As a historian, Vikram Sampath has breached a well-guarded ivory tower, the falling crumbles must now be borne with pride
An individual is a product of his experiences, socio-political realities, and memories. Memories of life experiences are unique and might not be intricately accurate. However, the dichotomy in the scholarly liberty granting more weight to one life than the other, is nowhere more glaring than when one compares the writings and commentaries, for let’s say, Dr BR Ambedkar with Vinayak Savarkar. Like Ambedkar, when talking of Savarkar, one cannot disassociate his individuality from his earliest memories, and his individual journey that trickled down to his radical ideas in the later stages of his life.
Even a passing observer of the Indian public discourse will be able to discern the singling out of historian Vikram Sampath, who finds himself in the eye of a conniving storm for his two-part biography of Savarkar. Many criticisms of his work neglect his attempts at filling out the existing lacunae in analysing the socio-political context of the times of Savarkar which moulded Savarkar’s ideas and inspired his philosophical inclinations. Simultaneously, Sampath’s work is also an attempt to understand Savarkar as a ‘person’ and not merely a subject of the political constraints of his times. Sampath indicates this desire when he mentions in the introduction of the text that Savarkar was a bundle of contradictions and a historian’s enigma.
One of the major criticisms that befall Sampath is his usage of biographical writings to draw the contours of the life of the contested political figure through the lens of personal experiences. Prima facie, in a biography drawing richly on self-narratives one sees the greatest logic and not any kind of credulity. Biographies of Mohammed Ali Jinnah by Hector Bolitho, or MJ Akbar’s comparative analysis of Gandhi’s Hinduism and Jinnah’s Islam, have followed similar trajectories of delving into the psyche of the character being studied through personal writings and speeches.
So epistemically, should one throw aside Savarkar’s self-narratives and testimonies, most of it being in Marathi, to write his biography? Why is there this ab-initio questioning of the legitimacy and authenticity of Savarkar’s own writings — what is the historical basis for such questioning; where does this stem from? Would tomorrow referring copiously to the exhaustive Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi in a biography of Gandhi to understand the inner core of his mind and the day-to-day mundane activities of a political persona like him, be termed as a hagiography that regurgitates the protagonist’s views?
However, Sampath uses not only Savarkar’s but multiple other accounts to outline the family history and community practices in great detail, along with their impact on the personality of Savarkar. Even while citing family traditions and the impact that events like a vow before the family Goddess Ashtbhuja Bhawani had on Savarkar, Sampath ensures that data is triangulated with other existing accounts such as the writings of his brother, Babarao Savarkar (Ganesh Damodar Savarkar). Thereafter accounts of his contemporary affiliates like Gangadhar Vishnu Joshi are used to move beyond speculating about the roots of revolutionary activities of his youth which became entrenched in Savarkar’s persona.
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The criticism that is being directed at Sampath also neglects the triangulation of information through the use of restricted, available accounts. As a reader, one cannot help but discern such efforts, especially in the chapters pertaining to the Sazaa-e-kala pani period. Despite the destruction of majority of records by the British to hide their atrocities in that dreaded Indian Bastille, and the limited articulation abilities of the many young contemporaries of Savarkar in the prison, records of two other prisoners, Ulaskar Dutt and Barin Ghose have been used to corroborate Savarkar’s personal writings. Furthermore, the written records are supplemented with the interview by Rashida Iqbal, the curator of Cellular Jail Memorial. When even in the restricted arena of the prison, the author has looked at multiple narrations from amongst the extant documents, what more triangulation can be achieved?
Along with Savarkar’s self-narratives, Sampath has made judicious use of legal testimonies, police records, Marathi literature, archival material, newspapers, scrapbooks and ledgers maintained and compiled by Savarkar’s secretary Balarao Savarkar in four volumes — in all about 2,072 endnotes and 145 pages of notes and bibliography in the two volumes. Can all these be dismissed away as motivated, questionable sources? Such a position brings us to a very philosophical position in historiography then — what exactly are facts and what are sources? Only those that are politically correct, expedient and acceptable today retrofit our narrative for the present times?
