What Savarkar replied when Gandhi addressed Abdul Rashid, killer of Swami Shraddhanand as Brother?

 

What Savarkar replied when Gandhi addressed Abdul Rashid, killer of Swami Shraddhanand as Brother?

Dr Vivek Arya

Savarkar was disgusted by Gandhi's rationalization of it and the absence of an unequivocal condemnation. In a sharp riposte to these utterances of Gandhi, Savarkar wrote an essay titled "Gandhiji and the Innocent Hindus' on 10 February 1927. Condemning the addressing mode of 'brother' for a violent assassin, Savarkar said that it was alarming that the Hindu community had quietly decided to follow Gandhi's dictates. ‘All the world is after all a stage and every man an actor. So one has to live up to the role that one has donned. Given that he has donned the role of a Mahatma, a great soul, he has to buttress it with such classic dialogues. He is not a man of common abilities, like a Shivaji or a Ramdas, but a great Mahatma! With this sarcastic take, while he rationalized the need for Gandhi to take such irrational, moral high grounds even on a matter as heinous as murder, he wondered why the Hindus had to blindly follow all his edicts. Why did Gandhi, who was so eager to call Abdul Rashid a 'dear brother', not address the eighteen-yearold Bengali revolutionary Gopinath Saha too as a brother, he questioned. On 12 January 1924, Saha had attempted to murder Charles Tegart, the then head of the Detective Department of Calcutta Police. His attempt failed and he erroneously ended up killing a European civilian, Ernest Day, whom we mistook for Tegart. Saha was arrested and hanged in March 1924. When C.R. Das had tried to express some sympathy for this young man, Gandhi had leapt at him with ferocity that such violent acts could not be condoned. Could Gopinath have been a “dear brother” too?' asked Savarkar.

Answering his own question, Savarkar said, 'Oh! Innocent Hindus! Why do we even ask such a query of the Mahatma? Gopinath was a Hindu and a dastardly assassin. Does supporting a Hindu assassin befit the status of a great Mahatma? Certainly not! So it was but natural for him to reprimand C.R. Das for taking a lead on expressing love for a Hindu. How dare he, after all!' Gopinath, according to Savarkar, had made another cardinal mistake, in addition to having been unfortunately a Hindu—he had not murdered a Hindu saint. To take the side of an assassin, a Hindu at that, and of a British to moot, is blasphemy not just for a “Deshbandu” C.R. Das, but for the veritable Mahatma ji too. From the Indian Penal Code to Special Ordinance Acts and all our religious scriptures, which tenet can support such a sacrilege? But how will these foolish Hindus ever understand such lofty principles!

Savarkar further postulated that Gandhi's calling the Muslims his own blood relatives in the context of this assassination was also true and correct. Most of them, being converts, had Hindu blood in them after all. Moreover Muslims being human beings like the Hindus, the same human ood flowed in all of But then just last year when a young revolutionary Hindu had asked Gandhi in Young India whether we had the blood of brave warriors like Shivaji and Rana Pratap running in our veins, Gandhi had totally denounced the idea. Savarkar said that Gandhi had then remarked that “this was impossible. There are so many castes among Hindus. Hence the blood of a Rajput or Maratha cannot be the same as a Brahmin or a Bania.' Poking fun at Gandhi, Savarkar wrote:

It is after all quite understandable. To declare that I share the blood of warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap, Guru Gobind Singh is such a pedestrian thought and where is the elevation to a ‘Mahatma’ status in such loose talk? But it is the hallmark of a saintly Mahatma to say the blood that shed the 'Hindu blood, that too of a saint, is that of my own sibling ... how do we ordinary mortals know the ways of Mahatmas? Else, we could find some rationale as to why a great soul who advises us not to pick up arms against a person who has raped our sisters as that is not ahimsa (non-violence), had no qualms recruiting Indians into the British army to kill Germans (in the First World War). But we are thickheaded commoners, and Hindus at that; how are we to understand all these esoteric matters. We just need to keep shut and follow the diktats."

Reproduced from Vikram Sampath epic work Veer Savarkar.