Book Review: Savarkar (Part 1): Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883–1924

 

For me, as part of a generation which had its education in the last quarter of the 20th century, Savarkar was not mentioned in any of the official study materials except for the insinuation that he was involved in the murder of Mohandas Gandhi. In the absence of viable alternatives to arrive at one’s own conclusion, the official position on Savarkar was the only one. Now with the arrival of social media and history in India being liberated from the clutch of vested interests in central institutions, new light is being shed on the contributions of individuals other than Nehru and Gandhi to the freedom struggle.

Volume 1 of Vikram Sampath’s epic biography deals with the upbringing of Vinayak Savarkar, the political environment in India and how it shaped him, his journey to England for his legal studies and his evolution as a political revolutionary plotting to overthrow the colonial British empire in India. It ends with his receiving conditional release from his sentence of life imprisonment in the notorious Cellular Jail of the Andamans.

This is not a book review, but key learnings from reading the first volume of Savarkar’s biography

Understand where you come from

I am a reformist at heart. However I consider it sheer cowardice to eschew our culture and traditions merely because some ignorant and arrogant Europeans laugh at it.....

Understand why we are in the current situation

The reason why our country has reached the most wretched condition is that we have given up our religion, our industries and our trade, which has been taken up by others.

Identify your core tenets

The streak of rationality and questioning tradition too came early to him....all the reading and reflecting made Vinayak question several beliefs and rituals that were blindly followed at that time.

Vinayak found the caste system that plagued Hindu society reprehensible.

...freedom was not to be got through begging.

The two cornerstones for the war, he postulated, were swaraj and swadharma—love for one’s country and one’s religion.

...passive resistance, argued Vinayak, was futile without the backing of arms.

Vinayak proclaimed in both Mitra Mela and Abhinav Bharat that their true caste and religion is humanity and humanity alone.

The sense of duty remained an important aspect of Vinayak’s political philosophy all his life.

Have single-minded focus on the goal

...he rushed to the idol of the Ashtabhuja Bhawani in his home town in Bhagur and poured his heart out to her. He made a fervent vow in front of his family goddess that he was committing himself and his life to free the motherland through armed struggle. He declared in her presence: ‘Shatrus maarta maarta mare to jhunjen!’

everyone should, while sitting, talking, sleeping, nay even when winking, remember of ‘Swadesh Bhakti’ that is the devotion to one’s own country.

Share your knowledge - build an ecosystem of like-minded people

young people from different parts of the country, all highly educated and intelligent, with bright prospective futures; yet they willingly gave up their careers, families and their very lives for the cause of liberating their motherland. And with Vinayak as the group’s leader, they were bracing themselves for creating a huge impact in the very heart of the mighty British Empire

Understand your problem

They thereby imply that they are the rulers and we, the ruled and hence all their customs, traditions and culture are way superior to ours. Therein lies the problem.

Build partnerships

...the members of Abhinav Bharat were in regular touch with the revolutionaries from Bengal. Regular meetings of such secret societies across India began to be held. Thus, contrary to popular narratives of dispersed activities of firebrand radicals devoid of any plan or strategy indulging in mere mindless violence and political assassinations, the emergent revolutionary movement was a planned, coordinated and a strategic one.

Be inclusive

Vinayak proclaimed in both Mitra Mela and Abhinav Bharat that their true caste and religion is humanity and humanity alone.

If dharma is observed, then this country which belongs to Hindus as well as Muhammadans would prosper. It belongs to whoever is born there, it belongs to those who are grown on the food it offers; whose children are to grow on the same.

Vinayak also suggests that the 1857 movement was one that brought Hindus and Muslims together; that Hindustan was ‘thereafter the united nation of the adherents of Islam as well as Hinduism’.

Use the power of the media

But for Savarkar’s discovery of that valiant heroine, Rani of Jhansi should have been a long-forgotten ‘mutineer’ of the nineteenth-century

Have a champion outside your organization who will support you

Develop thought leadership: Thought->Action->Thought

The Mitra Mela members had to select subjects of their choice, research them, read books on the topic, write essays and then lecture and debate on them in the weekly meetings.

