On 26 February 2016, it’s the 50th anniversary of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s death. Furthermore, this year marks also another anniversary related to the ‘jubilee’, two decades ago the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) formed its first national government in New Delhi. This date determines a significant bench mark in any elaboration on Savarkar, because the BJP spent substantial efforts to keep him alive in the country’s collective memory and to make sure that he gets an appropriate place in the conception and awareness of Indian history.
By Dr. Siegfried O. Wolf
Senior Researcher (member) at the South Asia Institute (SAI), Heidelberg University, and
Director of Research at SADF (Coordinator : Democracy Research Program).
On 26 February 2016, it’s the 50th anniversary of
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s death. Furthermore, this year marks also another
anniversary related to the ‘jubilee’, two decades ago the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) formed its first national government in New Delhi. This date
determines a significant bench mark in any elaboration on Savarkar, because the
BJP spent substantial efforts to keep him alive in the country’s collective
memory and to make sure that he gets an appropriate place in the conception and
awareness of Indian history. At the first sight, this might appear as a common
undertaking in a relatively young state which experienced centuries of colonial
suppression and years of freedom struggle. But when one looks closer, it touches
the core of India’s self-perception and the ideational foundation the country
is built on. By having said this, one has to be aware that Savarkar is an
extraordinary controversial and multi-faceted personality, whose life and
literary contribution present various paradoxical phenomena.
Yet controversies about Savarkar, mostly polemical in
tone, by Indian as well as foreign scholars have focused only on some
particular fragments of his thoughts and action without spending the time and
effort to understand his various theoretical concepts in a complex but coherent
framework. In this context, more or less all debates on Savarkar have basically
two main characteristics: First of all, they are not restricted to the academic
world, but are carried out as a public discourse including the political and
societal spheres as well. Secondly, the driving actors of the controversy
around Savarkar can be divided into two essential camps. On one side are those
who see Savarkar and his socio-political thinking and beliefs as the greatest
threat to the fundamental principles of India, namely secularism, multiculturalism
and democracy. Against this backdrop, Savarkar gets portrayed by his critics as
the synonym for an ‘anti-modern regression’, and as the ideological founder of
a phenomenon that gets generally been referred to as ‘Hindu-Nationalism’ or
‘Hindu-Fundamentalism’. This side is opposed by a second camp consisting of
people who tend to see Savarkar and his considerations about state and society
in India as a legitimate and ambitious form of democratic self-determination.
Against this backdrop, it is argued here that all
whole Savarkar discourse until now is due to its extreme politicization and
polarization distorted and narrowed down and hampers any comprehensive
understanding of Savarkar’s thinking and action.
Historical
Context: Independence Movement, Hindutva, and Missing out the Political Grip
Savarkar (1883-1966) became the object of attention
and the centre of academic as well as public controversy in past and
contemporary India because of his militant activism and nationalism during the
struggle for independence. As such, one can state that Savarkar was a child of
his time. Born in Maharashtra, the second son of a family of
Chitpavan-Brahmans, Savarkar was already as a youth influenced by a
nationalistic thought and felt himself to be obliged to an extreme and militant
form thereof. He was inspired by the idea of a violent liberation of India from
the British colonial power. Even during his school and college university
years, he founded the first organisations, such as ‘Unions of friends’, the Mitra Mela[1],
whose members, would not forsake the use of violence to achieve the India’s
independence. Savarkar drew the first public notice of him in 1906 with the
burning of imported British items at his college in Pune. A first high point of
his extremist activities occurred with of the India Office during his university
years in London (1906-1910). In result, Savarkar got convicted and banned to
the Andaman Islands until his conditional release in 1923. After arriving again
mainland India, he was put under ‘house arrest’ with the obligations not to
cross the borders of the district called Ratnagiri, and also that he not engage
himself in political activities. After his ultimate release in 1937, Savarkar
quickly had to realize that the essential moves in the direction of Indian
independence were being determined by other forces, and that it was no longer
possible for him to convince and mobilize large numbers of people in favor of
his own concepts and strategies. Nevertheless, he got politically active by
taking on the presidency of the political party Hindu Mahasabha (HMS) to
promote his visions of a future independent India.
