Reading Savarkar: How a Hindutva icon justified the idea of r@pe as a political tool

[Reichsmarschall]

Reading Savarkar: How a Hindutva icon justified the idea of rape as a political tool
The controversial figure castigated Maratha ruler Shivaji for sending back the daughter-in-law of the Muslim governor of Kalyan, whom he defeated.

savarkarsmarak.com
Ajaz Ashraf

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Decades before the sexual assault of women during the 2002 Gujarat and 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, Hindutva propounder Veer Savarkar justified rape as a legitimate political tool. This he did by reconfiguring the idea of “Hindu virtue” in his book Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, which he wrote in Marathi a few years before his death in 1966.

Six Glorious Epochs provides an account of Hindu resistance to invasions of India from the earliest times. It is based on historical records (many of them dubious), exaggerated accounts of foreign travellers, and the writings of colonial historians. Savarkar’s own febrile and frightening imagination reworks these diverse sources into a tome remarkable for its anger and hatred.

Savarkar’s account of Hindu resistance is also a history of virtues. He identified the virtues that proved detrimental to India and led to its conquest. He expounded his philosophy of morality in Chapter VIII, Perverted Conception of Virtues, in which he rejected the idea of absolute or unqualified virtue.

“In fact virtues and vices are only relative terms,” he said.

Virtues or vice?
Savarkar added that the test of determining what is virtue or vice is to examine whether it serves the interests of society, specifically Hindu society. This is because circumstances change, societies are always in a flux. What was deemed virtuous in the past could become a vice in the present if it is detrimental to mankind, he said.

For instance, said Savarkar, the caste system with its elaborate rules of purity and pollution helped stabilise Hindu society. But some of these rules became dysfunctional, degenerating into “seven fetters” of Hindu society.

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These shackles, according to Savarkar, were untouchability, bans on drinking water from members of other castes, inter-caste dining, inter-caste marriage, sea-voyage, the ban on taking back into the Hindu fold those who were forcibly converted to Islam or Christianity, and ostracism of those who defied these prohibitions.

These “seven fetters” proved advantageous to the Muslim conquerors, wrote Savarkar, because they exploited caste rules to increase their population.

The conquerors forcibly converted Hindus who had been defeated, provided them with food and water, abducted women who were either kept as concubines or wives, certain that the ban on taking them back into the Hindu fold left them with no option but to live as Muslim, the Hindutva propounder wrote. This meant the “transformation of a man into a demon, the metamorphosis of a God into a Satan”.

Rape as a political tool
It is in this paradigm of ethics that Savarkar mooted the idea of rape as a political tool. He articulated it as a wish, through a question: What if Hindu kings, who occasionally defeated their Muslim counterparts, had also raped their women?

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He expressed this wish after declaring, “It was a religious duty of every Muslim to kidnap and force into their religion, non-Muslim women.” He added that this fanaticism was not “Muslim madness”, for it had a distinct design – to increase the “Muslim population with special regard to unavoidable laws of nature.” It is the same law, which the animal world instinctively obeys.

Sarvarkar wrote:

“If in the cattle-herds the number of oxen grows in excess of the cows, the herds do not grow numerically in a rapid number. But on the other hand, the number of animals in the herds, with the excess of cows over the oxen, grows in mathematical progression.”

He cites examples from the human world too. For instance, he wrote, the African “wild tribes” kill only their male enemies, but not their women, who are distributed among the victors. This is because these tribes consider it their duty to increase their numbers through the progeny of abducted women. Similarly, he wrote that a Naga tribe in India kills women of rival tribes whom they can’t capture because they believe, rightly so, that paucity of women would enhance the possibility of their enemies dwindling in number.

Savarkar said that the Muslim conquerors of Africa too followed this tradition. Immediately thereafter, he spoke of the well-wishers of Ravana who advised him to return to Rama his wife, Sita, whom he had abducted. They said it was highly irreligious to have kidnapped Sita. Savarkar quotes Ravana saying, “What? To abduct and rape the womenfolk of the enemy, do you call it irreligious? It is Parodharmah, the greatest duty!”

