New Friends, Fresh Tension? Sena Slams 'Dirt' in Ally's Mind as Congress Booklet on Savarkar Creates Rift

Mumbai The Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance in Maharashtra seems to be on shaky ground owing to the difference of opinion between the alliance partners over Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.

In the latest incident, Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut trained guns at the Congress over a Seva Dal booklet questioning the credentials of Savarkar as a patriot and his reputation for valour.

The Hindi booklet, distributed at a camp of Congress-affiliated Seva Dal in Madhya Pradesh, had also claimed that Savarkar and Mahatma Gandhi's killer Nathuram Godse were in a physical relationship.

"Veer Savarkar was a great man and will remain a great man. A section keeps talking against him. This shows the dirt in their mind," Raut said, responding to the insinuations in the booklet, titled "Veer Savarkar, Kitne 'Veer'?"

The book alleged that Savarkar received money from the British after he was released from Andaman's Cellular Jail.

Pointing at the fissures in the Maharashtra alliance, BJP leader Uma Bharti questioned Shiv Sena chief and Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and asked if he would break silence and step down.

“He needs to decide between power and respect for Veer Savarkar,” she said.

Last month, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's jibe that his name was not "Rahul Savarkar" and hence he would not seek apology (about his remark on rape) had riled the Shiv Sena, his party's new-found ally in Maharashtra.

Congress Seva Dal stoked controversy with a booklet in which it claimed that Savarkar was in a “homosexual relationship” with Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse.

The book titled ‘Veer Savarkar Kitne Veer? (Veer Savarkar, How Brave?)’ was distributed among volunteers during the inauguration of the Seva Dal national training camp in Bhopal’s Bairagarh on Thursday.

The book claims that Savarkar was in a relationship with Godse and says that he had exhorted men to rape women of minority communities. It also blames RSS and Savarkar for the partition of the country in 1947.

While quoting an instance mentioned in Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s book ‘Freedom at Midnight’, the booklet claims, “Prior to adopting Brahmacharya, there is only one mention of Godse’s physical relationship. He had a homosexual relationship with his political mentor Veer Savarkar.”