Savarkar and Hindutva- The Godse Connection by A. G. Noorani

 Partisan Polemics

The Hippocrates Oath obliges a doctor to tend to any patient who seeks care without discrimination. Lawyers operate under a similar ethic, which requires them to legally defend any person needing help without discrimination. By implication, a lawyer is trained to look at all sides of the law. The author of this brief book was an eminent lawyer, scholar, author and critic. He famously defended Sheikh Abdullah [grandfather of the incumbent Chief Minister of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir], the ‘Prime Minster’ of Jammu and Kashmir who was jailed by the Union Government for his support to insurgents.

In this slim book on Savarkar, Noorani had the opportunity to examine Savarkar from all angles of the law. To say the least, Savarkar is deified and reviled in equal measure by large sections of the population of different persuasions. A controversial figure, Savarkar is the ideal subject for a scholarly lawyer’s all-encompassing legal vision. Unfortunately, Noorani fails the lawyer’s ethic. He assumes the role of a Judge, and pronounces his judgment in the very first paragraph of the Preface!

“He [Savarkar] was engaged in a political enterprise, and used history in the service of his politics of hate.”

Having passed the judgment at the outset, he sets about presenting the supporting evidence. He fails the test of an intellectual, and thereby, sadly reduces himself to the level of a partisan polemicist. A preview to his approach is evident in the Dedication:

“TO THE VICTIMS OF THE POGROM IN GUJARAT 2002 AND TO THE MEDIA, PRINT AND ELECTRONIC, WHICH DID INDIA PROUD”

He is not unique in presenting this slanted, and one sided view of the second most gruesome carnage in India’s contemporary history. He joins other authors in this vilification of India. See, my reviews of Graham Turner’s Catching Up with Gandhi, and David Hardiman’s Gandhi in His Times and Ours. As pointed out elsewhere, these latter two gentlemen are foreigners, who have no love lost for India. But for an Indian author, who led a privileged, eminent public life, to vilify the country of his birth by resorting to half-truths is to be not very decent. This reflects not on the country but on the individual.

For one, the pogrom of Gujarat 2002, did not just begin on one pleasant morning out of nowhere. It followed the 27^th February 2002 incident, in which 58 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya were locked inside the compartment of a train and burnt to death by Muslim miscreants in Godhra. If Noorani was even-handed, the dedication to the book should have included these 58 innocent souls as well. In failing to acknowledge the killing of these innocent victims, and in including the entire media, he is inadvertently imputing his partisan perception to the Indian Media as well. I do not know how many in the Media will look upon this Dedication as a badge of honour.

I have called this the second most gruesome pogrom. Which is then the first most gruesome pogrom? This is undoubtedly the Anti-Sikh riots in which over 3000 Sikhs were killed by Congress sponsored goons in 1984, after the murder of Indira Gandhi. A Citizens Commission headed by Justice S. M. Sikri, former Chief Justice of India went on the ground to hold public hearings, and indicted 198 local Congress (I) (these days called the Indian National Congress of Rahul Gandhi) activists, 15 Congress leaders, and 143 Police Officials. The then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi famously said on the occasion that the earth shakes when a mighty tree falls.

If one goes further back in history to the 1948 assassination of the Mahatma by Godse, the Gujarat 2002 pogrom will be the third pogrom in independent India. For a person of Noorani’s generation, the first pogrom ever to take place in independent India is the selective ethnocide of Chitpavan Brahmins (the caste to which Godse belonged) following the Mahatma’s assassination. This was again at the behest of Congress politicians, and other sundry disciples of Gandhian non-violence! Nehru kept a Rajiv Gandhi-like silence on this episode (for more on this see Koenraad Elst, Gandhi and Godse). While in this book, Noorani castigates Savarkar, the alleged Mentor of Godse, did he feel compelled to write about Congress sponsored pogroms and its ideologues?

If you still want to read this book, go ahead. However there are several more biographies of Savarkar: sympathetic ones by Vaibhav Purandare, and a two volume work by Vikram Sampath. There is another titled Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva, by Janaki Bakhle of the University of California, Berkeley. Evidently Savarkar is of interest not only to journalists, and scholars in India, but overseas scholars as well.

Statutory Warning: These are bulky tomes on a humorless personality. In the interest of your mental health, you could read other books.

Savarkar, fearful hate preacher or not, his followers are well and truly entrenched in power, with no credible challengers in view. As a local smart Alec once said: Either the Congress Party rids itself of Gandhi (not the Mahatma) or the Nation will rid itself of the Congress!