Akbar of Hindustan

Title: Akbar of Hindustan

Author: Parvati Sharma

Publisher: Juggernaut Books, 2022 (First)

ISBN: 9789391165512

Pages: 386

 

There are very many number of books on Akbar in vogue. This book is the latest in the series. I slightly wondered what new things this author has in her oeuvre to tell us that we have not heard before and prepared a blank sheet in my mind to note down such things. What came of it I will describe at the end of this review. And I also failed to categorize this work into any literary genre. Obviously the author wanted some parts to shine out as a novel, some parts as story, still others as historical fiction and the whole of it perhaps as history. Unfortunately, it has turned out to be a chimera of fact and fiction. The Mughal period of Indian history is now increasingly subjected to critical review by scholars who want to eliminate the hyperbole, false accounts and misleading analyses put together by Left-Islamist historians earlier. This book is a feeble attempt to drive a wedge in the popular narrative by inventing – or at least unearthing from hitherto unheard of texts – incidents in which historical characters who are popular in today’s India have acted in ways that defy modern morality. Thus we read about Tulsidas regretting that the Shudras imparting knowledge to non-Brahmins and Birbal arranging the demolition of a temple. Akbar’s reign was marked by a pattern of steady, unrelenting expansion of the realm, a clear focus on the generation of wealth and an equally resolute suppression of any opposition to the emperor. This is clearly catalogued in the book. Parvati Sharma lives in New Delhi where she studied English literature and Indian history. She writes novels and children’s books. Her debut work was known for its depictions of love and sexuality in urban India.

 

The book is not tightly organized around a defining layout and completely lacks a structure. The emperor’s sayings and deeds constitute the bulk of the narrative. While reading through it, one cannot help wonder at the part played by chance in the crucial battle at Panipat (the second). Akbar’s forces met Hemchandra Vikramaditya (Hemu) who was the vizier of Adil Shah Suri, the last of the Suri clan. Hemu did not wear a helmet while riding an elephant in the battle. Suddenly, an arrow pierced his eye, but he bravely pulled the arrow out and with it the eye out of the socket which he wrapped in his handkerchief. But after some time, he slumped unconscious. The elephant was caught and the grievously injured Hemu brought before Akbar who was only fourteen years old. His regent Bairam Khan wanted Akbar to behead him as ‘a blow for empire and Islam’. Akbar meekly obeyed. The Mughals did not leave Hemu’s eighty-year old father also. They captured him and offered him his life in return for converting to Islam. He protested that ‘after eight decades of having worshipped my god according to my religion, why should I change it at this time merely from fear of my life and without understanding it come into your way of worship?’. The fanatical Mughals were not diverted by such theological niceties. The old man was summarily executed like his son. These incidents show how bloodthirsty and devoid of compassion the Mughals acted. But remember, they were the most benevolent under Akbar!

 

It is true that Akbar’s attitude changed during the latter half of his reign and other religions received some royal patronage but never equal status with Islam. Akbar established the Ibadat Khana as a debating platform for various Muslim sects to argue among themselves. But religion is best believed in its entirety rather than subjecting it to rational arguments by the opponents. Akbar saw through its hollowness and was disillusioned. Then he invited other heterodox sects and even other religions. In the end, he decided to start a cult of his own called din-e-Ilahi. Surprisingly, the author makes very few remarks about the new sect on which historian Abraham Eraly heaps his praise as “for a brief, shining moment, a new and brilliant star blazed over Fatehpur Sikri. Then the moment passed. And the night closed in again”. Sharma consistently tries to gloss over temple destruction and forced conversion which was commonplace. In one instance, she talks about Birbal, Akbar’s Hindu minister, sacking and desecrating a temple in Nagarkot and concludes rhetorically that ‘a Shia commander, running a bloody campaign for a Brahmin courtier by assaulting a shrine is not the usual template of bigotry’ (p.175). It is construed as ‘changing affiliations and antagonisms that propelled Akbar’s world’. This is a typical trait of the Left-Islamist cabal. They would arraign any number of reasons or provocations for an act which they cannot openly support with modern morality, but would never pinpoint religious bigotry of the invaders as the prime cause.

