Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966

by Vikram Sampath

Notably, at a Shivaji Jayanti function in Nasik in 1924, Veer Wamanrao Joshi, the famous Marathi journalist and playwright, gave Savarkar the honorific of ‘Swatantrya Veer’ or ‘The Valorous Soldier of Freedom’.

Hence Savarkar’s prescription was not to merely target the upper castes but remove this abhorrent practice from the entire Hindu society, top to bottom.

A letter I received from a Hindu leader in Sindh makes it clear that the condition of Hindus in Sindh is worrisome. There is a caste called Sanyogi in Sindh who were converted by force centuries ago, but they have retained their Hindu roots and customs. They want to become Hindu again, but their Hindu caste panchayats are not willing to accept them back. The organizations that want [sic] to get these people back into Hinduism face a stiff resistance from the Muslim organizations of Sindh, who are saying that such efforts will go against ‘Hindu Muslim unity’ in the region. But the unity that tells only Hindus that they shouldn’t propagate their religion even by talking about it, but we are free to spread our religion using force, you should not do ‘shuddhikaran’ but we will do ‘bhrashtikaran’, is not unity. It is a division that must be fought.

I want to tell our Muslim brethren that you are Hindus by blood and race, and you are dearer to us than the Muslims of the world, but if you feel that you are dearer to the Islamic countries like Turkey than to the ‘Hindu Kafirs’, do understand that this delusion will end in your downfall.

When the Hindus of Punjab urged the Congress to take up their cause against this injustice, it was met with indifference. They finally decided to fight for their rights themselves.

The Morley–Minto Reforms, officially known as the India Act of 1909, sowed the seeds of separation and suspicion between the Hindu and Muslim communities. Separate electorates for Muslims and some seats for them in the joint electorates were given.

Delinking and underemphasizing Brahminism from Hinduism was seen by the Hindu nationalist leaders as an effective way to enhance the social base and integrate the Hindus, overcoming caste barriers. This was also the idea behind Savarkar’s conception of Hindutva that was beyond caste and even beyond pan-Indic faiths.

Along with Babarao and other leaders such as Dr B.S. Moonje, Dr L.V. Paranjpe, Bhauji Karve, Anna Sohoni, Cholkar, Vishwanath Kelkar and Dr Tholkar, Hedgewar started the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on 27 September 1925, on the auspicious day of Vijayadashami. All these men broadly opined that Hindu–Muslim unity was a mirage and ‘Hindutva’ is the only nationalist creed.

Aasindhu Sindhu paryanta yasya Bharata bhumika Pitrabhu punyabhushchaiva sa vai Hinduriti smritah. (The one who considers this vast stretch of land called Bharat, from the Sindhu [the Indus] to the Sindhu [the sea] as the land of one’s ancestors and holy land, he is the one who will be termed and remembered as a Hindu.)

He met groups of people in private and articulated his ideas on the ‘Seven shackles of Hindu society’: Vedokta bandi (denial of access to Vedic literature to non-Brahmins), Vyavasaya bandi (choice of profession by merit and not heredity), Sparsha bandi (untouchability), Samudra bandi (barring crossing the seas fearing loss of caste), Shuddhi bandi (denial of reconversions to Hinduism), Roti bandi (denouncement of inter-caste dining) and Beti bandi (denial of inter-caste marriage).

Can you prevent Christian children from attending public schools? No! You dare not, since you know the consequences. The British Government will reply with bullets. You insult the untouchables because they are ignorant and helpless. But you yield to the unjust demands of the Muslims because they are aggressive. When a Mahar becomes a Muslim or a Christian convert, you treat him as your equal. But as a Mahar, he will not receive the same treatment.

For instance, despite being Brahmins, the Deshasthas and Chitpawans would not dine together. Mahars refused to eat with the Bhangis, and the Bhangis in turn with the Dhors. Unlike the usual practice to blame the Brahmins or upper castes alone for the scourge of untouchability, Savarkar understood that the malaise ran deep. Time and time again, Savarkar emphasized this aspect of the highs and lows even among the so-called lower castes and untouchables in his speeches and writings and the imperative to get rid of all these divisions within Hindu society equally.