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It is with the “shameless religious fanaticism” of Ravana that the Muslims, from the Sultan to the soldier, abducted Hindu women, even the married ladies of Hindu royal families and notables, wrote Savarkar, adding that this was to increase the population of Muslims, to demographically conquer India, so to speak.

Savarkar is venomously critical of Muslim women who, “whether Begum or beggar”, never protested against the “atrocities committed by their male compatriots; on the contrary they encouraged them to do so and honoured them for it”.

Savarkar, even by his own standards, takes a huge leap by claiming that Muslim women living even in Hindu kingdoms enticed Hindu girls, “locked them up in their own houses, and conveyed them to Muslims centres in Masjids and Mosques”.

Muslim women were emboldened to perpetrate such atrocities because they did not fear retribution from Hindu men who, argued Savarkar, “had a perverted idea of women-chivalry”. Even when they vanquished their Muslim rivals, they punished the men among them, not their women, he said.

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“Only Muslim men alone, if at all, suffered the consequential indignities but the Muslim women – never!” wrote Savarkar.

When Shivaji was wrong
This regret prompts him not to spare those who commend Shivaji for sending back the daughter-in-law of the Muslim governor of Kalyan, whom he defeated, as well as Peshwa Chimaji Appa (1707-1740), who did the same with the Portuguese wife of the governor of Bassein.

Savarkar wrote:

“But is it not strange that, when they did so, neither Shivaji Maharaj nor Chimaji Appa should ever remember, the atrocities and the rapes and the molestation, perpetrated by Mahmud of Ghazni, Muhammad Ghori, Allauddin Khalji and others, on thousands of Hindu ladies and girls…”

Savarkar’s febrile imagination now flies on the wings of rhetoric. He writes:

“The souls of those millions of aggrieved women might have perhaps said ‘Do not forget, O Your Majesty Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and O! Your Excellency Chimaji Appa, the unutterable atrocities and oppression and outrage committed on us by the sultans and Muslim noblemen and thousands of others, big and small.

“Let these sultans and their peers take a pledge that in the event of a Hindu victory our molestation and detestable lot shall be avenged on the Muslim women. Once they are haunted with this dreadful apprehension that the Muslim women too, stand in the same predicament in case the Hindus win, the future Muslim conquerors will never dare to think of such molestation of Hindu women [emphasis added].”

Their chivalry was perverted, said Savarkar, because it proved highly detrimental to Hindu society. This chivalry was “suicidal” because it “saved the Muslim women (simply because they were women) from the heavy punishment of committing indescribable serious crimes against Hindu women”, Savarkar laments.

Even worse, he said, was the foolish notion among the Hindus that to have “any sort of relations with a Muslim woman meant their own conversion to Islam”. This belief became an impediment to Hindu men inflicting punishment on the “Muslim feminine class [fair (?) sex]” for their atrocities [words in parenthesis Savarkar’s].

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Savarkar’s readers cannot but see that he has overturned the code of ethics and freed the Hindus from the shackles that prevent them from descending into barbarism. But Savarkar doesn’t seem convinced of his persuasive powers.

So under a subsection titled, But If, he seeks to hammer in his point. He asks readers:

“Suppose if from the earliest Muslim invasions of India, the Hindus also, whenever they were victors on the battlefields, had decided to pay the Muslim fair sex in the same coin or punished them in some other ways, i.e., by conversion even with force, and then absorbed them in their fold, then? Then with this horrible apprehension at their heart they would have desisted from their evil designs against any Hindu lady.”

He adds:

“If they had taken such a fright in the first two or three centuries, millions and millions of luckless Hindu ladies would have been saved all their indignities, loss of their own religion, rapes, ravages and other unimaginable persecutions.”

Thus, the use of rape as a political tool stands justified.

But why should Savarkar’s idea of rape as a political tool apply today, given that Six Glorious Epochs deal with India’s past?

This is because Savarkar very explicitly stated that a change of religion implies a change of nationality. It was Savarkar, not Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who first categorised Hindus and Muslims as two nations. From the Hindutva perspective, the two nations – Hindu and Muslim – have been locked in a continuous conflict for supremacy since the 11th century.

