Contumely against Savarkar: Apoplexy Merited

Intrinsic to man is a labyrinth of values and sentiment. Whereas binary is a trait of benighted beings, of whose plethora on social media there can be no doubt, the cognizance of human sinuosity is a trait of such men and women who prefer more honest, refined conversation — refined not cardinally by way of semantics, but certainly by way of chivalry. Perhaps it is perspicuous that I unequivocally prefer the latter.

Yet, such chivalry is impossible to realize on some occasions. Confound the prescient men and women of the past indeed must the contemporary era, for in manifest contrast to their vision of a future progressive society, we have retrogressed socially, progressed though we may have scientifically. Such social retrogression is evident in the demise of the aforesaid labyrinth of values and sentiment, and entrenchment of a binary view of the world. So much so, that even the social discourse with respect to our national endeavour for freedom has been the unfortunate object of binary-ism. Savarkar is perhaps the principal recipient of its negativity.

A contexture to Savarkar

Savarkar was, much akin to any other person, an eclectic man, who prior to his incarceration, remained committed to the cause of freedom notwithstanding the great misfortunes that afflicted his family. It is posited that it was perhaps the demise of his mother at a tender stage in his life that germinated within him the sensitivity of a poet; his contribution to Marathi literature through his numerous poems and essays is voluminous. There was to him a magnetic allure; he was a born leader, and this trait would be intrinsic to him well thereafter. So casual and frolicsome a man as Madan Lal Dhingra, too, found himself greatly drawn to Savarkar and his nationalist ideals, and pledged himself unrepentantly to the cause of freedom. He embraced martyrdom, prideful in his service to his motherland. That Savarkar did not succeed in his endeavour as a leader to rescue his fellow revolutionary did not nonetheless dilute the latter’s respect for him, and so moved was Savarkar with Dhingra’s martyrdom, that he composed on the shores of Brighton a poem that is a most lyrical expression of his angst.

All the while, he was the chief figure of the secret revolutionary society of Abhinav Bharat, and it is to his credit that the first bonfire of foreign goods was ever organized — in the year 1905, while he was yet in India and had not proceeded to the UK’s prestigious Gray’s Inn for his education in law. He did not, however, renounce his revolutionary activities, and persisted in the production of intellectual corpus for his secret society. It scarce suffices to say that he was a terror to the British colonial rulers; he was the manifestation of the adage: “the pen is mightier than the sword”. Besides his much underacknowledged elder brother Ganesh Damodar Savarkar, he was instrumental in having smuggled to India his epochal book “The First War of Indian Independence”; his coinage for the 1857 revolt, thus far contemptuously depicted as the ‘sepoy mutiny’. It must have been quite the privilege for Savarkar’s book to have been banned by the Government of British India prior to its very publication.

The British were dextrous at investigative methods, and traced the assassinations of British officials to the organization, and eventually traced the leadership to this bespectacled, scholarly-looking man, certainly not a tough revolutionary in his appearance. Yet, he was the magnet of this prodigious society. There being no role of his in any assassination — direct or indirect — he was nonetheless sentenced to an unprecedented fifty years in the horror prisons of the Andamans. His extraction from London was itself an ignominious episode, a mockery of international law; for the laws of London would not have permitted any punishment, let alone so severe as he would later experience, for merely having expressed thoughts adversarial to the British. Having escaped British custody by having jumped off a ship and having swum a little distance to the shores of France, he naturally thought that France was the rightful custodian of Savarkar and not Britain. Britain, however, managed to coerce France; the International Court of Justice ruled in favour of Britain, and off was Savarkar to India where he was subject to a farcical jury trial and sent off to the Andamans, where the notion of human rights was as celestial as a Martian, and where the howls of revolutionaries sent to the gallows were his only companions in a dark, saturnine and solitary cell — once compelled to stand handcuffed for six months at an end. All this, in light of news that his first son Prabhakar had passed away, perhaps but a few months old.

Yet, behold the man’s fortitude; he did not acquiesce. Incarcerated with him were revolutionaries from across India, many of them yet in their late teens and early twenties, illiterate, who had their lives ahead of them but were, desirous of freedom as they were, prepared to sacrifice it all. Providence had not been kind to him; it was only after two years of incarceration therein that he discovered that his elder brother, too, had been consigned to the same fate, much earlier indeed than him. For two years, the brothers were not aware of being in each other’s vicinity. Throughout his time in prison, however, Savarkar not merely organized several fasts in protest against the prison’s mistreatment, but was able in later years to usher in a few prison reforms, was able to build a small library, and was able to help many inmates rid their addictions and imparted them with lessons from the books. Simultaneously, he routinely wrote poems on the walls of the prison, heartlessly whitewashed by the jailors, but he was able to memorize them all. Posterior to his release, he penned the 6,000 odd lines from his elephantine memory, and these long poems have been amongst the finest works of Marathi literature.

