Why Leftists hesitate to appropriate Savarkar

Swatantra Veer Savarkar

The fiction writers of the Left who wrote our history had a habit of appropriating various personalities. Appropriate, in this context means “take (something) for one’s own use, typically without the owner’s permission”. They ‘put’ such figures in ‘boxes’ they created to make it look like they were their descendants. It was a propaganda carried out posthumously (after death) making it more convenient. Another reason was that it became more acceptable to use the shoulder of someone else to fire from. Something which they realised as they knew they lacked relevance, themselves. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh were two such personalities who got ‘appropriated’ like that.

Netaji Bose and Bhagat Singh

Netaji Bose was mocked and taunted by Indian communists with jibes like ‘Tojo’s dog’, when he was alive. But, they admitted it was a mistake after almost half a century later, when they lost popularity. They found it more convincing to prop him up as a Communist like them and use that perception to counter the regime of today.

Indian Communists abusing SC Bose

Bhagat Singh, who has been ‘appropriated’ by the Communists, was not a part of the the Communist Party of India (CPI). He formed the HSRA (Hindustan Socialist Republican Association) and carried on his work. He did not name it as First/Second International. He fought and gave his life for Indian Independence.

Shehla Rahsid’s attempts to turn Bhagat Singh into a Communist

While the propagandists will emphasise that he read Lenin, they won’t tell you about his praise for Swami Vivekananda. Nor would they tell you that he published Veer Savarkar’s book, secretly in India. ‘The Indian War of Independence’ was Savarkar’s book which was banned by the British. Here’s a snippet from the book.

Snippet from Veer Savarkar’s The Indian War of Independence

Support for Savarkar

Veer Savarkar’s daring act of making an escape at the Marseilles port also won’t be known to many. It was not just a physical act of extreme courage but, a well thought out strategy too. He knew the legal and diplomatic implications on the British empire, even if they managed to catch him on French soil. Read this to know more about the attempt to escape at Marseilles and how he got betrayed.

Savarkar’s jump and subsequent recapture had taken the international community by storm. The French socialist press protested. There were two reasons for it – violating rights of Savarkar and the French sovereignty. The French Ambassador in London condemned the arrest of Savarkar. When this matter reached before the Hague Tribunal, it was the liberals and communists who supported him. It was Karl Marx’s grandson who represented him, there.

Why is he hated now?

 

Savarkar was a staunch Hindu nationalist though he was NOT the traditional gau sevak or a devotee. But, he was a reformer, who fought hard to abolish the evils of caste discrimination. His works called for unity of India and the emphasis of Hindutva (Hinduness), which have made him revered among the nationalists. RSS’s affinity towards Hindutva has made the leftists forget that he was not its founder. Savarkar’s Hindu Maha Sabha and RSS may have had overlapping goals but, they had differences and were not clones.

It was the Congress which continued to attack Savarkar the most, years after his death. They feared that once Indians got to know Savarkar fully, Nehru and the Congress would be washed away. The fear of Indian Independence movement being democratised would mean the end of Nehru dynasty’s divine right to rule. Savarkar’s life would open a can of worms for them since it would include his meeting with freedom fighters like Rash Behari Bose, Madanlal Dhingra etc. Many such freedom fighters were not given a deserving position in the History written by Marxists.

But, in states like Maharashtra where Savarkar is revered, the Congress usually prefers not to vilify him. They know that such a misadventure would call for backlash, even from their allies. For the Left, it’s appeasement which stands in the way of appropriating him and turning him into a “Communist”. They found it harder to appropriate him than Ambedkar, whose views on Islam and Communism were almost successfully concealed.

 

This mad tussle from those corners to disown and attack Savarkar has slowly seen a change. As some players in the Congress ecosystem are coming up with ‘neutral opinions’ on him, it signals various changes in the anti Savarkar ecosystem. It may either be an attempt to appropriate him, or use him as a stick to beat today’s regime.

A Congress supporter, on Savarkar

However, as long as the main plank of today’s opposition parties remains as ‘Anti Hindutva’ (acceptable version of Anti Hindu), Savarkar may not be appropriated in the near future. The only ‘use’ they can put him to is to blame today’s regime for a long extinct caste system. Or Gau Seva, which is very much a part of our Constitution. They would find more votes coming in by attacking Savarkar, than keeping quiet on him or endorsing him. Especially when India’s largest party’s chief has a Savarkar portrait at home. Today, on Veer Savarkar’s birthday, it’s just another opportunity for Congress to castigate him.

