Modi’s Unheroic
Nationalist Idol
By Jawhar
Sircar
(16 Feb
2019, National Herald)
(Modified English version of Bengali article published in Ananda Bazar
Patrika on 5th Feb 2019)
On December 30, last year, we were
treated to the most unusual spectacle of the Prime Minister of India sitting on
the floor or a cell of a jail, his legs crossed over each other, and his palms
joined in prayer. He was, however, not praying to God — he was actually
worshipping his guru, Veer Damodar Savarkar, who had once been imprisoned in
this cell and his eyes were transfixed on his portrait that was propped up a
few feet away. Savarkar, who coined the term ‘Hindutva’, is regarded as the
father of this ideology and it was he who led generations to dream of and to
agitate for a Hindu Bharat.
The prison that Narendra Modi was
visiting was the Cellular Jail of the Andamans, the dreaded Kala Pani that
India can never forget. It was here that hundreds of freedom fighters were
incarcerated, the cream of India’s youth, and except one, none of them is known
to have ever begged the British for mercy. And the only one who pleaded with
the Viceroy, repeatedly and fervently, to please release him from jail was
Savarkar, Modi’s hero.
The Government of India’s 1975
publication entitled Penal Settlement in Andamans records on page 213 VD
Savarkar’s mercy petition of 14th November 1913, addressed to the British
government. Savarkar’s fervent plea was “if the government in their manifold
benevolence and mercy release me, I for one cannot but be the staunchest
advocate of constitutional progress and loyalty to the English government.”
Without mentioning this abject
surrender to the British, Modi tweeted “I visited the cell where the
indomitable Veer Savarkar was lodged. Rigorous imprisonment did not dampen Veer
Savarkar’s spirits and he continued to speak and write about a free India from
jail too.” Incidentally, the BJP government has already named the main airport
of Port Blair in the Andamans after Savarkar and much of the ‘sound and light’
show at the Cellular Jail focusses on him — not on the countless freedom
fighters who underwent the trauma of the toughest form of imprisonment without
ever breaking down. Many, in fact, died within these premises.
What we need to recall on the 68th
anniversary of the promulgation of the India’s Constitution, is that the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the RSS, that formed the Bharatiya Janata Party
that rules India today, was opposed to the national flag and the Indian secular
polity. It had not even participated in the most important stage of India’s
freedom struggle, the Quit India movement, and KB Hedgewar, the founder and
chief of the RSS, had issued clear orders to his cadre not to cooperate with
Gandhi. CP Bishikar, the biographer of Hedgewar, quotes him as having said,
“Patriotism is not only going to prison. It is not correct to be carried away
by such superficial patriotism.” In fact, records preserved in India’s National
Archives mentions that certain sections of the British police considered the
RSS as friends who were loyal to them.
In August 1947, just before the day
when India finally attained Independence, the RSS’s mouthpiece, Organiser,
declared that the Indian Tricolour “will never be respected and owned by
Hindus. The word three is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours
will certainly produce a very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a
country.” If three is evil, is the Hindu Trimurti also evil? Two earlier issues
of the Organiser, of 17th and 22nd July 1947, had also mentioned the RSS’s
opposition to the national Tricolour flag. The second RSS supremo, MS
Golwalkar, who was the undisputed leader, had been quite vociferous in his
opposition.
In his book, Bunch of Thoughts.
Golwakar had stated quite clearly: “Our leaders have set up a new flag for the
country. Why did they do so? It just is a case of drifting and imitating...Ours
is an ancient and great nation with a glorious past. Then, had we no flag of
our own? Had we no national emblem at all these thousands of years?
Undoubtedly, we had. Then why this utter void, this utter vacuum in our minds.”
Guru Golwakar was perhaps referring to the saffron ‘split flag’ of the RSS,
known as the Bhagwa Dhwaj, that it wanted to foist as the national flag in lieu
of the nation’s culturally-composite tricolour.
Had Sardar Patel not banned the RSS
for 18 months in 1948-49 after Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu
Mahasabha fanatic (the RSS, incidentally, celebrated the heinous murder), the
RSS may never had changed its stand.
It was only when Sardar Patel
arrested RSS cadre in their hundreds that Golwalkar was finally compelled to
profess “loyalty to the Constitution of India and the national flag” in July
1949.
It is tragic to witness how the
RSS and the BJP now terrorise those who, they feel, are not honouring the same
Tricolour that they had opposed. Obviously, the BJP-RSS has no national heroes
of its own, as this combine played such a dubious role in the national
movement.
It has, therefore, made icon-poaching a
national phenomena and desperately tries to unscrew leaders like Sardar Patel
and Subhas Chandra Bose from the pantheon of mainstream nationalism. For over
seventy years, the RSS has taken active part in Indian politics, first through
the Jan Sangh and then through the Janata Party and finally as the BJP.
Democracy needs a rightist option as much as it needs the left, but all shades
of politics have to accept the plural polity and the secularism promised and
guaranteed by the Indian Constitution.
This, unfortunately, is not being
adhered to and a reign of terror has been unleashed on minorities and Dalits as
well as on secular and liberal forces. The only phase of independent India’s
history when the RSS’s political wing played a somewhat positive role was
during the Emergency of 1975-77, but then its supporters could fill the jails
as the organisation had the financial clout of traders and businessmen to
provide support to the affected families. The Hindu right that betrayed
Gandhiji’s national struggle may celebrate the Mahatma’s 150th birth
anniversary on a grand scale this year, by way of atonement, but the
questionable roles played by Savarkar and Golwalkar will remain etched forever
in our historical records. From time to time, elements within the Hindu right
family show their true colours when they publicly glorify Gandhi’s assassin,
Nathuram Godse — not once, but repeatedly.
So, when we see a Hindu fanatic
shooting at Gandhi’s statue and garlanding Godse’s, as actually happened in
Aligarh on Gandhiji’s death anniversary a few days ago, this subterranean
streak comes to the fore. Their hatred for Gandhi and his unshakable belief in
secularism will never die.
But, even history cannot decide
whether to laugh or cry when the RSS dominated government now turns around and
chargesheets Kanhaiya Kumar and his fellow students of Jawaharlal Nehru
University under the colonial law of ‘sedition’ for being ‘anti-national’.
And even when there are now more
relevant laws to tackle terrorism and anti-Indian activities, this regime has
openly declared in Parliament on the 5th of this month that this legacy of
British imperialism shall continue to rule. After all, it evokes a dash of
nationalist romanticism for those whose political ancestors took no part in the
national struggle. Now, they can freely hound and punish those who dare to
raise their voices too loud.
No comments:
Post a Comment