Their pathological hatred of MK Gandhi, who I and countless others call ‘Bapu’, and their desperation to justify his murder, saw them unleash a vicious campaign – from mixing up the Mopla Rebellion in the Malabar to Bapu’s championing of the Khilafat Movement and calling it the beginning of the appeasement of Muslims. They blame him for Partition and accuse him of forcing the government to ‘gift’ Rs 55 crore to Pakistan – blatant lies cleverly mixed with half-truths and fed to the gullible.

It’s understandable that they are desperate to justify Bapu’s murder. When their involvement in his murder was revealed, they had to portray themselves as saviours of Hindus. Many leaders have built their political careers by maligning Bapu and glorifying his murderer. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself is part of the Sangh, which is sympathetic to Bapu’s killer Nathuram Godse. Modi’s pretended devotion to Bapu is to gain credibility abroad, but it’s a sham.

Bapu, after all, is a soft target and the only thing his followers, ‘Gandhians’, have imbibed from him is to passively turn the other cheek.

The cultural offensive

Several books maligning Bapu have been published and widely circulated by the Sangh. The government banned the circulation of Godse’s statement in court and the book published by co-accused and his brother Gopal Godse, ‘55 Koticha Bali’ in Marathi and ‘May It Please Your Honour’ in English. A statement read in court by Godse, clearly written by his guru Vinayak Savarkar while they were incarcerated in the Red Fort, was circulated by the Sangh and illegal copies of the book were widely available among Sanghis.

Having emerged from their burrows and grabbed power, they have created a coterie of ‘historians’ who write a convenient version of history with fiction and myth freely mixed in. The Sangh then legitimises such ‘history’ and uses it as propaganda.

Initially, plays were written and performed in Maharashtra, such as ‘Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoy’. Actor Sharad Ponkshe made such a successful career portraying Godse that he now passes himself off as Bapu’s murderer and is venerated by the Hindutva hordes.

A spate of films has been made on Bapu and Godse, most of them so atrocious that they bombed at the box office. Rajkumar Santoshi’s ‘Gandhi Godse Ek Yudh’ is a glaring example.

The Sangh has now reaped the monetary benefits of its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), being in power for two terms. It backs propaganda films, the most recent being Randeep Hooda’s ‘Swatantra Veer Savarkar’. The lies begin in the title itself. An apologist of our freedom movement is being shamelessly placed among the ranks of martyrs like Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh, Shaheed Chandra Shekhar Azad and Shaheed Ashfaqullah Khan. Savarkar gave himself the title ‘Veer’, which makes the title of the film laughable.

Savarkar was no ‘Veer’

Unfortunately, many Indians believe the blatant lie that Savarkar was a ‘Veer’ and forget his centrality to the Gandhi assassination. The court acquitted him because the prosecution did not submit adequate evidence but it did not declare him innocent. The Kapur Commission proved Savarkar’s role beyond doubt and said that an organisation with a nationwide network of fanatics – whose members had deeply infiltrated the government, the bureaucracy and the police – was actively involved in the murder. At that time, there was only one organisation fitting the bill – the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Never mind the fact that the RSS was never prosecuted. Godse and Narayan Apte paid for their crime with their lives, but the kingpins escaped.

What brands Savarkar as a cowardly collaborator are not only his apologies and his multiple mercy petitions to the British but, after he secured his release from kala paani, how loyal he remained to the British, living off the pension provided by the colonial government. Many political prisoners in the Andaman Islands suffered much more brutal torture than Savarkar did, but they endured it and did not become British stooges.

The torture Savarkar was subjected to was also a myth created by him. The British knew how easy it would be to break him and succeeded spectacularly. So much so that after the provincial Congress government of the Bombay Presidency released him from house arrest in Ratnagiri, not once did Savarkar support the freedom movement. All he did was spew communal venom and loyally serve the British.

Savarkar openly advocated the boycott of the Quit India Movement, calling upon his supporters to subvert it. While Bapu and the Congress refused to support the British during World War II, Savarkar called upon his team to actively recruit soldiers – even when he knew that the British would use them to fight Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army. So much for ‘Swatantra Veer’.

