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Show Summary Details Overview Hindutva. In , as Savarkar was being taken to India after a warrant had been issued for his arrest on charges of sedition and treason, he escaped as his ship docked at Marseilles.
Upon being recaptured, Savarkar challenged the legality of his arrest in France, but the international court at Hague, though it took the view that an illegality had been committed when Savarkar was handed over to the British police, nonetheless ruled against Savarkar.
Savarkar was, at his trial in Bombay, sentenced to imprisonment for life, and transported to the Andamans. In , he was sent back to India, but confined to Ratnagiri District until The indisputable fact remains that throughout his political life, Savarkar showed himself perfectly capable of not merely negotiating with the British, but serving as an active collaborator.
When confined to jail in the Andamans, Savarkar negotiated with the British to have himself set free. He thought it a God-given opportunity for the Mahasabha to flex its muscles while the Congress was in hibernation. Similarly, though the Congress declared itself opposed to offering the British any assistance during World War II, Savarkar was keen that Hindus should acquire experience in the use of firearms.
Not only did the Hindu Mahasabha, whose presidency Savarkar assumed in upon the rescission of the order which confined him to Ratnagiri District, not oppose the British position in World War II, but the Mahasabha played no role in the Quit India movement and indeed even assisted the British in its suppression.
In the last analysis, Savarkar appears as an extraordinary embodiment of utter mediocrity. In the large corpus of his writings, there is barely anything to suggest a creative mind at work, and one searches in vain for any original idea. In his avid desire to militarize the Hindus, he showed himself hostage to crude notions of realpolitik. He perfected the art of assassination and political intrigue by remote control, and his true disciple in this respect is Bal Thackeray.
He did not allow religious rituals to be performed for his departed wife his son, Vishwas, had them conducted clandestinely. But at the same time, he realised the potential of using religion in politics and made the Hindu religion his main weapon. The core idea of Savarkar was to blend the European notion of a nation, a political entity, with Hindu religious identity, to form an idea of a nation based on religious lines and to unite the people in a political struggle with the use of religious images.
He continuously maneuvered between rejecting religion and respecting it. He also found it acceptable to regard Krishna and Ram as humans — as long as they would serve as unifying political factors. Social scientists and media commentators often make the mistake of conflating the thoughts of the leader with the ideas of the rank and file of the movement.
It is wrong to assume that all followers of Hindutva should think like Savarkar in every regard. Even if Savarkar did not believe in, say, the existence of Shiva, it does not make this view a central part of contemporary Hindutva, as it is clear most followers of Hindutva do believe it.
Savarkar moulded his ideology to successfully mobilise some of the believers, not the atheists. His attitude towards cow worship is probably a part of this thinking. It is true that he did not regard the cow as holy. But even here, by the way, he found a pin with which to prick Muslims, as he often did, by writing that Muslims armies used cow as shields in battle, thereby using the religion of their Hindu rivals against them.
Tavleen Singh is right that Savarkar was a reformist but this label does not explain and justify his other thoughts and actions. Yes, Savarkar was a reformist and at the same time a radical Hindu nationalist. Hindutva is not simply modernism; it is a nationalist ideology that seeks to unite various groups and hence needs to overcome certain traditional divisions through reform. But it is the other way round: Savarkar is remembered by the present BJP and the RSS precisely because he played such a crucial role in the formation of Hindu nationalism.
During the cow protection demonstrations of s and s, Hindu Mahasabha members took to the streets, working hand in hand with their rivals on the Hindu Right — the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and Ramrajya Parishad. Tavleen Singh also ignores the obvious connections between Savarkar and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The organisation was, after all, the creation of the Hindu Mahasabha men. One can simply go through some recent issues of the RSS magazine Organiser to see how much it writes of him with reverence.
The controversial parts of his thought fell off on the way, like the unwieldy parts of a mast, but the banner of his idea of Hindutva is still being carried. It is true that the pacifist policies of s had put India in grave danger. It is also true, to his credit, that Savarkar did warn against this. He criticised the Panchseel doctrine.
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