Chandrababu Naidu at Year 1 of Modi 2.0

The first anniversary of Narendra Modi’s return to power was celebrated a few days ago. This was a noteworthy event because the ‘India Shining’ syndrome of 2004 refused to repeat itself in 2019. The 23rd of May 2019 was the day many fates were written. It was also the day which set the future course of Indian democracy. There were people who rejoiced and people who got disheartened. It marked the 2nd turning point of Modi’s rise to power and sealed the fate of INC’s national ambitions. However, there were some key players (at least they looked so) before the election. They were actively running around and organizing strategies, cobbling up a new alliance which had only one motto – “Stop Modi”. TDP leader and the ex Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu was one of them.

Naidu had an inconsistent yet notable past, something which must be highlighted at this juncture. He is said to be one of the people who played a key role in APJ Abdul Kalam’s presidential candidature. As 2019 was a year the ghosts of 2004 were put to rest, let’s go back to that year. TDP envisaged ‘secularism’ and walked out of the NDA alliance in 2004 after a crushing defeat. Naidu continued this lonely path in 2009, only to realise that he could not make it alone. In 2013, he began showing interest in NDA, for the third time since 1998. When he returned to NDA in 2013, sensing victory, he tried to ride it on the Special Category Status. For a state like Andhra Pradesh which lost its capital in the bifurcation, it was seen as a compensation which was overdue. Former PM Manmohan Singh’s promise of a 5 year Special Category Status was also not forgotten by the regional parties of the state. It’s worth remembering that the UPA government had bifurcated Andhra Pradesh at the fag end of its term, in a very hasty manner.

Special Category Status

The prime attraction for a state to get the SCS was the Central grants for various projects (90% borne by the Centre), tax breaks, excise duty concessions etc. Currently, only the north eastern states of India and 3 mountain states enjoy the Special Category Status. But, the 14th Finance Commission technically abolished the difference between Special Category states and the General states by introducing different parameters. They decided to assess the backwardness of a state and allocate resources through ‘tax devolution’ and other grants. Andhra was also promised revenue deficit grants in case devolution would not be sufficient. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley also promised funds which would be at par to what a SCS state would get. To know more, read this.

Yet, Naidu moved a No Confidence Motion against the NDA government on 20th July 2018, ‘upset’ at the Centre for denying the SCS status to Andhra Pradesh. He thought it would be easier to win Andhra Pradesh by walking out of the alliance which did not give it the coveted SCS. Such name-game rhetoric over formalities just becomes some of the declarable reasons for cunning politicians when they have some tricks up their sleeves. It’s more or less similar to the lame demands of ‘national disaster’ tag from some ‘secular’ states during disasters.

Modi’s warning

During the proceedings of the No Confidence Motion which TDP brought against the BJP on, there was a revelation by PM Modi. He said that he warned Naidu about YSR’s trap, when TDP left NDA. He further went to tell Naidu that he would not survive in the circumstances which prevailed in the state politics. Watch Modi’s speech on the floor of the Parliament.

Naidu would know it when these words would come true, in less than one year after TDP losing the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. The NDA came out unscathed and established its strength while Sonia Gandhi who played behind Naidu was claiming to have the numbers.

Unifier of the Opposition

 

There were many symptoms of the strain in the BJP-TDP ties, long before TDP walked out. One of it was Naidu deleting a tweet praising Hindutva icon Veer Savarkar.

Once he formally left the NDA fold, he undertook a devoted pilgrimage to meet every opposition leader. Apart from them, he met certain allies of BJP too, since he wanted break NDA and ensure that the current regime does not come back to power. He had also joined the Rafale chorus which was led by the INC.

He continued meeting them even after the polls, to ensure a post poll alliance with them, in the worst case scenario. Some of the leaders whom he met as a part of this unification strategy were – Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Bannerjee, Akhilesh Yadav and Arvind Kejriwal. He did not stop with that. Naidu catapulted himself to be the rising vanguard of ‘secularism’, which has turned out to be the last refuge of a failed Indian politician. It involved the old school techniques of Iftar parties and Naidu’s desperation made him go one step ahead – offering Namaz.

