The Union government informed the parliament that there is no record of Savarkar’s mercy petitions with the Andaman administration. In a reply to the query on the display of petitions by the Hindutuva icon, the Union Culture Minister Prahlad Patel informed the parliament, “As per the information received from Andaman & Nicobar (Directorate of Art and Culture), such mercy petitions are not displayed at Cellular Jail since no record is available with the Department of Art and Culture, Andaman & Nicobar Administration.”
The Congress sponsored left-liberal intelligentsia has peddled lies against the Hindu nationalist leader for decades. They tried to whitewash the contributions of Savarkar in the freedom struggle, and ideological struggle against the monolithic secular narrative of the Congress and left.
Savarakar and his family had made immense contributions to the country’s freedom struggle. In 1909, Vinayak’s elder brother, Ganesh Babarao Savarkar had called for an armed rebellion against the separatist Morley Minto reforms, following which a young man Anant Laxman Kanhere, inspired by Babarao’s words, shot dead a devious tax collector from Nashik named Jackson in 1910. Though Savarkar was not directly involved in this plan, he was accused of being one of the chief conspirators by the British government. However, Savarkar did not want to fall into British hands, and so he attempted to escape to France, though in vain.
Despite his arrest, Savarkar did not lose hope and when the ship carrying him, S.S. Morea neared the French port of Marseilles, he jumped from the porthole of the ship and swam towards the shore. However, his colleagues reached late, and he was rearrested. He was sent back to India, where the British government sentenced him to transportation for life, that is, 50 years of rigorous imprisonment.
Savarkar spent 10 years of his imprisonment in Cellular Jail from 1911 to 1921. The way he was subjected to inhuman torture cannot be even written down. For many years, he didn’t even know that his own brother Ganesh was interned in the same jail as well.
After enduring incessant torture for 10 years, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was transferred to the Ratnagiri prison in 1921, under an amnesty order issued by the then Emperor of India, the British King George V. He spent three more years in that prison until he was finally released on conditional terms in 1924. He wasn’t allowed to participate politically until 1937. Now how can this be a mercy petition? Does the opposition care to explain?
Interestingly, the amnesty order under which Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was transferred to Ratnagiri prison; it was personally advocated and signed upon by Mahamana Madan Mohan Malviya and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. If we go by the opposition’s logic, was Mahatma Gandhi, not a traitor then?
Also, when people were busy preparing for the birth centenary of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in the early 80s, Indira Gandhi not only sent her warm regards to the organizers of the same, but had herself issued stamps in 1970, commemorating the sacrifices of Veer Savarkar. Was she not betraying the nation by glorifying an alleged ‘British stooge?’
Most of the opposition parties led by Congress have given it their all to limit the image of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar to just a radical leader. Last year, when Congress returned to power in Rajasthan, they not only removed his mention from school history books, but also attempted to portray him as a coward.