People's Democracy

 Opposition Boycotts Savarkar Portrait Function

FROM parliamentarians, historians to freedom fighters and artists; they have all come out against the BJP government’s announcement to unveil the portrait of Savarkar, the BJP and Hindutva’s new mascot in the Central Hall of Parliament. Continuing its earlier exposures and views, the CPI(M) Polit Bureau said it was a gross insult to the Indian Republic.

From honouring him at Port Blair, to letting him adorn Parliament, yet another major political controversy has broken out. This time it is over the unveiling of the portrait of Savarkar in the Central Hall of Parliament with almost the entire opposition requesting the president A P J Abdul Kalam to reconsider his decision to attend the unveiling function. The opposition, including the Congress, stressed issues like Savarkar's alleged association with the assassins of Mahatma Gandhi, his mercy petition to the British rulers at the height of the freedom struggle and his support for two nation theory of Jinnah and asked the president not to attend the function.

When the president, disregarding the opposition’s request, attended the function, he was greeted with the boycott of entire opposition.

The request to Kalam was made in separate letters written by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and others in a joint letter of the opposition. The opposition leaders who signed the letter included  Somnath Chatterjee (CPI-M), Mulayam Singh Yadav (Samajwadi Party),  Rashid Alvi (Bahujan Samaj Party), representatives of other Left parties and  E Ahmed (IUML)

Simultaneously, eminent freedom fighter and ex Andaman prisoner Shri            Vishwa Nath Mathur, historians Professors Bipan Chandra, Arjun Dev, Mridula Mukherjee, Aditya Mukherjee, Vishalakshi Menon, Dr Sucheta Mahajan, Antony Thomas in separate statements released at a press conference of SAHMAT condemned the government’s move.

SAHMAT stated “we strongly condemn the attempt to tarnish and dishonour this legacy by honouring those who betrayed it. The Lok Sabha is itself a product of the people’s struggle for independence from colonial rule and for it to install Sarvarkar’s portrait would be to disgrace itself.”

The Delhi Historians Group led by Professor Bipan Chandra said that the Parliament decision be immediately revoked. They condemned the attempts to create “nationalist icons” of communal and anti national persons.

The letter by the MPs to the president stated: “There is a great resentment amongst the secular political parties and the common people of the country on the decision taken to unveil the portrait of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in the Central Hall of Parliament, where the Constitution of India was framed and enacted. As you are aware, our Constitution gives primacy to the secular character of our nation.

In the eyes of the opposition, the NDA government has pushed through a shameful decision to unveil the portrait of V D Savarkar as a freedom fighter in Parliament on February 26.”

IGNOMINIOUS RECORD OF “VEER”

Savarkar’s claim to national recognition as a patriot and freedom fighter ended ignominiously within a few months after his incarceration in the Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands on January 30, 1911. His well-known mercy petition to the Home Member of the GOI (November 1913), reproduced in R C Majumdar’s book The Penal Settlement in the Andamans, reminds “your honour to be so good as to go through the petition for clemency that I had sent in 1911 and to sanction it for being forwarded to the Indian government”. He pleads that “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 British government which is the foremost condition of that progress.” Further he emphasises that his ‘conversion’ would “bring back to the fold all those misled young men in India and abroad who were once looking up to me as their guide”.

A more complete and abject capitulation is hard to imagine.

Following this undertaking Savarkar never thereafter took part in the freedom struggle. But he did advocate and participate in activities that ran counter both to the letter and spirit of the freedom struggle.

In 1937 after being elected the president of the Hindu Mahasabha Savarkar had said, “ I warn the Hindus that the Mohammedans are likely to prove dangerous to our Hindu nation and the existence of a common Indian state even if and when England goes out ---. We Hindus must have a country of our own in the solar system and must continue to flourish there as Hindus”. Hindu Rashtra Darshan, p 27.

In his presidential address to the Mahasabha in 1937, he said, “ India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogeneous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main, the Hindus and the Muslims”. This statement on the “two nations” was made full three years prior to the Muslim League’s resolution of 1940 demanding Pakistan on the basis of two-nation theory.

Finally, Savarkar was implicated in Mahatma Gandhi’s murder case. His political responsibility was widely acknowledged although legal culpability according to the evidentiary process was apparently not proved. What is less widely known is that during the investigation, Savarkar pleaded ill health and offered once again to give an ‘undertaking’ to secure release: “I wish to express my willingness to give an undertaking to the government that I shall refrain from taking part in any communal or political activity for any period the government may require in case I am released on that condition.” (K L Gauba, Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, p.209).

When the trial of Bhagat Singh and his associates had reached its concluding phase, Bhagat Singh’s father Sardar Kishen Singh wrote a letter to the Tribunal set up to investigate the Second Lahore Conspiracy Case stating that  his son was innocent and had no hand in the murder of Saunders.  He asked to be allowed to arrange for his defence. Bhagat Singh was shocked by his father’s efforts and his response was uncompromising: “My life is not as important as you seem to think it is.  At least for me this life is not so important that precious ideals should be sacrificed to defend it.”

Meanwhile in yet another letter to the president social worker Nirmala Deshpande and lawyer Anil Nauriya listed four reasons against the installation of Sarvarkar’s protriat in Parliament. These are:

1.      Savarkar was clearly implicated in the Gandhi murder case. Although he was acquitted, it is not a case of no evidence. Badge the approver gave evidence which clearly showed Savarkar’s inolvement. Savarkar was let off only because of a lack of an additional witness.

2.      The then deputy prime minsiter, Sardar Vallabhai Patel, clearly stated that Savarkar led the conspiracy “and saw it through”. (Letter to Jawaharlal Nehru, dated February 27, 1948).

3.      The Kapoor Commission of Inquiry into the Conspiracy to murder Mahatma Gandhi which gave its report, clearly referred to Savarkar’s inolvement (Paras 25.48,25.90 and 25.173).

4.      Gandhiji’s secretary Pyarelal, in his book the The Last Phase (Part II, page nos 752-753, brings out the following facts about Savarkar’s inolvement as revealed by Badge: “On the 17th January, according to Badge, Nathuram  Godse went to have a last darshan  of Savarkar at Bombay. While Badge and Shankar waited outside, Nathuram and Apte went in. On coming out, Apte told Badge that Savarkar had said to them, ‘Yashasvi houn ya--  be successful and return.” Apte is further reported to have said ‘Tatyaravani ase bhavishya kele ahe ki Gandhijichi Shmbhar vershebharali, ata, aple kam nischita honar yat kahi sanshaya nahi—Tatyarao Savarkar has predicted that Gandhiji’s hundred years are over; there is, therefore, no doubt that our mission will be successful.” (INN)