The Week India – June 30, 2019

66 THE WEEK • JUNE 30, 2019

THE PERFECT

ANTITHESIS

Gandhi and Savarkar will continue to

remain the two irreconcilable

poles of Indian history

BY VIKRAM SAMPATH

O

ctober 1906 saw an interesting

encounter between two individuals,

who were to be political rivals for

decades thereafter and whose ide-

ologies were to divide the Indian polity irrevo-

cably. Th is was when M.K. Gandhi came calling

to London’s India House and met Vinayak

Damodar Savarkar. Sponsored by a proponent

of Indian freedom, Shyamji Krishna Varma,

the India House was ostensibly fashioned as a

hostel for Indian students studying in London.

But under Savarkar’s leadership, it had trans-

formed into a veritable hotbed of “sedition and

dangerous revolutionary activities” spanning

across Europe.

Savarkar was busy cooking when Gandhi

tried to engage with him in a political discus-

sion. Cutting him short, Savarkar asked him

to fi rst have a meal with them. Gandhi was

VIKRAM SAMPATH

Author, historian and

a senior fellow at the

Nehru Memorial Museum

and Library. His upcom-

ing book is the biography

Savarkar: Echoes from a

Forgotten Past

horrifi ed to see the Chitpavan Brahmin, Savarkar,

cooking prawns. Being a staunch vegetarian,

Gandhi refused to partake. Savarkar apparently

mocked him: “If you cannot eat with us, how on

earth are you going to work with us? Moreover,

this is just boiled fi sh; while we want people

who are ready to eat the British alive!” Th is was

obviously not a great fi rst meeting and their

diff erences only increased with time.

Th e contrasts and similarities between the two

men are fascinatingly striking. Both spent signif-

icant times outside mainland India—Gandhi in

South Africa, Savarkar in London fi rst and then

ANIMAL

CHARM

Gandhi visiting a

dairy show in London