• Vijay Shankar Singh

History has always commonly been tampered with. The rulers often want to conceal their perverted and ugly past and bring to the fore in public their brighter faces. It is their heart’s desire to be remembered in history as a better ruler and person. When the elements who did not participate in the freedom movement and stayed with the British or the elements belonging to the Sangh, talk big about patriotism and nationalism and join a false race to showcase themselves as the ultimate patriot, then they feel that their past has been a stark contrast to their present. Then they superimpose themselves in some of the important events of the past and want to show the same to their supporters. They present their patriotism as a normal and genuine patriot who abstained from campaigning in the freedom struggle of the past. They are constantly engaged in the over-enthusiasm to prove that they were not separate from the mainstream of the country. But, for all this, they do not create a new history, instead, they start struggling to camouflage themselves in the backdrop of popular historical events. They join the stream of history but are distinctly known due to their role in the said period of history. I call it the ‘history writing of Improvisation’ or ‘smearing’.

Now-a-days, a statement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi given in Dhaka is very much discussed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had undergone Satyagraha for the independence of Bangladesh when he was 20 years or 22 years old. The revelation comes from a tweet by the PMO. According to the news of News 24, he also went to jail in this movement. His move on the path of agitation, after personal incidents of selling tea, catching crocodiles, begging for 35 years, doing post-graduation entirely in Political Science, then to retiring in the Himalayas, is a new information.

Contemporary history scholars should research the contribution made by the Prime Minister to the independence of Bangladesh, because this fact is not mentioned in the books related to the independence of Bangladesh. There is no mention of this incident even in many books written on Narendra Modi. This research is also important to know if any Satyagraha was organized by the then Jana Sangh big leaders, Atal ji and Advani ji during the Bangla Mukti Abhiyan. If anyone holds any piece of information about this then please do let everyone know about it and also let me know about the Satyagraha in which this great personality has endured so much. However, there is a mention of organizing a demonstration to demand recognition of Bangladesh in August 1971, under the leadership of Atal ji. But what was the role of Narendra Modi in it, it is not known.

Similarly, a page of a book is quite trending on WhatsApp these days, referring to the role of VD Savarkar in being instrumental in organizing a meeting between Shaheed-E-Azam Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad. First, read what is written in the above page, “Both were talking when Sardar Bhagat Singh came there. His fair long face, small moustache taut on his face, hat on the head and open collar of shirt. He looked magnificent in his form. He greeted Savarkar Ji.

“You have come at the right time Bhagat Singh.” Savarkar said looking at Bhagat Singh.

“Order, Guruji.” Bhagat Singh said.

“There is nothing to order. First you meet him. People know him by the name of Chandrashekhar Azad. “

Savarkar introduced them to each other. Getting emotional, both hugged each other. The two met for the first time today.

“Today, Azad is getting very hopeless with Bismil’s hanging. Therefore, you carry forward the work of the organization together.” Savarkar told Bhagat Singh.

Both of these things mean that VD Savarkar and Chandrashekhar Azad were in conversation with each other. Their conversation was in reference to the hanging of Ram Prasad Bismil, the hero of the Kakori incident. Then, Bhagat Singh comes there, and he addresses Savarkar as Guru Ji, and it is then that Bhagat Singh meets Azad.

Now see the chronology and facts of Bhagat Singh and Azad’s visit and the Kakori incident. The Kakori incident took place on August 09, 1925 and included the following revolutionaries. Chandrashekhar Azad, Ram Prasad ‘Bismil’, Ashfaq Ullah Khan, Yogesh Chandra Chatterjee, Prem Krishna Khanna, Mukundi Lal, Vishnu Sharan Dublish, Suresh Chandra Bhattacharya, Ram Krishna Khatri, ManmathnathGupt, Rajkumar Sinha, Thakur Roshan Singh, Rajendra Nath Lahiri, Govind CharanKar,Ramdulare Trivedi, Ramnath Pandey, ShachindranathSanyal, BhupendranathSanyal, Pranvesh Kumar Chatterjee. In 1927, on 19 December Ram Prasad Bismil was hanged in the Gorakhpur jail. On December 10, 1927, Rajendra Nath Lahiri and Ashfaq Ulla Khan had already been hanged. The trial of this case went on from 1925 to 1927 and appeal was carried even to the Privy Council, but the name of VD Savarkar has not been mentioned in this entire development.