 

It is really amusing to observe Parvati Sharma bringing up a retrospective justification for ‘love jihad’ which is a serious problem now faced by Indian society with the story of a couple engaging in inter-religious love. In her story, a Sayyid nobleman falls in love with a Hindu married woman in Agra. Musa and Mohini, as they are called, secretly united twice but forcibly separated each time by the woman’s relatives. Musa dies of heartburn at the ‘injustice’ of Hindus not letting a married woman into his harem. At this, Mohini duly converts to Islam and commits suicide. The author then seethes at the fact that the couple would have met the same fate in twenty-first century Agra. She is probably right. Today’s Agra, or Uttar Pradesh or even India for that matter, has not reached the stage already arrived at in Pakistan where Hindu women are simply kidnapped, declared to have embraced Islam and her relatives then lose any legal right to reclaim her. Is this the model she wants to establish in India? Now we go back to Mughal times for a moment to examine love as a noble emotion that transcends religion. If such was the case, then why is it that not a single case is known where a Mughal princess married a Hindu nobleman who were said to be aplenty in the Mughal court? After all, love is blind, but the author is not. And she knows how to sound the right notes to appear secular in today’s India. Akbar commissioned many translation projects of Hindu religious texts in Sanskrit to Persian. But behind his back, the Persian scholars reproached the books proclaiming polytheism. Badauni termed the Mahabharata ‘a collection of puerile absurdities’ (p.196). Further details of the reluctance of Persian scholars literally to touch Indian epics with their hands can be seen in my review of Audrey Truschke’s book, ‘Culture of Encounters – Sanskrit at the Mughal Court’ earlier in this blog.

 

The book offers nothing new and is just a run-of-the-mill product that satisfies nobody. It starts with an intimidating cast of characters that gives 106 names with their relationship noted in a small paragraph. Needless to say, this is a pure wastage of time as the readers won’t be able to remember even half of them. And some of them are mentioned only once in the main text, so this exercise appears pointless. The requirement of referring to the names after reading the book does not arise either. The author should have provided a caveat informing the readers that they stand to lose nothing if they skipped the section. The book also includes many irrelevant side issues like Akbar’s hatred of homosexuality among his high-ranked officers and the detailed handling of such an affair involving an Uzbek warlord in his service. What is most repugnant about the book is its thinly veiled attempt at cheap political criticism aimed at current nationalist parties. Historians – I am not sure if the author can be called one – should stick to their topics rather than dabble in contemporary political drama and make a mess of what they should have done.

 

In the beginning, I mentioned about a blank sheet in my mind. At the end of the reading, I had yet to scribble anything there apart from some remarks about the jarring political tone of the book. This book is useless as regards information or entertainment and hence not recommended.

 

Rating: 2 Star

 

The Anarchy

Title: The Anarchy – The East India Company, Corporate Violence and the Pillage of an Empire

Author: William Dalrymple

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019 (First)

ISBN: 9781526618504

Pages: 522

 

The eighteenth century was a critical period of transition in Indian history. The Mughal Empire began disintegrating immediately after the death of Aurangzeb. Or in other words, it can also be said that the pace of disintegration accelerated after fate removed Aurangzeb from the throne. A combination of weak and incompetent princes, dissension in the provinces, power struggles among princes and external threats destabilized the House of Timur day by day. It lost the reins completely after Nadir Shah’s invasion in 1739. Shah looted the entire wealth of the Mughals and carried away the treasure to Persia. The financially wrecked empire than had to deal with the English East India Company (EIC) which was growing from strength to strength in Bengal. The Hindus were also making resurgence in the form of Marathas and Jats. The Mughal emperor was literally at the protection of the Maratha confederacy. This book covers the period of five decades from 1756 – on the brink of Plassey – to 1803 when the British defeated the Marathas and took over as the Mughal emperor’s protectors. The contention between the British, French, Mughals and their vassals like the Bengal Nawab, Nizam of Hyderabad and Tipu Sultan and also the Marathas created a condition of anarchy in the subcontinent. William Dalrymple makes an excellent survey of the country in that period in this book. This is the latest volume from him. The book attempts to answer how a business corporation based in London managed to replace the mighty Mughal Empire as masters of India.

 

Dalrymple presents a prescient review of the operations of EIC and how the U-turn in the flow of money between India and England occurred after the company started poking its nose in regional battles with Mughal vassals. By the 1750s, the items handled by the company were tea, saltpeter, silk and cotton cloth. It had to exchange silver coins to purchase goods in India. £6 million (£630 million in current values) had been sent out in the first half of eighteenth century, but very little silver bullion was dispatched after Plassey. Bengal was the sink into which foreign bullion disappeared before 1757. But after this crucial year, Bengal became a treasure trove from which vast amounts of wealth were drained without any prospect of return. A large portion of the money ended up in the hands of company officials illegally. A good proportion of the loot of Bengal went directly into Clive’s pockets. The entire contents of the Bengal treasury were loaded into a hundred boats and transferred to company’s strongholds. India was being robbed in plain daylight. This required a strong military force to keep peace and order among the contenders. By the time EIC captured Delhi, the company had trained up a private security force of 200,000 sepoys which was double the size of the regular British army. It marshalled more fire power than any nation-state in Asia.