The startling change for its time was Savarkar’s assertion that it was not religion that made Hindus Hindu. Aasindhu Sindhu paryanta yasya Bharata bhumika Pitribhu punyabhushchaiva sa vai Hinduriti Smritah. One who considers this vast stretch of land called Bharat From the Sindhu to the Sindhu (Indus to the Seas) as his fatherland (or land of one’s ancestors) and holy land is the one who will be termed and remembered as a Hindu.

In a meeting on 1 October 1905 held at the auditorium of the Sarvajanik Sabha in Poona, Vinayak floated the idea of creating a mass bonfire of foreign clothes.

Vinayak asserted that one should stop calling the 1857 episode a ‘mutiny’ or ‘uprising’, and instead use the nomenclature ‘First War of Indian Independence’.

Have a roadmap and share the vision

Vinayak’s Abhinav Bharat was far from a bunch of misguided youth hurling bombs and assassinating random officers. It had a clear road map of how to instigate that ultimate pan-India revolution, taking inspiration from the seeds of 1857, and extinguish the Empire in its massive blaze.

The main aim of Abhinav Bharat was an overarching and all-inclusive vision of integrating the material and spiritual responsibilities of both the nation and the individual to attain a state of complete freedom—an almost utopian freedom in all its dimensions. This was not limited to just materialistic welfare, but intellectual, moral and spiritual progress too, along with political independence. The vision of freedom was one of divinity, of a divine goddess.

Empower your team so that they have the ability to work even in your absence

Vinayak implored the audience to train both their minds and bodies.

Be conscious of your purpose and make the best of your circumstances:

one of Vinayak’s most significant contributions during his incarceration at Cellular Jail was to attempt a change in the conditions there despite the resistance of the authorities. He had managed to organize the library, instil the habit of reading and discussions and striven to make it a model even for Indian jails when it came to prisoner reform. ...Books on religion and philosophy, the lives and teachings of saints like Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda had pride of place on its shelves.

From a decrepit hell of torture under the unlettered Barrie, the jail had suddenly transformed into a temple of knowledge.

Continuing with his work of reforming the lives of people in the prison and the Andamans, Vinayak then pushed for inter-caste dining. Though he met with stout opposition from orthodox Hindus, Vinayak was able to prevail upon them the need to break the barriers of caste that had crippled Hindu society and disunited it.

The leaderless disorientation in Hindu society, it being led in various directions and towards unrelated causes, and its own inherent divisions of caste and creed needed an intellectual response.

Make trade-offs where required only when it does not compromise your principles:

These seemingly contradicting stands lead one to believe that the petitions were a mere tactical ruse to secure a release and thereafter plan a future strategy. Nothing substantial could be achieved by being holed up in jail.

To save a few temples, a handful of Brahmins and some cows, we ended up sacrificing our entire country to foreign powers. Does this augur well for any nation? These ritual-ridden, illogical, self-destructive beliefs spawned a national and religious cowardice that kept us suppressed for centuries. I argue that taking cow protection to an extreme at the cost of human interests, is lethal, as history has proved to us.

Find how others have solved the same problem and determine if the same strategies and tactics can be applied

...there was a slow emergence of a national pan-Indian political identity that made common cause with grievances in any part of the country and also drew from global experiences and ideas.

Evolve your purpose

In the dark confines of Port Blair’s Cellular Jail, we see a gradual metamorphosis of Vinayak from a young, brash radical revolutionary to a more sober and strategic planner, whose focus was shifting towards an organization of Hindu society.

It was the conversion episodes at Cellular Jail that gave him an impetus to develop this thought. It also awakened in him the need to create unity among a community ridden with numerous factions, which had time and again proved to be its nemesis. A ‘Hindu,’ postulated Vinayak, was ‘a man who recognizes our country as the land of his birth and religion.’