Thread by @dhavalkulkarni

Much of the writings about #VDSavarkar paint him in black-&-white, when the truth lies in shades of grey. Brushing inconvenient facts under the carpet, does not do justice to #Savarkar's complex personality. This is a thread about Savarkar from a historic perspective #history

On 9 June 1906, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a 23-year-old from Nashik, bid adieu to wife Yamuna and their toddler son Prabhakar, and boarded the SS Persia in Bombay to sail for England to study law. However, even as he was in the high seas,

Stanley Egerley from the Bombay government’s special department sent a confidential letter (14 June) to R. Ritchie in the India Office, London, about Savarkar. Egerley said Savarkar held “…somewhat the same opinions” as the revolutionary Damodar Hari Chaphekar, who assassinated

the plague commissioner W.C. Rand in Pune on 22 June 1897 to protest the tyrannical and culturally insensitive methods of tackling the plague epidemic. “In short, he promises to be a firebrand,” Egerley noted pertinently.

That the British were accurate in their assessment became evident soon after. On board the steamship, Savarkar initiated some of his young co-passengers into his underground organisation ‘Abhinav Bharat.’ After reaching London in July, Savarkar enrolled

at Grey’s Inn and stayed at India House run by the nationalist Shyamji Krishnavarma. Savarkar wrote a book on the revolt of 1857 which challenged the colonial propaganda of a mere ‘sepoy’ mutiny, and hailed it as an example of Hindu-Muslim unity.

In London, Savarkar took his battle to the heart of the British empire. As he would proudly tell his associate S.P. Gokhale decades later, he had managed to hoodwink Scotland Yard in England’s capital. On 1 July 1909, Savarkar’s associate Madanlal Dhingra assassinated

Sir Curzon Wylie, the aide-de-camp to the Secretary of State for India, and a staunch imperialist. Savarkar also dispatched twenty Browning pistols and a bomb-making manual sourced from Russian nihilists to India.

However, his luck ran out after Anant Kanhere, a youth from Aurangabad, killed Arthur Mason Tippets (A.M.T.) Jackson, the district collector of Nashik (21 December 1909). Savarkar, the man described by the Governor of Bombay as ‘one of the most dangerous men that India

has produced,’ was arrested and sent to the Cellular prison in the Andaman Islands, after being sentenced to two terms of 25 years each. These sentences were not to run concurrently, but one after the other.

This meant he would be released only on 23 December 1960, albeit if he survived the ordeal. From the prison, described as the Guantanamo Bay of the British empire, Savarkar wrote a series of petitions to the authorities,

which resulted in him being eventually released in January 1924 on the condition that he would reside in Ratnagiri district and not participate in politics. This episode is one of the most controversial aspects of Savarkar’s life.

Perhaps a more nuanced view, albeit one that may lend itself to charges of “humanising” a polarising figure like Savarkar, will judge him based on his actions after being released from jail rather than the means adopted for it.

The Savarkar who was released from the Andamans was a different man from the one who had walked into it. The old Savarkar was a passionate advocate of Hindu- Muslim brotherhood and unity, as espoused in his book on 1857, but the new Savarkar was bristling with anger vs Muslims.

After his discharge from the Cellular jail, Savarkar focussed his energies on opposing the Muslims and later, Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress, rather than the British. This bitterness is attributed to Savarkar’s experiences in the Andamans,

where Muslim warders in the jail allegedly converted non-Muslim prisoners by inducements and force. The lack of unity and orthodox beliefs among the Hindus made it tough for them to present a united front. Though sceptics claim there is no record of any other nationalist

being converted to communalism or of Muslim warders converting or ill-treating Hindu inmates, his hatred for Muslims was genuine and not a form of posturing meant to ingratiate himself with the British. As the Savarkarite D.N Gokhale notes, Savarkar seems to be