Hindutva – The
Essence of Savarkar’s Thinking and Action
If one wishes to concern oneself with Savarkar’s
social- and political considerations on the organization of state and society,
then one must be continually aware of the ‘spirit and tone’ of the time for
such an analysis. The necessity for a historical contextualization of his
actions is shown in two factors: First, his promotion of the use of violence for
the liberation of India when there is no (peaceful) political option possible
to make the British ending colonial rule. Second, his occupation with his
societal-political project, which he expressed in his concept called Hindutva. Savarkar’s overall puzzle was
how to build an Indian nation which is strong enough to ensure its independence
(Swaraj, or “self-rule”) in the
international competition of nations. From his point of view Indian history had
witnessed various attempts to build up a national entity but all had failed
because of the inherent heterogeneity of Hinduism as the socio-cultural and
religious system of the majority. Here, he identified a ‘perverted notion of
tolerance’ which leads to a lack of common accepted norms (identity) as well as
disintegration of the (Hindu) people. To counter this, a homogeneous community
of the Hindus (Hindu-Sangathan) had
to be built up in which all heterogeneous elements were to be excluded. To
create such a society the establishment of a Hindu state (Hindu Rashtra) was necessary, including the socio -economic and
political transformations in all spheres of national life. Therefore, the most
crucial step is the definition of citizenship. In other words, the puzzle of
who is a Hindu must be understood in the context of the definition of which
person is a legitimate citizen. To operationalize this, he suggested a set of
criteria consisting of three main elements Rashtra (common land), Jati (common blood) and Sanskriti (common culture) which should be used as
guidelines in distinguishing between Hindu and non-Hindu. In essence, to
be a Hindu (Regarding Savarkar understood as future citizen of independent
India) one had to be born in India, one needed Indian (Hindu) parents, and one
had to accept and internalize the Hindu culture. However, the ‘moral pathos’
with which Savarkar brought forth his views was incompatible with the
conceptions of the independence movement under Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi’s
leadership and the Indian National Congress (INC) that arose later on under the
Nehru-Gandhi dynasty regarding a future social and political order in India.
With his comprehensive work Hindutva. Who is a Hindu?, Savarkar reacted first of all to the
tense relationship that had build-up between his own Hindu-Sangathan (‘Hindu Unity’) movement and the ‘Congress
movement’ under the growing influence of M.K. Gandhi. The incompatibility of
the two positions was shown in a first meeting in 1906, and later in a second
one in 1909 between Savarkar and Gandhi.[2]
There was a minimum agreement that the system of rule of the British Raj, the
colonial power, must be gradually dissolved. But there were major disagreement
regarding precisely how this dissolution should take place and what India’s
future social and political systems should look like. So, according to
Savarkar’s perception, the independence movement was stamped by the de-constructive
effects of two opposing forces that hampered each other.
In sum, with the establishment of Gandhi and
Jawaharlal Nehru as leading figures on the political landscape, and at the
least, with the attainment of India’s independence in 1947, the person Vinayak
Damodar Savarkar has been far less the topic of discussion. The HMS has become
a shadow of its former self. Only in isolated instances was it able to achieve
some electoral gains in local elections. In fact, politics in India on the
national or regional level were predominantly dominated either by the INC
directly or by local allies. Even in Savarkar’s home district Mumbai (at that
time Bombay), it was unable to gain a seat.[3] This
marginal political significance got flanked by the fact that Savarkar’s
political ideas were hardly ever a topic of public discourse in India at his
life time and next three decades beyond. When Savarkar died in 1966, the event
drew only rudimentary notice. Far away from the mainstream of Indian politics
and the centre of power in New Delhi, Savarkar -seen as a leading thinker and
visionary of Hindu-Nationalism- spent the last years of his life
un-spectacularly and little recognized.
It was only in the 1990s with the establishment of the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the national level and the consolidation of a
Hindu-Nationalist government under then Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee that the
‘public ban’ on Savarkar was broken. By observing this phenomenon, one had to
note that over the first decades of post-colonial India, Savarkar’s ideas were
more vivid than the political and academic realms were capable of imagining.
Savarkar’s Renaissance
Extraordinary steps were taken by the BJP to position
Savarkar within the ‘pantheon of freedom fighters’, understood as the founding
fathers of an independent Indian nation. This ‘enthronement’ got legitimized by
the argument that Savarkar was an eminent freedom fighter but his contribution
to the liberation of the country from the ‘British yoke’ was minimized by partisan
historians. Regarding this rationale, latter ones did so because of a distorted
perception of history and a restricted ideological philosophy by certain
political parties and/or political influential families. Consequently, in order
‘to give justice’, the BJP initiated a policy of ‘rehabilitating Savarkar’. A
first attempt to make Savarkar socially accepted failed, by trying to nominate
Savarkar unsuccessfully for the prestigious Bharat
Ratna, India highest civilian award.