 

Dalrymple then makes a unique observation that the conquest of India was not the end-result of an imperialist masterplan but rather the unexpected side-effects of manipulations in regional politics for power. Readers get stunned at this straight formulation of a new theory, but the author makes a convincing argument of the case. Siraj ud-Daula, whom the English defeated at Plassey, was a cruel despot who rough-treated his own nobles and Jagat Seth, the most powerful banking house of Bengal. Mir Jaffar, Siraj’s paymaster, turned against him with the help of Jagat Seth and encouragement from EIC. This was something quite new in Indian history. This was an instance of a group of Indian financiers plotting with an international trading corporation to use its own private security force to overthrow a regime they saw threatening the income they earned from trade. This was not part of any imperial strategy. In fact, the EIC men were ignoring their strict instructions from London, which were only to repulse French attacks. Seeing opportunities for personal enrichment as well as political and economic gain for their country, they dived headlong into the conspiracies. The Battle of Plassey was fought with only 800 Europeans and 2200 South Indian sepoys. After the Queen’s oversight was mandated by regulations, the company had to wage many battles which eventually bankrupted them.

 

The Battle of Plassey was a turning point in Indian history as the beginning of the end of Mughal colonialism and rise of British colonialism. This was the moment when the traders associated with a for-profit trading company engaged in administration of the land. Clive had intended only to establish British trade on a favourable footing and to ensure the accession of a friendlier Nawab than Siraj ud-Daula. But what they had in fact done was permanently to undermine the authority of Nawabs, bringing chaos to the most peaceful and profitable parts of the country. The Nawabs hoisted by the company soon turned against them and engaged in battle at Buxar. The nominal Mughal emperor Shah Alam also participated in the battle with his troops. The Mughals were convincingly defeated and they forfeited to the company the right to collect taxes (diwani) in the provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The emperor signed off economic management of the three richest provinces to EIC, taking Rs. 2.6 million in his pocket annually. The only condition he set to the company was to ‘govern the provinces agreeably to the rules of Mohammed and the law of the empire’. This concession enabled the company to soar high to conquer the entire land.

 

The book then takes a detour to examine the rising opposition in England to the company’s way of operations in India. Immediately after the company received the diwani, Bengal went through a gruesome famine lasting several years. Millions perished, but the company made an increase in tax collection. By 1771, word was spreading about company’s inhumanity in Bengal. The number of dead and dying was simply too vast to hide. The immense wealth flaunted by returned company officials – called nabobs – also caused resentment. Strident demands arose for the Crown to take over Bengal as a government colony so ending the asset-stripping of the province by a for-profit company. In 1772, several banks in England and the continent went bankrupt and the EIC came on the brink of loan default. Having a sizeable income of Britain channeled in through the remittances of the company, it was simply too big to be allowed to go down under. In return for a loan of £1.4 million as a bailout package, the company agreed for parliamentary control through the Regulating Act of 1773. Henceforth, parliament took upon itself the right to appoint the company’s governor general in India and to oversee its operations. The 1773 Act did little to muzzle the worst excesses but it created a precedent. It marked the beginning of a steady process of state interference that would ultimately end in outright nationalization in 1858.

 

The plundering mindset of both the Mughals and the British is evident in their sharing of spoils from Bengal treasury while the province was reeling under the worst famine and famished people were dying in hundreds on the wayside. Stretching the comparison a bit longer, it can be concluded that the Mughals and EIC feasted on the carcass of Bengal. While EIC increased its remittances to London during the famine, Emperor Shah Alam anxiously demanded the company to pay him the tribute from Bengal as he was in extreme demand of money. But don’t be misled by the urgency of the request! This was not to pay for any famine relief, but only to satisfy the demands of his court musicians and dancing girls. The author also portrays the extreme helplessness of the emperor. His forces had earlier defeated Rohilla chief Zabita Khan and sacked his Pathargarh fort. Shah Alam took his son Ghulam Qadir to Delhi and used him as a catamite. After a few years, Ghulam Qadir attacked Delhi while the Maratha protection force was engaged in an internal conflict among them. Qadir extracted his revenge from the royal family by raping the royal princesses, forcing the princes to perform dances in women’s costume and finally gouging Shah Alam’s eyes out with his own hands. The Marathas under Mahadji Scindia chased Qadir and retaliated by severing his head before inflicting all the punishments he gave to Shah Alam, who was the nominal overlord of the Marathas.