A conscientious reader uninitiated with Savarkar would think, “Certainly, challenges of ginormous proportions had afflicted the man. So erudite, so adamantine and so dextrous a man must not waste his acumen in the confines of prison.” Now, were I to reveal to such reader the fact that Savarkar intermittently penned the most eloquent petitions in the hopes of release, that employed ostensibly obsequious language, he or she would ponder to the effect, “Seeing as he was the head of a secret revolutionary society, and a master strategist, scarce could the petitions be interpreted as reflective of his true sentiment.” Regrettably, the contemporary social retrogression shall have us believe otherwise.

Savarkar’s Petitions

To my mind, one of the most conspicuous demerits of social media is a profound decrease in attention spans and the great degeneration of English to what I term ‘SMSspeak’; scarce anyone therefore is prepared to read either luscious prose or devote his vigour to analysis; in consequence of which, scarce would they care to analyze Savarkar’s petitions, eloquent and sinuous as they are. Perhaps his own words would suffice to indicate his disposition:

I am not asking for any preferential treatment, though I believe, as a political prisoner, even that could have been expected in any civilized administration in the Independent nations of the world; but only for the concessions and favour that are shown even to the most depraved of convicts and habitual criminals.

He was not a revolutionary of platitudinous traits, namely, apoplectic and hasty in actions. He did not view as valiant the act of killing for pure malice:

Now, no man having the good of India and Humanity at heart will blindly step on the thorny paths, which in the excited and hopeless 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 but be the staunchest advocate of constitutional progress and loyalty to the English government, which is the foremost condition of that progress.

“Brilliant propitiation”, a reader uninitiated with Savarkar might hold upon incisive analysis. Obsequious though the phraseology indeed is, it should be perspicuous to a discerning reader that such verbiage was inevitable. For who would deem it apt to express himself to the effect of, “May the Government of Your Majesty so extend its benevolence as to effectuate my freedom; able as I shall then be to commence again my sacrosanct revolution against You and Your Peremptory Regime!” But there persists yet another explanation; the recognition by one of the government’s authority — colonial though it may be — is of utmost essence in order to demand from it such progress, such reforms as one desires. Indeed, that was the premise of that national body of non-violent nationalists, namely the Congress. It would be logically incoherent to demand reforms from a government whose authority is not recognized.

Moreover my conversion to the constitutional line would bring back all those misled young men in India and abroad who were once looking up to me as their guide.

Esteemed a nationalist as he was, and a leader in the eyes of his fellow incarcerated revolutionaries as he was, it would have only been natural for some if not all of those revolutionaries to follow his example posterior to his purported conversion to the path of constitutional reforms. Why, indeed, must they take recourse to arms in the event of there being constitutional methods for the realization of such reforms as they desired to see implemented?

. . .and moreover when the Royal Road of constitutional success is thrown so wide open as Lord Hardinge has done, who is so depraved and fanatical as to hang to the thorny paths of blood or crime?

If not with his eloquence, a reader would certainly be impressed at the coherence of Savarkar’s arguments. Nonetheless, a paragraph from his petition is oft quoted by vested interests so as to depict him as a renegade to the cause of freedom:

The Mighty alone can afford to be merciful and therefore where else can the prodigal son return but to the parental doors of the government?

In his memoir titled “My Transportation for Life” he penned posterior to his release, he dwelled in one part the profound spiritual effect that reading the Bible had had on him. “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” happens to be a parable intrinsic to Christianity. Who is to say with unalloyed confidence that he was not through that line endeavouring to appeal to the religious sentiments of the British?

There is reason to suspect malice prepense on part of the aforesaid vested interests, for the following greatly significant portion is never brought forth in pertinent discussions:

If the Government suspect that my real intention in writing all this is only to secure my release, then I beg to submit let me not be released at all, with my exception let all the rest be released, let the volunteer movement go on — and I will rejoice in that as if myself was allowed to play an active part.

Certainly, this would suffice to convince a reader of his selflessness?

In Canada, revolts and rebellions were the order of the day; a bold statesman like Lord Durham rose and showed confidence — and now the grandsons of the Leaders of those rebellions are fighting in Flanders on the British side. The Boers fought and lost the day; but the English realizing the gravity of the situation and remembering the history of America and Cape Colony, behaved as a wise conqueror should do, and gave them autonomy and the result is that though a Dewett did rebel, yet there only a Dewett to be put down and not a Botha, too! Or can India be suspected of being less confiding and less generous in her response to any magnanimous and sincere dealing of the British people?