Nevertheless, Savarkar’s ‘renaissance’ began on 4 May
2002 in Port Blair on the Andaman Islands with the renaming of the local airport
after him. In this context, it is important to note that the goal of promoting
Savarkar was not only his ‘societal rehabilitation’ but also to lay claim to
the sole representation of his political ideas. Savarkar’s ‘political comeback’
was facilitated at his day of death in 2003, through the revealing of his
portrait in the Central Hall of the
Indian Parliament. This was an extraordinary symbolic gesture since the Central Hall is perceived as the ‘heart
and soul’ of Indian democracy. Subsequently, this act created massive protest among
the parliamentarians of INC and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). In this
context, some critics were describing the portrait of Savarkar as the
personified image of just what Indian democracy does not want to represent.
Through numerous other measures, attempts were made to
‘bring Savarkar back to life’. Some of the more remarkable ones were the
organization of an exhibition on Savarkar, the publishing of a bibliographical
pamphlet, and the governments support for the film project ‘Veer Savarkar’ by
Sudhir Phadke.
Final Thoughts -
The Misreading of Savarkar
Generally one can state that the ‘revitalization
campaign’ of Savarkar and related debates are staying in a sharp contrast to an
adequate understanding of his personality and beliefs, for several reasons:
Firstly, it enforced the trend to focus only on
certain aspects of Savarkar’s thinking and action on his potential contribution
to the independence movement. The fact that he was imprisoned during some of
the most decisive years of the liberation struggle underlines the limited value
of such an endeavor. Additionally, it portrays him in a way he did not saw himself.
Actually Savarkar identified his role rather as an ‘organizer of the Hindu
Society’ than as a ‘freedom fighter’ (especially in his later years). Latter
aspect was just a logic consequence of the first one.
Secondly, it ignores Savarkar’s engagement in social thought
and reforms. Regarding his perception the build-up of a strong Indian state is
not possible without the achievement of a ‘Hindu-Unity’. Therefore, it would be
crucial to carry out a substantial reformation of the social structure of the Hindu-Society.
His main focus was on the abolishment of the caste system based on birth, the
removal of untouchability, restrictions on inter-caste marriage, eating and
occupations among others. Savarkar was convinced that even if the country
obtains independence, the people will be not able to consolidate their
political freedom when they continue to life under the conditions of
social-religious atrocities implicated by the excesses of the Hindu social
structure. Therefore, according to Savarkar, the first aim is to make the
socially and politically fragmented Hindu society united, organised, and
progressive through the eradication of certain social practices which he
perceived as backward and harmful. It does not come by surprise, some of his
social reform ideas provoke resistance not only among the protagonists but also
among the antagonists of his political thoughts, expressed in Hindutva.
Especially the traditionally Hindu Orthodoxy turned either against Savarkar or
distanced itself from him.
Thirdly, it does not take into account the
philosophical tenets underlying Savarkar’s social and political thoughts. In
this context, one must emphasize that his philosophy and worldview was deeply
inspired by European thinkers. Nevertheless, there are numerous occasions in
which people are stating that Savarkar’s thinking is based on a strong
affection towards Hinduism. There are no doubts that Savarkar uses ‘religious
language’ to formulate a political agenda. But he was neither a religious man
nor an atheist; he did not abandon religion but accepted nothing that was
irrational. Metaphysical statements and theological debates concerning
religious beliefs were of no interest to him. As such, one should rather
describe him as a ‘strategic agnostic’.
To summarize, Savarkar got not only politically
side-lined from the mainstream of the independence movement. His thinking and
action got either ignored or for partisan purposes misinterpreted. A major
reason therefore is that he never wrote substantially and coherently on one
issue of his concerns, like social reforms. His notions are rather scattered
over his writings, which are not only numerous but also quite different in
nature, including political statements, historically accounts, or theater plays. The fact that he changes his political position in certain themes, for
example the give up of his initial believe in Hindu-Muslim Unity as expressed
in his book 1857 and the subsequent adaption of a remarkable antipathy against
(Indian) Muslims, made it easy to utilize Savarkar for partisan political
goals.
Savarkar’s personal link with people implicated in the
assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and his breaching of religious sentiment have
made him an object of unquestioned judgments in the public as well as in the
academic sphere. The 50th Anniversary of his death might be the occasion to
make him finally the object of renewed analytical and scientific study apart
from India’s party political arena.
About The Author:
Dr. Siegfried O. Wolf, is Senior Researcher (member) at the South Asia
Institute (SAI), Heidelberg University, and Director of Research at SADF
(Coordinator : Democracy Research Program). He was educated at the SAI and
Institute of Political Science (IPW) in Heidelberg. Additionally he is a
visiting fellow at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST,
Islamabad), affiliated researcher at the Pakistan Security Research Unit (PSRU,
Durham University), and a former research fellow at IPW and Centre de Sciences
Humaines (New Delhi, India).