Ambedkar’s unwillingness to share stage with Savarkar is inexplicable.

‘I believe that if Hindu society has been able to stand, it is because it is founded on the caste system. The seeds of swaraj are to be found in the caste system.

The stand of the Mahatma justifying the caste system and its merits went completely tangential to Ambedkar’s philosophy and also the writings of Savarkar during the same period. While one must give the benefit of doubt to any political leader whose thoughts and philosophy change with time, preferably evolving for the better, Gandhi went a step back in 1925 by expressing his deep faith in the varna system but interpreting it in his own creative manner. In Gandhi’s justification for the varna, it is a cloak for the same caste system that he found appealing earlier.

When a deputation of untouchables came to meet him on 15 December 1932, among other things, he said candidly: ‘I do believe in the four varnas . . . All occupations should be hereditary. Millions of people are not going to become Prime Ministers and Viceroys.’69 This to an Ambedkar or Savarkar would be construed as being antithetical to the fundamental concept of democracy where anyone, irrespective of their dynastic heritage, could actually aspire to become a prime minister or a viceroy!

Gandhi’s repeated reference to Abdul Rashid as a ‘dear brother’ caused a lot of consternation among an already agitated crowd.

Savarkar wanted Gandhi to make an assessment of the riots that had rocked India after Malabar—Gulbarga, Kohat, Delhi, Panipat, Calcutta, East Bengal, Sindh and several low-intensity clashes all round the year in some place or the other—and analyze which community began the skirmish in each case and who perpetrated the crimes. Could Gandhi list cases of rapes of Muslim women by Hindu mobs, or was it the other way round, he challenged. Were there assassinations of any leaders of the Muslim community by Hindus, while the converse had numerous examples of martyrs for the shuddhi cause beyond Shraddhanand?

What astonished Savarkar was that the man making these claims was not someone unaware of ground realities or the recent history of clashes. Yet, his taking a stand like this, just to prove his own greatness, was according to Savarkar not only foolishness and cowardice but also a crime against one’s community.

You say further, Islam means peace. Is this truth? Islam as taught by the Koran and practised by Muslims ever since its birth never meant peace. What makes you write a thing so patently wrong? Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism of course teach peace, but not Islam. May I know what makes you think and write like this? You never minced matters when condemning the wrongs of the Government, you never minced matters when you condemned Arya Samaj, why fear to condemn Muslims for even proved wrongs? I am sure if such a black act had been committed by a Hindu against a Muslim leader (which Heaven forbid!), you would have condemned the murderer and the community in unsparing terms. You would have asked Hindus to repent in sack-cloth and ashes, to offer fasts, hold hartal, raise memorial to the departed Muslim and many other things. Why do you accord preferential treatment to your ‘blood brothers’ the Muslims?

When Islam as a political force conquered Syria, the local Christians underwent immense genocides and had to abandon their homes and homeland, said Savarkar. It was India that gave these persecuted Syrian Christians shelter in its southern provinces. Moving further in history, Savarkar argued that the same fate befell the entire region of Persia, and the victims held their sacred fires and Zend Avesta close to their heart and sought shelter in this very land of the Hindus. They were still in India as Parsis. From the time of the Islamic conquest of India and the attack on the Somnath Temple in Gujarat, it was a story bloodied with the sacrifices of a million Hindu martyrs, said Savarkar.

Gandhi for making an utterly false equivalence. The history of Islamic rule in India, according to Savarkar, was personified by the barbarities of Muhammad Ghazni, Muhammad Ghori, Muhammad-bin-Tughlak, Aurangzeb and Tipu Sultan.

