Who is Veer Savarkar?
Who is Veer Savarkar? Why is the International Airport at Port Blair, Andamans in the Indian Ocean, named after this Maharashtrian? (Veer Savarkar was a freedom fighter who was imprisoned in Kalapani.)
Where did the Indian National Flag fly first? Who raised it? Any guesses? (Netaji visited the Andaman Island and hoisted the tricolour flag on 30th December 1943)
All of us worship Gandhiji and love him like our own grandfather and Nehru like our own uncle. But this is not the exhaustive list of freedom fighters in our country. And while some political parties favour some leaders and others favour other leaders, ordinary people like us have a very deep gratitude for all those men and women, both famous and ordinary who fought and sacrificed so that we might be free.
In 1905, during Dasara festivities Vinayak Savarkar organised setting up of a bonfire of foreign goods and clothes, as a part of a an economic move to give this country freedom. Just one century later we would love to wear nothing but Reebok and Adidas! And today we are happily listening to the British Prime Minister, Cameron, pitch for trade ties with India. I guess 100 years or 3 generations is all it takes for a country to forget all the lessons of history and to throw caution to the winds.
A trip to the cellular jail in the andamans and to the Veer Savarkar park in front of it., is a heart wrenching experience. To see the statues of strong, proud and brave men in chains, men who were prevented from using the toilets at night, who were fed dilute kanji after hard labour and brutally force-fed when they went on hunger strike and thus killed, men who were ill-treated in unimaginable ways till they said whatever their jailors wanted them to say… this will draw tears from hearts of stone. All this because they loved their country, their identity and their freedom.
We had the good fortune to be escorted to Mount Harriet (Look at the Lighthouse on the back of a 20 Re. note..), by a Muslim Malayali (Moplah), who was the grandson of two freedom fighters, both imprisoned in the cellular jail at Andaman. He told us that all the cruelty described to us in the light and sound show was true and it was even worse in reality. He told us how pained he felt to re-live that torture since it was his own grandfathers who suffered. We told him that we too feel the pain very acutely. He said that his grandfathers were honoured by the Kerala Govt as well as by Rajiv and Sonia gandhi when they visited the Andamans. And that the diaries maintained by his grandfathers were read out on the radio on some programs.
Dr. Baban Phaley writes that the jailer Barrie, told Savarkar that he would languish in jail till 1960, and Savarkar told him that the British would be long gone from India by then!
While The British downplayed the 1857 freedom struggle as a sepoy mutiny.. Savarkar called it the First War of Indian Independence. While the British tried to tell Indians that we did nothing but sit around and get defeated, Savarkar wrote a book about our victories. When they tried to arrest him, he tried to escape by swimming across the ocean!
He was accused as one of the men who plotted to assassinate Gandhiji. While western sources will tell you that he was “let off because no evidence was found”, Indian sources will tell you that he was let off because he was not guilty. Both sentences imply completely different things while stating the same fact.
In a country of 1 billion voices, there is room for 1 billion opinions. But no one can deny that Savarkar was a brave freedom fighter who loved India from the hills to the seas, including the islands on which he was imprisoned. And as I saw the statues of the heroes in Veer Savarkar Park, I realised that it is not the 1 billion opinions which count. It is a few hundred or thousand good men and women with courage, intelligence and a love for the country. They carry the rest of us, opinions and all…!
Jai Hind!
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