Recently, BJP announced in their manifesto for the state assembly elections that if they are reelected to power, they shall honour social reformers Jyotirao Phule and Savitribai Phule, apart from revolutionary activist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar posthumously with the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour.
However, no sooner than this announcement had gone public, the left-liberal cabal began hounding the BJP government in Maharashtra for the same. Irrespective of party, the opposition politicians as well as the left-liberal intellectuals took BJP to task for daring to make this promise. On one hand, Manish Tiwari tried to falsely implicate Savarkar for the assassination of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, while Asaduddin Owaisi, on the other hand, started peddling false propaganda against Veer Savarkar.
However, has this been their policy from the beginning? Certainly not. If we go back in history, it turns out that nobody is as hypocrite as the left-liberal intelligentsia of India has been. How can a man easily turn into a villain for those, who until the late 1980s had no objections with stamps being issued in his name, and also contributed voluntarily into building a softer image for the same person?
If you don’t believe us, carefully read these facts. Though Nehru abhorred the very sight of Savarkar, he couldn’t build a negative image about him despite being the Prime Minister, since many senior Congress leaders, including Sardar Patel had no doubts about Savarkar’s patriotism despite disagreeing more than once with his approach. When Nehru died in 1964, Lal Bahadur Shastri, who had assumed the post of the PM, approved the allocation of a monthly pension to Savarkar, as given to the other freedom fighters.
Surprisingly, even Indira Gandhi didn’t look down upon Savarkar, but allowed stamps to be issued in his memory in 1970. This wasn’t all, when the followers of Veer Savarkar began preparing for Savarkar’s birth centenary celebrations in 1980 itself, Indira Gandhi not only sent her warm regards to the organizers, but also donated 11000 rupees to the Savarkar memorial fund.
Also, some of the popular leftist historians had initially given a positive coverage to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Bipan Chandra, popularly known for his book ‘India’s Struggle for Independence’, had given a small but positive coverage to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Now if we go by the logic of the current Congress-led opposition, didn’t Indira Gandhi, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Bipan Chandra betray the nation by allegedly glorifying a ‘traitor’ like Vinayak Damodar Savarkar?
So, the question is – how did this positive attitude towards Savarkar change all of a sudden? This probably began from the late 1980s, when the nation was undergoing a radical change, and the politics of Hindutva apart from that of BJP was on the rise. Threatened by their rising popularity, the Congress and left-liberal intelligentsia once again turned back to Nehru’s ideology and made a villain out of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.
The first signs of the same were seen in 2003, when the portrait of Savarkar was to be installed in the Central Hall of Parliament, on the insistence of PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the then Lok Sabha Speaker, Manohar G. Joshi. Despite agreeing to the same initially, Congress and CPI [M] backed out of the ceremony, only to discover that most of the senior Congress leaders, including ex-Home Minister Shivraj Patil disagreed from the party stance. Shivraj was later humiliated by Sonia Gandhi for the same.
Apart from the same, in 2004, when the then Minister for Panchayati Raj and Development of North East Region, Mani Shankar Aiyar visited the Cellular Jail, he had infamously said, “There was no difference between the radical right-wing revolutionary Veer Savarkar and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, as they shared a ‘divisive’ philosophy.”
Not only that, but also he ordered that a plaque with a poem commemorating Savarkar be removed and replaced with a plaque with quotes from Mahatma Gandhi, since Savarkar had been tried for conspiring in Gandhi’s assassination, though he was acquitted later. Reports of the incident led to furious agitations by the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. Adding fuel to the fire, the official spokesman, Anand Sharma said that the Congress Party did not consider Savarkar either a freedom fighter or a patriot. However, the then PM Manmohan Singh disassociated himself from this statement a few days later.
Congress continues to bash Veer Savarkar unnecessarily even today, and Rahul Gandhi used to make such statements about Savarkar that he has been booked for the same by the courts of Maharashtra. As such, the current attitude of Congress and the left-liberal cabal is nothing but sheer hypocrisy, which is further pushing them into political oblivion. If they don’t learn soon, Congress shall become a part of history, and their mere mention shall make them a laughing stock, nothing else.