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In the Savarkarite worldview, only those ethical codes should be adhered to which enable the Hindus to establish their supremacy over the Muslims. Thus, he reasoned, it is justified to rape Muslim women in riots because it is revenge for the barbarity of Muslims in the medieval times, whether proven or otherwise. After all, today’s riots are a manifestation of the historical conflict.

This is why BJP leaders clamour to celebrate the heroes of what they call Hindu resistance. The most recent example of this trend is Union Minister VK Singh, who wants Delhi’s Akbar Road to be renamed after Maharana Pratap. It is from Savarkar they have got their cue.

Later in Six Glorious Epochs, Savarkar adopted a distinct Nietzschean tone to cry out: “O thou Hindu society! Of all the sins and weaknesses, which have brought about thy fall, the greatest and most potent are thy virtues themselves.”

These virtues were cast aside in Gujarat in 2002 and Muzaffarnagar in 2013. That is something to remember as some people come out to pay homage to Savarkar who was born on this day 133 years ago.

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This is the second article in a two-part series on VD Savarkar. The first part can be read here.

Read Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History here.

 

[maximuswarrior]

Rape is already embedded Indian culture.

 

[Nityam]

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Savarkar is always Veer: Gandhi’s case for him flattens leftist propaganda

J Nandakumar

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.

Mahatma Gandhi called Savarkar ‘A faithful son of Bharat, brave, clever and…frankly a revolutionary…’ In an article published in Young India, Mahatma Gandhi fiercely argued why ‘Royal Clemency’ should be given to Veer Savarkar and his ‘talent should be utilised for public welfare’.


New Delhi: There are few heroes in history who have been subjected to a smear campaign of such ferocity and viciousness as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar—a man who inspired many nationalists and political leaders including early Communists like M.N. Roy, Hirendranath Mukherjee, S.A. Dange etc. However, unlike their predecessors, neo-communists with a skewed perspective of history, made a sustained effort to besmirch the image of the great revolutionary to such an extent that they painted him a “traitor and saboteur” of the Indian freedom struggle.

As we know, the major allegation against Savarkar is that he wrote multiple letters of clemency to the British during his Andaman days. This is a debate that was triggered only post-Emergency. In the post-Emergency period, with nationalism rapidly gaining traction, the new Left were rattled and found in Savarkar a soft target, ascribing to him the paternity of Hindutva. For that, they delved deep into much celebrated “new discoveries” and reappeared with canards and alternative history to replace facts and social convictions.

It is interesting to note that Communist veterans like M.N. Roy and E.M.S., who were contemporaries of Savarkar, always held him in high regard, notwithstanding their harsh criticism of “Hindutva”. On the contrary, going a step beyond, the New Leftist intellectuals are hell-bent on manufacturing “shreds of evidence”, cooking up new history lessons according to the whims and directions of their political masters.

Both the New Leftist propaganda and unquestionable facts pertaining to the life and times of Savarkar were topics for volumes of publications and are already in the public domain. Were the “new discoveries” about Savarkar actually “new”? Why was Savarkar left untouched by the Leftists of his time? For them Savarkar was an unquestionable patriot, fiery anti-imperialist and a brave freedom fighter.

To cement the baseless allegations against Savarkar that began in the post-Emergency period, they cleverly pitted Mahatma Gandhi against him as an ideological opponent, sweeping historical facts under the rug. The so-called clemency letters were the order of the day, and for Savarkar, they were a tactical step towards furthering his revolutionary activities. While the criticism is that nobody of his time knew about his mercy petitions, and writing such petitions were exceptions, the writings of Mahatma Gandhi prove otherwise.

Even though pitching Savarkar against Gandhiji is a favourite exercise for Neo-Communists, they have never revealed to us what Gandhiji thought and wrote about Savarkar. While half of the leftist propaganda has already found its rightful place in the dustbin of history, testing it with the opinions of the towering Communists like M.N. Roy, E.M.S., Dange, etc., hitherto suppressed works of literature by Mahatma Gandhi about Savarkar expose the fraud of leftists.

As codified in his autobiography and myriads of biographies, the life of Savarkar is full of sacrifice and valour that Indian Communists cannot even fathom or imagine, let alone emulate. The entire unparalleled episode of his revolutionary life stands out in the Indian Independence Movement. Despite having a difference in means of liberating the country from slavery, Mahatma Gandhi maintained a rare, complex and respectful relationship with the Savarkar brothers—V.D. Savarkar and G.D. Savarkar. This is evident in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, which has spread into 100 thick hardbound volumes.

