Savarkar’s crisis of masculinity

The Murderer The Monarch and The Fakir A New Investigation of Mahatma Gandhirsquos Assassination pushes the timeline of the conspiracy to kill the Father of the Nation beyond the usually accepted period This bookrsquos authors Appu Esthose Suresh and Priyanka Kotamraju do so by accessing classified intelligence documents not seen till dateThe JL Kapur Commission appointed in March 1965 traced the conspiracy to a few weeks before Nathuram Godse pumped bullets into Gandhi on January 30 1948 We knew that both Godse and coconspirator Narayan Apte met Savarkar in Bombay on January 14 and January 17 1948 We also knew that Digambar Badge who turned approver in the assassination case heard Savarkar tell the two ldquoBe successful and returnrdquoThe motivation of the gang of nine including Badge to kill Gandhi was said to have been spawned by their hostility to Gandhirsquos insistence that the Indian government should repatriate R55 crore to Pakistan as part of the agreement on the division of assets and liabilities between the two countries Kapur identified Savarkar as the gangrsquos leader evident from his conclusion that all ldquofacts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his grouprdquoSuresh and Kotamraju say that on August 8 1947 Savarkar Godse and Apte boarded a plane from Mumbai to attend a Hindu Mahasabha meeting in Delhi Savarkar by then ailing would not venture out of Bombay his trip to Delhi was an exceptionIn the Capital the trio met Dattatreya Parchure the Gwaliorbased founder of the Hindu Rashtra Sena Weeks before in July 1947 Apte and Vishnu Karkare had approached Badge to secure arms on behalf of ldquoinfluential personsrdquo These new facts have the authors to ask Was the Hindu Mahasabha meeting a cover for Savarkarrsquos gang to finalise the plan to kill GandhiIt is hard to prove whether the Delhi meeting is the ldquosmoking gunrdquo that conclusively links Savarkar to the death squad But the new timeline for the conspiracy does rubbish the theory that the funds repatriation issue triggered the killing of Gandhi This is because the Indian government toyed with the idea of not paying Pakistan after it invaded Kashmir in October 1947Savarkarrsquos role in the assassination is shrouded in ambiguity because Godse and Apte both hanged for their crime studiously distanced themselves from their leader during the trial And yet PL Inamdar who secured Parchurersquos release from the High Court tells in his memoir that Godse was deeply hurt that Savarkar would not even look at him during the court proceedingsIt was typical of Savarkar to disown those who implemented his bloody ideas typically also his followers never named him as the agent provocateur Such was his charisma Savarkar armed Madanlal Dhingra to kill British official Sir William Curzon Wyllie in 1909 We know this because Dhananjay Keer reissued his 1950 hagiography of Savarkar after the latterrsquos death The new edition said Savarkar gave Dhingra the revolver used for killing WyllieAnant Kanhere killed AMT Jackson district magistrate of Nashik in 1909 again with the revolver sent from England by Savarkar a fact that became known because of letters seized from the killerrsquos accomplices Savarkar was deported to Indiandashand packed off to the Cellular Jail Port Blair AG Noorani in Savarkar and Hindutva The Godse Connection cites Keerrsquos hagiography to say that the Hindutva ideologue likely prompted VB Gogatersquos failed bid to kill Ernest Hoston Bombayrsquos Acting Governor in 1931If repatriation to Pakistan was not why Gandhi was killed then what was the gangrsquos motive Suresh and Kotamraju say the gang believed in the ldquomyth of Hindu masculinityhellip that the passive nonviolenceloving Hindu man is an effeminate weakling who is unable to protect the Hindu society from attacks especially from the violence of MuslimsrdquoGandhi had to be killed because he was an insurmountable obstacle in Hindutvarsquos attempt to invent masculinised nationalism marked by belligerence which remains the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sanghrsquos credoIndeed Savarkar suffered from what is called the crisis of masculinity As a 13yearold he and his friends attacked a mosque in Bhagur his village contemporary accounts speak of his effeminate voice Aparna Devare in History and the Making of a Modern Hindu Self writes that underlying his disdain for Muslims was a ldquosecret admiration for Muslim lsquomasculinityrsquohellipwhich he thought Hindus lsquolackedrsquordquoSavarkar wanted Hindus to acquire the masculine self evident from his book Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History Citing dodgy historical sources he mocks Buddhism for enfeebling Hindus who therefore became vulnerable to foreign invasions And because they were forbidden to take up arms the ldquotreacherous Buddhistsrdquo had no option but to save their religion and themselves by siding with foreign conquerors argued SavarkarHe accuses Muslims of raping millions of women and forcing them to embrace Islam He faults Hindu rulers for not pursuing a rapeforrape policy whenever they vanquished Muslims in battlefields Savarkarrsquos chilling fantasies of violence were enacted by his followers What role did the RSS have in Savarkarrsquos fantasy How was Godse connected to them Watch out for journalist Dhirendra K Jharsquos forthcoming book on GodseThe writer is a senior journalistSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper