Veer Savarkar: The Man Who Could Have Prevented Partition by Uday Mahurkar, Chirayu Pandit
Genre: Non-Fiction, Indian Politics
4.5 Stars
One Liner: Informative and easy to read.
Veer Savarkar has been a controversial personality in India for many decades. While the left cabal hates him, the non-left looks up to his values, and there are enough people on the fence who don’t know what to believe.
The partition of India and Pakistan has for long been a gut-wrenching topic. The generational trauma of the survivors of the partition and the subsequent Kashmir genocide (along with the Moplah massacre, the Direct Action Day) are hard to forget, no matter how many intellectuals want to brush them under the carpet.
This book focuses on the events leading to the partition and how Savarkar came close to preventing it from happening. The book isn’t an emotional appeal or an intense read. It has an easy conversational writing style and presents facts with relevant proofs and footnotes.
The book debunks various lies spread about Savarkar and presents the aspects that were hidden from being common knowledge. Do you know that Savarkar was a crusader for equal rights for everyone? He conducted camps to empower the so-called untouchables, organized inter-caste dinners and supported those who wanted to marry people from other castes. The only condition was that the marriage had to be for love and not forced or in the name of revenge. While Ambedkar got into the limelight (not without reason), Savarkar was conveniently pushed into the dark.
Savarkar was emphatic about equal rights, which meant he was dead against the appeasement politics by Congress. Nothing much has changed over the years. In fact, things have gone from bad to worse.
The role of Congress in partition, oh, well! The party has always been a bunch of narrow-minded, visionless politicians (except for a few noteworthy leaders) who never really related to reality, even if it hit them in the face.
When you read the predictions Savarkar made, you realize just how right he was. The book shows his visionary side, and I couldn’t help but admire his grasp of human psychology and the inherent differences in the thought processes of different communities.
The partition has been a psychological game, a manipulation of masses at its very best, which continues even today. Imagine a 500%+ explosion of the population of a community in one country and still the claims of being a victim. The platinum victim card was first invoked in the late 1800s, revived during the early to mid-1900s, and is still continuing even today.
What’s crucial to recognize here is that the ones who are hardworking rarely call themselves a victim. It’s almost always the ones with privileges that think they are entitled to special treatment. The sad truth is that we hardly know of the great Muslim leaders who truly worked for the nation rather than for religious dominance. Many of them fought lone battles, ousted by their own people. Those are the men (& women) we need to know about (the book mentions a few of them, and I couldn’t remember reading about any of them earlier).
Another (not-so) surprising aspect is that the two-nation theory was first proposed by Syed Ahmed Khan in the 1830s something and promoted by Jinnah. But the blame falls on Savarkar, who wanted to keep the country united. (And no, I didn’t get to know of this after reading the book. I found out about this around 4-5 years ago.)
I have to add a point that my heart stopped when I read that the great Mahatma thought there was no need to have an army for India after the partition. He didn’t want Indians to defend themselves from their ‘brothers’. Given the number of attacks we faced during the last 7.5 decades, this one statement was enough to show his inability to see the truth for what it is. Thank God, good sense prevailed in some of the then Congressmen who rejected his words.
I could write a lot more, but will instead leave you with a couple of quotes from the book.
Dr. Mukund Ramrao Jayakar said, ‘The word communalism has acquired a most extraordinary significance these days [even before the partition]. If I venture to speak for Hindu rights, I am a communalist, but if a Muslim with nationalist tendencies fights for Muslim rights, he still remains a nationalist.’ [This was about Jinnah.]
If nationalism means that the Hindus should cease to be Hindus, even culturally, racially, or religiously, while all other non-Hindu Indians despise to adopt that attitude in their own cases, then such a nationalism is the most criminal and dastardly betrayal of our true national soul and ancestral heritage.
Any nation who helps India or is friendly towards her struggle for freedom is our friend and the nation which opposes us or presents a policy inimical to us is our foe.
I respect his ability to see patterns by stripping away the disguises with such ease. How clear and precise his opinions were! Sure, he was far from perfect; but who is flawless?
The book has some repetitions and quite a few references to the current government (which might actually dilute the purpose of the book). However, it presents the partition from a broader perspective with emphasis on the political and personal ambitions/ ideologies of a handful of men who successfully messed up millions of lives for their benefit.
I received a review copy from Indica Books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.
This review is posted as a part of the Thousand Reviewers Club 2022, an initiative by Indica and Indica Books.
*****
PS: I haven’t yet read any other books about Savarkar, and this is my first major reading.
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