 

As is usual among left-liberal writers, Dalrymple strives hard to portray Tipu Sultan as a benevolent and impartial ruler who treated all religions equal. The attempt is quite clumsy and unconvincing though. He accuses the British to have consistently portrayed Tipu as a savage and fanatical barbarian, but he was in truth a connoisseur and intellectual with a library containing 2000 books (p.321). Tipu was also in the habit of sending offerings to Sringeri Mutt. Will these mitigate his atrocious conduct described by the author on the same page? Tipu Sultan had a cruel bend of mind and was in the habit of cutting off arms, legs, ears and noses of prisoners before hanging them. He routinely circumcised captive enemy combatants and brutally converted them to Islam. He destroyed temples and churches of those he conquered. Another of his favourite pastime went like this: he tied naked Hindu and Christian prisoners to the legs of elephants and made the animals to run in opposite directions till the bodies of the victims are torn to pieces. The modern ISIS has also replicated this kind of punishment, probably stimulated by the deeds of their ‘illustrious’ predecessor. The only difference is that they used SUVs rather than elephants. One has to change with the times, isn’t it?

 

The East India Company sucked the life blood of India for a century before it was dismantled after the 1857 war of independence. But if you look at it from a modern management expert’s viewpoint, it was the ultimate model of commercial efficiency. After a century of incorporation, it still had only 35 permanent employees in its head office. The firm managed military conquest, subjugation and plunder of vast tracts of south Asia while operating from a modest office building in London. But what played out in the end was the supreme act of corporate violence in history. Dalrymple plays up the usual liberal trope of the enlightened Mughals in treating their subjects without consideration of the religion they belong to. We see a conscious selection of passages which favour the narrative of ‘magnanimous Mughals’. Not content with stopping there, he goes a step further and includes passages depicting the barbarity of Marathas. We read about Shah Alam’s poems praising Hindu gods on the one hand and the Marathas destroying temples in Bengal on the other. A notable feature of the book is the special care it devotes to estimate the present money value of the amounts mentioned in historical records. Seeing these figures Indians would surely get heartburn at the vast amount of wealth plundered out of India by the British, Persians, Afghans and Mughals. Quite expectedly, Dalrymple’s style of writing is a delight to readers.

 

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

 

India, Bharat and Pakistan

Title: India, Bharat and Pakistan – The Constitutional Journey of a Sandwiched Civilisation

Author: J. Sai Deepak

Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2022 (First)

ISBN: 9789354353017

Pages: 616

 

The traditional accounts of India’s freedom struggle make us believe that Muslim League raised the demand of Pakistan with the Lahore Declaration in Mar 1940 and thereby creating the Two-Nation theory. It then grew so strong in the coming years as to receive acceptance even from Gandhi a few years later. As a result, the country was partitioned in 1947. This argument posits that the Two-Nation theory was a political idea put forward by the Muslim League, which was a political party. However, it was not difficult for discerning readers to shred this popular, comforting and infantile fiction to pieces with a little application of common sense. This book attributes the theory as a purely religious one having its origins in the minds of a few bigoted men after the disintegration of Mughal Empire by the middle of the eighteenth century. It is a fundamental principle in Islam that asks its followers to reside in a country where the Sharia law is in place. If it is not, they have two options. One is to fight their way to power by overthrowing the rulers through a holy war and make Sharia rule the land. But if the ruling agency is very powerful, this may not be possible and the believers are then exhorted to migrate to a country where Islamic law is in place. When Mughals ruled India in their prime, the entire land lay under the yoke of Sharia and offered the perfect abode of domicile for Muslims. With the decline of the Mughals, the Marathas, Jats, Sikhs and Rajputs assumed dominance in North India. Islamic revivalist movements came up in this period as a response to this loss of political power which grew into prominence under different guises in the coming centuries. Muslims were pacified under British ascendancy after 1857, but as soon as democratic reforms began to be implemented, they feared Hindu oppression owing to their superior numbers. As far as religious principles went, the British were at least People of the Book, while Hindus were ‘despised polytheists’. The Two-Nation theory thus originated from the reluctance of pious Muslims to live under Hindu rule which came into being in the eighteenth century. This book is the second in the trilogy on India’s constitutional development written by J. Sai Deepak and asserts that the Two-Nation theory cast its shadows on every political development such as the partition of Bengal, establishment of separate electorate for Muslims and the Khilafat Movement. The first volume was reviewed earlier in this blog.

