BJP-Cong spat over Savarkar is age old

BJP's Savarkar politics didn't start with the party's Assembly election manifesto in Maharashtra promising a Bharat Ratna for the Hindutva icon. It predates 2019 even as the tussle between the BJP and the Congress on the issue continues.

Back in 2004, when Vinayak Damodar Savarkar's plaque was removed by the then Congress-led UPA government from the cellular jail in Andaman where Savarkar spent time as an inmate, BJP raised the issue vociferously.

Lal Krishna Advani, a top BJP leader at the time, had said, "We will fight this ideological war. Congress leaders do not understand what Indianness means... They have hurt a lot of Ind by removing Veer Savarkar's plaque from the cellular jail."

The plaque was removed by controversial Congress leader and then minister Mani Shankar Aiyar. In response to that, BJP's then deputy leader in Rajya Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, went to Andaman along with other BJP leaders to lead a day-long 'satyagraha'.

In 2014, when Narendra Modi swept to power at the Centre, Savarkar's birth anniversary, an otherwise muted affair in the Parliament, got a lavish lease of life.

The BJP top brass, including Prime Minister Modi, attended the event which was earlier marked with indifference and bare minimum low key attendance.

Top names of the Union cabinet, including Union ministers Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, M. Venkaiah Naidu, Gopinath Munde, Harshvardhan, Ananth Kumar, Najma Heptulla, Piyush Goyal, Prakash Javadekar, Dharmendra Pradhan, Thawar Chand Gehlot, Sripad Naik and Smriti Irani were present on the occasion.

The Lok Sabha secretariat brought out a pamphlet on the occasion which recalled the "rich tributes" paid by Indira Gandhi to Savarkar.

Even during Atal Bihari Vajpayee's era when Savarkar's portrait was unveiled in the Parliament in February 2003, a massive row was created by the Congress.

It urged the then President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to stay away from the event. It's another matter that Kalam did not pay heed to the "advice" of the Congress-led opposition. But the public spat between the two had got a notch shriller when historian Bipan Chandra called the "very sight" of the portrait "vulgar".

So, today's ugly public spat between the Congress and the BJP is not new. It just got more ugly with the advocacy of the highest civilian award the Bharat Ratna for Savarkar by the BJP.

( With inputs from IANS )