu Damodar Savarkar called ‘Veer’ by his devoted followers.
In many parts of India and especially in Maharashtra until the beginning of the 20th Century it used to be the custom to celebrate the advent of a New Vikrami Year by planting a triumphal flag at the gate on the Chaitra Pratipada [1st digit of the moon; first day of the fortnight of the waxing moon]. A weekly Marathi paper, ‘KAL’ by Shivaram Mahadeo Paranjape wrote on 25th March 1904
“Why are you planting the flag of victory ?
What achievement is it meant to commemorate?
Are you merely following an immemorial custom in planting it ? Have you delivered the Aryans from their miseries and bestowed upon them the boon of independence?
Have you won a victory on the battlefield?
Have you driven away those who kick the Indians and rob them of freedom?
Have you killed Afzal Khan or driven away Durrani?
Have you distinguished yourself like Rani of Jhansi?
If you have done none of these things why do you erect a flag in vain?…
First achieve a victory and then erect a flag before your home”
The newspaper and its proprietor were accused of seditious writings in 1900, 1904, 1905 and 1907. In 1908 Shivram Mahadeo Paranjape was prosecuted and jailed.
The reference to the Rani of Jhansi shows that the memory of 1857 was alive. The lauding of the assassination of Afzal Khan marks the deification of Shivaji who could not be seen as having done any wrong. The advocacy of violence for achieving independence is clearly spelt out.
The Pratijna writing on 26th July 1905 published a poem describing an interview between Shivaji and Samarth Ramdas
“The night is very dark, overcast with clouds which occasionally flash lightning.”
Shivaji is seeking guidance from the Guru for a means to advance the national and the individual good of the people. The Guru asks Shivaji to look up. He sees the figure of Mother India. She has a terrible sword in her hand and says through a smile
“This is the one way on earth”
The 1905 defeat of the mighty Russian Empire by the tiny Japanese kingdom in a full scale war shattered the myth of ‘white’ invincibility and gave heart to the revolutionaries.
The Yugantar published a Japanese couplet which read
“How can a man die than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods.”
Various acts of great bravery were performed by Indians arming themselves surreptitiously and braving imprisonment torture death and exile.
It was in these stormy days that Vishnu Damodar Savarkar became a revolutionary and spread the message of freedom in India and abroad.
Why did he and the RSS which he inspired with the idea of ‘Hindutva’ fail to achieve freedom?
The answer has perhaps been provided by Sitaram Yechuri in the Dr Zakir Hussain Memorial lecture delivered at Hyderabad on 25th March 2001. Savarkar made peace with the British through a mercy petition he wrote on 14th November 1913 seeking release from jail. Sitaram Yechuri quotes from the mercy petition
“Now no man having the good of India and humanity at heart will blindly step on the thorny paths which in the excited and hopeles situation of India in 1906-1907 beguiled us from the path of peace and progress.
“Therefore, if the government, in their manifold beneficence and mercy, release me, I, for one cannot be but the staunchest advocate of constitutional progress and loyalty to the British government which is the foremost condition of that progress.”
Yechuri then goes on to point out that Savarkar opposed the Quit India movement of 1942. This is curious as Yechuri’s own masters, the Communists also opposed Gandhi and talked of 1939-1944 as ‘People’s War. But then both the RSS and the Marxists have a Truth which is above and away and far from the common everyday people’s truth!
Perhaps the Prime Minister will not repeat his performance of describing Savarkar as a patriot of the calibre of Bhagat Singh…