Recently, there was a rage in the comment-sections of an answer on Quora, the famed online question-answer forum. The question attempted to seek reasons behind a Hindu assassinating Mr. M K Gandhi; not the express words of mine, but the phrase of the question. To be precise, the question was phrased, "Why was Gandhi assassinated by a Hindu itself?"
Notwithstanding the obvious grammatical error in the question, I scrolled down and chanced upon an answer particularly hostile to Gandhi's assassin, Nathuram Godse. Someone in the comments section asserted, without providing any reason whatsoever, that Godse did perpetrate the assassination, but be that as it may, it was ordered by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, an influential leader of the Hindu Mahasabha.
Naturally curious, I asked for evidence. This was about five months ago. It was only recently that I received a reply, and in it, the Report provided by Jeevan Lal Kapur Commission of Inquiry was cited as evidence.
The report ran into over four hundred pages. I scrolled through the findings of the Commission that were enlisted in the report. In the summed up findings, there wasn't even a mention of Savarkar, which would've been very strange were he to be the ringleader.
It must be clarified that in the aftermath of Gandhi's assassination, nine people had been arrested:
(1) Nathuram Vinayak Godse
(2) Narayan Apte
(3) Digambar Badge
(4) Shankar Kistayya
(5) Dattatraya Parchure
(6) Vishnu Karkare
(7) Madanlal Pahwa
(8) Gopal Godse
(9) Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
What has been expressly concluded in the report is that two of the conspirators: Narayan Apte and Digambar Badge, did visit Savarkar's residence, also known as Savarkar Sadan.
When Savarkar had been arrested and produced in court, he made the following statements to the court in his defence:
“Firstly…visiting Savarkar Sadan does not necessarily mean visiting Savarkar. Apte and Godse were well acquainted with Damle, Bhinde and Kasar who were always found there (in Savarkar Sadan)… So Apte and Godse might have gone to see their friends and co-workers in Hindu Mahasabha.”
“Secondly… Apte and Godse deny it and state that they never went with Badge and the bag (of weapons) to Savarkar Sadan as alleged.”
It so happened that Badge had agreed to testify in hope of a lighter sentence. With regards to Badge's claim about Apte informing him that Savarkar had decided that Gandhi had to be assassinated, Savarkar said in his defence:
“..taking it for granted that Badge himself is telling the truth when he says Apte told him this sentence, the question remains whether what Apte told Badge is true or false. There is no evidence to show that I had ever told Apte to finish Gandhi, Nehru and Suhrawardy. Apte might have invented this wicked lie to exploit Savarkar’s moral influence on the Hindu Sanghatanists for his own purposes. It is the case of the prosecution itself that Apte was used to resort to such unscrupulous tricks. For example, Apte is alleged to have given false names and false addresses to hotel keepers.. and collected arms and ammunition secretly..”
In court, it was said that Apte and Badge had met Savarkar on 17 January 1948, when the latter blessed them saying, "Yashasvi houn ya!" (Marathi for, "Return successful (in your mission)"). In his defence, Savarkar said thus:
“Firstly, I submit.. that Apte and Godse did not see me on 17th January 1948 or any other day near about and I did not say to them, ‘Be successful and come back’… Secondly, assuming that what Badge says about the visit is true, still as he clearly admits that he sat in the room on the ground floor of my house and Apte and Godse alone went upstairs, he could not have known for certain whether they.. did see me at all or returned after meeting someone of the family of the tenant who also resided on the first floor of the house.”
“Taking again for granted that Apte and Godse did see me and had a talk with me, still it was impossible for Badge to have any personal and direct knowledge of what talk they had with me for the simple reason that he could not have either seen or heard anything happening upstairs on the first floor from the room in which he admits he was sitting on the ground-floor. It would be absurd to take it as a self-evident truth that.. they must have talked to me about some criminal conspiracy only. Nay, it is far more likely that they could have talked about anything else but the alleged conspiracy.”
“Even if it is assumed that I said this sentence it might have referred to any objects and works.. Such as the Nizam Civil Resistance, the raising of funds for the daily paper, Agrani, or the sale of the shares of Hindu Rastra Prakashan Ltd.. or any other legitimate undertaking. As Badge knew nothing as to what talk Apte and Godse had with me upstairs, he could not assert as to what subject my remark “Be successful etc’ referred.”
