Bharat Ratna for Savarkar is an essential piece of Hindutva mosaic
Bharat Bhushan
The
Modi election machine has once again led the Opposition and critics of
its regime on a merry dance by invoking a controversial Hindutva icon. In its manifesto for the Maharashtra state legislature elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) promises to confer Bharat Ratna, the highest civil award, posthumously, on Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. It is pertinent to note that the Bharat Ratna is not awarded by the Maharashtra state government. It is a national award conferred by those who rule at the Centre.
Savarkar’s portrait was already installed in the Central Hall of Indian Parliament in 2003 by the BJP-led government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Modi, unlike Vapayee, does not have to appease coalition partners and can go one step further.
Like moths to a flame, Opposition leaders and public intellectuals are rushing to take the Savarkar Test and will be once again singed. The more they target Savarkar without understanding the BJP’s game, the stronger he becomes as an icon.
Many
have wasted their breath pointing to the pathetic apology letter
written by Savarkar to the British colonial government seeking his
release from the Andaman Cellular Jail offering to collaborate with it
on return. Others have pointed to Savarkar’s complicity in the murder
conspiracy against Mahatma Gandhi citing the findings of the Jivan Lal
Kapoor Commission set up by the government in 1965 to examine the
evidence that was left out during the Gandhi murder trial.
The
Congress party’s increasingly weak-kneed response to Hindutva’s
challenge saw it fielding former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to say
that the Party was not opposed to “Savarkarji” but only to his ideology of Hindutva. He
also added that Indira Gandhi had released a stamp on Savarkar. Why the
Congress was called upon to make such a pointless public statement
remains a mystery.
Savarkar with or without Bharat Ratna will
make little difference in the Maharashtra elections to anyone except
perhaps a few Chitpavan Brahmins and Hindu zealots. However, the
significance of Savarkar is deeper and beyond the state election.
The Modi government does nothing that does not fit into the declared ideological predilections of the RSS. Prime Minister Modi’s ideological education took place in the morning branch meetings (shakhas) of the RSS and
seems to have remained largely unaffected by his somewhat controversial
university education in “entire political science”. He is doing what he
was taught by the RSS –
marrying Hinduism to ultra-nationalism and has got the support of
Corporate Capital for that agenda. As long as the backing was limited to
small businessmen and local shopkeepers, the project could not take
off. Now it has.
Modi
in his second term is trying even harder to mainstream the RSS-defined
agenda of ultra-nationalist Hinduism, illiberalism, regimented social
thinking, and intolerance of dissent. These will define the political
contours of a “new India” imagined by the BJP’s parent organisation.
Savarkar spelt out the foundational ideology of Hindu nationalism and it is essential for the BJP to
promote him. Moreover, his youthful involvement with the radical Indian
nationalist underground in London allows the RSS to claim that its
leaders also come from a tradition of the Indian freedom struggle. By
referencing to these early years, Savarkar’s long collaboration as
leader of the Hindu Mahasabha and the British colonial government is
conveniently hidden, including at crucial moments such as the Second
World War and the Quit India movement.
Savarkar’s book The Indian War of Independence is
also an important text in furthering the ideological war between Hindu
nationalism and secular liberal nationalism. If the birth of the latter
can be traced from the founding of the Congress in 1885, Savarkar’s book
traces the roots of nationalism earlier, to 1857. In his book on 1857,
the leadership of the rebels is not liberals dreaming of parliamentary
democracy but sanyasis, religious leaders and princes dreaming about
restoration of Hindu kings.
To expand the reach of Hindutva nationalism the RSS and the BJP have
to revive a historical narrative about centuries of political-cultural
humiliation under the rule of Muslim dynasties – from the Slaves or
Mamluks, Khiljis, Tughlaqs, Sayyids, Lodis and the Mughals, and then the
British. They can ask for retribution and psychological reparations in
the present only by attributing nationalist aspirations and nationalist
humiliation to what were essentially a bunch of fragmented indigenous
kingdoms conquered by diverse foreign invaders.
The
spectre of Hindu society breaking down in the present requires that
13th century wars are made central to our historical imagination. This
will establish the core Hindutva idea that the “true” India, Hindu
India, is under threat from a combination of religious minorities and a
liberal elite that has dominated the Indian State since Independence.
Savarkar’s
Hindutva laid the ground for “othering” long-resident minorities by
arguing that their religions, the founts of their cultures, did not
originate within the geographical boundaries of India. The liberal
elite’s secular ideology is a threat because it provides the basis for
allowing a culturally diverse and multi-religious India.
The
multi-culturalism of secular politics inhibits Hindu zealots from
unapologetically celebrating their numerical dominance. In Modi they
have a Hindu authoritarian leader who can ensure that the liberal elite
does not become as powerful as it was earlier. The idea of a conspiracy
of the elite is being embedded in the minds of the people and helps to
justify the use of state power against the liberals as ‘enemies’ of the
people. It generates popular support for crushing the universities and
other institutions where multi-cultural humanism flowers.
The
belief of some opposed to the Modi government, that it will lose
support if India’s economic crisis worsens, is self-delusional. It does
not understand how well the Modi regime is able to work electoral
democracy by winning hearts and minds over to the Hindutva narrative.
Savarkar
is the new hero for ‘new India’. His writings undercut the legitimacy
of religious minorities as equal citizens of India and of the liberal
elite to lead the country. Savarkar then is an essential building block
of Hindu authoritarian politics.
