The renaming of Port Blair airport was incidental to Advani's real mission.
He sought to use the
occasion to send a message which was not lost on observers: 'Home Minister
L.K. Advani sent out
a signal that neither he nor his party was apologetic about their Hindutva
ideology'. Advani said,
"Today, Hindutva is considered an offensive word. But we must remember
that the pioneers of
Hindutva like Veer Savarkar and RSS founder Hedgewar kindled fierce,
nationalistic spirit that
contributed to India's liberation".'
This is a brazen falsehood. Savarkar met the arch imperialist Viceroy
of India, Lord Linlithgow, in
Bombay on October 9, 1939, the month Congress asked its ministers in
the Provinces to resign and
pledged his enthusiastic co-operation to the British. Linlithgow reported
to Lord Zetland, the
Secretary of State for India:
The situation, he [Savarkar] said, was that His Majesty's Government
must now turn to the
Hindus and work with their support. After all, though we and the Hindns
have had a good
deal of difficulty with one another in the past, that was equally true
of the relations between
Great Britain and the French and, as recent events had shown, of relations
between Russia
and Germany. Our interests were now the same and we must therefore
work together. Even
though now the most moderate of men, he had himself been in the past
an adherent of a
revolutionary party, as possibly, I might be aware. (I confirmed that
I was.) But now that our
interests were so closely bound together the essential thing was for
Hinduism and Great
Britain to be friends, and the old antagonism was no longer necessary.
The 'fierce nationalistic spirit' that Savarkar kindled was the spirit
of Hindu nationalism, not Indian
nationalism. Advani visited Savarkar's cell in the Cellular Jail Complex.
'Though the Morarji Desai
government [of the Janata Party of which Advani and Atal Behari Vajpayee
were members between
1977-79] declared the entire complex a national memorial in February
1979, a plaque was recently
put up in Savarkar's cell, which hailed him as a leader who gave the
country the "mantra of Hindutva,
equality among Hindus, Hindu nationhood, Akhand Bharat". No reference
to Indian nationalism.
It is notable, too, that Morarji Desai studiously refrained from honouring
Savarkar in 1979. Morarji
Desai, of course, was no acolyte of Jawaharlal Nehru at whom Advani
took wide swipes at Port
Blair. As Home Minister of Bombay Province, Desai had assigned its
celebrated Advocate General
C.K. Daphtary to the prosecution, inter alios, of Savarkar in the Gandhi
murder conspiracy case.
The investigation was conducted by his trusted, hand-picked police
officer Jamshid ('Jimmy') D.
Nagarwala, Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of the Bombay CID
Special Branch's
Sections One and Two. He was responsible for the gathering of local
political intelligence.
Savarkar escaped conviction in the case by the skin of his teeth. The
law requires that the evidence
of an accomplice to a crime must be corroborated in all material respects
by independent evidence.
Savarkar was acquitted only because the approver Digamber Badge's evidence,
which damned
Savarkar, did not have independent corroboration as the law requires.
But Judge Atma Charan
accepted Badge as a truthful witness. 'He gave his version of the facts
in a direct and
straight-forward manner. He did not evade cross-examination or attempt
to evade or fence with any
question.' His version was that on January 17, he went with the assassin,
Nathuram Vinayak Godse,
and accomplice Narayan Apte to Savarkar's home and that he heard Savarkar,
while bidding thein
farewell, say: 'Yashasvi houn ya' (Be successful and come back). On
the way back, Apte told
Badge that Savarkar had predicted that 'Gandhiji's 100 years were over
- there was no doubt that
that work would be successfully finished.'
Nathuram Godse hailed Savarkar in the court as the 'most faithful advocate
of the Hindu cause.' The
two had known each other since 1929. Therefore, it was natural that
Savarkar came under a heavy
cloud of suspicion immediately on Gandhi's assassination at the Birla
House in New Delhi on January
30, 1948. His house was searched by the police the very next day and
a watch was kept at it. He
was arrested on February 5, and put in prison. On March 11, while in
prison, he was served with a
warrant of arrest issued by the Presidency Magistrate in Delhi. The
charge was participation in a
conspiracy to kill Gandhi, the man he loathed most.
In his famous speech at the All India Congress Committee on August 8,
1942, shortly before it
passed the Quit India resolution, Gandhi said: 'Those Hindus who, like
Dr Moonje and Shri
Savarkar, believe in the doctrine of the sword may seek to keep the
Mussalmans under Hindu
domination. I do not represent that section. I represent the Congress.'