Mahesh Manjrekar, who was initially the director of Hooda’s film, received well-deserved criticism when he announced the project. But he left the project soon after, alleging falsification of history.

Hooda’s film claims Savarkar inspired Bhagat Singh; even thick-skinned Sanghis would have been embarrassed by this fiction.

Hooda also claimed that, had Savarkar had his way, India would have gained Independence three decades earlier and blamed Bapu for the delay. India got its freedom in 1947; three decades earlier would mean 1917. Bapu had just launched his first agitation in India, the Champaran Satyagraha, and Savarkar had already made several mercy petitions to the British. So, in 1917, Bapu had a negligible influence on our freedom movement and Savarkar had already embarked on becoming the British’s loyal servant. He would not have worked for freedom.

To a motivated falsifier of facts, however, such details don’t matter. Hooda has loyally completed a task assigned to him – add fuel to the inferno of hate and aim vitriol at Bapu. He will be handsomely rewarded for his service.

The silver lining on the silver screen

There is hope. I end by talking about two films, one a documentary made by a Canadian-India director and my friend Anand Ramayya – ‘Who Killed Gandhi?’ (2013). It is a balanced documentary that throws light on the Gandhi murder conspiracy through the lives of the three main characters: Bapu, Savarkar and Godse. Unfortunately, because of the regime change in 2014, the documentary hasn’t found a theatrical or OTT release in India. It has, however, had several screenings abroad and won awards too.

The other film I admire is ‘Ae Watan Mere Watan’, directed by Kannan Iyer and written by him and Darab Farooqui. This is how historical films should be made – not by incorporating fiction, twisting facts or adding melodrama but by telling the story simply and honestly. There may be creative and technical criticism but no one can fault the honesty of the filmmakers. Personally, I would have loved more drama to bring out the heroism of common Indians who made great sacrifices during the Quit India Movement but I doff my hat to the writer and director for not deviating from the facts.

I admired the cast as well; Sara Ali Khan portrayed admirably someone she had never seen. It is easy to portray a fictitious character but intimidating to portray someone whom many in the present have interacted with and you haven’t. For me, Khan brought Ushaben Mehta – Gandhian and freedom fighter – alive on screen. Emraan Hashmi portrayed Ram Manohar Lohia convincingly, putting aside his stardom to get into the character of an icon. This, too, isn’t easy.

The other actors too did justice to the characters they portrayed; no one played to the gallery. That was left to the story, a tale of valour told honestly.

This is the difference between propaganda and history, the former is devoid of truth, the later needs no embellishment. I wish we had an audience that was enlightened enough to know the difference.

 Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of the Mahatma, is an activist, author and president of the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation. Reach him at gandhitushar.a@gmail.com

Courtesy: https://www.allindiansmatter.in

The post Fiction as history and history honestly portrayed: a tale of two films and a documentary appeared first on SabrangIndia.

With the ascendance of a brute majoritarian politics, identity politics related divisive issues and the ideology of Hindu nationalism, many in the film World have been now producing films which promote a particular narrative, a divisive one, which is based on sectarian views of politics and history. The common theme among these is a tilting of truth and in most cases glorification of Hindu Nationalist icons. The clever undermining of truth and building up of ‘fiction as fact’ is the underlying theme of most of these films. One of these was heavily promoted by the likes of Prime Minister Modi and RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat, ‘Kashmir files’. Affluent BJP supporters bought the tickets of this film in bulk and distributed these in their areas to encourage people to watch this. The worthies who promoted these claimed that finally the truth of these events is being brought to fore.

Another one was Kerala Story, where the figures of those being converted to Islam and recruited for IS were exaggerated to the sky. Many other such fiction like films flopped at the box office like 72 Hoorain, which tried to present ‘Islamic Terrorism’, presenting the political problem as a religious one. This film suppressed any social understanding that similar allurements of Apsaras in Swarg and Fairies in Heaven are also there in the mythologies of other religions.