“the only Indian thinker who laid down a philosophy of revenge.” At Ratnagiri, Savarkar wrote his seminal ‘Essentials of Hindutva,’ which laid the foundations of Hindutva as an ideology. It emphasised cultural nationalism as against a territorial one,

and said that India was for the Hindus alone, and not for the Muslims or the Christians. Despite the severe shortcomings in his philosophy (he had no firm views on issues like economics and foreign policy), Savarkar is perhaps the only organic intellectual in the Hindu right-wing

universe that is otherwise intellectually-barren. Savarkar also identified caste as the factor preventing the unity of Hindus and raised the hackles of orthodox Brahmins by launching reforms like inter-dining, temple entry for Dalits and ‘shuddhi’. In that era, these restrictions

were strictly followed. John Nesfield describes caste as a class whose members did not intermarry, drink, or eat with any person not belonging to their class. Though Savarkar was not a radical, anti-caste reformer like Mahatma Jotiba Phule or Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, he helped

soften the attitudes of fellow Brahmins towards the Dalits and lower castes. However, true to his complex nature, Savarkar retained some Brahmanical, upper-class biases, and by one account, he felt that family planning should be practised not by the educated class but the poor.

The scholar-author Y.D. Phadke notes that despite his rational and scientific approach, Savarkar advocated only those reforms that fit into his concept of Hindu nationalism and did not support any initiatives that went against it.

Savarkar’s foundational text inspired the launch of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1925. Savarkar’s elder brother Ganesh (Babarao) was one of the co-founders with Dr K.B. Hedgewar, Dr B.S. Moonje, Dr L.V. Paranjape and Dr B.B. Tholkar. Their youngest brother Narayanrao

was a senior functionary of the Sangh and was said have founded the 1st #RSS shakha in #Mumbai. In 1937, Savarkar was released from detention by the Dhanjishah Cooper- Jamnadas Mehta ministry in the Bombay province, and soon after, became the president of the Hindu Mahasabha.

He converted the Mahasabha, which was largely a cultural body, into a political party. Among those who had sought his release or loosening of restrictions included Dr #BabasahebAmbedkar, leaders of the non-Brahmins & depressed classes, even a Muslim Rafiuddin Ahmed

British-era secret records however provide a nuanced view of Savarkar. They hesitated to release him because they felt he was anti-British. In 1928, the additional secretary, Home (Special), said that if Savarkar was released it must be in the full realisation that “the leopard

cannot change his spots,” and said that he was still “anti-British.” Archival records reveal that the British government felt that Savarkar continued to “show a strong anti-Muhammadan bias and… (also) entertain feelings of disaffection against [the] government”.

He was also found to have been “collecting around himself irresponsible youths (sic) to further his revolutionary objects under the pretext of Harijan upliftment work.”

Savarkar is blamed for propagating the two-nation theory in his maiden speech as the president of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1937. But the truth is more complex. The idea of Hindus and Muslims being two separate, antagonistic nations was floated by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1888)

and elucidated by Lala Lajpat Rai (1899 and 1924), and Sir 'Allama' Muhammad Iqbal and Choudhary Rahmat Ali (early 1930s). One of the fundamental principles of the Aligarh movement was that the Hindus and Muslims form two separate political entities

But it is certain that with his polarising and divisive agenda, Savarkar was among those who aided the eventual partition of the Indian subcontinent. One of the forces that partitioned the country was Hindu fanaticism, as Ram Manohar Lohia notes.

As president of the Hindu Mahasabha, Savarkar played a seminal role in the growth of the Sangh in its initial years. Unfortunately, the role of the Savarkar brothers in the launch and growth of the RSS has been glossed over by official accounts.

Savarkar’s actions in the decades of the 1940s raise a question that historians must ponder over—was his politics an extension of his animosity or perhaps a sense of jealousy towards Gandhi than opposition to the British or Muslims?