Gandhi and Savarkar
represented two diametrically opposite outlooks. The ideologies and
policies they represented
clashed sharply. Gandhi championed Indian nationalism. Savarkar rejected
the very concept of
Indian nationalism.
Naturally, therefore, Savarkar rejected India's National Flag adopted
by the Constituent Assembly
of India on July 22, 1947. This flag was adopted unanimously, 'the
whole Assembly standing'.
Sarojini Naidu, the last speaker in the discussion, said in a moving
peroration, 'Whether we be
Hindus or Muslims, Christians, Jains, Sikhs or Zoroastrians and others,
our Mother India has one
undivided heart and one indivisible spirit. Men and women of reborn
India, rise and salute this Flag. I
bid you, rise and salute the Flag. (Loud cheers).' The President of
the Assembly, Dr Rajendra
Prasad, sensing the unanimity, said 'I would ask Members to express
their assent to the Resolution
which has show their respect to the Flag by getting up and standing
in their places for half a minute'.
A week later, on July 29, Savarkar issued a statement in which, sneering
at Gandhi, he welcomed
the replacement of the charkha (spinning wheel) by tile chakra (wheel)
from the Ashoka Pillar at
Sarnath. 'This old attitude of the Corigressites provoked naturally
a sturdy opposition which, led by
the Hindu Sanghatanists in particular, had at last succeeded in getting
the symbol Charkha removed
and relegated to its proper sphere - the Khadi Bhandar [Khadi Store],
where it may fittingly serve as
a trade mark of any spinning association.' He added, 'Having thus noted
impartially the good points
in the new Flag adopted for the Indian Union which render it much less
objectionable, I must
emphatically state it can never be recognized as the National Flag
of Hindusthan. Firstly, because the
state of Indian Union and the so-called Constituent Assembly are the
creation of the British will and
not of the free choice of our people ascertained by a national plebiscite
and their ultimate sanction
even today is the British bayonet and not the national consent or national
strength. Secondly, the very
mention of the Indian Union reminds us of the break-up of the unity
of India as a nation and a state,
the vivisection of our Motherland, and the treacherous Congressite
abetment of the crime. How can
a genuine nationalist salute such a Flag adopted by such a party with
no mandate from the nation as a
National Flag?
No: The authoritative Flag of Hindusthan, our Motherland and Holyland,
undivided and indivisible
from the Indus to the Seas, can be no other than the Bhagava [saffron
flag] with the Kundalini and
the Kripan inscribed on it to deliver expressly the message of the
very Being of our Race! It is not
made to order but it is self-evolved with the evolution of our National
Being. It mirrors the whole
panorama of our Hindu History, is actually worshipped by millions of
millions of Hindus and is
already flying from the suntraits of the Himalayas to the Southern
Seas. Other Party Flags will be
tolerated, some may even by respected in corresponding courtesy but
Hindudom at any rate can
loyally salute no other Flag but this Pan-Hindu Dhwaja, this Bhagava
Flag as its national
Standard."
This is, of course, of a piece with the recently unveiled plaque in
Savarkar's cell in the prison at Port
Blair. This is the man the BJP hails as a national hero. Coming as
it does close on the heels of the
Gujarat pogrom, Advani's extravagant praise for Savarkar therefore
marks a defining moment in the
history of the B]P. Advani has, of course, set his sights on office
of Prime Minister of India which he
hopes to occupy after the General Elections due in 2004, if not earlier.
But his larger aim is more
far-reaching than that. He wants the BJP to shed all inhibitions, forced
on the party by the constraints
imposed by sheer circumstance, and come out boldly, openly with an
alternative credo of its own -
the credo of Hindutva. He would then proclaim its author Savarkar as
a national hero to replace
Gandhi. Advani bitterly lamented at Port Blair that 'some parties,
because of their narrow ideological
philosoptly [sic] made the heroes of freedom struggle a preserve of
a particular political organization
or a family!' The reference here is, of course, to the Indian National
Congress. Socialists and
Communists were among its proud members. So were members of the Hindu
Mahasabha until 1938
when the Congress forbade dual membership with communal bodies. Thc
Mahasabha collaborated
with the British while Congressmen went to prison in the struggle for
freedom. The Congress stood
for Indian nationalism. Savarkar propounded the slogan: 'Hinduize politics
and militarize Hindudom'.
Advani and other admirers of Savarkar complain that their hero 'did
not get his due'. But saying this
is to invite attention to Savarkar's and his admirers' record of patriotism
and sacrifice. And such a
course, as we shall see, is fraught with risk. The risk of the truth
coming out in the open.