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Congress in a tight spot over Savarkar portrait

Congress in a tight spot over Savarkar portrait

Author: Sanjay K Jha
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: February 26, 2003

An unfortunate oversight or an error of judgement has brought upon the Congress the ignominy of sharing the blame for the installation of a portrait of Veer Savarkar just opposite to Mahatma Gandhi's portrait in the Central Hall of Parliament. The Congress has all along believed that Savarkar had a hand in Gandhi's assassination, an allegation the Hindutva icon later denied.

The Congress and the rest of the Opposition are desperate to distance themselves from this event by deciding to boycott the unveiling of the portrait on Wednesday noon, but knives are out against those who were party to the Government's decision.

Veteran Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee and Deputy Leader in Lok Sabha Shivraj Patil, along with Communist giant Somnath Chatterjee, were on the parliamentary committee that cleared this idea of Speaker Manohar Joshi.

What is interesting now is the Opposition's political acrobatics to save its skin and make President APJ Abdul Kalam atone for the lapses of its leaders.

While the rest of the Opposition shot off a letter to the President, entreating him not to attend the ceremony because such a gesture would help in preserving the "highest secular traditions of the country as enshrined in our Constitution in letter and spirit," Congress president Sonia Gandhi merely expressed her inability to participate in order to "show solidarity" with other members of the Opposition.

This is not the first time that the Opposition leaders have wanted the largely ceremonial office of the President to play politics to make up for their failures, but what takes the cake are the clever designs of the Congress to sweep its follies under the carpet. CPI-M leader Somnath Chatterjee on Tuesday held a Press conference to admit his "mistake" but the Congress tried its best to paper over the cracks. Congress spokesperson fiercely hawked the boycott plan but sought to hide behind a technical plea - that the proceedings of the parliamentary committee cannot be diclosed - when grilled as to why Mr Mukherjee and Mr Patil did not protest against the idea mooted by the Speaker. But angry MPs spilled the beans, revealing that everybody was up in arms in the party and even the leadership was panicky about the grave political implications of being party to such an exercise.

Several senior leaders spoke off the record, giving vent to their anguish at the development and many of them wanted stern action against the two.

Though the party cannot punish such senior leaders for one case of "misjudgement" there was frenzied activity throughout the day in order to invent an escape route. Sources said Mr Patil has this "speakerish" attitude of not encouraging "tiffs" on all matters and tends to go by the Government unless something had seriously gone wrong. But Mr Mukherjee, whose secular credentials cannot be doubted and has a knack of finding fault with everything, erred this time, creating considerable heartburn in the party. A large number of Congress leaders describe this as a "monumental mistake" and wonder how the party will now oppose portraits of Golwalkar and Deen Dayal Upadhyay. Sources said what made the leaders angry is that neither Mr Mukherjee nor Mr Patil disclosed this to anyone over these months since the proposal was cleared in December. They said the party came to know only when the ceremony came so close and was left with no option but to boycott it and request the President to skip it. But the function is on and the President appears to be in no mood to oblige the Opposition. A senior leader, responding to the RSS claim that many Congress stalwarts in the past had hailed Savarkar, said, "quoting out of context won't change history. We all know of his bravery as a teenaged rebel, but his betrayal during the freedom movement and definition of Hindutva made his persona an anti-thesis of Indian values." He said Savarkar could be held responsible for the threat India's secular fabric is faced with today. Mr Jaipal Reddy also released a letter, apparently to make up for Ms Gandhi's weak position on the issue, saying, "While Savarkar was, indeed, an early pioneer in the freedom movement, and spent several years of incarceration in the cellular jail at Port Blair, his petition for mercy to the British authorities, his advocacy for the two-nation theory and his alleged association with the assassins of Mahatma Gandhi makes it extremely inappropriate that his portrait be put up in the same hallowed precincts which celebrate the fundamental secular and democratic values of the freedom movement and nation-building". The BJP described the Opposition's protest as an insult to a great freedom fighter who instilled patriotic fervor among the youth of his generation. Ms Sushma Swaraj said the Opposition's protest was unfair as it was a collective decision. A Lok Sabha Press release late in the night confirmed that the event was on and described Savarkar as a "brave patriot" whose "love for the motherland was reflected in all facets of his personality." Angry Congress leaders, meanwhile, were busy digging out what Savarkar actually said and did, to corner their own leaders. One MP read out on phone what Savarkar said in his mercy petition, "...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."
 


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