While taking leave, Gandhi told Savarkar that quite noticeably they disagreed on several issues but he hoped that the latter would have no objection to his making experiments to deal with the issues on hand. Savarkar sternly replied: ‘Mahatmaji, you will be making these experiments at the cost of the nation.’

Nepal may not only obtain its honoured position among the sovereign and free nations of the world, but that it may also give a new life to the decaying forces of the great Hindu civilization . . . great ideal of creating a federation of powerful, peace-loving Hindu nations from the Himalayas to Ceylon, and from Sindh to far off Java. The menace of Islam is still hanging over our land as the sword of Damocles. Christianity and its activities in India threaten to wipe away whatever is left of us now.

For instance, Cinema House would be Chitra Griha or Chitrapat Griha; terms such as Veshbhusha (Costume), Chhayachitra (Photograph), Digdarshak (Director), Daak (Post), Panji (Register), Doordarshan (Television) and so on—many of which are in actual usage today.

Yet, he cautioned that there might well be a day when this same Congress that is so steeped in Muslim appeasement and its leader Gandhi might decide to scrap this song in case some members of the Muslim community oppose the Hindu iconography in the verses. The party needed to guard against such tendencies too, he cautioned.25 His statement was to be quite prophetic as that was precisely what the Congress did by eventually junking the song and adopting ‘Jana Gana Mana’ of Rabindranath Tagore as the national anthem of free India.

He chided the ‘Mohammedans who are nowhere to be found while the national struggle goes on and are everywhere to be found in the forefront at the time of reaping the fruits of that struggle’,40 and who are ‘often found to cherish an extra-territorial allegiance, moved more by events in Palestine than what concerns India as a nation, worries himself more about the well-being of the Arabs than the well-being of his Hindu neighbours and countrymen in India’.

When an overwhelming majority in a country goes on its knees before a minority so antagonistic as the Mohammedans, imploring them to lend a helping hand and assures it that otherwise the major community is doomed to death, it would be a wonder if that minor community does not sell their assistance at the higher bidder possible, does not hasten the doom of the major community and aim to establish their own political suzerainty in the land. The only threat that the Mohammedans always hold before the Hindus is to the effect that they would not join the Hindus in the struggle for Indian freedom unless their anti-national and fanatical demands are granted on the spot. Let the Hindus silence the threat once for all telling point blank: ‘Friends! We wanted and do want only that kind of unity which will go to create an Indian state in which all citizens irrespective of caste and creed, race and religion are treated all alike on the principle of one man one vote. We, though we form the overwhelming majority in the land, do not want any special privileges for our Hindudom; nay more, we are even willing to guarantee special protection for the language, culture and religion of the Mohammedans as a minority if they also promise not to infringe on the equal liberty of other communities in India to follow their own ways within their own respective houses and not to try to dominate and humiliate the Hindus. But knowing full well the anti-Indian designs of the pan-Islamic movement, with a ...

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. Let us not be stone blind to the fact that they as a community still continue to cherish fanatical designs to establish a Moslem rule in India. Let us work for harmony, let us hope for the best, but let us be on our guard! As it is, there are two antagonistic nations living side by side in India. Several infantile politicians commit the serious mistake in supposing that India is already welded into a harmonious nation, or that it could be welded thus for the mere wish to do so. These our well-meaning but unthinking friends take their dreams for realities. That is why they are impatient of communal tangles and attribute them to communal organizations. But the solid fact is that the so-called communal questions are but a legacy handed down to us by centuries of a cultural, religious and national antagonism between the Hindus and the Moslems.

The more you hanker after the Hindu-Muslim unity, the further it runs away from you. Plainly speaking, there does not exist any minority problem worth the name. The Parsis, the Jews and the Christians inhabiting this land never claimed special rights and they have declared more than once that they do not want separate electorates.

On 15 October 1938, speaking at a regional session of the Nasik and Khandesh District Hindu Mahasabha held in Nandgaon, he articulated that there were three main foes that the Mahasabha had to fight—the British, a united and aggressive Islamist tendency and the Congress and its Muslim appeasement policy.

