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Savarkar opined that this was a civilizational and cultural war to alter the core of Hindustan by a determined and aggressive force and warned of repeated and concerted attacks for which the new state of Pakistan was readying itself by militarily arming itself.
Savarkar took on Nehru’s repeated attacks on the Hindu Sangathanist leadership. Reacting to one of Nehru’s assertion that any attempt by Hindu Sangathanist leaders to establish a Hindu Rashtra in India would meet the same fate that Hitler and Mussolini met in Europe, Savarkar denounced his threats through a statement on 22 October 1947. As if the mere demand for a Hindu Raj constitutes a danger to his Government so much more imminent, impending, incalculably disastrous as to call for his immediate attention than the already established Moslem Raj in Pakistan where fanatical atrocities, arson,
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Was it not the League of Nations prescription that all states and nations were to be called after the predominant majority community that lived there, he asked. ‘How is it then,’ questioned Savarkar, ‘that the very mention of the name Hindustan or the Hindu State alone takes your breath away as if you were smitten by a snake bite?’
The other pressing concern was the growing feud between his two trusted lieutenants who held the top two positions in the nascent government—Prime Minister Nehru and Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. In the wake of growing differences between the two men, Patel had volunteered to relieve himself from the duties of government rather than play second fiddle to a man he did not agree with on several issues of national concern.
Whether this step was taken by Desai to settle scores with a political opponent would not be known but that definitely brought Savarkar under Nagarvala’s scanner.
Gandhi’s fast was intended to be a soothing balm to communities on both sides of the newly vivisected country. While at least an outward appearance of camaraderie and restraint was on display on this side of the border, no such compunctions existed in Pakistan. On the night of 22 January, the Parachinar tragedy had struck there where more than 130 non-Muslims were butchered, thirty wounded and fifty abducted. The honour of women was violated in the most grotesque manner.
Commenting on the police’s questionable role in the whole case, Tushar Gandhi writes: One of the crucial factors in the success of the murder plot was that the police—who were hampered by Gandhi’s decision not to allow additional security and frisking of his visitors—did not think of placing constables or inspectors from Bombay, Poona or Ahmednagar at Birla House, who would have been able to identify Godse, Apte and Karkare . . . The Congress Government and at least some of the members of the Cabinet were fed up of the interventions of the meddlesome old man. To them, a martyred Mahatma would
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It is also possible that the entire police organization believed, rightly or wrongly, that “someone up there” would be highly gratified if Savarkar could be implicated.’55 In Gopal Godse’s memoirs, he mentions how not a part of his body was free of bruises from custodial torture by the police, as he tried to convince them in vain that he had not visited Savarkar on his way to Delhi, nor did he even know where his house was in Bombay.
The Gandhi murder investigation and trial became an opportunity and an excuse for the ruling establishment for witch-hunts to settle scores with political opponents.
Patel’s remarks in this letter to Mookerjee were quite the crux of what was to become of Savarkar’s legacy. Even if he were to be acquitted from the point of view of ‘law and justice’, the belief of his complicity had got so enmeshed that the ‘moral’ culpability would be an albatross hanging around his neck all his life, and even thereafter.
The case trial formally began on 27 May—ironically, a day before Savarkar turned 65 when he was to face one of the biggest challenges in his life.
As Inamdar states, Badge was a ‘lucky find’ for the Bombay Police. With the fury of the anti-Brahmin riots and sentiments raging in Maharashtra, Badge ‘the non-Brahmin, unearthing facts, witnesses and also material exhibits against the Brahmin accused’ made him extra special.
Apart from the fact that the Approver happened to be a brother of an employee of the Police Department of the then State of Bombay, it is now (in 1976) being disclosed by the writers of Freedom at Midnight (page 368) that ‘in seventeen years (prior to 1948) Badge (the Approver) had been arrested a record 37 times on such varied charges as bank robbery to murder, aggravated assault, and a dozen arms violations
The whole edifice of the case was thus a sheaf of straws but for the steel helmeted protection given to Badge and other Prosecution Witnesses during the course of the trial, and the atmosphere of terror prevalent everywhere in those days of 1948.
He considered Gandhi’s silence against the inhuman crimes and tortures meted to the Hindus and Sikhs in the wake of Partition as his complicity in their misery.
Families after families of pitiable refugees who were thronging Delhi and seeking shelter in mosques against the biting cold were asked by him to move away, he claimed.