Unlike the Congress, which worked to keep the Muslim League away, the Hindu Mahasabha was part of coalition governments with the League in Bengal and Sindh. The limitations of his politics, which sometime went against the popular mood, like opposing the Quit India upsurge

and advocating the recruitment of Hindus to fight alongside the British in World War-II, were exposed after the Hindu Mahasabha’s debacle in the 1945-46 elections.

In 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse and Savarkar was arrested as a co-accused.

The ties between Savarkar and Godse went back to 1929, when the latter had met him as an impressionable 19-year-old in Ratnagiri. In court, Savarkar claimed that Godse and his co-conspirator Narayan Apte were “neither specially chosen, nor exclusively trusted”—

a statement that flew in the face of the deep associations between the trio. Savarkar also exhibited a peculiar conduct and showed “calculated, demonstrative non-association” with Godse and his co-accused during the trial. As A.G. Noorani notes, this reveals

a “nervousness born out of deep consciousness of guilt”. Savarkar was acquitted by the special court and this was not challenged by the Union government in the high court.

Eventually, the report of Justice J.L. Kapur Commission of Inquiry (1969) indicted Savarkar saying:

“All these facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group.” This was based on statements given by Savarkar’s secretary Gajanan Damle and bodyguard Appa Kasar to the Bombay police.

But by then, Savarkar was no more, having willingly renounced food, water, and medicines, in an act of atmarpan (act of voluntarily embracing death) in 1966.

The period after Gandhi’s assassination saw the RSS being banned for a short while, and the launch of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) as its political arm. It was during this time that the Sangh Parivar gradually begin distancing itself from the Mahasabha and Savarkar.

This saw narratives about the historic estrangements between the two organisations being built up. After all, Godse had recited the RSS prayer before his execution!

However, scholars like Marzia Casolari have debunked the claim of a split between the Sangh and the Hindu Mahasabha when Savarkar was the president of the Mahasabha.

As Y.D. Phadke says, ordinarily, politicians who are considered to be thinkers have one thing in common—over the years, they are influenced by men, events and their reading and change their initial opinions and views. They gradually accept new ideas and realise their mistakes.

This is a common thread that runs through the lives of Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar and M.N. Roy. However, Savarkar may have been an exception to it. Phadke questions whether Savarkar matured intellectually, retaining the same ideas like militarisation, nationalism,

opinions about the Muslims, concepts of Hindutva during his lifetime. In the UK, Savarkar looked at the Russians for bomb making, but did not try to imbibe their ideology.

When someone reportedly asked Savarkar whether he had read Marx, he replied with a counter-question: “Did Marx read Savarkar?” Of course, he had books on Marx and Lenin, and Marx predated him. But this response shows his hero complex.

Savarkar’s time in London coincided with the influence of Fabian socialists like Beatrice and Sidney Webb and George Bernard Shaw, and the intellectual climate in the West was rife with discussions over concepts like the struggle between the haves and the have nots, class war etc

But the young Savarkar was unaffected by this. A strong votary of militarization, Savarkar remained firm about this agenda even in his final years.

The India-Pakistan war started in 1965. At Tashkent, PM Lal Bahadur Shastri signed a pact with Pakistan to end the war. Shastri died on 11 January 1966, but Savarkar refused to condole his death as he had ceded territory won by India.

Phadke notes that Savarkar managed to free himself from years of detention in the brutal Cellular prison & later, from charges of being a conspirator in Mahatma Gandhi’s murder. However, he could never break the chains in which he had imprisoned his mind at a tender age.

After joining politics as the head of the Hindu Mahasabha, Savarkar diluted some of his progressive, iconoclastic views on the cow--he had said it was not a holy animal but one with a utility. But later, he attended cow protection conferences!

This also brings us to an interesting question to ponder on—how would Savarkar’s atheism and his move to strip the cow of its holiness be regarded by the Hindu right-wing were he alive today?

It must also be noted that the Maharashtra government’s recommendations to the Union government in August 2018 and September 2019 to confer the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour, on Savarkar have gone unheeded.