Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Devendra Fadnavis on Friday demanded a ban on a controversial booklet on V.D. Savarkar released by the Congress Seva Dal in Madhya Pradesh, and asked the Shiv Sena how many insults it would endure at the hands of the Congress to remain in power in Maharashtra.
Mr. Fadnavis, the Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Assembly, lashed out at the claims made in the booklet distributed at a camp of the Seva Dal — the grassroots organisation of the Congress — which claimed that Savarkar had a physical relationship with Nathuram Godse, Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin.
“The Congress has continually insulted Veer Savarkar, who suffered untold atrocities in Andaman’s Cellular Jail in the fight for Independence and who inspired several revolutionaries. But [Congress leader] Rahul Gandhi calls him a ‘traitor’… the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Sena should beware that the people of Maharashtra will never forgive them for insulting Savarkar in this crass fashion,” he said, addressing public meetings in Nandurbar district to campaign for the zilla parishad elections.
He later tweeted, “SwatantryaVeer Savarkar ji is undoubtedly one of the greatest freedom fighters & inspiration for all of us! Congress party has shown its distorted mentality by distributing a book which uses extremely cheap,insulting words for Veer Savarkar ji.Congress shows its mental bankruptcy (sic).”
He also demanded that Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray immediately ban the booklet, while wondering how Sena founder Bal Thackeray would have reacted to it.
The booklet, Veer Savarkar Kitney ‘Veer’? (How ‘brave’ was Savarkar?), claims that Savarkar encouraged sexual assault on women from the minority community and that he celebrated the deaths of Muslims. It also says he received money from the British after his release from Cellular Jail.
The Seva Dal has said that claims of Savarkar’s alleged homosexual relationship with Godse were made in the bestseller Freedom at Midnight (1975) penned by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. The book details the events in the run-up to Independence and the immediate aftermath, including Gandhi’s assassination.
In his address, Mr. Fadnavis further attacked the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, saying that the Sena had “betrayed the people’s mandate” and trust by forming a government with the Congress and the NCP.
“This is the first time in the State’s history that a party [BJP] has fought with its ally [the Sena], but the latter is setting up a government with the opposition. This [MVA] is a government by deception,” he said, adding that in India’s history, no government formed by deception had lasted for more than six months.
He said while the BJP had won 70% of the seats it had contested in the Assembly elections, the other three parties had barely managed to win in 40-45% of the constituencies where they contested.
“Despite the BJP coming first in class by topping the merit list, it is out of it … but the other three students [the Sena, the NCP and Congress] who secured 40% came together and claimed that they are in the merit,” he said.
He said the Sena’s ‘tiger’ — the party mascot — had been reduced to a ‘cat’, and the party was politically impotent.
