Savarkar And Caste: Facts Beyond Propaganda

On 23 March 2022, The Indian Express (TIE) came out with an article by Shamsul Islam, previously professor of political science at the University of Delhi. It was on 'Savarkar and caste'.

The professor alleged that Savarkar actually believed in birth-based varna and caste and that his reforms were more a strategy than an acts of conviction.

Islam claimed to prove his case through the words of Savarkar himself.

Let us look into the claims and facts, in detail.

Dr. Islam's claim 1:

Fact:

Demonstrably false. What Savarkar actually said about caste discrimination in general and untouchability in particular goes exactly opposite to Prof. Islam’s claim. In fact, it was as if Savarkar somehow could look into the future and had already read the article in question and decided to answer it. He states:

Prof. Islam's Claim 2:

His proof is what Savarkar wrote in the ‘Essentials of Hindutva’ written in 1923. Here Savarkar says this:

But what Prof. Islam hides reveals the opposite of the claim. Savarkar wrote in the very same book in 1923:

The Context:

Even in 1940s, Eugenics was very much accepted by even the most liberal of the Western thinkers. 'Race' was for them a scientific fact. In such an intellectual condition, Savarkar not only rejected the notion of race but emphasised that the mixing of genes across all the artificial barriers erected by religious laws was inevitable.

So, his statement on ancient caste system should be seen in this light. He considered it as an experiment. He could have (of course, if so, erroneously in hindsight) thought that the experiment was on the whole right. But even here he had changed his view later.

By 1931, he states that the experiment had failed ‘due to its extreme practice or distortion’ and also that ‘failing in this great experiment of the caste system, our Hindu race enriched human experience.’

Closely associated with caste is the notion of heredity as the sole or the most important carrier of important traits like intelligence or valour. It is also the basic belief of those who uphold birth-based varna. But Savarkar forcefully and bluntly pointed out the stupidity and impossibility of such assumptions:

Even today, for a traditionalist who loves to misquote the confused ramblings of Arjuna in the first chapter of Bhagavad Gita as the essence of Gita itself, such statements should be more horrifying than the Kalashnikov of a Jihadist.

Now let us look into the practical aspects of how Savarkar dealt with the caste problem in society.

Claim-3: Savarkar disowned the reforms and supported the orthodoxy with respect to reforms.

Dr. Islam selectively quotes from Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s Whirlwind Propaganda: Extracts from the President’s Diary of his Propagandist Tours Interviews from December 1937 to October 1941, which he characterises as an official guide for Hindu Mahasabha cadre. He quotes:

What Prof.Islam left out:

In the first quote of 1939, Dr. Islam has left out the subsequent passage which is quite important. Here Savarkar states this:

Now let us take the 1941 passage he quotes. What he leaves out is significant:

If one leaves out the passages as Dr. Islam did then one can see that it makes Savarkar looks as if he was against the reforms.

At this juncture, let us also remember that it was Mahatma Gandhi and not Veer Savarkar who had considerable influence and clout of massive following in India. Compared to the public admiration and following that Gandhi commanded, Savarkar would not even come close. Yet, even Gandhiji, even after the Pune pact, always assured the orthodoxy that he would not force Harijan temple entry without their complete acceptance. At the same time, the Congress supported Harijan upliftment movement effected or agitated for temple entries.

Savarkar clearly wanted untouchability forcefully banished from all walks of public lives which in itself was a great blow to the inhumanly suicidal Hindu orthodoxy as they denied the Scheduled Community basic humanity.

With respect to religious institutions, he personally wanted untouchability to go as he had written repeatedly but as a party leader he, (as was Gandhi), would have a greater war in his hands. But even here, he had supported the Mahad Satyagraha. On the whole, to state that Savarkar believed in casteism is nothing but falsehood.

In the very same document that Dr. Islam has quoted there is abundance of evidence for the real intent and strategy of Savarkar in fighting the scourge of untouchability and the unscientific inhuman superstition of birth-based varna.

In 1938, the Hindu Mahasabha issued an official statement as to what they had done to eradicate untouchability when a Scheduled Community organisation asked them about it. This long statement is very much there in the same book. Somehow Dr. Islam did not see it fit to include it. Here is an excerpt from that statement of the Hindu Mahasabha:

For the same period, Gandhi was not very comfortable with intercaste marriage. He would come to terms with it slowly and accept it only later.

Even when he was sending a message to the heads of princely states, he brought up the topic of untouchability and asked the princes that they should put their foot on ‘the social curse called untouchability’ and prove ‘that the Hindu Princes can and do take the lead in patriotic progress and are capable of effecting far reaching reforms and know how to keep abreast of time.’

