Savarkar & apologies

Rajesh Ramachandran

Nothing tickles the public like an apology by a politician, for much of it would be insincere and not worth the paper on which it is written; yet, the concomitant loss of face makes it a spectacle that rivals relish and the crowd jeers. But an apology can also be therapeutic for one’s credibility, even for hypocrisy’s sake. The Guardian newspaper, which claims to be the high Anglican priest of Left liberal journalism, has apologised for having been founded on slave capital. John Edward Taylor, the cotton merchant who launched the newspaper in 1821, had profited from slave labour. “Taylor and at least 9 of his 11 backers had links to slavery principally through his textile industry,” wrote The Guardian on March 28.

Before the Congress rakes up the mercy plea, it should explain why it failed to protect Gandhi, why it did not appeal against Savarkar’s acquittal, and why the stamp.

And as is always the journalistic norm, capital dictated the editorial line. The Scott Trust that now owns the paper also apologised “for early editorial positions that served to support the cotton industry and therefore the exploitation of enslaved people.” The Guardian was originally published from Manchester, the global hub of the textile industry, and championed its cause. This apology brings to the fore the memory of another newspaper, The Morning Post, which collected 26,000 British pounds for the Butcher of Amritsar after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. This ultra-rightwing abomination had hailed Reginald Dyer as a saviour and blamed The Tribune’s legendary Editor-in-Chief Kalinath Ray for causing the events of 1919 that led to the massacre and the imposition of martial law in Punjab. The newspaper was later acquired by William Berry, the owner of the conservative newspaper Daily Telegraph, in 1937 and merged with the latter.

Of course, conservative monarchists and colonial apologists who still have not come to terms with a brown man at 10 Downing Street cannot be expected to offer an apology for their old owner having acquired a newspaper which presented a purse to Reginald Dyer. Such an apology does not suit their rightwing politics, just as it is imperative for a so-called Left progressive daily to shore up its credibility by owning up to its horrendous beginnings. So, an act of contrition — perfect or imperfect, biblically speaking — does serve a very important function in legitimising a person’s, an organisation’s or even a government’s contemporary standing. The reverse is equally relevant: not to apologise for something that one considers to have been done truthfully.

Rahul Gandhi could have escaped disqualification and a jail term had he offered an apology for defaming all those who bear the surname Modi. Instead, he is trying to turn the idea of an apology into a political weapon, pointing out that he is not a Savarkar but a Gandhi, thereby attacking Vinayak Damodar Savarkar for what he calls an apology (actually a mercy petition) seeking release from the Cellular Jail in Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Savarkar’s mercy plea was dishonourable, no doubt, when juxtaposed with the defiance of great revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru, who joyously embraced the gallows rather than grovel before the British. Yet, it’s Savarkar’s later acts of collaboration with the British that define him, not the mercy plea.

It is, of course, easy to pick on Savarkar for his inability to serve the harshest prison sentence imagined by the British colonial establishment in India, but very difficult to have the moral courage and political steadfastness to face the backlash in Maharashtra for calling Savarkar names. Already, the Congress and Rahul are piping down the Savarkar tune because of the response it has evoked in Maharashtra where, unlike the rest of India, Savarkar is revered as a revolutionary patriot and a freedom fighter. It was similar political expediency that forced Indira Gandhi to issue a postage stamp in Savarkar’s name, that too soon after the Justice Jeevan Lal Kapur commission found him to be responsible for Mahatma Gandhi’s murder. “All these facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group,” concluded Justice Kapur in 1969. Indira Gandhi issued the Savarkar stamp in 1970.

Was Indira Gandhi atoning for the sins of her father Jawaharlal Nehru by appointing the Kapur commission? After all, Nehru’s government had miserably failed in protecting the Mahatma despite ample warning

provided by the failed attempt on January 20, 1948, when Madan Lal Pahwa and other conspirators ignited an explosive but failed to throw grenades at Gandhi while he was addressing a prayer meeting. Meanwhile, Bombay Presidency’s Home Minister Morarji Desai had warned his boss, premier BG Kher, of a conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi. Yet, within 10 days of the first attempt, the conspirators were successful the second time. “Had the slightest keenness been shown in the investigation of the case at that stage, the tragedy probably could have been averted,” was how trial judge Atma Charan rebuked the Delhi Police, who were reporting to Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. And Nehru’s government, mysteriously, did not move an appeal against Savarkar’s acquittal.

So, more important than Savarkar’s “apology” to the British is his acquittal in the Gandhi murder case. And the Congress and its sole proprietors have shown immense insensitivity as far as the most important political assassination of the nation is concerned. Rahul has no right to even refer to Savarkar’s name without apologising for the lapses of his party in helping their rivals put up Savarkar’s picture in Parliament’s Central Hall. So, before Rahul rakes up the mercy plea to attack the Hindutva Right, he should at least attempt to explain why Nehru and Patel failed in protecting Gandhi, and why they did not appeal against Savarkar’s acquittal, and why Indira issued a postage stamp in Savarkar’s memory. An apology could be therapeutic to the Congress and Rahul — for the chilling iconography of Savarkar is his picture along with all the accused in the Gandhi murder trial.

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