THE MYTH AND THE MAN
THOUGH DELAYED, JUSTICE has finally been done to the man.
By publicly and explicitly owning up Vinayak Damodar Savarkar as its
hero and cult figure, the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) finally nailed its colours firmly to the
mast of Savarkarism on May 4,
2002. This was a somewhat belated acknowledgement of the party's enormous
ideological debt to
him. His name was not invoked even when, over a decade ago, Lal Kishan
Advani, then BJP's
Prime Minister-in-waiting, hitched his party's political fortunes to
the star of Hindutva. This term,
'Hindutva', is of relatively recent vintage. It was coined in 1923
by Savarkar, who repeatedly made it
plain that the term was not to be confused with Hinduism. The BJP's
apparent neglect of its hero was
gross and seemed inexplicable. It was almost as if, to draw an analogy,
the Communist movement
had forsworn the very mention of the name of Karl Marx. The BJP's omission,
however, is perfectly
understandable when one recalls the party's style of shaping and re-shaping
its public image in order
to cover up its real commitment and its true faith, ever since it was
established in 1980.
It is difficult to imagine Advani saying, even as late as 1989, what
he said at Port Blair on May 4,
2002. He was there to rename Port Blair airport in the Andaman Islands
as Veer Savarkar Airport.
The Times of India tells us that 'Advani dwelt at length on how he
idolized Savarkar from [sic] his
youth after he read his book The First War of Independence [sic] in
1942 .... He confessed that it
was in Savarkar's writings that he had come across the "much maligned
word Hindutva". Quite
right, for he could not have found the term in the writings of Vivekananda
or Aurobindo Ghose. They
preached the noble philosophy of Hinduism. Savarkar, on the other hand,
coined the term in his
essay Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (1923), to propagate the two-nation
theory and a cult of hate.
Hinduism is noble and ancient. It shows man the path to self-realization.
Hindutva, on the other hand,
is modern and ignoble. It debases man by arousing his basest emotions
- fear and hatred.
The term 'Hindutva' does not occur in Savarkar's book The First Indian
War of Independence-
1857 published in 1909. Therefore, prime among 'Savarkar's writings'
on which Advani drew was
Hindutva, followed by a considerable body of writings and speeches.
That Advani drank deep at the
fount of Hindutva became clear when he began propagating Hindutva as
he embarked on his Rath
Yatra ('Chariot Procession', for the construction of a Ram temple at
Ayodhya) on September 25,
1990. Yet, its authorship was not acknowledged - that was done only
at Port Blair. 'There is no
reason to fight shy of... Hindutva, propounded at great length by Veer
Savarkar. It's an
all-encompassing ideology with its roots in the country's heritage'.
Why, then, the reticence in
acknowledging this earlier?