Could a rational reader attribute the last line to a renegade to the cause of freedom? I contend not.

History shows that the fault of India, if fault it was, had been, not that she was less but that she was too generous and too confiding.

This, too, I should attribute to a nationalist at heart.

When there was no Constitution, it seemed a mockery to talk of constitutional movements. But now if such a constitution exists, and Home Rule is decidedly such, then so much political, social, economical and educational work is to be done and could constitutionally be done that the Government, may securely rest satisfied that none of the present political prisoners would choose to face untold suffering by resorting to underground methods for sheer amusement!

Penurious as India was, it would be deemed rational for social reforms to proceed in parallel with the struggle for freedom. Indeed, they did, with Dr. B.R. Ambedkar being amongst the most prominent social reformers, committed to the emancipation of the historically oppressed Dalits subjected to the inhumane practice of untouchability. Certainly not a participant in the freedom struggle, could so emancipator a man be ever deemed a renegade? Not, I hold, in one’s wildest dreams.

How can there be peace and mutual confidence and love in the land in which thousands of families are literally torn to pieces and every second home has either a brother or a son or a husband or a lover or a friend snatched away from its bosom and kept pining in the prisoner? It is against human nature, for blood is thicker than water.

Rationality, not treason.

Fourthly, all over the world the prisons have been thrown open to those who had been pent up for the sake of political principles. Not to mention Russia, France, Ireland and Transvaal. Even Austria could not refuse amnesty to her political prisoners even while the war is still hanging heavy over her. Nor could it be said that the prisoners thus released were convicted of ‘general participation only’ for in the case of suffragists, almost all of them had been convicted of ‘individual acts’, to quote Mr. Bonar Law, including arson, and yet were released immediately after the war broke out. It could not be that a step, which had been thought beneficial in all the nations of the world should prove disastrous only in India.

If anything, this but evinces British colonial contempt towards Indians.

Fifthly, as long as some of those whose names are rightly or wrongly, but undoubtedly revered by thousands of souls are still kept in the Jail; and are looked upon as foes to the present order of things, so long the tradition of opposing authority would continue to produce its own devotees and even blind followers.

Regardless of the foregoing sentence having been written as an ominous warning to the British or as a gesture of goodwill, that he thought not merely of himself but of all other nationalists is conspicuous. And following yet again is his selflessness:

In conclusion, I beg to add, in all sincerity, that if the Government thinks that it is only to effect my own release that I pen this; or if my name constitutes the chief obstacle in the granting of such an amnesty then let the Government omit my name in their amnesty and release all the rest; that would give me as great a satisfaction as my own release would do.

He proceeds thereafter to plead also for those exiled, and not merely those incarcerated. But it would appear that he was not the only one to pen a petition:

Well, the monster petition that the Indian public had sent to His Majesty and that had been signed by no less than 5,000 signatures, had made a special mention of me in it. I had been denied a jury in the trial; now the jury of a whole nation has opined that only the eagerness for political progress had been the motive of all my actions and that led me to the regrettable breaking of the laws.

It is of import to note that in December 1919, Emperor George V ratified the Government of India Act (Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms) through a Royal Proclamation. Clause 6 of the proclamation was as follows:

Schematically, the Emperor desired that his Royal clemency be exercised to political prisoners, and most prisoners were in consequence granted a release. The prisoners had to sign a pledge indicating their abstinence from politics and revolutionary activity for a stipulated number of years. On being guilty of treason again, they were to be sent back to the Andamans to serve the remainder of their life sentence. Savarkar and his elder brother, however, had been excluded from the general amnesty by the prison authorities. In the subsequent petition, therefore, Savarkar made a brilliant case for himself and his brother:

…I beg to point out, that there had been no prosecution against any member of my family till this year in 1909; while almost all of my activity which constituted the basis for the case, have been in the years preceding that…The prosecution, the Judges and the Rowlatt Report have all admitted that since the year 1899 to the year 1909 had been written the life of Mazzini and other books, as well organized the various societies and even the parcel of arms had been sent before the arrest of any of my brothers or before I had any personal grievance to complain of (vide Rowlatt Report pages 6 &c.)…

The petition is replete with legalities:

The Proclamation does not make any distinction of the nature of the offence or of a section or of the Court of Justice, beyond the motive of the offence. It concerns entirely with the Motive and requires that it should be political and not personal.

