Author: Balraj Madhok
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: April 5, 2003
Veer Savarkar reached Bombay on
July 22, 1910. His trial started soon after. He was sentenced to transportation
for 25 years. Soon another case was instituted against him for abetting
Jackson's murder. He was sentenced to another transportation for 25 years
on January 30, 1911. Thus, he was sentenced to remain in the Cellular Jail
in Andamans for 50 years. On hearing the judgment Savarkar stood up and
declared: "I am prepared to face ungrudgingly the extreme penalty of your
laws in the belief that it is through sufferings and sacrifice alone that
our beloved Motherland can march on to an assured, if not a speedy, triumph."
He remained in Andaman jail from
July 1911 to March 1921. His elder brother
Baba Rao was already there. The
two brothers were not allowed to meet. They suffered extreme hardships.
Savarkar was not given any writing material. He wrote a number of poems
on the wall of his cell with coal and then memorised them. Many times he
clashed with the jail authorities to get some relief for the fellow prisoners.
During his 14 years of internment
from 1923 to 1937, Savarkar brought about a
social revolution in Ratnagiri.
He carried on a campaign for eradication of untouchability and social integration
of Hindus belonging to different castes. He built a Patit Pawan temple
open not only to all Hindus but also to non-Hindus. He also started a campaign
to make Hindi, written in Devnagri, the common national language of Hindustan.
Gandhi took up these programmes much later. His internment was ended by
the interim Government of Bombay Presidency formed by Jamna Das Mehta after
the 1937 elections, before the Congress decided to take office.
From the point of view of capability,
service and suffering for the freedom of the
motherland, Savarkar stood above
all his contemporaries. Had he accepted the offer to join the Congress,
he might have out-shone and distanced other Congress leaders, including
Nehru, and emerged as the national leader and first Prime Minister of free
India. But he found Gandhi's Congress far from the ideals he cherished.
He found Hindu Maha Sabha closer to his thinking and joined it. He was
elected its president. His Presidential address at the 1938 Bilaspur session
of the Hindu Maha Sabha, which the national press carried in full, is a
historic document. He put forth a realistic programme for tackling the
problems confronting the country and achieving freedom.
Adoption of Pakistan resolution
by the All India Muslim League at Its Lahore
session in March 1940, gave a new
turn to Indian politics. It made Savarkar's thinking and approach more
relevant. Had the RSS extended its support to him, the Hindu Maha Sabha
under his leadership could have become an alternative platform for uniting
the nationalist elements and effectively check-mated the Muslim League.
I had the opportunity to interact
with Veer Savarkar at Jammu in 1942. His shorty
lean body with a sun-baked and hardened
face and sharp eyes marked him out as a man of rare determination and will.
He had clear insight and understanding of the problems and challenges facing
India from within and outside.
Addressing a large meeting at Jammu's
Parade Ground, Savarkar analysed the
developing situation in the context
of the demand for partition on the basis of the Two-Nation theory put forth
by the Muslim League and its wider implications. He made it clear that
Gandhi's stress on non-violence and Hindu-Muslim unity as a pre-condition
for wresting freedom and his Muslim appeasement policy would prove counter-productive.
He stressed the need for opposing the demand for partition even at the
cost of a civil war.
Dwelling upon the comparative strength
he asserted that the nationalist forces
could defeat the separatist forces
of the country. He viewed that partition will make the Muslim problem more
complex and give it an international dimension.
Partition of India and creation
of Pakistan in 1947, proved Savarkar's warnings to
be correct. Pakistan forced first
war on India only three months after it came into existence.
Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi
by Nathu Ram Godse on January 30, 1948,
gave Prime Minister Nehru, his Leftist
allies and the Congress an opportunity to check the rising tide of Hindutva
in truncated Hindu India and suppress its protagonists. Savarkar was also
arrested. His trial in the Red Fort became as historic as that of the INA
officers in 1945. The judge acquitted Savarkar honourably.
This experience broke Savarkar's
heart and disillusioned him about the leadership
and Government of free India. He
became all the more convinced that a strong nationalist alternative to
the Nehruite Congress was an imperative necessity for the healthy growth
of democracy and for giving nationalist orientation to politics and policies
of free India.
(Concluded)