When the ruler of the princely state of Indore banished untouchability, Savarkar not only issued a statement favouring the move on behalf of Hindu Mahasabha but he went an extra mile and instructed the ruler to implement the law strenuously:

The strategy of Savarkar was very similar. Because both Gandhi and Savarkar, thought strange it might appear, were united in preventing further fissures within Hindu society at at time when the nation was fighting for independence.

Savarkar had the additional responsibility, though in a much weaker capacity in terms of public support, to not thwart Hindu consolidation. So, he actually pressed for reforms. Wherever in princely States progressive legislations came up opening up temples and public places for the Scheduled Communities, he publicly welcomed it.

Compared to the Congress movement, it should be stated that the Hindu Mahasabha temple entry movements, as in the case of Bengal temple entry spearheaded by Swami Satyananda of Hindu Mahasabha, were spectacularly successful.

Claim: 4 Savarkar considered Manusmriti as the supreme Hindu and national scripture.

Let us also take the case of Savarkar seemingly appreciating Manusmriti. Again, this is a cunning deception from Prof. Islam. This is the passage Islam quotes from Savarkar’s article on Manusmriti and women:

This is from a four-part article Savarkar wrote on Manusmriti in a progressive magazine called Kirloskar in 1933. But that was Savarkar showing the important place of Manu Smriti in the mind of Hindus.

What he left out:

But again what Dr. Islam did not quote from the article is this passage:

Savarkar and Ambedkar

Again in his letter to Veer Savarkar, Baba Saheb Ambedkar praised Savarkar and also criticised him for using the term 'chaturvarna'. Let us look at the context here.

In 1933, when Savarkar opened the pan-Hindu temple in Ratnagiri, he invited Dr. Ambedkar. As the latter could not come because of previous engagements, he took that ‘opportunity to convey to him his appreciation for the work Savarkar was doing in the field of social reform.’ He further stated that to make the Scheduled Communities part and parcel of Hindu society, the very jargon of Chaturvarna should be dropped and Savarkar was one of the very few leaders who understood this. Though Savarkar used the Chaturvarna which he ‘qualified by basing it on merit’ even that was ‘unfortunate’ and Ambedkar him to drop the term. Ambedkar ended his letter expressing his desire to meet Savarkar.

Ambedkar himself had said that the varna was based on worth initially and later it became rigid based on birth. In his The Triumph of Brahminism, he alleged that this worth-based system was intentionally made into a birth-based system by the conspiracy of Brahminism – ‘Brahminism changed Varna to Caste’. (Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches: Vol.3, Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, Ministry of Justice & Empowerment, Govt. of India, 1987:2014, pp.287-8pp.287-8)

One may or may not agree with the views of Dr. Ambedkar, but the fact was that to Dr. Ambedkar varna was not as offensive as caste. In his dialogue with Mahatma Gandhi which Ambedkar included in his work Annihilation of Caste, he wrote:

Savarkar too considers a similar idealistic varna system degenerating into birth-based system that is found in the present times. However, he did not blame it on the so-called Brahmins and Kshatriyas alone. In his 1930 article on caste system, Savarkar wrote:

Here we can see a striking parallel between Ambedkar and Savarkar. Both considered charturvarna to be have been worth based initially and later to have devolved into castes. It is quite interesting to note that Savarkar had tweaked the famous Smriti injunction that 'all are born Shudras'—'janmanaa jaayate shudraha'—into 'all are born Hindus' and just left out the change to the so-called twice born.

So actually, Savarkar had, at least three years before Dr. Ambedkar’s letter to him, repudiated the concept of varna as it was explained by the orthodoxy. Additionally, Savarkar also thought of the areas in which caste should be attacked so that it could be completely annihilated .

In 1937, he diagnosed ‘scripture-based caste division’ as a ‘mental illness.’

He identified ‘seven shackles’ which should be broken to liberate Hindu society from the stranglehold of caste. These seven shackles he identified were:

1. Prevention of Vedic chanting;

2. Prevention of entering into certain occupations;

3. Untouchability;

4. Forbidding the crossing of sea;

5. Denial of reconversion or Shuddhi;

6. Absence of inter-dining and.

7. Prohibition of inter-caste marriages.

So, Prof. Islam’s article is yet another case of partial truths and complete falsehood – a characteristic feature of campaigns against Swatantra Veer Vinayaka Damodara Savarkar.