Also highlighted is the release of revolutionaries Barin Ghose and Hemchandra Das who were directly involved in political assassination:

These men had confessed that one of the objects of their conspiracy was ‘the murders of prominent Government officials’ and on their own confessions, had been guilty of sending the boys to murder magistrates, etc. This magistrate had among others prosecuted Barin’s brother Arabinda [Aurobindo] in the first ‘Bande Mataram’ newspaper case. And yet Barin was not looked upon, and rightly so, as a non-political murderer.

Sagaciously, he notes the weakness of the case against him:

In my respect the objection is immensely weaker. For it was justly admitted by the prosecution that I was in England, had no knowledge of the particular plot or idea of murdering Mr. Jackson and had sent the parcels of arms before the arrest of my brother and so could not have the slightest personal grudge against any particular individual officer. But Hem had actually prepared the very bomb that killed the Kennedy’s and with a full knowledge of its destination. (Rowlatt Report, page 33). Yet Hem had not been thrown out of the scope of the clemency on that ground…In the case of my brother this question does not arise as his case has nothing to do with any murders, etc.

…And as to my revolutionary tendencies in the past; it is not only now for the object of sharing the clemency but years before this have I informed of and written to the Government in my petitions (1918, 1914) about my firm intention to abide by the constitution and stand by it as soon as a beginning was made to frame it by Mr. Montagu.

None perhaps shall now contend that he apologized for his actions in the petitions. But it may perhaps be of the essence for vested interests to hear so from an employee of the Government of British India himself. I hope that the testimony of Sir Reginald Craddock from the Home Department shall suffice for that purpose.

The contexture thereto is arresting as well. While Savarkar was at jail, one of the fellow revolutionaries had managed to pen a long letter, replete with the minutiae of the inhumanity associated with the Andamans. The revolutionaries together, Savarkar included, plotted to smuggle the said letter to mainland India, the people where were blissfully unaware of the atrocities committed yonder; an endeavour in which they succeeded. The letter had been successfully sent to the newspaper named “The Bengalee” and it created a furor throughout India.

In light of this, Sir Reginald Craddock had personally arrived for an inspection at the Cellular Jail. If the vested interests, despite all evidence to the contrary, suspect that Savarkar had become an ally of the British, they would do well to note Reginald Craddock himself detailing that Savarkar was not apologetic and that he “cannot be said to express any regret or repentance for whatever he did”. He further notes:

So important a leader is he that the European section of the Indian anarchists would plot for his escape which would before long be organized. If he were allowed outside the Cellular Jail in the Andamans, his escape would be certain. His friends could easily charter a steamer to lie off one of the islands and a little money distributed locally would do the rest.

Savarkar’s companions had meanwhile moved heaven and Earth indeed to help Savarkar escape during the First World War, venturing so far as to ensure the bombardment of the authorities at the Andamans through German warships. That the endeavour did not materialize, however, is another matter.

It could scarce be polemical to hold that Reginald Craddock knew better than such vested interests who seek to calumniate Savarkar.

Savarkar’s Hindutva

Savarkar was free from prison only in 1924, having first been imprisoned in 1910. Thus, he was incarcerated for fourteen years, the last two of which he spent in the Ratnagiri District Jail in what is contemporarily known as Maharashtra. In that jail, he penned a most eloquent treatise titled “Essentials of Hindutva”; his only treatise in English. But in light of the fact that he was a great proponent of unity between Hindus and Muslims, otherwise adversarial religious groups, his gravitation towards Hindutva might cause surprise to an uninitiated reader. Had he then succumbed to religious provincialism? He most certainly had not; he had merely become a pragmatist.

The First World War concluded in 1918, and parallel to it in India was the endeavour by the Congress as well as the revolutionaries, albeit independently of each other, for freedom. That endeavour had, however, been dominated by the Hindus; the Muslims had thus far dwelled and remained at the socio-political periphery. By this time, Mahatma Gandhi had already become the chief national figure. The British had in the First World War vanquished the Ottoman Empire, the Emperor of which, the Turkish sultan, also happened to be the caliph — the religious head — of Muslims all around the world. Scarce, nonetheless, did Muslims around the world bat an eye at his debacle. Curiously, however, Gandhi deemed it of the essence for Muslims to agitate in India for his reinstation, as if the British would acquiesce to the demands of a country, India, which was practically its slave, as respects the reinstation of him who they had vanquished, and with whom India should have had no relation. The endeavour was ludicrous by way of yet another factor, namely that the Turkish people themselves desired to constitute themselves under Mustafa Kemal (Pasha) Ataturk into a republic.

