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Disillusionment of a revolutionary

Disillusionment of a revolutionary

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)
 


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