But I do maintain that even this servant of the country had no right to vivisect the country—the image of our worship—by deceiving the people . . . there was no legal machinery by which such an offender could be brought to book and it was therefore that I resorted to the firing of shots at Gandhiji as that was the only thing for me to do.9
The entire episode of the murder case had made Savarkar more of a social recluse who shunned public contact, especially with those associated with either the plot or the trial. Inamdar felt deflated a second time, after the rude rebuff he had got on his request for an autograph. ‘I returned from Savarkar Sadan,’ he reminisces ‘pondering over the susceptibility of even great men to human infirmities.’
Even as these tragedies were being quelled, Nehru invited his Pakistani counterpart Liaquat Ali Khan to Delhi to sign the Nehru–Liaquat Pact on 8 April 1950. The bilateral treaty was aimed at a safe return of refugees and a protection of the rights of minorities in both countries—something that Pakistan never followed up on, in letter or in spirit.
But in a completely unexpected and draconian move, the Nehru government swooped down on all its political opponents within the country, especially the Hindu Mahasabha, in a spate of nationwide arrests under the Preventive Detention Act of 1950.
The offensive against the Hindu Mahasabha and the R.S.S. leaders and workers has only one implication. That is that, Premier Nehru has elected to appease Pakistan and imperil the integrity and the independence of India.
The offensive against the Hindu Mahasabha and the R.S.S. had a two-fold purpose; one is to divert India’s attention from the policy of appeasement; the other is to create a panic that there is a Hindu conspiracy and rally the progressive elements in support of the policy of appeasement of Pakistan.
It was a clear attempt to completely eliminate political opposition especially in the wake of the upcoming first general elections that the country was to witness in 1951.
stated that the government was of the view that it was willing to release Savarkar if he undertook to retire from politics and stay confined to his house. Savarkar had had enough and eventually decided to retire completely from public life. He was given an option to be released from prison only if he abstained from politics for a year or till the first general elections or the third world war, whichever took place first. In view of such ridiculous conditions put on him, he stated: ‘In view of the restrictions put on me by Government, which I mean to observe, preventing me from taking part in
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Savarkar asserted that all the reforms that the British brought in over different periods of time were in response to the violent outbursts and activities of revolutionaries—right from Vasudev Balwant Phadke down to the Naval Mutiny of 1946. He warned that efforts would be made to suppress that part of our history but the truth has a way of resurfacing itself.
After arming oneself sufficiently the country could choose to be non-aggressive and neutral, but doing so before that was foolish and suicidal. Preparing for world peace without military strength was pompous and useless according to Savarkar.
When China, without even consulting India, invaded the buffer state of Tibet, India should at once have protested and demanded the fulfillment of rights and privileges as per her agreements and pacts entered into with Tibet. But our Indian Government was not able to do any such thing. We closed our eyes in the name of world peace and co-existence and did not even raise a finger against this invasion of Tibet. Neither did we help this buffer state of Tibet when her very existence was at stake. Why?
But in the very six years that we criminally wasted, China has equipped her whole nation with most modern and up-to-date arms, and without in the least caring for the feelings and sentiments of India had completely overrun Tibet and destroyed the only buffer state so as to strengthen her vast borders.
Sacrificing the cow to spite the Hindus or to please the gods should not be allowed was his measured opinion.
Savarkar’s repeated warnings since 1954 turned out to be opportune and prophetic, even as India received a decisive drubbing in the India–China War of 1962. Nehru died a dejected man in 1964 after this fatal blow to his failed diplomacy and misplaced trust in China. Savarkar displayed his animosity, departing from his characteristic nature and maintaining a deafening silence, not sending any public statement condoning Nehru’s death.
When Shastri was leaving for Tashkent for peace negotiations with Pakistan, Savarkar publicly shared his apprehensions on Pakistan’s untrustworthiness. Quite prophetically, Shastri died in Tashkent under extremely mysterious circumstances on 11 January 1966, shortly after valorously leading the nation to a great victory.
I have never believed in Gandhiji’s doctrine of Non-Violence. Absolute non-violence is not only sinful but immoral. This doctrine of non-violence benumbed the revolutionary fervor, softened the limbs and hearts of the Hindus, and stiffened the bones of enemies. The lambs resolved to lead a vegetarian life but the wolves were not concerned with their pious resolution.
My India would be a democratic State in which people belonging to different religions, sects or races would be treated with perfect equality. None would be allowed to dominate others. None would be deprived of his just and equal rights of free citizenship, so long as everyone discharged the common obligation, which he owed to the State as a whole. Hindusthan, the motherland and the holy land of the Hindus, from the Indus to the Seas would be an organic, undivided State. The Hindus would be a casteless society, a consolidated and a modern nation. Science and technology would be encouraged.