Succeed his endeavour did; not in the reinstation of the caliph but in something patently pernicious to India. The Khilafat Conference, thus far an inconsequential body of only a few educated Muslims petitioning to the British to the reinstation of the caliph, transmogrified into the Khilafat Movement as Muslims across British India were mobilized on pan-Islamist sentiment. Gandhi, however, did not appear to discern the perniciousness of it all, and did not indeed appear to discern the sheer antitheticality of Islamism with Indian nationalism, a fact well-chronicled by Dr. Ambedkar on the basis of incisive understanding of Islamic theology, political proclivities of the Muslim League, and statements by Muslim leaders themselves, in his phenomenal book titled “Pakistan or the Partition of India”; a book that remains nonpareil in its profundity. Seven and a half decades have passed by, and scarce has any historian of any worth succeeded in repudiating his book.

Discerning as he was, Savarkar was equally cognizant of the perils such an endeavour could pose, principally to the Hindus, led as they were by the enigmatic saint that was Gandhi in his arduous quest for Hindu-Muslim unity, akin to the manner in which were led the rats to the melody of Pied Piper’s flute. Ambedkar would venture so far as to say that the sacrifice of a few Hindus did not ostensibly matter to Gandhi in his obdurate zeal.

But Ambedkar could have borne scarce interest in actively uniting Hindus, save perhaps through his prescient book, and rightly so. His principal sphere of work had to be the emancipation of the oppressed castes who had been subject to the most disagreeable living conditions owing to the social evil that was untouchability, for which the Hindus themselves had been culpable for centuries; however, he bore no sentiment of vengeance against them and was guided chiefly by the desire to extend to the hitherto untouchables the self-same dignity that any other human would be accorded with. Anyhow, Ambedkar was but a student at the time of the Khilafat, and had not even commenced his social and political life; his book was first written in 1942, issued as a subsequent, enlarged edition in 1945.

Savarkar, perhaps, deemed it his responsibility to educate the misled Hindus — that their loyalty must vest not in Gandhi but in national interest. As a matter of fact, Gandhi was thoroughly prepared to welcome an invasion by the Amir of Afghanistan:

Savarkar was cognizant of the perils such thorough iniquity could pose to India. Pragmatically, he had noted in one of the petitions to the British during his incarceration:

The danger that is threatening our country from the north at the hands of the fanatic hordes of Asia who had been the curse of India in the past when they came as foes, and who are more likely to be so in the future now that they want to come as friends, makes me convinced that every intelligent lover of India would heartily and loyally co-operate with the British people in the interests of India herself. That is why I offered myself as a volunteer in 1914 to Government when the war broke out and a German-Turko-Afghan invasion of India became imminent.

His incarceration brought to him interesting and rather unpleasant experiences; the Muslim prisoners were not subjected to nearly the same indignities and harsh punishments as the Hindus; they converted wantonly the Hindus given the insouciance of jail authorities; they would often also switch sides and act as spies for the jail authorities, engaged as the revolutionaries constantly were in one plot after another. They were delighted at the prospects of an Afghan invasion of India.

Evidently, Savarkar discerned that his quixotism had little basis in fact; that the Muslims perhaps did not reciprocate the liberal demeanour that Hindus, barring a few exceptions, extended to them. Concomitant with this realization was also perhaps another; that of the gullibility of the average Hindu; and that it was not necessarily a blot on the character of the lay Muslim, but on the influential Muslim leaders who could mislead the lay Muslims, which was possible owing to the organized nature of Islam itself. Such realizations altogether served as the likely inspiration for his Essentials of Hindutva. His endeavour to unite the Hindus was not premised on provincial distaste for Muslims; indeed, he was convinced, perhaps naively, of the possibility of Hindu-Muslim unity, notwithstanding his cognizance of both communities having practically lived as two separate nations in the Indian subcontinent.

He was from 1924 to 1937 confined by the British to the district of Ratnagiri, where he was, perpetually in their watchful gaze, not to participate in politics. He therefore dedicated himself to social reforms. His views on the calcified caste system were in consonance with those of Ambedkar; that it had to be annihilated. In face of an enormously orthodox society, he fastidiously promoted the most radical of reforms — he took active part in inter-caste dining, promoted inter-caste marriage, had a temple named Patit Pavan Mandir constructed to which caste was no bar for entry, much unlike in other temples. Simultaneously, he promoted the purification of Marathi and coined several words that are in common use today. At long last, in 1937, he was a free man, and was shortly thereafter elected president of the Hindu Mahasabha, a party that had been formed in order to further the interests of the Hindus. Yet, as shall be perspicuous from “Hindu Rashtra Darshan”, a collection of his speeches as the Hindu Mahasabha president, not ephemerally did he endorse sectarianism to the prejudice of Muslims. Contemporary vested interests — the proponents of the reductionist binary paradigm — ostensibly view the furtherance of Hindu interests to the detriment of Muslims. It would be a prudent contention, therefore, that such proponents, far from their claim of fighting parochialism, indeed further it; for is it not the very essence of baneful predilection to pass verdict purely on grounds of identity?

