Prime Minister Narendra Modi – apart from being the only prime minister of our country who repeatedly invokes the name of V.D. Savarkar in his addresses to the nation – has recently set the unenviable record of laying the foundation of a college in Delhi University named after Savarkar. Such acts on his part constitutes an affront to the vision of Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, B.R. Ambedkar and the ethos of the freedom struggle.

Gandhi on V.D. Savarkar

It is worth noting that while Savarkar fought against British rule during the first decade of the 20th century, after his incarceration in the cellular jail in the Andamans, he submitted multiple mercy petitions between 1911-1914 for his release. He even gave undertakings that he would be loyal to the British rulers without ever participating in the freedom struggle.

In fact Savarkar’s brother, D.N. Savarkar, sent a telegram to Mahatma Gandhi on January 8, 1920 saying that the names of Savarkar and one of his imprisoned brothers did not figure in the list of those released from jail based on their mercy petitions. Gandhi wrote back on January 25 saying that the offences committed by them should be persuasively presented before the public as purely political in nature.

Gandhi, in his article ‘Savarkar Brothers’ published in Young India on May 26, 1920, recalled Savarkar’s sensational attempt to escape the custody of the police by jumping through a porthole of a ship in French waters and pleas for their release by citing, among other grounds, that “They both state unequivocally that they do not desire independence from the British connection”. Savarkar and his brother’s stand that they were not for independence of India stood in contrast to the spirit of freedom struggle.

Savarkar preceded Jinnah on two-nation theory

Apart from abandoning the freedom struggle, Savarkar propagated the divisive and toxic narrative that Hindus and Muslims should constitute two separate nations. He did so while addressing the session of Hindu Mahasabha in 1937 in Ahmedabad. “I warn the Hindus that the Mohammedans are likely to prove dangerous to our Hindu nation and the existence of a common........

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