Eyeing political benefits from successive Congress regimes, the Communist historians have been making repeated attempts to besmirch the patriotic image of Veer Savarkar citing letters of clemency. Contrary to their false accusations, Mahatma Gandhi explains how the Savarkar brothers were denied justice when the majority of political prisoners received the benefit of the “Royal Clemency”. Mahatma Gandhi’s views on Savarkar are quite revealing and it is interesting to note how Gandhiji saw the contributions of a revolutionary like Savarkar to the freedom struggle, despite their divergent views on the idea of non-cooperation.

“Thanks to the action of the Government of India and the Provincial Governments, many of those who were undergoing imprisonment at the time have received the benefit of the Royal clemency. But there are some notable ‘political offenders’ who have not yet been discharged. Among these I count the Savarkar brothers. They are political offenders in the same sense as men, for instance, who have been discharged in the Punjab. And yet these two brothers have not received their liberty although five months have gone by after the publication of the Proclamation,” Gandhiji wrote in an article titled “Savarkar Brothers” in Young India dated 26-5-1920 (Complete Works of Mahatma Gandhi Vol 20; Page 368).

For the political prisoners, it was a common procedure for appealing for conditional clemency in a prescribed format. From the writings of Mahatma Gandhi, it is beyond doubt that he was aware of Savarkar’s clemency letters, which were the order of the day, as majority of the political prisoners of those days applied for and was granted Royal Clemency, which was later projected as an unpardonable and unprecedented crime by the leftists.

Gandhiji offers a brief biography of G.D. Savarkar in the article: “Mr. Ganesh Damodar Savarkar, the elder of the two, was born in 1879, and received an ordinary education. He took a prominent part in the swadeshi movement at Nasik in 1908. He was sentenced to transportation for life with confiscation of property under Sections 121, 121A, 124A and 153A on the 9th day of June, 1909, and is now serving his sentence in the Andamans. He has therefore had eleven years of imprisonment. Section 121 is the famous section which was utilized during the Punjab trials and refers to ‘waging war against the King’. The minimum penalty is transportation for life with forfeiture of property. 121A is a similar section. 124A relates to sedition. 153A relates to promotion of enmity between classes ‘by words either spoken or written’ or ‘otherwise’. It is clear therefore that all the offences charged against Mr. Savarkar (senior) were of a public nature. He had done no violence. He was married, had two daughters who are dead, and his wife died about eighteen months ago.”

After giving a brief account about G.D. Savarkar, Mahatma Gandhi introduces Veer Savarkar: “The other brother (Veer Savarkar) was born in 1884, and is better known for his career in London. His sensational attempt to escape the custody of the police and his jumping through a porthole in French waters, are still fresh in the public mind. He was educated at the Fergusson College, finished off in London and became a barrister. He is the author of the proscribed history of the Sepoy Revolt of 1857. He was tried in 1910, and received the same sentence as his brother on 24th December, 1910. He was charged also in 1911 with abetment of murder. No act of violence was proved against him either. He too is married, had a son in 1909. His wife is still alive.”

Detailing the content of the letters of Savarkar, Mahatma Gandhi states: “Both these brothers have declared their political opinions and both have stated that they do not entertain any revolutionary ideas and that if they were set free they would like to work under the Reforms Act (Government of India Act, 1919), for they consider that the Reforms enable one to work there under so as to achieve political responsibility for India.” With Mahatma Gandhi quoting the conditions proposed in the original letter, the big leftist lie of “cover-up” against Savarkar falls flat. Gandhiji speaks a self-evident truth that those including Gandhi were fully aware of the content of the letters of Savarkar. Noticeably, it did not prevent him from calling Savarkar “a faithful son of Bharat and brave”. As Gandhi hailed Savarkar, he was “clever” enough to take advantage of the situation where in seeking clemency was norm, that has been extended to the most of the revolutionaries and political prisoners in the country during that period of time, as vouched for by Gandhiji.