 

What makes Sai Deepak stand out from the crowd of authors who had handled this subject earlier is his original thinking which found the real origins of the Two-Nation theory to the collapse of the most powerful Muslim empire in India – the Mughals. After its disintegration, the Islamic scholars sought solace in going back to the fundamentals of the religion and to revive it thereby. Shah Waliullah Dehlawi is the most prominent cleric of this period who propounded the bigoted tenets of Wahhabism which he encountered during his stay in Arabia. He exhorted the Muslims of the subcontinent not to integrate into society, since contact with Hindus would contaminate their Islamic purity. He urged them to see themselves as part of a global Ummah (religious community). He mandated them to follow the customs and mores of the Prophet. He was such a Sunni hardliner that he allowed Shias to celebrate their festivals in public but only with strict moderation. The Hindu infidels were not even permitted this somewhat shard of a privilege. Waliullah hated India, his homeland, so much that he invited the Afghan warlord Ahmed Shah Durrani to invade India to teach the infidels a lesson. In his letter, he detailed the strengths and weaknesses of Marathas and Jats. This was how the Two-Nation theory sprouted in India.

 

The author then lists out the religious movements that spread in all parts of the country like wildfire. The Faraizi Movement in Bengal founded by Haji Shariatullah in the 1820s was a violent organisation. Atrocities against Hindus spread in Bengal as its consequence, including destruction of temples and idols. Under Syed Ahmed Barelwi’s lead, Muslims in Bengal joined pan-Indian networks to fight common enemies such as the Sikh kingdom in Punjab. With Wahhabi influence, it became a practice in some Muslim families to earmark a portion of their earnings for contribution to jihad or to send their men to participate in it at least for a few months. Wahhabi thought was taken forward by other schools such as Ahl-i-Hadith, Deobandi, Barelwi, Nadwah and Aligarh movements.

 

Clubbing the Aligarh Movement with other hard-line religious associations may surprise some naïve souls. It is true that Aligarh was the only place where Islamic teaching was juxtaposed with modern Western learning, but the religious axis on which it turned was the same as the others. The combined effect of Syed Ahmed Khan and Jamal al-Din Afghani was the simultaneous growth of Muslim nationalism and pan-Islamism. Khan openly professed that Muslims are a separate nation in India and his reconciliation with pan-Islamism did not bode well for India. Liberal thinkers attribute all the blame for religious unrest in India to the ‘Divide-and-Rule’ policy of the British. Here, Deepak makes a sagacious observation. To blame the ‘Divide-and-Rule’ policy is to wistfully and willfully ignore uncomfortable and ‘unsecular’ facts. The British policy succeeded only because there were serious, pre-existing and irreconcilable religious, cultural, linguistic and civilizational fissures between the two communities. We were divided and they ruled.

 

The partition of Bengal was the definite moment in which the Muslim nation first asserted itself. This critical episode is given a fitting coverage in the book. The partition was more on religious lines than administrative convenience as the newly formed province of East Bengal and Assam was having a Muslim majority and became a centre of consolidation of Muslim interests and the point of convergence of Muslim organisations from across the country. Muslim associations in the new province celebrated Oct 16, 1905, the day on which the partition was officially declared, as a day of rejoicing. Congress and other Hindu organisations strongly opposed the measure and the agitation continued till it was partially withdrawn in 1911. However, Bengali Muslims stayed away from anti-partition protests and remained loyal to the British. Meanwhile, the British introduced reservation for Muslims in government jobs in the new province. Ulemas toured the province with incendiary speeches that led to widespread attacks on Hindus, especially women. This was a dress rehearsal for the ethnic pogrom against Hindus unleashed in 1946-47 in the same regions. When the partition was annulled, Bihar and Orissa was separated from the parent province. Now, the unity of Bengal was ensured, but the entire province then became one with a Muslim majority.

