Concluding the massive book on Veer Savarkar in 1950, his biographer Dhananjay Keer prophetically observed that if in the history of modern India there was any great leader who neither pursued fame nor followed fortune nor individual greatness, discarding national interests, national integrity and national honour ; that great leader was Savarkar and as such, he would carry influence with posterity. Even after more than seven decades surfaces a Savarkar vilification campaign by a group of politicians and corresponding to it are released well-researched books with new discoveries on him by Vikram Sampath, Mahurkar, Chirayu Pandit and others. In fact the true measure of an individual’s greatness is the length of the shadow he casts over posterity.
It is pertinent, states Mahurkar in his book, that Savarkar and Ambedkar were the only two leaders in the last hundred years, who could comprehend the strategy of pan-Islamists to develop a Muslim dominated polity in India basing on Muslim appeasement which, in turn was based on Muslim victimhood theory. As the president of Hindu Mashasabha, Savarkar made it clear in 1938 in his Press interview at Lahore, “Myself and Jinnah are not birds of the same feather .While I am for equal treatment for all and no concessions, Jinnah is for more and more concessions for Muslims.”
His Manifesto for an Independent India made in the 1930s specified his Hinduttva vision in unequivocal terms, and clearly stated, “In independent India, all religions and castes will have equal rights, and as regards religious minorities, the State will step in and ensure that they are able to offer prayers unhindered in the manner they want to do. However, he warned, the nation will not allow creation of a State within a State in the name of religious ‘Minoritism.'
Undoubtedly, a recent row on hijab was a manifestation of that apprehended malady. In 1937 when Savarkar was released from internment at Ratnagiri, prominent Congress leaders including Subhas Chandra Bose wanted him to join Congress. But he declined that, on the ground that the Congress was indulging in unabashed appeasement of Muslims at the cost of Hindu rights and that would prove very costly to the nation in the near future. In his ‘Thoughts on Pakistan,’ Ambedkar described this unending Congress appeasement of Muslims as ‘the dark age of Indian politics in modern times’, and believed that it had made Hindus feeble, reducing Hindu society’s will to fight against Muslim fanaticism and putting Hindus virtually in a ‘lame duck’ mode. That was one of Savarkar’s many prophecies which came true within just ten years of his warning when India was partitioned.
Again when Congress president Acharya Kripalini , voicing his support for the demand for Pakistan said, ‘One more State will be added with the formation of Pakistan, what else,' Savarkar had warned that it was beyond Kripalini’s imagination the crisis Hindus would have to face if Pakistan came into existence. In his 1942 presidential address Savarkar had countered the Hindu supporters of Pakistan, who conveniently visualised that Pakistan in future would regret becoming an economic failure , and surrender itself to India. He predicted, “Mind well .Not a single person with Congressite mindset will remain in their Pakistan, but Muslims will remain as a minority in every province of your country, and will always put pressure on Congressite Hindus to bow before Pakistan. And every time for the hypocritical patriotism of Hindu Muslim unity, you have to make this sacrifice." This even continued to happen after India’s phenomenal victory over Pakistan in 1971 war!
At a very early age Savarkar knew that the country would not attain freedom by killing just a few Britishers, as revealed in his memoirs. Secretly collecting weapons, making attacks on the evil British officers in India, creating arsenals in and outside the borders of the country and infiltrating the borders when opportunities arose, developing relations with Britain’s enemy countries such as Germany and Russia, inculcating patriotism in the army and the police by secretly propagating revolutionary literature, fighting indirect wars, committing petty rebellions and making it difficult for the enemy to govern the administration of India were all parts of his scheme. During his stay in London , Savarkar had established connection with revolutionaries from secret revolutionary parties in Ireland and Egypt, countries under the British empire; and also Russia and Germany among the European countries. It was through this network of revolutionaries spread across Europe and Asia that he could manage to get secret information. He sent nationalist revolutionaries like Senapati Bapat, Mirza Abbas, Hemachandra Kanungo Das to Paris from England to study the art of bomb making, managed to obtain a bomb-making manual from a Russian engineer, got it translated by Miss Annya, a medical student at Berlin and made several copies of it. Thereafter, Bapat Das and another revolutionary Motilal Varma came to India carrying its cyclostyled copies. Bapat met the Bengal revolutionaries Barindra, brother of Sri Aurobindo, Prafulla Chakravarty and Narendra Goswami in Calcutta on April 7, 1908. This was followed by young Khudiram Bose throwing a bomb in Muzaffarpur to kill District Magistrate Kingsford on April 30. Later in 1952 Savarkar in a meeting at Delhi had revealed that the real purpose of his journey to England was not doing Bar at Law but to obtain this formula of bomb making.
From the beginning of the World War, revolutionaries including Lala Har Dayal, Shyamji Krishna Varma M, PT Achary, the leaders of Abhinav Bharat and Japan had an unwritten pact with Germany to provide weapons and finance warfare -exports for an armed revolt against the British. Further it was a great diplomatic triumph for the armed revolutionaries on the international platform, that the 14-point agenda for truce, which the German emperor (Kaiser) King Willhelm II sent to US President Wilson, had included the German demand that the British must give India total freedom.
Even during 50 years of rigorous imprisonment in the Cellular Jail , one of the first things that dawned on this born revolutionary was the manner in which Andaman could be developed into a strong Indian naval base in the future, a blueprint of which he gives in his ‘My Transportation For Life’.
British Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s admission to the then acting Governor of West Bengal Justice PB Chakravarty that the British decision to grant independence to India was not due to Gandhiji’s ‘Quit India’ movement, which flopped with ‘minimal’ impact, if at all, but the real cause was the spectre of fear created by Subhas Bose's Azad Hind Fauz (INA) episode culminating in 1946 mutiny of naval soldiers and spreading to other wings of defence. The fact long suppressed is no secret today , but a well settled historical document.
One of the greatest services that Savarkar and Hindu Mahasabha rendered to the nation was to convince the British to remove caste distinction between martial and non- martial Hindus in the recruitment of Hindu youth in the British Indian Army in the 1930s. His call for militarisation of Hindus was based on robust reasons and rational thinking. He saw how Muslims were far ahead of Hindus in the army in terms of their numbers. He could also envisage Partition on the horizon, given the Congress's meek response to pan-Islamism and foresaw that military strength would decide the final contest between India and Pakistan.
When Hindu strength in Armed Forces rose to around 70 percent to three forth ,an unnerved Sir Ziauddin Ahmad and Liaqat Ali Khan, secretary All India Muslim League frequently reported their concerns to the British Government. Subsequent developments proved Savarkar right. Of the Muslim soldiers in Indian Army, over 90% chose to join the Pakistan army at the time of partition and soon after that Pakistan attacked India in 1947 and occupied one third of Jammu and Kashmir. Had the military balance been against India at the time, Pakistan could have even tried to swallow Muslim majority areas on the Indian border in Rajasthan, Gujarat, West Bengal and in parts where Muslims outnumbered Hindus.
