Truth about Savarkar’s role during the freedom movement

 

Truth about Savarkar’s role during the freedom movement

On November 17,2022, Rahul Gandhi addressing the Press in Akola, during his Bharat Jodo Yatra, commented on V.D. Savarkar’s mercy Petition to the British Government seeking his release from the Cellular jail in the Andamans: “Wasn’t it the betrayal of freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel and Pandt Nehru who sacrificed their lives for the country, but never bowed in front of the British. When he signed this … what was the reason? It was fear. He was afraid of the British” (IE 18/11). He said earlier that Savarkar helped the British during the freedom movement. Dhaval Kulkarni in his article Why Vinayak Domodar Savarkar remains a polarizing figure in state (HT 19/11) has given an account of the controversy surrounding Savarkar. What is the truth about Savarkar’s role during the freedom movement? This piece is an attempt to unearth the historical facts about his role, based on the information available in public domain.   

 

V.D. Savarkar and his elder brother Ganesh Savarkar founded a secret Organisation called Abhinav Bharat Society in 1904. In his earlier days, he advocated Indian independence by revolutionary means.  He went to England to study the law.  According to Dhaval Kulkarni, Savarkar “shipped pistols and a bomb making manual for Indian revolutionaries.” He influenced thinking of a fellow student Madanlal Dhingra. In 1909, Dhingra assassinated Curzon-Wylie, a colonial officer. Mark Jurgensmeyer alleged that Savarkar supplied the gun used by Dhingra.  In December 1909, Nashik District Collector A.M.T. Jackson was assassinated by one Anant Laxman Kanhere. Savarkar was accused of participating in a conspiracy to overthrow the British government in India by organizing murders of the British officials

 

On 13 March 1910, he was arrested in London on multiple charges, including procurement and distribution of arms, waging war against the state, and delivering seditious speeches. In addition, the British government had evidence that he had smuggled 20 Browning handguns into India, one of which was used to assassinate Jackson. Savarkar was extradited to India for trial. The trial before the special tribunal was started on 10 September 1910.  One of the charges on Savarkar was the abetment to murder of Nashik Collector. The second was waging a conspiracy under Indian penal code 121-A against the King Emperor.   Following the two trials, Savarkar was convicted and sentenced to 50-years imprisonment and transported on 4 July 1911 to the Cellular jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. 

Savarkar, while in jail, submitted several mercy petitions to the British authorities. A month after arriving in the Cellular Jail, he submitted his first clemency petition on 30 August 1911, which was rejected on 3 September. His next petition on 14 November1913 reads: ‘prodigal son longing to return to the parental doors of the government … 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. I am ready to serve the government in any capacity they like…” In 1917 and 1918, he submitted mercy petitions again. And in his fifth mercy petition on 30 March,1920, addressed to the Chief Commissioner of Andamans, V.D. Savarkar pleaded:

“The undersigned most humbly begs that he should be given a last chance to submit his case…The Royal proclamation most magnanimously states that Royal clemency should be extended to all those who were found guilty of breaking the law… I beg to point out, that there had been no prosecution against any member of my family till this year 1909; while almost all of my activity which constituted the basis for the case, have been in the years preceding that... I humbly submit that the Government be pleased to extend the clemency to me… I most emphatically declare that we are not amongst “the microlestes of anarchism … I am sincere in expressing my earnest intention of treading the constitutional path and trying my humble best to render the hands of the British dominion a bond of love and respect and of mutual help… if the Government wants a further security from me then I and my brother are perfectly willing to give a pledge of not participating in politics… so desirous of leading a quiet and retired life for years to come that nothing would induce me to dabble in active politics now… This or any pledge, e.g., of remaining in a particular province or reporting our movements to the police for a definite period after our release - any such reasonable conditions meant genuinely to ensure the safety of the State would be gladly accepted by me and my brother… I beg to submit that our release should not be made conditional on the behaviour of those released or of anybody else; for it would be preposterous to deny us the clemency and punish us for the fault of someone else… The brilliant prospects of my early life all but too soon blighted, have constituted so painful a source of regret to me that a release would be a new birth and would touch my heart, sensitive and submissive, to kindness so deeply as to render me personally attached and politically useful... I beg to remain, SIR, Your most obedient servant.”