These films were mainly to promote Islamophobia. On another level, the film on Godse (2022) was an attempt to glorify Godse by putting together many falsehoods around false narratives that Gandhi did not try to save Bhagat Singh from hanging and he opposed the Congress resolution mourning Bhagat Singh’s death. And now comes the film ‘Swatantaraveer Savarkar’ by Randeep Hooda. This promotes fiction as truth, taking this self-deception to an even higher level. It claims that Bhagat Singh went to meet Savarkar and even told him that he wants to translate his book, ‘First War of Independence’ from Marathi to English!

What is the truth? Many revolutionaries read this book and appreciated it. The fact is the book was written in Marathi around 1908 or so and was translated into English a year later. Bhagat Singh was born in 1907 and as a matter of fact never met Savarkar in his all-to-brief life!

The film shows Savarkar stating that we shall win Independence by 1912 i.e. 35 years before we actually got Independence. The fact is that Savarkar was in the Andaman Jail from 1910 and had started writing mercy petitions. By 1912, he had written three of them. In these petitions he had sought apology from the British for his earlier actions and committed to serve the British loyally if he is released. And that’s what he did after his release by the British. Our freedom struggle picked up steam in 1920 when due to the Non Cooperation movement, most of the people started associating with the freedom struggle.

The film goes on to question why no Congressman was sent to Andamans and most of them were sent to Indian jails alone. This may not be factually true. After 1920 the anti British movement took the path of non violence led by Gandhi-INC. The sentences given to the satyagrahis were of different types like imprisonment in jails. Andaman or hanging (Like for Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru) were for involvement in acts of violence. As non violence was the basic credo of the movement led by Gandhi they were neither sentenced to death nor sent to Andamans.

The film argues that the country got Independence not through non Violence but through violence. The major revolutionaries operating in India belonged to the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. After Bhagat Singh and his comrades were killed or hanged there was no major violent movement. Savarkar’s Abhinav Bharat had abandoned anti British stance with Savarkar’s mercy petitions. Subhash Bose, who formed Azad Hind Fauz, was killed in 1945 and the soldiers of Azad Hind Fauz were imprisoned and kept in Red Fort as prisoners. It was the INC which formed a committee to defend these soldiers. In this Nehru had taken the lead to form the committee for release of these prisoners of war.

There are claims in the film that are fallacious: that it was Savarkar who advised Bose to form the army and to fight the British. This is totally in contrast to what are the real facts. Bose after leaving Congress had made up his mind to fight the British through armed might with the help of Germany and Japan, When Bose was fighting against British, Savarkar was urging Hindu Mahasabha to get the Hindus recruited to British army, to help British,

“Addressing the Mahasabha’s Calcutta session, Savarkar urged all universities, colleges and schools to ‘secure entry into military forces for youths in any and every way’. When Gandhi had launched his individual satyagraha the following year, Savarkar, at the Mahasabha session held in December 1940 in Madura, encouraged Hindu men to enlist in ‘various branches of British armed forces en masse’.”

About Savarkar, Subhash Chandra Bose wrote: “Savarkar seemed to be oblivious of the international situation and was only thinking how Hindus could secure military training by entering Britain’s army in India.” Bose concluded that “…nothing could be expected from either the Muslim League or the Hindu Mahasabha.”

Bose in an address to Indians via Azad Hind Radio said “I would request Mr. Jinnah, Mr. Savarkar & to all those who still think of a compromise with the British to realize once for all that in the world of tomorrow there will be no British Empire”

As far as associating Savarkar with Subhash Bose in the film, Chandra Kumar Bose, grand nephew of Netaji after seeing the trailer told Hooda, “Please refrain from linking Netaji with Savarkar. Netaji was an inclusive secular leader and patriot of patriots.”

The film is one more “cultural effort” aimed at distorting the truth to strengthen Hindu Nationalist politics, only with an eye on the forthcoming elections.

The post Films building up  a majoritarian narrative: Swatantraveer Savarkar appeared first on SabrangIndia.