For 13 years, from 1924 to 1937, Savarkar was restricted to living confined in Ratnagiri. He was considered a veritable persona non grata, as people feared associating with him openly — a possible hint that Sampath gives as to why Ambedkar, though appreciative of Savarkar’s social reform movements in Ratnagiri, desisted from sharing stage with him openly despite several requests. From that period on, Savarkar’s secretary Balarao Savarkar kept a detailed logbook of his boss’ day to day activity, his social work, any press coverage or interviews that he gave, including what people said of him and vice versa.
During this time, Savarkar also wrote copiously as a journalist in his newspaper Shraddhanand (many times in a pen-name as he was under intense surveillance) on matters of politics, society, etc, and critiqued the political scenario of the times, outlining his philosophy of change and of an ideal political system. Balarao’s accounts were compiled into long ledgers titled Ratnagiri Parva, Hindu Mahasabha Parva, Ladha Parva and so on which are primary sources, and sometimes one of the few available sources on Savarkar at the time, other than the British Intelligence reports that were on surveillance. Sampath has used all of these diverse sources as is evident in the bibliography and endnotes to each chapter. After all, Mahadev Desai’s dutiful catalogue of Mahatma Gandhi’s papers as his secretary are one of the biggest and most reliable sources for any scholar on Gandhi. Why then are Balarao’s similar papers anathema?
In critiquing the essentialisation of Muslim separatism, prevalent in some of the canonical texts pertaining to the same subject, Sampath tries to outline the backdrop prior to the formulation of Savarkar’s idea of Hindutva. In the biography, the author elaborates the grievances of Indian Muslims resulting from the administrative policies of the British by citing examples of disproportionality in selections for the administrative services. Other such contributing factors also led to a sense of alienation. The author goes on to trace the politicisation of these grievances in the Aligarh movement, resulting in the 1906 request by Aga Khan to Viceroy Minto for guaranteeing the Indian Muslims concrete steps for improving their political status and representation in colonial India. The premise of this request identified as the perception of their “past political greatness” is also found in the works of other scholars of that era, like HV Hodson.
The multiplicity of factors leading to the political mobilisation of the disenchanted Muslim leadership were mirrored in the circumstances behind the consolidation of the rising communal sentiments among Hindu leaders. The most prominent of these factors was the census’ attempt to create breakaway sections of lower castes from the Hindu fold. The veneer of inevitability of the same cannot be an excuse for brushing aside the consecutive responses to the political developments of that era. Samapth tries to address this disparity in the lived experiences of the masses and the narratives from the political elites of the times. His writing allows space for the day to day occurrences shaping the individual attitudes by not letting them get subsumed in the larger political movements like the Khilafat movement.
Objectivity also lies in the acceptance of follies of all the stakeholders being studied and Sampath’s biography explicitly elucidating the opposition by the ‘Hindu Warders’ to Savarkar’s anti-caste activities is one such example of the same. In order to understand the thin line between hagiographies and demonising accounts, one needs to assess whether the shared interests of diametrically opposite political personalities are emphasised rather than only singling out instances of discords, without understanding the socio-political context. Therefore, it is important to note what Savarkar envisaged as the end result of his conception, which Sampath quotes directly from Savarkar’s work — his desire to get rid of the religious connotations associated with the term ‘Hindu’, for it to mean the Indian citizenry in general, as it was then used by the West. This conception was also a subject of continuous reconceptualisation by various other scholars apart from Savarkar, which later became a clarion call for the larger Hindutva movement.
In the second volume, A Contested Legacy: 1924-1966, Sampath is particularly harsh on Savarkar’s vacillations as the president of the Hindu Mahasabha, his inability to carry his party along in turbulent times and rather pander to factional feuds. It also brings to light some of his petty mindedness when it came to being generous to others, be it in his praise or even money to his long-serving secretary and assistant, or grace with his dying wife. A hagiography would have conveniently glossed over all these human pitfalls of the protagonist.
Until today, a fundamental deliberation on Savarkar, his life and philosophy remain an understudied topic by ‘South-Asian’ historians which Sampath has positively attempted to do through his two volumes. Seldom has a book been subjected to such microscopic scrutiny by those keen on discrediting it, as the enormous gaps it fills for Indian historiography helps blow the lid off several well-concealed facts.
Recounting the merits of Sampath’s work is futile. The orchestrated attacks on him are far from a constructive discussion on the merits and demerits of his writings. As a historian, Sampath has breached a well-guarded ivory tower, the falling crumbles must now be borne with pride.
The writer is a student from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Massachusetts. Views expressed are personal.
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