Loss in Lok Sabha, Assembly elections and Resignation

 Though Naidu could stop NDA from winning seats in Andhra Pradesh, TDP could win only 3 seats in the Lok Sabha elections of 2019. He had also lost the Assembly elections while YSRCP won with a huge mandate. Naidu tendered his resignation on the very day Modi came back to power at the Centre. He was one of the most powerful figures who did everything to break NDA but ended up broken, reduced to the stature of an Opposition leader with very few seats. He is indeed one of the rare people who struggled hard to drive himself to irrelevance (SIC). As a result of such ‘flip flops’, BJP made it clear that it has closed doors for any alliance with TDP in future, after Naidu expressed his regret.

He has become the case study of a politician who wanted to dislodge a government by ditching it, attempting to topple it with a no confidence motion, cobbling up an alliance consisting of almost all the arch rivals of the regime, trying to bring more allies out of NDA and even whipping up regional and ‘secular’ feelings, only to end up losing his existing relevance in politics. The changes in the political scene were so rapid that Naidu maybe wishing that he’d wake up one day to realise all this was just a terrible nightmare.

Aftermath

The unexpected fall turned him into a disgruntled man. It’s not easy for someone accustomed to VIP privileges and other trappings of power to adjust back to an ordinary life. A controversy erupted as he was denied the VIP access at the Vijayawada airport and had to go to the flight in a bus after being frisked, like any ordinary passenger.

Post defeat, TDP decided to temporarily forgo their ‘secular’ values and supported the abrogation of the draconian Article 370, despite J&K National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah campaigning for them in 2019. He made a U-Turn on the Citizenship Amendment Act, when he suddenly saw a high demand for ‘secular’ credentials in the ‘market’.

It’s sure that he regrets his decision of leaving NDA when he could have stayed back and enjoyed few more years of power. The ‘most unkindest cut’ from BJP was not the permanent cutting of ties but, the merging of TDP with BJP in the Rajya Sabha, where 4 TDP MPs joined BJP.

The TDP leader who was discussing post poll strategies with the high command of INC few days before the 2019 results, was missing from a conference organized by Sonia Gandhi, recently. The praises Modi receives through letters and on calls for the fight against COVID-19, shows how desperate the TDP leader has become. Though Naidu would have to leave NDA for obvious reasons, he would be repenting the most for not heeding Modi’s advice, around two years ago. One year is too short in politics but, more than enough to turn someone into a no one. Also a play ground where people can make grave mistakes while thinking that they’re winning.

The pseudo-liberals’ hallucination about India being bullied

Sovereignty is a key word in our Constitution, one of the main reasons for which the Indian independence movement took off. We wanted to be ruled by ourselves without any foreign power dictating the terms. A pseudo liberal who’s a leftist and endorses a border-less world cannot accept it. They can’t even think for themselves, forget about withstanding pressure. Their herd mentality has been exposed many times and almost everyone on social media can recognize their modus operandi of co-ordinated tweeting for a particular day’s agenda. They drool to see India being bullied, for not toeing the line and becoming isolated in the world. Sometimes they go to the extent of hallucinating and end up writing fairy tales on complex subjects like foreign policy, which is a very tedious and endless process to be handled by expert diplomats.

A few days ago, there was a controversy over India lifting the ban on HCQ exports amidst the world’s fight against COVID 19. As expected, there were many rumors on “India buckling under US Pressure” and so on. Many of these propaganda pieces also had a statement of US President Trump threatening to retaliate if India didn’t lift the ban on exports of HCQ. However, all their hallucinatory claims by misquoting him were debunked in no time. Shekhar Gupta himself came out with a clarification about India lifting the export ban on HCQ, hours before Trump’s ‘threat’ call.

The latest speculation made by some of them were about India being forced to pay $ 2.6 million for 200 ventilators which USA donated. It was later corrected (with a disclaimer).

 

The cost of the ventilators have been made to look synonymous with the price India has to pay. Adding question marks are assumed to be a safe way out to twist and create a perception. This turned out to be false again, when it was reported that the USAID would bear the cost of the ventilators.

On Citizenship Amendment Act 2019

There was a huge confusion created in a similar manner over the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019, where people from the same stable were out, creating conspiracy theories – about how India got bullied. This was after they had tried all their best to misinterpret and distort a small, harmless amendment which would benefit persecuted migrants who came to India seeking refuge, before 31 December 2014. The Act aimed to help specific persecuted religious minorities of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh get Indian citizenship. CAA was NOT a law that prevented Muslims from any of these countries from getting Indian citizenship. Read this report about a Muslim woman from Pakistan getting an Indian citizenship, after the so called anti-Muslim amendment was made.