He harked back on his favourite theme of history to deduce that for 5000 years the ancestors of Hindus were always shaping the formation of the people into a religious, racial, cultural and political unit. This nation was not a ‘mushroom growth’ and barring China, few others could claim such unbroken civilizational continuity.

But such an expectation was fanciful according to him. Having largely sat on the fence and staying away from freedom struggle, the Muslims, in his opinion, jumped to gather their pound of flesh only after all the struggle and efforts by others had forced the British to climb down and begin granting concessions. Things had come to such a pass now that a separate non-Hindu state for the Muslims was being discussed, and this only went to show the thoughtless beliefs of the Hindu patriots of welding everyone on to a common nationhood through the bond of territorial unity that had eminently proved itself to be futile.

The Moslems in general and Indian Moslems in particular have not as yet grown out of the historical stage, of intense religiosity and the theological concept of state. Their theology and theocratical [sic] politics divide the human world into two groups only—The Moslem land and the enemy land. All lands which are either entirely inhabited by the Moslems or are ruled over by the Moslems are Moslem lands. All lands, which are mostly inhabited by non-Moslem power are enemy lands and no faithful Moslem is allowed to bear any loyalty to them and is called upon to do everything in his power by policy or force or fraud to convert the non-Moslem there to Moslem faith, to bring about its political conquest by a Moslem power.

‘If you come, with you; if you don’t, without you; but if you oppose, in spite of you, we Hindus will fight out the good battle of achieving the independence of India and herald the rebirth of a free and mighty Hindu nation in the near future!’

‘The Hindus will assure them all that we hate none, neither the Moslem nor the Christians nor the Indian Europeans, but henceforth we shall take care to see that none of them dares to hate or belittle the Hindus also.’

Grenfell had read up extensively on this issue and deduced that 12,000,000 Hindus in the Nizam state were being systematically persecuted on religious grounds.

In today’s Congress, there are three schools of thought . . . Gandhian school of thought has truth and non-violence as its key ideas. But Gandhian non-violence is inimical to Hindutva. Hindu philosophy says violence for violence sake is bad, but violence is permissible to destroy evil and protect the good, and such violence is good conduct. But Gandhian thought makes no such distinction. They believe in non-violence under all conditions. Second school of thought is led by Subhas Bose and the Forward Bloc. His policies and means used are similar to our thought process and we could work together on certain issues, but even they are obsessed with this mirage of Hindu-Muslim unity. The third school of thought is of Manvendranath (sic) Roy and that is not acceptable to us at all. They believe in the policy of active Muslim appeasement. The Hindu Mahasabha has the interests of Hindus in mind always.

Even the British had taken note of this fascination and in an intelligence report said, ‘It is perhaps no exaggeration to assert that the Sangh hopes to be in future India what the “Fascisti” are to Italy and the “Nazis” to Germany.’

Savarkar wished to ‘relieve our non-Hindu countrymen of even a ghost of suspicion… that the legitimate rights of minorities with regard to their religion, culture and language will be expressly guaranteed : on one condition only that the equal rights of the majority also must not in any case be encroached upon or abrogated.

Nay, even the Frontier tribes, the ‘brave brothers Moplas’, the Moslem populations in Bengal or Sindh who indulge in such horrible outrages against Hindus have no taste for it all, nursed within themselves; but were almost compelled to rise and revolt against the Hindus by ‘the third party’ the Britishers [sic]. When the British did not step in we Hindus and Moslems lived together in perfect amity and brotherly concord and Hindu-Moslem riots was [sic] a thing simply unheard of. Thousands of Congressite Hindus are observed to have been duped in to this silliest of political superstitions. As if Mahamad Kasim, Gazanis, Ghoris, Allauddins, Aurangzebs were all instigated by the British, by this third party, to invade and lay waste Hindu India with a mad fanatical fury. As if the history of the last ten centuries of perpetual war between the Hindus and Moslems was an interpolation and a myth. As if the Alis or Mr. Jinnah or Sir Sikandar were mere school children to be spoiled with the offer of sugar pills by the British vagabonds in the class and persuaded to throw stones at the house of their neighbours. They say, ‘before the British came, Hindu-Moslem riots were a thing unheard of’. Yes, but because instead of riots, Hindus-Moslems wars was the order of the day.

