Author:
Publication: BJP today
Date: June 1-15, 2002
Introduction: Communists in their
old game of defaming patriots
A young student studying in England
sends revolvers to India in book parcels, the weapon cleverly concealed
within thick books, the pages cut in order to accommodate the revolver.
On being caught in similar activities animal at winning freedom of India,
the youth is arrested and being sent to India in a ship. When he ship berths
at Marseilles port in France, the intrepid youth jumps into the sea from
the porthole of his cabin in order to escape. He is caught by the French
Police who, unfortunately, hands him over to the British once again.
Years later, the British are compelled
to send this youth from Maharashtra to the Andamans for life imprisonment.
For ten long years, he undergoes untold misery and persecution by the British
in the cellular jail. When he obtains freedom from there, settles down
in Ratnagiri district and kept under strict surveillance by the British,
he organises nevertheless revolts and sends two youths who shoot at British
officers.
In 1948, he was arrested along with
the killers of Mahatma Gandhi in the case heard at Delhi's Red Fort. Most
people are or have been made unaware of the fact that Judge Atma Ram had
honourably acquitted him of the charge framed by Nehru's Police.
His name, which should have been
a household one for Indians by now, has been kept out from the people who
believe that one saint-like personality or just one family was responsible
for winning India's freedom. Needless to remind Indians (not Communists,
of course) he was Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.
So when in early May this year,
Home Minister L.K. Advani named the Port Blair airport in the Andamans
after this patriot, the erstwhile "Moscow-and now Beijing-patriots", cried
foul. It is normal of course for poisonous reptiles to bite humans. So
one does not really mind this foul write-ups or statements.
However, what one does mind is the
attempt by one of the Beijing patriots to denigrate Savarkar and honour
Susbhash Chandra Bose in the same breath. Who does not know that these
people had described Subhash as "Tojo's dog" because he had taken the help
of the Japanese for setting up the Azad Hindu Fauz during the second world
war in order to win freedom for India?
How does one describe the scene
at the airport when Savarkar's son Vishwasrao meets Advaniji and when both
the "stern" Home Minister and music Director Sudhir Phadke, who made a
film on Savarkar with money raised from the people, came to tears remembering
Savarkar?
One feels grateful to young Shahnawaz
Hussain, Minister of Civil Aviation, for taking intiatives for the remaining
of the airport.
One might add as a footnote that
the Dum Dum airport at Calcutta has already been named after Subhash Chandra
Bose.
