India's debt to Savarkar
Priyadarsi Dutta (pioneer, 29.5.08)
His Irish admirers fondly misspelt him as 'Sawarkar', and politely declined to make amends when Shyamji Krishna Verma, his sponsor in England, clarified the point. It was difficult for his readers to imagine him without invoking imageries of war. His pen, dipped in blood, breathed so much fire that it was a wonder that "why the paper did not burn". In those days, India's freedom movement was not stricken with the phthisis of non-violence and obsessive compulsive disorder of Hindu-Muslim unity introduced by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, whose 125th birth anniversary was marked on May 28, was 14 years junior to Gandhi. But he was years ahead of him on many counts. He set the goal of absolute independence for India in 1900; Gandhi asked for it in 1929. He performed a bonfire of foreign clothes in 1905, during the movement against Bengal's partition, an idea emulated by Gandhi for his noncooperation movement. India could have been spared of its emasculation had it abided by Savarkarite clarity rather than Gandhian absurdities. To Savarkar, as he succinctly put down in his last book, Six Glorious Chapters of Indian History, no nation could aspire for civilisational greatness without acquiring military strength. Savarkar lived to see the vindication of his proposition in contemporary India. Gandhi's policy of pacifism failed to buy peace with Muslims, leading to carnages and expulsion of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan. Jawaharlal Nehru's dream of "talking his way to leadership of the world", and forging Hindi-Chini brotherhood through slogans failed badly. Slapped hard by China, he was exposed for what he was -- a meek leader of a Third World country. Independent India scarcely realises the greatest debt it owes to Savarkar; turning a Muslim dominated Indian Army into a predominantly Hindu-Sikh Army with his whirlwind recruitment drive during World War II. If it were otherwise, Pakistan, even after partition, would have 60 per cent to 70 per cent of soldiers, enough to overwhelm West Bengal, East Punjab, threatening Delhi, let alone much talked about Jammu & Kashmir.