Hinduism is said to divide people and in contrast Islam is said to bind people together. This is only a half truth. For Islam divides as inexorably as it binds. Islam is a close corporation and the distinction that it makes between Muslims and non-Muslims is a very real, very positive and very alienating distinction. The brotherhood of Islam is not the universal brotherhood of man. It is brotherhood of Muslims for Muslims only. There is a fraternity, but its benefit is confined to those within that corporation. For those who are outside the corporation, there is nothing but contempt and enmity. The second defect of Islam is that it is a system of social self-government and is incompatible with local self-government, because the allegiance of a Muslim does not rest on his domicile in the country which is his but on the faith to which he belongs. To the Muslim ibi bene ibi patria is unthinkable. Wherever there is the rule of Islam, there is his own country. In other words, Islam can never allow a true Muslim to adopt India as his motherland and regard a Hindu as his kith and kin. That is probably the reason why Maulana Mahomed Ali, a great Indian but a true Muslim, preferred to be buried in Jerusalem rather than in India.

According to the Muslim Canon Law, the world is divided into two camps, Dar-ul-Islam (abode of Islam) and Dar-ul-Harb (abode of war). A country is Dar-ul-Islam when it is ruled by Muslims. A country is Dar-ul-Harb when Muslims only reside in it but are not rulers of it.

Ambedkar mentions that history has shown only two ways in which a major nation has dealt with a minor nation that exists within it. The first way is for the former to destroy the nationality of the latter and assimilate and absorb it within itself. This would be done ‘by denying to the minor nation any right to language, religion or culture and by seeking to enforce upon it the language, religion and culture of the major nation’.15 The other alternative is to let the minor nation separate itself into an autonomous and sovereign entity.

He attacked the viceroy’s speeches to this effect and quoted the instance of Hitler who when asked to vacate Poland by Chamberlain said that he would do so when Britain decided to vacate India. ‘Thieves alone can trace the footsteps of thieves best,’ he mocked.

We should neither hate nor love Nazists [sic] or Bolshevists [sic] or Democrats simply on the ground of any theoretical or bookish reasons. There is no reason to suppose that Hitler must be a human monster because he passes off as a Nazi or Churchill is a demi-God because he calls himself a Democrat. Nazism proved undeniably the saviour of Germany under the set of circumstances Germany was placed in; Bolshevism might have suited Russia very well and we know what the English Democracy has cost us.

On 14 August 1941, the United States of America and Britain jointly issued the ‘Atlantic Charter’ as a statement of their war policy. Among other things, Article 3 of this charter declared that ‘they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of Government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them’.87 The statement was obviously welcomed with cheer by Indians across the political spectrum. However, the joy was short-lived as British prime minister Winston Churchill punctured the balloon in his speech in the House of Commons on 9 September 1941. He declared that the Atlantic Charter had no application to India and referred only to European nations under Nazi rule. It did not relate to ‘the development of constitutional government in India, Burma or other parts of the Empire’.88 The ‘progressive evolution of self-governing institutions in the regions and peoples who owe allegiance to the British Crown’89 was to be distinguished from the emancipation of Europe from Nazism, he asserted. Even the advice of the US ambassador to Britain, Guy Winant, to whom he sent an advanced copy of his speech, could not influence Churchill. Winant believed that the denial of the Charter clauses to India ‘would simply intensify charges of Imperialism and leave Great Britain in the position of a “do-nothing policy”’.90 But Churchill was adamant and refused to modify the passage. If the ...

for the Hindus there was no country beyond the frontiers of India that they can call as their home