Arun Shourie – A Contemptible Mercenary

 

Arun Shourie – A Contemptible Mercenary

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Recently, Arun Shourie published a book on Savarkar, doing what he does best: spewing hatred and bile against India’s greatest and most revered figures, as he had done in respect of Ambedkar earlier. Yes, both Savarkar and Ambedkar are India’s greatest national heroes of the Independence era, and, in my article “The Twelve Indian Political Figures I Like, Respect and Admire the Most”, I named these two at the top of my list.

About Savarkar, I clarified in this very article: “Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, called Swatantraveer or simply Veer Savarkar, is definitely the greatest political figure in India, the perfect epitome of a popular term "intellectual kshatriya". To begin with, not only did he fight for India's freedom all his life, but he also fought for Hinduism, Hindus and Hindu interests: in fact, he coined or popularized the word Hindutva. He suffered physical and mental tortures for several years in the Andaman islands for his activities. And the greatest and most unique thing about him is that after India became free (or I should say, free from British rule) he never once sought any position of power or profit, which he could have done with the very greatest of ease.

And not only did he fight valiantly for freedom and for Hinduism, he also actively and continuously  worked against the evil social practices associated with casteism, and he was a rationalist to the extent that after his death his body was cremated without any religious rituals as per his wishes. Although Mahatma Gandhi is credited with the swadeshi movement and the boycott of British goods, it is Savarkar who initiated the movement long before him in 1905 by publicly burning British goods in a bonfire. His fruitful interactions with Subhashchandra Bose and Dr. Ambedkar are also well documented. And his call for Hindus to join the army in large numbers during the second world war, so that (after the British left India) India would have a well-trained and experienced army, was truly prophetic and timely. And after all this he was a great litterateur and poet: listen to his two extremely touching and stirring songs "jayonstute shri mahanmangale" and "ne mazasi ne parat matrubhumila" so beautifully song by the Mangeshkar family.

It is amusing to see rabid leftists and other Hindu-haters berating him for "tendering an apology to the British government" to get out of the Andamans after spending almost 13 years in the Andamans as a prisoner, and even, ludicrously (and taking as a fact that he had orchestrated the assassination of Gandhi, in spite of the court verdict rejecting such an idea), for "turning his back on his lieutenants" after this assassination. It is obvious these rabid Hindu-haters would have wanted to see Savarkar rotting to death in the Andamans (rather than remaining alive to carry out his role in India's history) or convicted for Gandhi's assassination, but their frustration at neither of these two events taking place cannot be held as a black mark against Savarkar.

This is not to say that I agree fully with everything Savarkar said or felt: I am a vegetarian by ethical conviction (although my mouth still waters at the smell of non-vegetarian food which I gave up in 1973) and cannot agree with his views on meat-eating being necessary for Hindus to be a strong race. I agree with Ambedkar's call for an exchange of population (in 1947) rather than Savarkar's call for a United and undivided India. And obviously I cannot agree with Savarkar's views (though not fully developed) on the AIT.

But none of this detracts from his being the greatest political figure in the history of India.”

 

About Ambedkar, I clarified in another article, “Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: A much-Misappropriated Scholar”: “Dr. Ambedkar is indeed one of the most misunderstood and even most misappropriated leaders of the Independence era. On the one hand, all kinds of casteist hate-politics (most of which goes blatantly against whatever he stood for and whatever he wrote and expressed in his writings) is played in his name by self-styled "followers" and "Ambedkarites". On the other hand, he is an object of hatred for many misguided Hindus. That he should be hated by casteist upper-caste Hindus is understandable. But even many more scholarly Hindus are lacking in respect for this very great man. I remember a popular and prominent Hindu writer (now long dead) once telling me: "Oh, you must not pay much attention to what Ambedkar wrote and said. He was often in a state of inebriation, and wrote anything at all", which shocked me by the degree of sweeping contempt which that writer seemed to have for Dr. Ambedkar. Other Hindu writers (and of course the BJP Parivar, which uses every trick ever invented if it can be used to its advantage) have misappropriated him whenever and wherever they could do so.”