Savarkar died on 26 February 1966, aged 83. The Jeevan Lal Kapur Commission of Inquiry was set up on 21 November of the same year, by the then State of Mysore, which submitted its report in 1969.
To the Commission, Savarkar's bodyguard Appa Ramachandra and secretary Gajanan Vishnu Damle provided statements that Apte and Godse had, in fact, met Savarkar in the middle of January, and that the conspirators held even long discussions with Savarkar. However, they had not testified when Savarkar was produced before the court.
Justice Kapur recorded the statements and subsequently wrote, “All these facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group.”
It is on the basis of this that Savarkar was being villified. It is interesting to note, however, that nowhere in his report did Justice Kapur expressly conclude that Savarkar was directly responsible or, in any way, complicit!
The statement only meant that the theory stood on the grounds of the circumstantial evidence that the conspirators occasionally frequented Savarkar Sadan. There was neither clinching evidence to hold Savarkar himself guilty, nor was there sufficient evidence to unambiguously clear him.
It must be noted that the report by a Commission of Inquiry is not the final word. The Commission of Inquiry Act 1952 states that the report must be accepted by either the State Legislative Assembly or the Lok Sabha (depending on which government had ordered the formation of the Commission). Even then, the decision could be challenged a court of law, and the report therefore liable to judicial scrutiny. It is in light of this that the Commission Report has to be very cautious with its choice of words, for there is always the possibility of the report standing to scrutiny by court. Quite possibly, even grammarians would not lay the kind of emphasis on the choice of words laid in the field of law.
I had (and still have) a few observations to make:
(1) On what grounds can it be trusted that the respective testimonies of Savarkar's aides are valid, almost twenty years after the said assassination?
- Was it expressly established that long years had not clouded their memories?
- Was it expressly established that they had no incentive, material or otherwise, to record the said testimony?
- Could they have been coerced into providing such a testimony?
(2) That they were not present to testify before the court, but were present before the Commission, is very strange. Why had they not testified before the court?
(3) If their testimonies were to be true, the conclusion would be that Savarkar had deceived the court through a false statement that Godse and Apte did not meet him on 17 January 1948. However, this would have been enough to convict him only for bearing false witness, and not for being party to the plan of assassinating Mr. Gandhi. Unless the motive of deceit were established, it would be unfair to assert his complicity.
(4) A possibility could very well be raised that those who frequented Savarkar's residence hatched out a plan to throw him off the scent, and consequently held long discussions about anything else but Gandhi's assassination, with him, in order to ensure that he would not get even a whiff of their plans, for there was the possibility of him prohibiting them from executing their plans otherwise. After all, the evidence that intends to convict Savarkar are purely circumstantial in nature, and the circumstances could have been anything at all.
Dr. Vikram Sampath, the biographer of Savarkar, has pointed out to the possibility of the Commission of Inquiry being politically motivated. In order to lend credence to this possibility, he pointed out that the government did not table the Action Taken Report in the Parliament. After a Commission of Inquiry submits its report, the government that has constituted the Commission is supposed to table its own report clarifying the action taken by it in light of the same. The Government of Indira Gandhi, however, did nothing of the sort. Although Savarkar had already died before the Commission was set up, it could have been mentioned in the Action Taken Report. There is, again, nothing to that effect that can be observed.
Then, a few legal luminaries appear to have castigated the Commission's Report, for having ignored key witnesses like Savarkar's Secretary and bodyguard.
If my personal opinion is to be sought, I would say that there were two primary factors that would have prevented Savarkar from attempting something to that effect even if he had wanted to do so:
(1) His overall bad health since 1942.
(2) His own ability as a master planner.
He would not have done anything by himself that could have possibly resulted in serving time in prison. Added to it Nathuram Godse's own testimony that he, once, used to look up to Savarkar but was later disillusioned because the latter had turned comparatively soft-hearted post 1942, there is clearly nothing that establishes a motive.
-----The point of this long post is to clarify that the evidence is not clinching enough to convict Savarkar. After all, mere accusations amount to nothing.-----
Source of the various testimonies: https://thewire.in/history/savarkar-gandhi-assassination