One of those controversies ‘manufactured’ in the Parliament, just days before the Citizenship Amendment Act became one, was about the inclusion of Christians in the Citizenship Amendment Bill. Dayanidhi Maran, a DMK MP had claimed that India was forced to include Christians. Reasons being – “Probably the fear of the West, the fear of being isolated by West”. He was seen ‘quoting’ the BJP Manifesto and claiming that BJP had excluded Christians from CAA and did not have the same love for Christians while preparing the manifesto. Here is his full statement (December 2019).

In an attempt to prove that “BJP was fearing the West”, he ended up showing the first, ‘un-corrected version’ of the 2019 BJP Manifesto which was having many mistakes, some pretty embarrassing. It is true that the CAB head under the first version of the 2019 Manifesto (in April 2019) did not mention Parsis and Christians. There were many attempts that time, to claim that BJP made the correction in the Sankalp Patra (election manifesto) just before passing the CAB in December 2019. The omission of Christians in the manifesto was reported on April 10th 2019. The report says that the manifesto was corrected to the extent of adding Christians, within one hour that day. This is more than 6 months before the DMK MP made that statement.

Here is the corrected portion of the BJP’s Sankalp Patra 2019 where the change has been reflected.

Since there are no ‘Parsi countries’ today, there could not be any claims of India being arm twisted to add Parsis in the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019. (Read this to understand how the inclusion of persecuted religious minorities in CAA was done)

Even if this does not sound convincing, a look into the history of the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 can prove the point. The CAB as it was known, was introduced in Lok Sabha in 2016. This is around 3 years before it became an Act. The Bill at that point of time, mentioned Parsis and Christians. So it can be clearly seen that it was not a sudden love for Christians induced by fear of the West as claimed above.

Jews who are a persecuted minority in Islamic countries were not included in the CAA (it’s also true that Jews didn’t come on streets to riot for that). Should it be inferred that there was no pressure from Israel to include Jews? Or is it even right to conclude that there was no pressure from Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC)? Or the Arab nations, which are Islamic countries? What about Iran, which is a Shi’a majority country, whose counterparts are being persecuted in Pakistan?

On PM Modi’s call for Unity

Recently, many Indian citizens who were working in the Gulf countries got fired and/or jailed for voicing their ‘Islamophobic’ opinions on social media. This was an aftermath of the Tablighi Jamaat members coming under scrutiny for the spread of COVID 19 in India. Prime Minister Modi had appealed for unity in fighting COVID 19. Shortly after this, ‘Journalist’ Rana Ayyub immediately came out with a new theory of PM Modi buckling under pressure from the Gulf countries. The same pressure which he’escaped’ from, during the CAA controversy.

The Indian ambassador to UAE had also taken the same stand, as UAE was a sovereign nation just like India. But, this was not due to any pressure which India had faced from such countries. There were also shocking reports of Indians losing jobs in the Gulf for supporting CAA, because of the distortion done by such thugs. If it was true, India would have succumbed to the same pressure which was there, when Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019 was passed. How is it sensible to believe that few Indians tweeting something anti-Islamic can damage or undo the decades-old diplomatic ties which even the CAA or the abrogation of Article 370 could not?

Pseudo liberals who are armchair activists, have a very shallow sense of understanding and show an unusual sense of disconnect from the reality. Be it about the cost involved in building toilets or the foreign policy. They can be seen quarreling endlessly and making absurd claims, without understanding how wrong they were. After all, it’s said one should not disturb an enemy when he (or she) is making a mistake.

There is also a deep sense of satisfaction in the hearts of these so called Indians, on any occasion where India is defeated or humiliated. This article is not to prove that India faced no pressure or that it has always withstood it. A lot of things had happened even before today’s regime came into power which escaped scrutiny, unlike today’s scenario. These are just few instances where such people have been caught hallucinating about it, with a glee.

First published in Opindia MyVoice.

The perpetual returns of Rahul Gandhi

Here’s a small story: There was a conman in a village who realized the potential of occult and planned to use it for hoodwinking gullible people. So he bought a hen, killed it and stuffed a frog inside its belly, after cleaning it. He called it the ‘flying dead hen’ predictions and began exhibiting it to people. When he brought anything hot to the left of it, it would fly towards right and vice versa too. He used this to make predictions about various things. But the people did not know that it was the frog who jumped as it was hidden. He continued conning people until, the day he got caught.