Kanpur was the city where Bhagat Singh met revolutionaries like Chandrashekhar Azad, BatukeshwarDutt, Phanindranath Ghosh, Bijoy Kumar Sinha, Shiv Verma and Yashpal. Kanpur had then become a center of movements against the British rule. Kanpur has been a major contributor to the life of Bhagat Singh. It would not be incorrect to say that this city gave a new direction to his ideas. He lived in the city as a journalist, and it was this role that gave his thinking an edge. Bhagat Singh came to Kanpur for the first time in 1924, at the age of 17. It is also said that Bhagat Singh’s family wanted to get him married. Bhagat Singh used to say that ‘As long as his country is a slave, he cannot marry.’ In Bhagat Singh’s words, ‘My bride is freedom, and she can only be won by dying.’

In Kanpur, where people of Gandhian ideology were present on one hand, those with revolutionary thinking were also present on the other. The communist movement had also been present here. One of them was Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, a pioneer of journalism. Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi used to publish newspaper ‘Pratap’ from Kanpur. Bhagat Singh came into his contact. Bhagat Singh worked for about two and a half years in Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi’s newspaper, ‘Pratap’. He used to write his regular column in the newspaper by the name of Balwant Singh. His articles often used to inspire the youth for the freedom struggle. It is said that in addition to Pratap’s printing press at Feelkhana, Kanpur, he also stayed in the Mohalla Ramnarayan market. It was in Kanpur itself that he met revolutionaries like Chandrashekhar Azad, BatukeshwarDutt, Phanindranath Ghosh, Bijoy Kumar Sinha, Shiv Verma and Yashpal. It was Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi who led to the meeting of Bhagat Singh with Chandrashekhar Azad. Savarkar is not mentioned even in this context.

Among Bhagat Singh’s associates, Shiv Verma, who lived till 1996 and I have had the privilege of meeting him, also made no mention of Bhagat Singh’s meeting with Savarkar. ManmathnathGupt has written the history of the revolutionary movement, but there is no such mention in it either. Yashpal in his overview mentions a meeting of Azad and Savarkar, in which Savarkar promises to give Azad a pistol on the condition that he would kill MA Jinnah. Azad rebukes Savarkar and says that they are revolutionaries and not mercenaries. If Savarkar had any role in the meeting between Bhagat Singh and Azad, the historians, who wrote the history of the revolutionary movements, would have surely mentioned that.

If history is not read with the eye of a fact-seeker, then many incidents written in the form of such speeches often not only mislead, but also change the historical thinking and direction of the reader. It is a surprising fact that organizations such as the Hindu Mahasabha, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Muslim League, not only stayed away from the ideals of these revolutionaries but also kept silent on their hanging. But an interesting aspect is that out of these three communal organizations, the RSS, which remained silent during the entire struggle against the British, has been bringing out literature which claims that it was associated with these revolutionaries during the freedom struggle. During the NDA regime when the RSS volunteer Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister, a surprising claim was made that the founder of the Sangh, Keshav BaliramHedgewar, had met Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru in 1925 and also used to attend the meetings of these revolutionaries. It was also claimed that when Rajguruwent underground after killing Saunders, he was given shelter by Keshav BaliramHedgewar.

(Also See - Dr. Keshav BaliramHedgewar: Rakesh Sinha, Department of Publications, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, page-160)

The truth is the Sangh had stopped the young volunteers, who were drawn towards Bhagat Singh, from joining the freedom struggle. Now-a-days, the RSS and its associated organizations invoke the name of Bhagat Singh and all the other revolutionaries with great enthusiasm. But the fact is that the RSS has a dream for India which is completely contradictory to the one envisioned by this revolutionary stream of freedom fighters. Bhagat Singh had wanted to establish a socialist rule of the workers and was a firm atheist. The founder of the RSS, Dr. Hedgewar, made a lot of effort to prevent volunteers from the influence of Bhagat Singh at that time. Not only this, later the other Sarsanghchalak Guru Golwalkar also condemned the movement of Bhagat Singh.

