India: Delhi University Students movement succeeds in removing Savarkar statue from Delhi University

STUDENT MOVEMENT SUCCEEDS IN REMOVING SAVARKAR STATUE FROM DELHI UNIVERSITY:
SAVARKAR CANNOT SURVIVE WHILE BHAGAT SINGH LIVES ON!

On the birth anniversary of martyr of the Indian liberation struggle Rajguru, we present our revolutionary salute to the struggle of DU students which pushed the administration to remove bust of Hindu communalist ideologue VD Savarkar from the public university. A signature campaign by several progressive and revolutionary student organisations in DU, taking the the diametrically-opposite legacies of Com. Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose versus VD Savarkar in the anti-British struggle among students, was met with police repression yesterday. In an alarming precedent, 'rioting' criminal charges were imposed on two student activists by police while ABVP gundas who installed the statue in the silence of the night and intimidated the activists with violence were treated like royalty in full public view. Fearing further student unrest at such brazen hand-in-glove nexus between the fascist ABVP-DU admin-police, the statue was removed once again in the night.

The role of RSS idealogue Savarkar in the anti-British movement was indeed shameful. His several mercy petitions to the colonial authorities, promising to aid the administration in all possible ways, and advocating the communal '2 nation theory' which led to Partition and the continuation of imperialist 'divide and rule' politics even after the British were forced to retreat, shows the cowardly and opportunist nature of Sangh politics since its very beginning. On the other hand, Bhagat Singh and his comrades in the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association asked to be treated as the 'war prisoners' they were and asked to be killed at gunpoint because they saw the colonial occupation of India as nothing but a state of war. Bose too advocated for the armed overthrow of the British empire, setting up the INA, while the empire was at its weakest during the Second World War. It is a testament to the bravery of these leaders that ABVP had to resort to placing Savarkar next to them in order to convince students that their leader too was a part of this revolutionary tradition.

While it is obvious that the followers of Savarkar are still perpetuating this same reactionary collaboration with American Imperialism and Ambani-Adani today to fulfil their dream of a casteist, communal Hindu Rashtra, the revolutionary legacy of Bhagat Singh still lives on in struggles for an egalitarian social order in various villages and town, farms and factories, slums and universities across the country. In the coming weeks, we will stand with efforts to take these lessons of history to a wider audience in Delhi University. It is only such a coming together of progressive voices which can eliminate the RSS, from its fascist takeover of public institutions and society at large.

- Collective