Veer Savarkar is not in public discourse. His portrait in Central Hall of the Parliament, unveiled in 2003 by Atal Behari Vajpayee, was the first stirring for his recognition.
(No surprises, Congress boycotted that moment. Sonia Gandhi stood with opposition in snubbing the event. The opposition had written to President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to stay away from the function--he didn't.)
Be witness to the "Hate-Veer-Savarkar" moment in blogs and social-media posts on his 135th birth anniversary on May 28. As the creator of "Hindutva" philosophy, the annual reviling of the man would be done in unison by TheLiars, Squint, Srolls and Duff-Posts; besides editorial pieces in "Journalism of Courage." In essence, these hacks and compromised academicians would take recourse to five issues to revile the man:
1--SAVARKAR SOUGHT MERCY FROM BRITISH
Savarkar
spent 27 years in jail and under prison-restrictions between 1910-1937. He was
sentenced to 50-year imprisonment and transported to the infamous Cellular Jail
in the Andaman and
Let's
look at what Savarkar underwent while serving "Kaalapaani," in the most
inhuman jail of all. Prisoners were manacled; gruel to eat was riddled with
worms; inmates, formed in groups, were chained like bullocks and hauled to oil
mills, grinding mustard seed, for endless hours. Prisoners were flogged. Light
was scarce. No talking between prisoners at mealtime. No contact with outside
world. Those resisting food had a rubber catheter inserted through the nostril
and into the gullet and so to the stomach. Medical aid was none. It was a
precursor to Gulag Archipelago and
Savarkar endured all this and much more. His badge was marked "D"--for Dangerous. He was subjected to unspeakable cruelties. Every time there was trouble in the compound, Savarkar was punished. The British were determined he must not be allowed to leave the prison alive.
(Before we proceed, let's see how it contrasted with jails of pliable Congress leaders: it was almost a holiday vacation. We have the good word of none other than Asaf Ali: that Nehru almost had a bungalow to himself in his so-called jail with curtains of his choicest colour: blue. He could do gardening at leisure; write his books. When his wife was sick, his sentence was suspended even without he asking for it! Nehru "graciously" accepted the offer.)
As
subsequent events were to show, there was a method in Savarkar's mercy pleas.
He didn't want his life's mission to rot away in prison and come to a grief as
it happened to Rajput warriors in the past. Jaywant Joglekar, who authored a
book on him, dubbed his clemency pleas a
tactical ploy like Shivaji's letter to Aurangzeb during his arrest in
After his release in 1937, Savarkar led a political movement to prevent the Partition of India as president of Hindu Mahasabha.
2--DIDN'T SUPPORT QUIT
Savarkar's
stance to British was: "Quit India but not Army." Unlike Gandhi, he firmly
believed "military strength" as key to
It's
laughable to even suggest Savarkar worked for the British. After Second World
War broke out, he wrote once and cabled on another occasion to US President
Franklin Roosevelt, urging him to ask "
Savarkar,
and Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, were keen on Indianising the British-India
army. This effort of his was endorsed by both Rash Behari Bose and Subhas
Chandra Bose--the revolutionaries behind the Indian National Army (INA). Subhas
Bose praised Savarkar in his broadcast from
It
was INA that forced
Further, Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev had made "Life of Barrister Savarkar" a necessary reading for revolutionaries, as their associate Durga Das Khanna was to reveal in 1976. The book was clearly anti-British.
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