Why Hindu should vote en mass? What Savarkar says?

 

Why Hindu should vote en mass? What Savarkar says?

Savarkar warned the Hindus of NWFP in a statement on 3 September 1943 and asked them to vote decisively for the Hindu Mahasabha henceforth if they needed a strong political voice to protect their rights:

Moslems have learnt to vote solidly for the Moslem League [sic] not because it has any very well-disciplined organization or extensive membership or work to recommend it but only because the Moslems have been taught and trained from their very cradle that their first duty is to enable Islam to dominate even politically over the non-Islamic world. To them the Moslem cause is the only patriotic, the only national nay, the only human cause. That is why the Moslem electorate, almost instinctively, backs up the candidates of any Moslem organization whether it be the Khilafat movement or the League as soon as that body pledges itself to defend and promote even aggressively this innate ambition of the Moslems. The League has most uncompromisingly raised the standard of Pakistan and Moslem electorate backed it up by voting for it solidly and invested it with the unquestionable right of being the representative body of the vocal and powerful Moslem sections. But the Hindu electorate on the contrary has been subjected to the perverse and degenerating influence of the pseudo-nationalistic tenets of the Congress. Anybody or any organization that tries to advocate the Hindu cause is immediately dubbed as unpatriotic, something sinful and any one or any organization that plays ducks and drakes with even the legitimate Hindu rights or with Hindu honour is invested with humanitarian magnanimity and saintliness. Owing to this mentality the Hindu electorate continued to entrust their representation in the hands of that very body which stands openly pledged not to defend Hindu rights as Hindu rights, and publicly maintained that Nationalism' requires it to betray the Hindu rights. The result is that the Hindus are now hemmed in on all sides by anti-Hindu forces and Pakistan and the cursed principle of Provincial self-determination to secede which is worse than Pakistan—have now become life-issues. But if the Hindus even now learn the stem lesson which the determination of Moslem electorate to vote only for the most aggressive Moslem candidate implies and rally round the only organization which has been strenuously, faithfully and effectively advocating the Hindu cause then even now the Hindus would regain much that they have lost and find themselves in a dominant position in the political field. The Congress cannot and will not recognize itself as a Hindu body and cannot therefore advocate the special rights and interests of the Hindus. Nay, on the other hand the Congress is always bound to indulge in letting down the Hindu case if only to prove more emphatically its pseudo-nationalistic pretensions ... If today the Hindu cause is not defended or promoted as strongly and rapidly as it ought to have been it is only due to the suicidal mistake of the Hindu electorate in voting for this very Congress. Let the Hindu electorate try at least once to cast their votes for the Hindu Sangathanist candidates and it will immediately see that the Hindu Mahasabha and the Hindu Front in general grows a dozen times more in strength than the League or the Moslem Front as a whole.

[ Reproduced from Vikram Sampath book Veer Savarkar by Dr Vivek Arya]