 

While the Bengal partition produced a physical shape of the Muslim nation, the 1909 Morley-Minto reforms outstretched its vicious tentacles with separate electorates for Muslims. This sordid chapter also finds prominent mention in the book. While all other minorities such as Christians, Parsees, Jews and others were treated as members of the general electorate, Muslims as a community was offered a separate electorate. In this manner, Muslim separatism was constitutionally cemented in the political psyche of India. Not content with that, Muslims were also given more seats than their population numbers warranted in view of the ‘historical and political superiority of Muslims’. The Congress, especially its moderate faction, had taken colonization as a time for beneficial political apprenticeship and wanted to present a united front to Britain to secure self-government. Naturally, they were willing to make critical concessions to Muslim demands to keep them along. The Muslim League realized this weakness early on and exploited it to the hilt. Deepak establishes that appeasement of the Muslim League was entrenched in Congress well before Gandhi took centre-stage. Jinnah assumed an amphibian role at this time by becoming a member of both Congress and the League and put his membership of the Congress to good use of Muslim community by softening the opposition within Congress to separate electorates for Muslims.

 

Another major contribution of the book is its categorical establishment that Gandhi was not the originator of Congress’ Muslim appeasement. It started right from that party’s birth in 1885 and went into overdrive after Muslim League’s formation in 1906. At least in one instance, it went far more than the League was willing to go – on the issue of the fate of the Turkish sultan who was also the caliph of Muslims who was defeated by Britain and its allies in the First World War. Gandhi’s rise as a national leader was significantly owed to the Khilafat Movement. His agitation against the Rowlatt Act too was made possible due to the support of the Khilafatists. This was the first time Muslims came out on the warpath after 1857, but unfortunately, it was for a cause not even remotely connected to India’s destiny. In fact, its pan-Islamic objectives threatened the national aspirations of India. Maulana Muhammad Ali declared that he will assist the Afghans if they invaded India. This open threat alienated a sizeable cross-section of Hindu supporters. Within no time, the Khilafat agitation changed track and turned into forced conversion and ethnic cleansing of Hindus, especially in Malabar in 1921. The horrifying fact was that the Khilafat leaders refused to condemn the brutal atrocities even after they were widely published by the Press. Maulana Hazrat Mohani, who was one of the founders of the Communist Party of India (CPI), informed in a meeting that ‘since the Moplahs suspected their Hindu neighbours of colluding with the government, they were justified in presenting the Quran to the Hindus. And if the Hindus became Musalmans to save themselves from death, it was a voluntary change of faith and not forcible conversion (p.469). This was how the Khilafat leaders actually justified the murder, rape and forced conversion while the Congress leaders continued to keep their eyes firmly shut.

 

Another idea this book conveys is the longevity of the fundamental Indic consciousness that animates the Indian communal being. Indic consciousness was able to produce society-based institutions and individuals who constantly and uncompromisingly advanced the Indic civilizational cause and space in the two waves of Middle Eastern and European colonialism. This ability preserved the Consciousness then but is now dulled and stifled under the third wave of colonization, namely, under the Nehruvian Marxist/post-colonial establishment which even refuses to acknowledge the Middle Eastern colonialism which ravaged the country perhaps much more detrimentally than the British.

 

This book is rather huge even though it covers only the period from 1905 to 1924. It is a worthy follower of the first book of the trilogy – India that is Bharat – in content, but rather less enjoyable due to the frequent and very long extracts from speeches, books, memorials and debates. At least a quarter of the book is filled with verbatim reproduction of speeches on 1909 reforms and the Khilafat. This is very tiring for the reader as the author seems to have taken a temporary leave of absence and left the readers to deal directly with the jargon and vocabulary of politicians who lived more than a century ago. The book consistently uses the terms Bharat/Bharatiya for India/Indian which proclaims its firm mooring to Indian, er, Bharatiya consciousness. The author also emphasizes the Hindu roots of Sikhs and how fanatical Muslims treated both as the same. The unseating of the Khalsa kingdom of Lahore was a sworn objective of Wahhabi extremists in the early half of the nineteenth century. This is especially valid as the Khalistanis are now hand in glove with the Wahhabis.

