Dialogues Across a Century

The cover page of Makarand Paranjape’s meditation on Hindutva and Hind Swaraj has a deep red background. Veer Savarkar, in a shade of saffron, points to the left, while Mahatma Gandhi, in his trademark white homespun cotton, is aligned to the right. It is also important to note, in the title, the “AND” instead of “OR”, for unlike U.R. Ananthamurthy, who juxtaposed Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh founder V.D. Savarkar’s idea of Hindutva with M.K. Gandhi’s concept of Hind Swaraj, Paranjape argues that the two are not always entirely mutually exclusive. In his view, India-that-is-Bharat can invoke a dialogue with itself: aatm-aamvad. With the emphasis on “and”, Paranjape places on record that both were intensely patriotic and wanted India to exercise Swaraj. As he says in the Prastavana (Prologue), Swaraj subsumes Hindutva.

The book follows an interesting structure. The first part, Itihasa Mimamsa: Poetics of the Past, is a meditation on history. If we do not engage with the past, we cannot understand what happened to us as a nation, as a people, and as a civilisation. Daksinayana – India Lost and Found is Paranjape’s personal rediscovery of India within the Hindu-Muslim fault lines that flared up in murderous rage during the Partition of 1947 and continue to erupt occasionally. The last part, Dharma – Samsthapanarthaya, is a “Politics of the Present”. Its central point is that if we make the transition from politics to Dharma, then we may be able to heal the wound in the national psyche. And finally, there is the Svargarohana, where the Mahatma seems to have made peace with himself as well as with the Veer, but the latter is still in a state of agitation.

The book’s history can be traced to a difficult conversation between the two protagonists on Vijay Dashami Day at London’s India House in 1909. This was the year Savarkar challenged the narrative of the “Sepoy Mutiny” by instead calling it the “Indian War of Independence 1857” to inspire his people to wage a second, successful war to liberate their motherland. Savarkar was all of 25 when he wrote this 552-page narrative, which was at complete odds with the Imperial narrative. More than historical accuracy and linear detail, he was interested in what Nietzsche called “monumentalism” in his 1873 work On the Use and Abuse of History for Life. However, one must not lose sight of the fact that the chosen symbol of the rebels was Bahadur Shah Zafar, then head of the Mughal Empire, whose territorial writ was limited from the Red Fort to Palam. As such, the book’s great merit lies not so much in historical accuracy but rather in resurrecting the heroes of 1857. Writes Subbarao: “The greatest value of Savarkar’s book lies in its gift to the nation of the torch of freedom under whose light, a humble I, and a thousand other Indians have our dear daughters named after Laxmibai, the Rani of Jhansi. Even Netaji formed an army corps named after this valiant heroine.”

Dhananjay Keer, the biographer of both the Mahatma and the Veer, believes that Hind Swaraj was actually the former’s rebuttal to Savarkar’s advocacy for armed revolution. For the record, the Mahatma wrote in Young India: “I came in contact with every known Indian anarchist in London. Their bravery impressed me, but I felt their zeal was misguided. I felt that violence was no remedy for India’s ills, and her civilisation required the use of a different and higher weapon of self-protection.” This then was the background to the 275-page manuscript, written in Gujarati on board the SS Koldonan Castle from November 13-22, 1909, on his way back from England to South Africa. The Mahatma had turned ambidextrous for this book—40 pages of the volume were written with the left hand.

Hind Swaraj is a conversation between an Editor (Gandhi himself) and a reader, in which they cover a range of subjects from the critique of modern Western civilisation (which he saw as materialistic and spiritually bankrupt) to his vision for true Indian self-rule (Swaraj, Satyagraha, Swadeshi, and a return to traditional, self-reliant Indian values).

One way of looking at the two books is to suggest that the Mahatma and the Veer represented two ideas of India. However, before their competing versions took centre stage, for all of the 19th and the first few decades of the last century, dominant history taught in Indian schools was based on James Mill’s three-volume History of British India, first published in 1817. It may be mentioned that Mill had never felt the need to visit India, but had no qualms about passing value judgments about Indians. Both Edward Said and Ranajit Guha have shown the nexus between knowledge and power, and how Mill sought to disparage the Hindus by statements like, “In point of manners and character, the manliness and courage of our ancestors, compared with the slavish and dastardly spirit of the Hindus, place them in an elevated rank.” No wonder then that this was the dominant narrative which informed colonial administrators and others of their ilk.

As against this narrative, there was much more that Hind Swaraj and the First War of Independence had in common. Paranjape argues for an intermedial hermeneutics to re-read these texts, for both drew their inspiration from a Bhartiya version of Itihasa, which is based more on collective memory than on linear arrangements of facts. Wilson’s first Sanskrit-English dictionary (1819) describes Itihasa as a tradition of reciting and performing the stories and legendary exploits of gods and heroes that flourished in the entire Indo-European region. As Ananda K Coomaraswamy notes, the quality of oral literature is essentially poetical, and its content essentially mythical, in its preoccupation with the spiritual adventures of heroes. Thus, the Muslim poet Jayasi celebrates not the pyrrhic victory of Allaudin Khilji but the Jauhar of Rani Padmavati and her companions. Death was preferred to dishonour.

There were other points of similarity as well between the Mahatma and Savarkar. Both were admirers of the Italian freedom fighter Mazzini. The Mahatma named Young India after his Young Italy, and Savarkar was in absolute agreement with him that revolution is a complete rearrangement in the life of historic man. “A revolutionary movement cannot be based on a flimsy and momentary grievance.” Both the Mahatma and the Veer agreed that the grievances against the Empire were deep and well-founded—but differed vehemently on the way ahead.

One must briefly mention their deaths. The Mahatma fell to the assassin’s bullet on January 30, 1948, at 5.15 p.m.—the time being recorded on his Swiss-made Zenith alarm clock—with “Hey Ram” on his lips. The Veer fasted himself to death and preferred the term aatmarpan to aatmahatya. Both terms have entirely different connotations.

Can India do without either of them? Paranjape is convinced that both are needed. The Swaraj needs a Samvad in which the Hindutvavaadi viewpoint has to be factored in—for a nation needs both strategic insight as well as frank dialogue and civic engagement. India-that-is-Bharat needs to face facts in the face, even as some old scores need purposeful forgetfulness.