There was a recent article in The Print India titled “Rahul Gandhi is back. Now with two economists, a migrant aid pack and an ethical hacker”. Here is the link to it, added solely for the reader’s convenience. So this article talks about the ‘comeback’ of Rahul Gandhi for the ‘N’th time. So the 3 main points raised here about his discussions with two economists, the migrant workers’ issues and that of an ‘ethical hacker’. This is just one of the recent come-back and ‘returns’ articles. They are written as usual every year like it was a life changing event. A simple google search with ‘Rahul Gandhi returns’ can show those. Now, let’s analyse each of these points, all of which had some external ‘heat’ to make those resurrectional statements.

First was the discussion he had Raghuram Rajan, the former RBI governor. That had been badly exposed as a scripted and heavily edited video where a clock betrayed the timings. Not that it’s wrong to edit or shoot a scripted interview – which most journalists do but, the amount of external ‘heat’ to make him ‘fly’ was so superficial and choreographed. If an alien landed on Earth at that moment, it would have believed he was the world’s greatest economist. But even that fell flat after a while. The wall clock betrayed him. After all, frogs cannot fly. They can only jump. Then the next attempt was his talk with the Nobel laureate Abhijit Bannerjee. Nothing much changed in it except that the traitor clock was banished and he tried hard to put words in Bannerjee’s mouth. 

When it came to the case of the poor migrants, as usual he stuck to the modified version of NYAY, which the people had rejected during the 2019 polls. Next came the generous offer to fund the travel of poor migrant labourers. In Kerala, Congress proposed to pay Rs. 10 lakhs from each district committee but, they ‘could not’ as the local administration refused especially, in Alappuzha. The District Collector there refused to accept the cheque as there were no legal provisions for it. However nothing stopped Congress from donating to the Kerala CMDRF (not mentioning PMCARES here, as they will never donate to a transparently working trust). The biggest shocker was when the video clip of Congress MLA Amarinder Raja came. He was seen telling the people at Bhatinda railway station that Sonia Gandhi paid for their travel and he distributed pamphlets. Well, Congress is adept at playing such dirty tricks while evoking little to no reaction from the fourth estate of today.

Rahul Gandhi’s ethical hacking avatar was the next comedy. He had been conspicuously silent about the controversies surrounding the Sprinklr deal of the Kerala government though it had come up before the High Court of Kerala. The Leader of opposition in the Assembly, who is from Congress had also played a role in bringing up this matter to the HC. Anyway, it’s unfair to blame Rahul Gandhi’s silence on it as he may not know much about Sprinklr and the fixed match in Kerala. The frog does not jump without any heat and it when it does, it does only to a place where it’s directed. It was around this time he raised false alarms about the privacy of the Aarogya Setu app which was developed by the Government of India to fight COVID 19.

“The Aarogya Setu app, is a sophisticated surveillance system, outsourced to a pvt operator, with no institutional oversight – raising serious data security & privacy concerns. Technology can help keep us safe; but fear must not be leveraged to track citizens without their consent” was his tweet. However he never mentioned who the private operator was as he was sure there would be no scrutiny from his pliant media. The hen never gets questioned even when the frog refuses to respond to the heat. All he intended to do was put the Government in trouble and confuse the citizens, thereby derailing India’s efforts to fight COVID 19. Shortly after that a self proclaimed ‘French Hacker’ came out saying Rahul Gandhi was right. Though the Arogya Setu team released a statement about the ‘valuable findings’ of that hacker, he went on to write a long article to further defend Gandhi. There was nothing in it to substantiate Rahul Gandhi’s claims of the ‘private operator’, ‘surveillance’ or ‘lack of consent’. By the end of the day, the pliant media forgot about what Rahul Gandhi said and what the so called hacker tried to prove. There were instances where the village conman got so engrossed in conning people that he forgot about the frog inside. 

Every time the Lutyens media tried to resurrect the image of Rahul Gandhi, it always fell flat precisely because he was never what they really showed. They have been trying hard to save him from taking the responsibility of losing so many elections consecutively that they forgot it was leading to the collapse of India’s grand old party and ultimately their ecosystem. We can see more such articles in future where a whole PR team tries to heat up the surroundings and make the hen fly.

Originally published at https://myvoice.opindia.com on May 18, 2020.