Endeavour for Freedom as a Free Man?

Some amongst such proponents, regrettably, are in profound want of both reason and erudition. Savarkar was not a nationalist, they contend, owing to his absence of participation in the endeavour for freedom posterior to his complete release in 1937. With them I should share this momentous documentary on him, commissioned in 1983 by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The Films Division is credited with its creation, and under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting as it is, it finds mention on the latter’s official website. It is, therefore, an official source.

It has therein been mentioned that Savarkar, as president of the Hindu Mahasabha, exhorted Hindu youth to enlist in the British Indian Army in light of the Second World War, receive arms training and “turn the gun in the appropriate direction at the opportune moment.” Needless to say, he coated it in the rhetoric of ‘militarizing Hindudom’. He did not, however, openly renounce his yet persistent nationalist stance either, for he once cabled U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt:

If your note to Hitler was actuated by disinterested human anxiety for safeguarding Freedom and Democracy from Military Aggression, pray ask Britain too to withdraw her armed domination over Hindusthan and let her have free and self-determined Constitution. A great nation like Hindusthan can surely claim at least as much international Justice as small nations do.

The proponents of the binary paradigm profess a penchant to contrast him with another eminent nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose, who, while despising the politics both of the Muslim League and of Savarkar, gave every indication of holding Savarkar in high regard. Indeed, both had discreetly met at Savarkar’s residence in Mumbai.

The minutiae of the meeting are yet unknown, but it is only posterior to the meeting that Bose considered resorting to armed rebellion.

It was at great peril of discovery by British intelligence, notes columnist Aravindan Neelakandan, that Savarkar managed to maintain contact with revolutionary Rash Behari Bose who was in Japan — of no familial relation to Subhas Chandra Bose — who was the architect of the Indian Independence League and the first Indian National Army, the charge of which was assumed by Subhas Chandra Bose later. The biographer of Savarkar, Dr. Vikram Sampath, notes that Rash Bihari Bose had, in a Japanese newspaper named “Dai Ajia Shugi”, commented that Savarkar was a rising new leader of India. Once, he wrote to Savarkar, “every attempt should be made to create a Hindu bloc extending from the Indian Ocean up to the Pacific Ocean” and that the Hindu Mahasabha must “take immediate steps for establishing branches of Maha Sabha in Japan, China, Siam and other countries of the Pacific …for creating solidarity among the Eastern races.” In a radio broadcast, he directly addressed Savarkar as follows:

In saluting you I have the joy of doing my duty towards one of my elderly comrades in arms. In saluting you I am saluting the symbol of sacrifice itself.

Subhas Chandra Bose, too, had praise to offer when he was in Japan, in charge of his Provisional Government of Free India:

When due to misguided political whims and lack of vision almost all the leaders of Congress Party are decrying all the soldiers of Indian Army as mercenaries, it is heartening to know that Veer Savarkar is fearlessly exhorting the youth to enlist in the armed forces. Those enlisted youths themselves provide us with trained men from which we draw the soldiers of our Indian National Army.

The proponents of the binary paradigm claim to follow the ideals espoused by independent India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Lamentably for them, he did not forgo his labyrinth of values and sentiment, and therefore, his sinuosity, for he noted in the National Herald after Savarkar’s meeting with Sir Stafford Cripps during his Mission to India in 1942:

Profoundly as we disagree with his politics, … Savarkar showed the old fire in him, when he took up the thoughtless challenge, thrown to Hindu Maha Sabha by the Government of Bihar and obtained a resounding victory at Bhagalpur. With Sir Stafford Cripps he crossed swords which the former will never forget.

His role in Gandhi’s assassination?

Amongst the most pernicious allegations against him was Savarkar’s ostensible complicity in the plot to assassinate Gandhi — the dastardly act having been perpetrated by a man who once looked up to both, Nathuram Godse.

In the aftermath of Gandhi’s assassination, nine people had been arrested: Nathuram Vinayak Godse; Narayan Apte; Digambar Badge; Shankar Kistayya; Dattatraya Parchure; Vishnu Karkare; Madanlal Pahwa; Gopal Godse; and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.

Savarkar was represented by eminent lawyer L.B. Bhopatkar. Two of the conspirators: Narayan Apte and Digambar Badge, did visit Savarkar’s residence, also known as Savarkar Sadan. When Savarkar had been arrested and produced in court, he made the following statements to the court in his defence:

Firstly…visiting Savarkar Sadan does not necessarily mean visiting Savarkar. Apte and Godse were well acquainted with Damle, Bhinde and Kasar who were always found there (in Savarkar Sadan)… So Apte and Godse might have gone to see their friends and co-workers in Hindu Mahasabha.

