“Veer Savarkar’s daring defiance of the British government has its own important place in the annals of our freedom struggle,” Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had written on May 20, 1980. She further called Vinayak Damodar Savarkar “this remarkable son of India”, donating over Rs 5,000 then for Swatantryaveer Savarkar Rashtriya Smarak. Not just Indira Gandhi, but several other Congress leaders too had supported the cause of propagating Savarkar’s work and ideology.
Now, Indira Gandhi’s grandson Rahul Gandhi has yet again stirred up a controversy, saying he will not apologise as his surname is not Savarkar.
In 1979, Congress leader and then defence minister Babu Jagjivan Ram had done the bhoomi poojan of Swatantryaveer Savarkar memorial in Mumbai. The grandson of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Jayantrao Tilak, was the president of the memorial in 1981. He was the cultural affairs minister of Maharashtra then.
Several Congress leaders like Rajni Patel, Vasantdada Patil, Babasaheb Bhosale, Sushilkumar Shinde, and Murli Deora had actively encouraged the work of the memorial, as per information furnished by Savarkar Smarak.
Located at the centre of Mumbai, opposite the historic Shivaji Park, is the Savarkar memorial. It is a hub of several socio-cultural activities and also has a light-and-sound show on the role of revolutionaries in India’s freedom struggle. A boxing ring, a firing range, a yoga centre, archery training, and dance and singing classes are part of the centre with several renowned personalities as trainers.
“The memorial has been working for decades now to propagate the work and ideology of Savarkar. The idea was to silently work on issues Savarkar firmly believed in. Invoking nationalism among the youth was one of the core ideas. So we have several activities for it,” said Swapnil Savarkar, an office-bearer of the memorial. Accordingly, it was here that the first private firing range in the country with Olympics standards was started. Today, it boasts of five Shiv Chhatrapati awardees: Vishwajeet Shinde, PL Keni, Ajit Tawde, Vedangi Tuljapurkar, and Ashok Karande.
The library at the memorial has over 9,500 books, of which 3,500 are on revolutionaries alone. For any research on revolutionaries, and on Savarkar in particular, it is the best place for all references. Manuscripts of texts written by Savarkar and historic documents from the World War 2 period form a part of the library’s reference material.
“We have a mountaineering institute to imbibe a sense of adventure among the young generation. We give awards in the fields of science, defence and social work,” Swapnil Savarkar said.
“We have thrown an open challenge to the Congress, to Tushar Gandhi, about Savarkar being called ‘maafiveer’. We have all the documents. Those are the kind of letters that everyone from Nehru to Gandhi wrote to the British government. Come with documents. Let us openly discuss it. Why single out Savarkar? But nobody has taken up our challenge,” said Dhananjay Shinde, another office-bearer of the memorial.
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