He is the co-author of 'A Political and Economic
Dictionary of South Asia' (Routledge; London 2006), co-editor of 'Politics in
South Asia. Culture, Rationality and Conceptual Flow' (Springer: Heidelberg,
2015), 'The Merits of Regionalisation. The Case of South Asia' (Springer:
Heidelberg, 2014) and 'State and Foreign Policy in South Asia' (Sanskriti:
2010), and Deputy Editor of the 'Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and
Comparative Politics' (HPSACP). Furthermore, he has worked as a consultant for
the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Germany,
and is member of the external group of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Task Force,
Federal Foreign Office, Germany.
Cite This Article:
O. Wolf , Siegfried.
"FEATURED | The 50th Anniversary of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’ Death: It’s
Time for a New Assessment" IndraStra Global 002, no. 02 (2016): 0069. http://www.indrastra.com/2016/02/FEATURED-50th-Anniversary-of-Savarkar-Death-Time-for-a-New-Assessment-002-02-2016-0069.html , |ISSN
2381-3652|
Selected
bibliography:
Anand, VS, 1967, Savarkar:
A Study in The Evolution of Indian Nationalism, Woolf, London.
Appaiah, P, 2003, Hindutva.
Ideology and Politics, Deep & Deep Publications, New Delhi.
Banerjee, S, 1991, Hindutva - ideology and social
psychology, in Economic and Political
Weekly, Vo. 26, No. 3, 1991, pp. 97-101.
Godbole, VS, 2004, Rationalism
of Veer Savarkar. Itihas Patrika Prashan, Thane/Mumbai.
Grover, V, 1998,
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar: A biography of his vision and ideas. Deep and Deep
Publications, New Delhi.
Keer, D, 1988, Veer
Savarkar. Popular Prakashan, Bombay (Mumbai).
Lederle, M, 1976, Philosophical
Trends in Modern Maharashtra, Popular Prakashan,: Bombay (Mumbai).
Lok Sabha Secretariat, (Ed.), 2003, Swatantraveer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar - A
Profil, Lok Sabha Secretariat, New Delhi.
Noorani, AG, 2003, Savarkar
and Hindutva: The Godse Connection, Leftword, New Delhi.
Parel, A, 2000, Gandhi,
freedom, and self-rule, Lexington Books, Lanham.
Phadtare, TC, 1975, Social and Political Thought of Shri V.D. Savarkar, Thesis
submitted to the Marathwada University for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy,
Unpublished: Aurangabad.
Phake, S, Purandare, BM & and Bindumadhav, J (Eds),
1989, Savarkar. Savarkar Darshan
Pratishtnah (Trust), Mumbai (Bombay).
Savarkar, SS
& Joshi, GM, (Eds.), 1992, Historic statements (Prophetic Warnings). Statements,
Telegrams & Letters. 1941 to 1965 by Veer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Veer Savarkar
Prakashan: Bombay (Mumbai).
Savarkar, VD, 1999, Hindutva:
Who is a Hindu, Seventh Edition. Swatantryaveer Savarkar Rashtriya Smarak,
Mumbai.
Savarkar, VD, 1970, The
Indian war of Independence 1857, Rajadhani Granthagar, New Delhi.
Savarkar, VD, 1940, Hindu
Sanghatan: Its ideology and immediate programme, Hindu Mahasabha, Bombay.
Sharma, J, 2003, Hindutva.
Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism, Viking/Penguin Book, New Delhi.
Srivastava, H,
1983, Five stormy years: Savarkar in London (1906-1911) - A
centenary salute to V.D. Sarvarkar, Allied, New Delhi.
SSRS, 1989, Smarak
Inauguration, Festschrift. Swatantryaveer Savarkar Rashtriya Smarak (SSRS),
Bombay.
Trehan, J, 1991, Veer
Savarkar: thought and action of
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Deep & Deep Publications, New
Delhi.
Wolf, SO, 2010, Savarkars
Strategic Agnosticism. A compilation of his political and economic worldview,
in Heidelberg Papers in South Asian Comparative Politics (HPSACP), No. 51,
Heidelberg University, Germany; http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/10414/
EndNotes:
[1] This group was later renamed in Abhinav Bharat Society.
[2]
As a reaction to the confrontation with Savarkar and like-minded persons (of
the extreme wing of the independence struggle) in London, Gandhi was convinced
of the necessity to produce a counter-statement paper (called Hind Swaraj) to lay
down his own basic vision for India’s future course. See Parel 2000, p. 120;
Godbole 2004, p. XVI.