Secondly… Apte and Godse deny it and state that they never went with Badge and the bag (of weapons) to Savarkar Sadan as alleged.”

It so happened that Badge had agreed to testify in hope of a lighter sentence. With regard to Badge’s claim about Apte informing him that Savarkar had decided that Gandhi had to be assassinated, Savarkar said in his defence:

“..taking it for granted that Badge himself is telling the truth when he says Apte told him this sentence, the question remains whether what Apte told Badge is true or false. There is no evidence to show that I had ever told Apte to finish Gandhi, Nehru and Suhrawardy. Apte might have invented this wicked lie to exploit Savarkar’s moral influence on the Hindu Sanghatanists for his own purposes. It is the case of the prosecution itself that Apte was used to resort to such unscrupulous tricks. For example, Apte is alleged to have given false names and false addresses to hotel keepers.. and collected arms and ammunition secretly..”

In court, it was said that Apte and Badge had met Savarkar on 17 January 1948, when the latter blessed them saying, “Yashasvi houn ya!” (Marathi for, “Return successful (in your mission)”). In his defence, Savarkar said thus:

“Firstly, I submit.. that Apte and Godse did not see me on 17th January 1948 or any other day near about and I did not say to them, ‘Be successful and come back’… Secondly, assuming that what Badge says about the visit is true, still as he clearly admits that he sat in the room on the ground floor of my house and Apte and Godse alone went upstairs, he could not have known for certain whether they.. did see me at all or returned after meeting someone of the family of the tenant who also resided on the first floor of the house.”

“Taking again for granted that Apte and Godse did see me and had a talk with me, still it was impossible for Badge to have any personal and direct knowledge of what talk they had with me for the simple reason that he could not have either seen or heard anything happening upstairs on the first floor from the room in which he admits he was sitting on the ground-floor. It would be absurd to take it as a self-evident truth that.. they must have talked to me about some criminal conspiracy only. Nay, it is far more likely that they could have talked about anything else but the alleged conspiracy.”

“Even if it is assumed that I said this sentence it might have referred to any objects and works.. Such as the Nizam Civil Resistance, the raising of funds for the daily paper, Agrani, or the sale of the shares of Hindu Rastra Prakashan Ltd.. or any other legitimate undertaking. As Badge knew nothing as to what talk Apte and Godse had with me upstairs, he could not assert as to what subject my remark “Be successful etc’ referred.”

In a public function held in Pune on 12 November 1964, senior journalist and grandson of Lokmanya Tilak, GV Ketkar stated that he and some others had prior information of the Gandhi Murder. There had accordingly been a public outcry. Gopal Swarup Pathak, MP was appointed to make the Inquiry. On his being appointed a Minister, Justice Jivan Lal Kapur was appointed to conduct the Inquiry on 21 November 1966. Savarkar had already passed away by then; on 26 February 1966, just three months away from his 83rd birthday. The Commission submitted its report in 1969.

To the Commission, Savarkar’s bodyguard Appa Ramachandra and secretary Gajanan Vishnu Damle provided statements that Apte and Godse had, in fact, met Savarkar in the middle of January, and that the conspirators held even long discussions with Savarkar. However, they had not testified when Savarkar was produced before the court.

Justice Kapur recorded the statements and subsequently wrote, “All these facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group.”

That has been yet another regrettable foundation on which Savarkar is calumniated. Interesting it is to note, however, that nowhere in his report did Justice Kapur expressly conclude that Savarkar was directly culpable or, in any way, complicit. At best, the report holds him under suspicion.

The statement only meant that the theory stood on the grounds of the circumstantial evidence that the conspirators occasionally frequented Savarkar Sadan. There was neither clinching evidence to hold Savarkar himself guilty, nor was there sufficient evidence to unambiguously clear him.

The report by a Commission of Inquiry is by no means a final word. The Commission of Inquiry Act of 1952 states that the report must be accepted by either the State Legislative Assembly or the Lok Sabha (contingent on which government had ordered the formation of the Commission). The decision could nevertheless be challenged in a court of law, and the report therefore liable to judicial scrutiny. Thus, it is of prudence for the Commission report to exercise caution with respect to its verbiage, for there is always the possibility of the report standing to scrutiny by court.

A few questions have nonetheless not been answered, namely:

(a) On what grounds can it be trusted that the respective testimonies of Savarkar’s aides are valid, almost twenty years after the said assassination?

(b) Was it expressly established that long years had not clouded their memories?