Read on this important excerpt from Media Vigil,

“When Bhagat Singh and his comrades were hanged, some of our friends were so excited that we swore together that we too would do something dangerous and had decided to run away from home to do so. But it was not right for us to run away from the house like this without telling doctor (Hedgewar) and then we thought of letting Doctor Ji know about our decision and the friends handed over this responsibility to me. We reached Doctor Ji together and with great courage, I started putting my thoughts in front of him. Upon knowing this, Doctor Ji held a meeting with us to have us cancel this scheme and tell us the superiority of the work of the Sangh. This meeting was held for seven days and used to take place from ten o’clock to three o’clock in the night as well. The brilliant ideas and valuable leadership of Doctor Ji made a fundamental change in our thoughts and ideals of life. From that day onwards, we stopped making such thoughtless plans. Our life was given a new direction and we put our mind in the works of the Sangh. “

(Madhukar DattatrayaDeoras, Third Chief of the Sangh. Smritikan - A compilation of the various events in the life of honourable Dr. Hedgewar, RSS Publications Division, Nagpur, 1962, pages-47-48)

The same sequence is seen in the desire to connect oneself with Subhash Babu. After 2014, the exercise of opening files related to Netaji started and in those classified documents it was tried to find out that Nehru Ji and Subhash had a very tense relationship. It was even said that Nehru Ji had a hand in the death of Netaji. Nehru Ji was responsible for the sudden disappearance of Subhash so as to become Prime Minister himself. But all these misgivings were answered appropriately by Subhash Babu himself when he named the three brigades of the ‘Azad Hind Fauj’ after Gandhi, Nehru and Azad. Subhash Babu’s autobiography, which has remained incomplete, and which is repeatedly mentioned in the book ‘His Majesty’s Opponent’, written by Sugata Bose, can be read to know about the relationship between Nehru and Subhash. When nothing concrete could be found in the files of Netaji Subhash that could confirm the RSS’ thinking towards Nehru, they were again trusted back into their peaceful and silent existence.

Now read a recent episode. Netaji Subhash’s birth anniversary was being celebrated in Kolkata on January 23, 2021. A friend of mine was also attending that event as a special guest. In that event, the announcer mentioned Netaji’s escape from the country disguised as Ziauddin Khan and also added, “It is said that Savarkar had suggested Netaji to go out of the country and form the INA.”

The Prime Minister was also seated as the chief guest at the event and Mamata Banerjee was hooted with the slogan of Jai Shri Ram at the same event, and she left the assembly.

Such lies are intentionally injected into history. This is often used as a test of sensitivity to historiography, as propagandists keep doing so. Such lies are planted on the principle of Goebbels. Such misconceptions usually get accepted in the field of ancient history and to some extent in medieval history, because due to lack of historical writing material, there is some skepticism on their authenticity. Therefore, just like the ‘Syawad’ of Jain philosophy, this injected lie is acceptable to a certain extent.

But in modern history and especially in the history of freedom struggle, all this lie is not accepted at all, because printed and written material about this period is available in such a quantity that no matter how beautifully the lie is crafted, it gets here. Almost all the big leaders have written their memoirs. All the incidents are mentioned in the newspaper files. The government has its own classified and open documents. Anyone contracted, can study them and draw their own conclusions.

Both Netaji Subhash and Savarkar lie at opposite poles on issues of politics, political ideology, freedom struggle and religion in politics. When Netaji became Congress President in 1939, he had made the rule for the first time that members of the communal parties, the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha would not join the Congress.

In 1940, Netaji formed the Forward Bloc, which is based on leftist ideology. The Forward Bloc continues to exist as a political party and as a constituent party of the Left Front even today. Till Netaji leaves the country, he strongly opposes Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee of the Hindu Mahasabha in Bengal. VD Savarkar remains the President of the Hindu Mahasabha from 1937 to 43. He was the pensioner of the British. He continues to be against the Quit India Movement and supporter of Jinnah’s two nation theory. How to believe that Savarkar had advised Netaji to go out of the country?

Such lies are being intentionally injected since many years. A lie about the lineage of Jawaharlal Nehru has been circulating for a long time, that he belongs to the family of some Ghiyasuddin. It is the RSS that issues most of Gandhi-Nehru’s character certificates. It is a kind of inferiority complex, not an atonement for not participating in the fight of the great freedom struggle. The study of history cannot be one-sided. Every event is multi-faceted, no matter which angle you look at it from, it will look different. In a sense, we are in an era of Goebbelism. Finding the truth from among fake screenshots or a pile of unproven links is a bit laborious, but not too difficult.

(The author is a retired IPS officer)

The article is translated from Hindi