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A Hindu of my conception is not a fascist, but a real democrat in the true sense of the word. He is also a communist in a way. If all the Hindus who believe in the fundamentals of Hindutva unite, then the question of a contest for a political power does not arise.
But our aim of achieving Akhand Hindusthan with its natural boundaries still remains to be fulfilled. I am old now, and the time has come for me to say goodbye to all that! I have served the cause of my country in accordance with the dictates of my conscience. I am glad that I have lived to see my country free from bondage. As long as the world lasts, this, our ancient land—this, our great Bharatvarsha, will live in all its glory!
‘We are going to our native Home; accept out goodbye; Now there can be no give and take, the speech itself is stopped.’
He had survived for almost twenty-two days by then with little or no medicine, and taking just a few spoonfuls of water daily and remaining alert and conscious till the very end.
Meanwhile, the crows that had perched on the window-sill of Savarkar Sadan, waited patiently for long for their morsel, and then flew away, hungry and dejected.
Barve was the one responsible for suitably containing the anti-Brahmin riots in Poona through his proactive actions of calling for the army on time and imposing curfew for almost a fortnight.
As Justice Kapur states about Alwar, where the Congress had tried to implicate N.B. Khare as a conspirator too: ‘An atmosphere had been created in Alwar State, which was anti-Congress and also anti-Gandhi . . . even though it may not have been an encouragement to the persons who wanted to murder Mahatma Gandhi.’12 Regarding Gwalior Justice Kapur states that, ‘the Maratha princes had no hand in the assassination and no connection with the Maratha conspirators’.
Evidently, it seemed like a colossal exercise in futility as the Commission did not make any pointed references or castigate the people who had been named as part of the enquiry in the terms of reference. What it however ended up doing was to drag the name of the deceased Savarkar yet again into the realm of culpability. All through Justice Kapur’s report, he uses the term ‘Savarkarites’ to mean a caucus within the Hindu Mahasabha that was possibly inspired by Savarkar’s ideology and believed in a militant approach, as being the prime culprits in the murder.
Yet, two pages thereafter the needle of suspicion moves from ‘Savarkarites’ to ‘Savarkar’ himself.
The Kapur Commission Report died a natural death with no clear Action Taken Report or the like filed by the Central government that had set it up in the first place. But since the time the report became public, it became a convenient handle to quote that one sentence from the report that alleges Savarkar as the chief conspirator in the murder.
Just as their portraits hang diametrically opposite to each other in the Indian Parliament’s Central Hall, Gandhi and Savarkar remain the perfectly irreconcilable polar opposites that would never meet and whose ideologies shaped the two distinct ‘Ideas of India’.
As the first leader to vociferously demand nothing short of complete freedom at a time the Congress was still petitioning the British for concessions, Savarkar articulated his vision of a grand constitutional republic for India, way back in 1908.
When Savarkar was unfairly tried and condemned to the dark dungeons of Kala Pani for two life terms equalling fifty long years. Gandhi was nowhere on the national scene. But by the time he was repatriated to an Indian jail in 1921, Savarkar had to contend a Gandhi who had not only returned to India but also managed to take complete control of the Congress and the nationalist struggle, especially after the death of Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1920.
With economic liberalization, the Pokhran nuclear tests, our space conquests and rapid urbanization instead of gram swaraj—not to speak of course of the ascendant political right in India today that claims its ideological lineage from him—it is perhaps Savarkar’s vision of India that is fructifying and not Gandhi’s. Yet, he is the one icon and the tragic anti-hero of Indian history who shall not be named or credited for any of those, even by his political proponents.
All his life Savarkar romanticized the idea of dying a martyr. But even in death Gandhi stole a march and ended up becoming the martyred ‘Father of the Nation’ and Savarkar on the other hand, always insinuated as his murderer by implication.
Without beginning or end am I, inviolable am I. Vanquish me? In this world no such enemy is born! Resolutely, as the Upholder of Dharma, Challenging very Death, into the battlefield charge I. A sword cannot slice me nor can fire burn me, Craven Death itself shall flee in fear of me, aye! And yet, O Foolish Foe, By fear of Death you dare to scare me! Pushed into the cage of a ferocious lion Reduce him to a cowering servility, I will! Flung into the blaze of a roaring inferno Reduce it to a gentle halo of brilliance, I will! Bring on your mighty, skilled armed Legion, Your weapons and missiles
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Anadi mi! Ananth mi!
Worldwide, history offers a space for wounds of the past to be healed, reconciled and to move on. Unfortunately, in India, such episodes are not only forgotten but their very occurrence is denied, thereby adding insult to the injury of the victims.