“What is more, I think, it may be safely stated that the cult of violence has, at the present moment, no following in India. Now the only reason for still further restricting the liberty of the two brothers can be ‘danger to public safety’, for the Viceroy has been charged by His Majesty to exercise the Royal clemency to political offenders in the fullest manner which in his judgment is compatible with public safety,” Gandhiji further writes.

“I hold therefore that unless there is absolute proof that the discharge of the two brothers who have already suffered long enough terms of imprisonment, who have lost considerably in body-weight and who have declared their political opinions, can be proved to be a danger to the State, the Viceroy is bound to give them their liberty. The obligation to discharge them, on the one condition of public safety being fulfilled, is, in the Viceroy’s political capacity, just as imperative as it was for the Judges in their judicial capacity to impose on the two brothers the minimum penalty allowed by law. If they are to be kept under detention any longer, a full statement justifying it is due to the public,” he continues his arguments.

“This case is no better and no worse than that of Bhai Parmanand who, thanks to the Punjab Government, has after a long term of imprisonment received his discharge. Nor need his case be distinguished from that of the Savarkar brothers in the sense that Bhai Parmanand pleaded absolute innocence. So far as the Government are concerned, all were alike guilty because all were convicted. And the Royal clemency is due not merely to doubtful cases but equally to all cases of offences proved up to the hilt. The conditions are that the offence must be political and the exercise of Royal clemency should not, in the opinion of the Viceroy, endanger public safety. There is no question about the brothers being political offenders. And so far the public are aware there is no danger to public safety. In answer to a question in the Viceregal Council in connection with such cases the reply given was that they were under consideration. But their brother has received from the Bombay Government a reply to the effect that no further memorials regarding them will be received and Mr. Montagu has stated in the House of Commons that in the opinion of the Government of India they cannot be released. The case however cannot be so easily shelved. The public are entitled to know the precise grounds upon which the liberty of the brothers is being restrained in spite of the Royal Proclamation which to them is as good as a royal charter having the force of law,” Gandhiji concluded his article.

Another note by Gandhiji, published in the Complete Works Vol 23 (page 156), titled “Horniman and Company”, begins apologetically, expressing his helplessness in the case of the Savarkar brothers after people complained to him as to why he was reluctant even to write about the brothers. “Friends have accused me of indifference about Mr. Horniman, and some have also wondered why I rarely write about the Savarkar Brothers.”

“If I mention Mr. Horniman’s case or that of the Savarkar Brothers, I can mention it not to influence the Government’s decision, but to stimulate the public in favour of non-co-operation. I would be delighted to have Mr. Horniman back as an able and brave comrade. I know that he was unjustly deported,” defenceless Gandhiji explains.

“The Savarkar Brothers’ talent should be utilized for public welfare. As it is, India is in danger of losing her two faithful sons, unless she wakes up in time. One of the brothers I know well. I had the pleasure of meeting him in London. He is brave. He is clever. He is a patriot. He was frankly a revolutionary. The evil, in its hideous form, of the present system of Government, he saw much earlier than I did, He is in the Andamans for his having loved India too well. Under a just Government, he would be occupying a high office. I therefore feel for him and his brother. Had it not been for non-co-operation,” he wrote.

In fact, the writings of Mahatma Gandhi on Savarkar should be viewed as a “new” discovery pertaining to Savarkar, as there has been a concerted effort to suppress these historical facts. Gandhiji is in fact, busting the Communist lies against Savarkar that have cast a shadow of doubt over one of India’s bravest sons for the last several decades. For Communists, history is not just a tool for revealing something favourable for their cult, but concealing truths bitter to them—this is passed off as academic exercise. The years ahead are more frightening as we outlive the “freedom fighters” and the national sentiments attached to their lives.

This critical juncture of time should not become fertile ground for propagandists who are working to destroy the cultural and social fabric of the nation. On the eve of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary, independent researchers and historians should make sincere efforts to shed more light on the warm, respectful, and multi-layered relationship cherished by V.D. Savarkar and Gandhiji, the two bright stars of Hind Swaraj.

J. Nandakumar is National Convenor of Prajna Pravah and member of National Executive of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Former editor of Kesari Malayalam Weekly, he had authored half a dozen books including a biography (in Malayalam) of V.D. Savarkar.