Arun Shourie unpacks the myths of Savarkar and his role in Indian history

As for Bose and the INA, Bose himself had recorded his meeting with Savarkar in a book and said that nothing can be expected from this man… Savarkar’s claim that he provided the INA blueprint, which he claimed in three lectures he gave in Poona for the organisation Abhinav Bharat, is not true. The INA’s formation predates the meeting between the two, and not one of the things that he said will be done because he has ‘shown the way’ to Bose, happens. India does not rise in revolt. The INA soldiers were not given important jobs by the Japanese. Indian soldiers in the British Indian army did not defect — which he said they would as he had put Hindus in the army.

Hindutva, which you summarised at the end of the book, has been the foundation of the movement that led to a BJP-led NDA government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

This is not a book on Hindutva. So, in this last page I have said, if you follow the sutras that Savarkar laid down for the formation of an Indian state of Hindu rashtra, it will become an Islamic state in saffron of the kind of cruelty that Savarkar associated with the Islamic state, with the super cunning, super deceit, which he propagated and which he said Hindus must acquire. That kind of state will make India a Pakistan, which we are becoming…. So, in the last page, I’ve put out my plea: ‘Save Hinduism from Hindutva’.

Has this always been your position?

My position has always been the Express position, always the facts and nothing but the facts. So, if it was a question of Shah Bano’s case, I studied Islamic law, and wrote on Islamic law not from the Hindu-Hindutva point of view. In Savarkar’s case, he is being resurrected today, and I will only examine the facts. In this book you will find close to 600 references.

Don’t you think Savarkar’s anti-caste stance was more a pragmatic attempt to forge an anti-Muslim Hindu bloc than about an abolition of the caste system?

No. He was sincerely against caste. Caste, he feels, is the rakshas, and untouchability, the rakshasi of our history. The very people invoking his name are refusing to look at these things he wrote and wrote repeatedly. After all, they are fanning caste in every election speech and in selecting candidates. My book asks how such a rational person goes off the rails in political and strategic matters and so on.

According to Savarkar, what should Hindus and Muslims do and abide by in a Hindutva state? How have these thoughts panned out under various Indian governments?

Muslims, he felt, should live in India but as second-class citizens. I don’t remember any other government before this one that invoked the thoughts of Savarkar. Yes, for Maharashtra politics, a stamp was issued in his honour during Indira Gandhi’s time and a portrait was unveiled in Parliament during Vajpayee’s time but his thoughts weren’t discussed.