Savarkar was shifted to Bombay Presidency in 1921. After series of mercy petitions, he was released in January 1924 on the condition that he would stay within Ratnagiri district and not participate in politics. He remained confined to Ratnagiri district until 1937when he was unconditionally released by the newly elected congress government of Bombay Presidency.

After the release, Savarkar was totally a changed man. According to Dhaval Kulkarni, “The earlier Savarkar was a passionate advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity…hailing the revolt of 1857 as an example of Hindu-Muslim unity. The latter-day Savarkar simmered with hatred for Muslims, even advocating sexual violence against Muslim women as an instrument of retribution.” And after his release, “Savarkar channelised all his energies in opposing Muslims rather than the colonials, snaping his association with the mainstream freedom movement.” Participating in the NDTV programme The Big Fight on 18 November, Shruti Kapila, Professor of History at the Cambridge University, said that Savarkar was the only person who made the mercy petition to the British; and no other frontline freedom fighter made such petition and that he made no contribution to the freedom movement.

In 1921, Savarkar wrote his seminal tract Essentials of Hindutva, which laid the foundation of Hindutva as an ideology. It emphasised cultural nationalism as opposed to a territorial one and said that India was for the Hindus alone and not for the Muslims or the Christians.  And Savarkar influenced the launch of the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1925, with his elder brother as its co-founder ad younger brother as its office bearer.

After 1937, he started traveling widely, becoming a forceful orator and writer, advocating Hindu political and social unity. In 1938, as the president of the Hindu Mahasabha, he endorsed the idea of India as a Hindu Rashtra and supported the two nations theory.

Apart from Muslims, he harboured acute dislike for Gandhi. He was not favourably disposed to Gandhi’s agenda of non-violence, satyagraha and Hindu-Muslim unity. From 1937 onwards, when he became the President of the Hindu Mahasabha, Savarkar’s politics took an intensely anti-Gandhi and anti-Congress stance going to the extent of asking Hindus to join the armed forces to fight alongside the British. He wrote a letter titled Stick to your Posts, instructing the Hindu Sabhaites who happened to be "members of municipalities, local bodies, legislatures or those serving in the army ... to stick to their posts" across the country, and not to join the Quit India Movement at any cost. The  Hindu Mahasabha openly opposed the call for the Quit India Movement and boycotted it officially. 

The Indian National Congress won a massive victory in the 1937 Indian Provincial Elections, decimating the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha. In 1939, the Congress ministries resigned in protest against Viceroy Lord Linlithgow's action of declaring India to be a belligerent in the Second World War without consulting the Indian people. This led to the Hindu Mahasabha, under Savarkar's presidency, joining hands with the Muslim League and other parties to form governments, in certain provinces. Such coalition governments were formed in Sindh, NWFP and Bengal. In Sindh, Hindu Mahasabha members joined Gulam Hussain Hidayatullah's Muslim League government. In Savarkar's own words: "Witness the fact that only recently in Sind, the Sind-Hindu-Sabha on invitation had taken the responsibility of joining hands with the League itself in running coalition government.”  In the North West Frontier Province, Hindu Mahasabha members joined hands with Sardar Aurangzeb Khan of the Muslim League to form a government in 1943. The Mahasabha member of the cabinet was Finance Minister Mehar Chand Khanna. In Bengal, Hindu Mahasabha joined the Kishan Praja Party led Coalition ministry of Fazlul Haq in December 1941. 

During the Second World War, Savarkar advanced the slogan "Hinduize all Politics and Militarize Hindudom" and decided to support the British war effort in India seeking military training for the Hindus. When the Congress launched the Quit India movement in 1942, Savarkar criticised it and asked Hindus to stay active in the war effort and not disobey the government. He urged the Hindus to enlist in the armed forces to learn the art of war.  And Hindu Mahasabha activists protested Gandhi's initiative to hold talks with Jinnah in 1944, which Savarkar denounced as appeasement.

Through all this, Savarkar emerges as a controversial figure whose Hindutva ideology spread hatred and violence. He lacked the courage of conviction to fight the British, ultimately reconciling to the inevitability of the imperial British rule in India. He was willing to be subservient to the British. Though he was acquitted of the charge of conspiring to murder Mahatma Gandhi, for want of adequate supporting evidence, the Justice Jivanlal Kapur Commission, set up in November 1966 to probe whether some people had prior knowledge of the plot to assassinate the Mahatma, indicted Savarkar. The Commission concluded that “All the facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group.”