 

Even in this article on Ambedkar, I again wrote about Savarkar: “Before Ambedkar,  I must mention (as I did in my reply to the comment on my last article) Veer Savarkar, my most respected leader from the Independence era, who was not only a great revolutionary freedom-fighter, Hindutva exponent, social reformer, outspoken rationalist, poet and writer, and whose stirring songs set to music by the Mangeshkar family (Ne Mazasī  Ne  and Jayonstute) can bring tears to the eyes, and who suffered isolated imprisonment in the Andamans for 13 years, but also a person who never sought any kind of material reward or position from Independent India (which he could very easily have angled for and got) as a reward for having devoted his entire life to the nation: in this respect he stands out from all the rest.

There have been plenty of scurrilous writings on Veer Savarkar, as a search of the internet will immediately bring to anyone's notice, by people not worthy of even taking his name or wiping his shoes. That all these slanderous writings have been completely destroyed by the deeply researched and truly great recent two-volume magnum opus, "Savarkar: A Contested Legacy 1924-1966" by Vikram Sampath, only serves to highlight the fact that truly great people will always be the target of scandal-mongering hate-writers, who can pick up small incidents (true or false) and distort and magnify them to any extent to malign them.

On a personal note, I remember that when I "joined" the RSS in 1977 (after the Emergency, when I had read the book "Freedom at Midnight" by Collins and Lapierre, and decided that I would become a member of both the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, both of which were much maligned in that book) I was uncomfortable with most of the things that I saw in the organization. I realized it was a purely political organization, a kind of recruitment-and-volunteer organization for the then Jana Sangh, with mindless activities (calculated to inculcate a kind of blind cult of affiliation, devotion and obedience to the "Sangh"), and no intellectual pursuits (beyond the most juvenile ideas of history, religion and nationalism): all the organizations emanating from it were only calculated to enlarge the recruitment-and-volunteer base in different fields (students, farmers, workers, etc.). There was actually no commitment to any aspect of Indian Culture: no organization for protecting and propagating Indian flora, fauna and environment, or Indian history or philosophy, or India's extremely rich heritage in music, dance, architecture, handicrafts, etc. (and nor for social reform or social work). I spent most of my time asking the elders in my "shakha" why the uniform (which I refused to wear), the marching instruments and music, etc. of the organization were based on British cultural models rather than on Indian cultural ones — and was told each time that all these aspects of culture were irrelevant to nationalism, and definitely to the "Sangh's" ideas of nationalism ("we are not nationalistic in that way"): ironically the same answer I continued to receive in later years when swayamsevaks criticized Rajiv Gandhi's "Festival of India" or defended the Shiv-Sena-BJP Maharashtra Government's active sponsoring of the Michael Jackson show in Mumbai. Now, with the BJP Parivar actively carrying on all over India the active mercenary destruction of India's forests and natural heritage, this is doubtless the unspoken logic behind it.

And, on every single point, I realized that the swayamsevaks had two sets of rules and principles, not just different from each other but diametrically opposite to each other, to judge the acts of Congressmen and Jana Sanghis. The only positive thing I can say is that I made many new friends and acquaintances in and through the RSS.”

 

About Ambedkar, I went on (in this article on him): “But, since this article is about Ambedkar, let me point out that he was genuinely one of the deepest and most intelligent thinkers of his time, the most genuine scholar among all the political leaders of that era, and in many respects, his scholarship, perception and insight was far ahead of the times, and far above that of even Savarkar (which, again, does not reduce Savarkar's greatness). If he often wrote things that a Hindu activist would not like, well, it is not surprising and only what one should expect from an intelligent thinker belonging to a "lower" caste in the mid-twentieth century when "upper" caste politics was at its height. Which is what makes the following all the more admirable and impressive:” And I dealt with the greatness of Ambedkar in the following Sections in that article, which I will not repeat here in full (and will give only the names of those Sections):

“I. The Aryan Invasion Theory.