(c) Was it expressly established that they had no incentive, material or otherwise, to record the said testimony?

(d) Could they have been coerced into providing such a testimony?

(e) That they were not present to testify before the court, but were present before the Commission, is very strange. Why had they not testified before the court?

(f) Presuming the veracity of their testimonies, the conclusion would be that Savarkar had deceived the court through a false statement that Godse and Apte did not meet him on 17 January 1948. However, this would have sufficed to convict him only for bearing false witness, and not for being party to the plan of assassinating Gandhi. Unless the motive of deceit were established, it would be unfair to assert his complicity.

(g) A possibility may well be raised that those who frequented Savarkar’s residence plotted to conceal in full measure their iniquitous plan, and consequently held long discussions about everything but Gandhi’s assassination, with him, in order to ensure that he would not be any the wiser, for there was the possibility of him prohibiting them from executing their plans otherwise. The evidence that intends to convict Savarkar is elementally purely circumstantial in nature, and the circumstances could have been anything at all.

Dr. Vikram Sampath has pointed out to the possibility of the Commission of Inquiry being politically motivated. So as to lend credence to this possibility, he noted that the government did not table the Memorandum of Action Taken in the Legislative Assembly. Posterior to the submission of the report by a Commission of Inquiry, it is expedient upon the government that has constituted the Commission to table the said memorandum elucidating upon the action taken by it in consequence of the same. The concerned Government, however, did nothing of the sort. Although Savarkar had already passed away prior to the formation of the Commission, it could have been mentioned in the Memorandum. Nothing to that effect, however, could be observed. He also accentuates that the Commission committed the grave breach of duty of transcending its terms of reference, and therefore committing contravention of law. Then, a few legal luminaries appear to have castigated the Commission’s Report, for having ignored key witnesses like Savarkar’s Secretary and bodyguard.

Thereafter, Manohar Malgaonkar penned an incisive book titled “The Men Who Killed Gandhi”, considered the most authoritative book on Gandhi’s assassination, which explicitly exonerates Savarkar. As a matter of fact, it elucidates that posterior to Savarkar’s acquittal, his lawyer L.B. Bhopatkar had revealed in a dinner party that his (Bhopatkar’s) long-time friend and fellow lawyer, Ambedkar himself, had convinced him of there being in existence at top levels of central government to falsely implicate Savarkar, and that from so high a level were the orders passed that even the then Minister of Home Affairs, Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, could not prevent such brazen manipulation. Ambedkar appeared to be insinuating at Nehru, but did not say so aloud. By the time of Bhopatkar’s revelation, Ambedkar and Patel had passed away.

The account has been enumerated by Manohar Malgaonkar as follows: ‘While in Delhi for the trial, Bhopatkar had been put up in the Hindu Mahasabha office. Bhopatkar had found it a little puzzling that while specific charges had been made against all the other accused, there was no specific charge against his client. He was pondering about his defence strategy when one morning he was told that he was wanted on the telephone, so he went up to the room in which the telephone was kept, picked up the receiver and identified himself. His caller was Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, who merely said: “Please meet me this evening at the sixth milestone on the Mathura road”, but before Bhopatkar could say anything more, put down the receiver. That evening, when Bhopatkar had himself driven to the place indicated he found Ambedkar already waiting. He motioned to Bhopatkar to get into his car which he, Ambedkar himself, was driving. A few minutes later, he stopped the car and told Bhopatkar: There is no real charge against your client; quite worthless evidence has been concocted. Several members of the cabinet were strongly against it, but to no avail. Even Sardar Patel could not go against these orders. But, take it from me, there just is no case. You will win.”

Savarkar was unequivocally not culpable, and could not have had any idea whatsoever. Added to all such evidence is Nathuram Godse’s own testimony that he, once, used to look up to Savarkar but was later disillusioned because the latter had turned comparatively soft-hearted post 1942.

Conclusion

Certainly, in light of the pandemonium of the present day, chivalrous conversation is a luxury. Yet, it is to my mind thoroughly unacceptable to cast aspersions on the intentions of those who endeavoured for our national freedom, and such aspersions warrant spirited repudiation. Freedom of speech notwithstanding, one must of one’s own accord exercise restraint in one’s objective conversation pertinent to them, for we owe our freedoms to them in great measure. I would not endorse state prosecution in an otherwise event, but it is only the sensitization to the stalwarts of our freedom struggle that posterity shall cherish the freedoms and perpetually strive to defend them from degeneration — and this applies indeed to all stalwarts. I wrote on Savarkar, for no academic institution appears desirous of extending the privilege of objective scrutiny to him.

Perhaps this nation shall do right to implement corrections in its discourse.