 

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

 

Savarkar – A Contested Legacy

Title: Savarkar – A Contested Legacy 1924 – 1966

Author: Vikram Sampath

Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2021 (First)

ISBN: 9780670090310

Pages: 691

 

This is the second and final volume of Vikram Sampath’s definitive book on Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. The first volume, ‘Savarkar – Echoes from a Forgotten Past’ was reviewed earlier in this blog. This volume seamlessly picks up the narrative from where the first book left it with Savarkar’s transfer from Andaman to a jail on Indian mainland. He continued in preventive detention for thirteen more years and was released only in 1937 after serving twenty seven years in detention. Savarkar became a controversial leader after his release from captivity. He strongly objected to the nonviolent gimmicks of Gandhi and also the violent demands of Muslims for Pakistan. Savarkar never minced his words, especially in exposing the religious bigotry beneath the Pakistan demand even though it was couched in seemingly innocuous, westernized jargon of nationhood. After Pakistan was conceded, Gandhi was severely chastised by Hindu leaders. Savarkar was implicated in Gandhi’s murder carried out by two members of the Hindu Mahasabha which he led as its president. Even though the trial and appeal courts honourably acquitted him, Savarkar is still stigmatized by vested interests for the alleged association with the convicts. We read about all these issues in this volume. Savarkar and Gandhi fought for the nation’s freedom but an ocean separated their outlooks. Savarkar stood for modernity and science, separation of ritualistic religion from politics, militarization of Hindu society and dismantling the caste system. Gandhi, meanwhile, spoke of faith, religion and ahimsa, approved of the caste system in principle and had not much time or appetite for science. This volume caps Vikram Sampath’s timely and brilliant effort to examine a renowned freedom fighter such as Savarkar in a light unshaded by Left-Islamist perspective.

 

After completing fourteen years in different jails, Savarkar was transferred to detention in Ratnagiri district for five years under stringent conditions not to involve in political activity. The place was cleverly chosen as it had no rail lines or telephones in 1924. He was subjected to the strictest surveillance on every spoken or written word. The visitors were also trailed. Every sentence or word that came from him was dissected and analysed by several government departments keen to rescind his release. He had to obtain permission from the highest circles even to travel to his home district of Nashik occasionally. The detention was extended four times of two-year duration after the initial five-year period ended and Savarkar was fully released only in 1937 after spending 27 years in captivity. He was 27 years old while going to jail and was 54 while coming out of it, having sacrificed the prime of his youth in incarceration. Finding a means of livelihood in the period of house arrest was a serious task as the government had seized all properties of Savarkar and his father. His degrees – Bachelor of Arts and Law – were revoked. All his books were banned thereby eliminating the chance of getting royalty on its sale.

 

Once he was barred from political activity, he devoted his time to strive for reforms of the Hindu society. It was the aroused Hindu consciousness in the wake of the communal riots after Gandhi’s Khilafat agitation that Savarkar utilized as a crucible for his experiments on social reforms. He hit upon ending untouchability of the lower castes as the start of his grand program. The untouchables were not allowed entry to public places nor permitted to draw water from public wells. Savarkar earnestly instituted the practice of inter-dining and persuaded upper castes to allow children of the lower castes to study along with their own kids. In 1929, the Vitthala temple of Ratnagiri allowed entry of untouchables inside the temple for worship. Still, many Brahmins did not open their temples, claiming it to be private property. Savarkar constructed the Patit Pavan Mandir in Ratnagiri as a fitting reply which was open to all classes and had a Dalit as its chief priest. Progressive upper castes also prayed there. On the third day of its opening, he arranged an inter-dining program. He also operated a café in Ratnagiri which was open to all castes. Savarkar attacked the scriptural underpinnings of untouchability too. He asked that if the four varnas are the bedrock of Hinduism, how is it that we have defied this maxim and created a fifth class of untouchables. Thus, those who have already destroyed the Chaturvarna system are crying foul about the collapse of Sanatan Dharma. The book includes a prescient comparison of the views of Gandhi, Ambedkar and Savarkar on how untouchability should be ended. Gandhi wanted the pace of a snail, Ambedkar desired that of a cheetah and Savarkar’s was in the middle of them!

 

A good part of the criticism of Savarkar in contemporary society derives its origin from the perceived anti-Muslim rhetoric that is seen in his writings and heard in his speeches. However, the virulence of Savarkar’s opposition to the Muslims during his years as the head of the Hindu Mahasabha would need to be seen in the context of the times where the vivisection of the country on communal lines was being vociferously demanded and pushed through by the leaders of that community. His advancement of the ‘Hindu Rashtra’ was another point of contention. But Savarkar’s conception of a Hindu was devoid of the narrow religious underpinnings of the term. A Hindu is one who considers this vast stretch of land called Bharat from the Indus to the sea as the land of one’s ancestors and holy land (pitrbhu and punyabhu). The Hindu Rashtra does not envisage any preferential treatment or prerogative for the majority community. The problem arises when people examine the treatment meted out to religious minorities in all Islamic states and fear that it will be repeated against minorities in a Hindu Rashtra too. Of course, there will be no special favour for the minority and the democratic idea of ‘one man, one vote’ will be put in place. No enhanced weightage will be extended to a citizen’s vote based on his religion. The foreign policy will be set purely based on the nation’s interests and academic-political ideologies like communism, Nazism or fascism would have no place in it.