II. Caste as a Non-Racial Division.

III. Conversion to Christianity or Islam as Denationalization.

IV. Rejection and Criticism of Islam and the Koran.

1. On Islamist Assassinations and the Moplah Riots of 1921.

2. On the burqa and related Islamic female apparel.

3. On Islamic Invasions and Destruction.

4. Specifically on the Destruction of Buddhism in India.

5. On Casteism, Slavery and the Koran.

V. On the Partition of India.”

 

Can it be a coincidence that these are the very two Indian leaders this megalomaniac has chosen to target, just as, in another earlier book, he targeted two of the most revered spiritual leaders of the Independence (or rather pre-Independence) era: “Two Saints: Speculations Around and About Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Ramana Maharishi” (Harper Collins, 1917).

All this stands out in sharp contrast to his sycophantic and kid-gloves treatment in respect of Mahatma Gandhi, whose much greater and much more devastatingly destructive acts and actions are conveniently ignored by Shourie, who places him on a pedestal in all his writings.

Is there something innately wrong with this man? I did not really want to criticize him because some of his books are still, and will always be, among the greatest and most emphatically must-read books for all Indians and Hindus:

1. Eminent Historians…

2. Falling Over Backwards…

3. Harvesting our Souls…

4. The Only Fatherland…

5. The World of Fatwas…

Also, he was a close associate of Sita Ram Goel, and almost all his above books were printed in Sita Ram Goel’s printing press.

Also, one can sympathize with him in his personal tragedies, with his son suffering from cerebral palsy, and his wife from Parkinsons' Disease, and himself shattered by various severe financial problems. This left him embittered.

 

But embitterment is no excuse for ideological turncoatism. As I wrote in a mail to someone a year or so ago: “Even otherwise, despite his extremely high degree of intelligence and scholarship, there is something perverse and turncoatish in Arun Shourie's nature. I noticed this long ago from two incidents. First was when Rajiv Gandhi was the PM, he went on a visit to Pakistan, accompanied by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, PA Sangma.  After returning, Sangma gave a flowery and sycophantic speech in the Lok Sabha about how much the Pakistani public really loves India, giving some examples of the sentimental reactions that he encountered there. Shourie immediately wrote an article castigating him for falling a prey to Pakistani machinations in seeing "Love" and "friendly sentiments" for India in Pakistan. However, later, when Vajpayee was the PM, he also visited Pakistan, and Arun Shourie accompanied him. After coming back, Shourie wrote an article about the love and friendly sentiments for India that he noticed in Pakistan!

However that was nothing to the way he executed a u-turn when he fell out with Modi. The same man who had earlier written the brilliant book "Harvesting our Souls" about the activities of Christian missionaries and their victim-card games in India where even when they were the attackers, the Christians were portrayed as victims, now started singing the opposite tune: he held joint press conferences with leftists and Christian missionaries to claim that helpless Christians were being attacked and killed all over India!”

And this is the crucial point: the same man, whose brilliant book on missionaries, “Harvesting our Souls…” simply cannot be praised enough, suddenly went out of his way to hold joint press conferences with leftists and Christian missionaries to say exactly the opposite of everything he had written in that book, and to display in himself the same mercenary tendencies he had exposed in that book.

Can personal tragedies, or disillusionment with a particular political party or leader, or personal political setbacks, justify such brazen and blatant u-turns on purely ideological issues or issues of right and wrong? Can there be anything more unprincipled than this?

 

And does a man of this type have the right to fling mud on the greatest political and spiritual leaders India has seen in the last century? What was the last straw to me was the following disgusting interview given by him to another Hindu-hater, Karan Thapar:

https://x.com/thewire_in/status/1884257625359241685

I feel truly disgusted to see the level to which he has fallen, and I am sure If Sita Ram Goel were alive, he would have been equally disgusted to see him venting his personal frustrations on great people from the past whose shoelaces he is not fit to even tie.