After a long spell, the demand for Bharat Ratna — India’s highest civilian award — for Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is back. Just ahead of the Maharashtra assembly elections, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sunil Deodhar said that giving the Bharat Ratna to the father of Hindutva will bring prestige to the award.
“If they give Bharat Rana to Savarkar, the award will attain more respect. He didn’t work to get this award. But I am confident that the Modi government, in the next five years, will do the needful. Entire Maharashtra and the entire nation is looking upto him,” he said.
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) fell significantly short of its target of bagging 45-plus seats in Maharashtra, where it won just nine seats on its own. The BJP alone had won 23 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha. This demand may resonate with a large segment of Maharashtra given Savarkar’s roots within the state, putting the party in a tricky position.
The BJP leader went a step further, arguing that Savarkar is a better idol for India’s youth than many Bollywood and cricket stars.
Early last year, Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde created a political stir when his Shiv Sena, in its national executive, approved a resolution asking the Modi government to honour the Hindutva icon with the Bharat Ratna. It was quickly followed by the Maharashtra tourism department, headed by BJP minister Mangal Prabhat Lodha, announcing the launch of a tourism circuit covering locations that held significance in Savarkar’s life such as his birthplace Bhagur in Nashik district, or the hostel room of Fergusson College where he stayed as a student.
Even in 2019, the BJP president released a Maharashtra-centric manifesto that promised the BJP will ask the NDA government at the Centre to confer India’s highest civilian award on the Hindutva icon, popularly known as Veer Savarkar.
Savarkar, a right-leaning freedom fighter, is one of the tallest icons in the Hindutva pantheon of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). Several political parties, particularly the Congress and its leader Rahul Gandhi, have been persistent in their attack on him.
The controversy over Savarkar brings to light the complexities of his personality and career in public life in a highly polarized political atmosphere of 2024. Savarkar thought Congress wasn’t a good antidote to the Muslim League which is why he had joined the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha and focussed on Hindutva, a term coined by Bengali conservative Chandranath Basu.
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