 

The book narrates in unequivocal terms that though ideological rivalry existed between Gandhi and Savarkar, it never degenerated into personal enmity. Savarkar severely criticized Gandhi’s absolute nonviolence. Adherence to nonviolence is laudable as a principle, but Savarkar always maintained that one is required to take up arms for a just cause. Acting otherwise is impractical monomania and sheer insanity. The Mahasabha encouraged youths to militarize themselves by joining the army and getting trained. As the Second World War loomed, the British abandoned their practice of recruiting only the martial races. Several Hindus joined the army and the percentage of Hindus in the army went up.

 

Savarkar coined the term ‘Hindutva’ and the proponents of Hindutva revere him today. However, the Mahasabha and the RSS were not on very cordial terms for a considerable length of time. Sampath devotes a few sections to explain and analyse this fratricidal animosity. Excessive generalization and formulaic definition of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hindutva’, however rational and logical it might have been, alienated several sections from accepting Mahasabha’s viewpoint. Savarkar was on very friendly relations with RSS founder Hedgewar, but it was not so with Golwalkar, his successor. Slowly, the Sangh and Mahasabha drifted apart from each other. Mahasabha always took on hero worship while the Sangh was ideology-based. Moreover, Savarkar’s outspoken criticism alienated other leaders too. As a tactic of political expediency, Mahasabha members in the provincial legislative assemblies allied with Muslim League and served in their ministries in Sindh and Bengal. But the reticence of their allies did not detract the League from passing Pakistan resolutions in the assemblies. Mahasabha members were then accused of opportunism in holding on to power even at the cost of honour and patriotism. Syamaprasad Mukherjee became the president of Mahasabha, but he joined the Nehru cabinet. Eventually, the Mahasabha became irrelevant in Indian politics.

 

Savarkar turned notorious the moment he was accused as a conspirator in Gandhi murder. Both Godse and Narayan Apte, those who were sentenced to death for killing Gandhi, were workers of the Mahasabha and personally known to Savarkar. Exploiting this link to the hilt, Savarkar was falsely implicated as the master brain behind the murder. No credible evidence or witnesses were there to convict him and so the police was forced to fabricate them. Savarkar was taken from judicial custody and photographed along with Godse and other accused so as to create an insinuation of guilt. But concocted evidence could not stand judicial scrutiny. Gopal Godse, brother of Nathuram Godse who was Gandhi’s assassin, mentions that not a part of his body was free of bruises of custodial torture to elicit confession. Digambar Badge turned approver and testified against Savarkar. The investigation and trial became an opportunity and excuse for witch-hunt to settle scores with political opponents. Police believed that ‘someone up there’ would be highly gratified if Savarkar could be implicated. This was a veiled reference to none other than the Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The book covers the trial in some detail at the end of which Savarkar was acquitted. The government went in appeal and Godse made a brilliant speech defending his action. Justice G. D. Khosla of the Punjab High Court who had heard the appeal remarked after Godse’s testimony that ‘had the audience on that day been constituted into a jury, they’d have brought in a verdict of ‘not guilty’ by an overwhelming majority!

 

The book boldly attempts to describe the planned anti-Brahmin riots that took place in the aftermath of Gandhi assassination. Just like the Congress workers who attacked Sikhs in Delhi after Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, Congress workers chanting ‘Gandhiji ki jai’ attacked the persons and property of Maharashtrian Brahmins just because the killer happened to belong to that community. This episode was put under wraps by the succeeding governments even though hundreds of people were killed in what practically amounted to genocide. In continuation with the first volume, Sampath treats his protagonist with no superhuman attributes nor attempts to whitewash every behavioural trait. It really looks like Savarkar was uncomfortable with spending long prison terms and tried every strategy to get out, including writing humiliating mercy petitions. When Nehru government incarcerated him, the conditions they put forward for his release were strange: Savarkar should abstain from politics for a year, or the 1952 general election should be over, or the start of the Third World War, whichever occurred first. This was adding insult to injury, yet Savarkar agreed. The book provides only a very short account of Savarkar’s rationalism and that too, portraying him as somewhat insensitive at the demise of his much devoted wife. The book serves its purpose well even though the frequent and long quotations from other books affect readability.

 

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star