JUNE 30, 2019 • THE WEEK 69do believe in the four varnas... all occupations
should be hereditary. Millions of people are not
going to become prime ministers and viceroys.”
Th is to Ambedkar or Savarkar was antithetical to
the fundamental concept of democracy where
anyone, irrespective of their dynastic heritage,
could actually aspire to become a prime minister
or a viceroy!
Gandhi came to visit Savarkar at his house in
Ratnagiri in March 1927. Th e two debated and
diff ered for hours, especially on the shuddhi or
reconversion to Hinduism that Savarkar was
undertaking. While taking leave, Gandhi told
Savarkar that noticeably they disagreed on
several issues but hoped that the latter would
have no objection to his experiments to deal
with the issues on hand. Savarkar gave a stern
reply: “Mahatmaji, you will be making these
experiments at the cost of the nation.” Th e two
never met thereafter.
Following his release in 1937, Savarkar be-
came president of the Hindu Mahasabha, pitting
himself directly against Gandhi’s Congress and
Jinnah’s Muslim League. He opposed what he
considered foolhardy jail-fi lling agitations like
the Quit India, and instead actively support-
ed and helped Rash Behari Bose and Subhas
Chandra Bose and their Indian National Army
in recruiting troops for the army. Th at it was the
Naval Mutiny of 1946 in Bombay that eventually
got us freedom is something our history books
have cleverly concealed.
Savarkar was a die-hard rationalist and
advocated mechanisation, market-driven
economy, strong military and scientifi c temper.
He pooh-poohed Gandhi’s attribution of the
devastating 1934 Bihar earthquake as God’s
punishment for the caste system. “I still await to
hear,” he mocked, “what his inner voice will tell
us about why Quetta was rocked by an earth-
quake!”
When Gandhi spoke contemptuously about
the infl uence of cinema, Savarkar stepped up to
back it as the best example of modern technol-
ogy and that he disliked “any restrictions on the
innovative spirit of the human mind.” When the
interviewer asked him if these were contrary
to what Gandhi thought, he made it a point
to quip: “Is there anything common between
Gandhi and me?”
Gandhi was a great advocate of cow worship
and said in June 1921 that “no one who does
not believe in cow protection can possibly be a
Hindu. Cow worship means to me the worship
of innocence.” Savarkar’s views would shock the
cow-vigilante mobs today as he viewed cow only
as a “useful animal”. Savarkar argued that cow
deserves to be protected, but elevating it to the
status of worship was an insult to both human-
ity and divinity. “Th e qualities of the object of
veneration permeate to the worshipper,” he
believed, and hence the symbol of hindutva
was not to be the docile cow but the ferocious
man-lion Narasimha.
All his life Savarkar romanticised the idea of
dying a martyr. But even in death Gandhi stole a
march—being assassinated by a former acolyte
of Savarkar in 1948. Savarkar faced trial on ac-
count of his implication by association, but was
later acquitted for want of substantial evidence.DINODIA