The protest against converting Sammed Shikharji into a tourist destination must also start a debate that enables restoration of sanctity of India's sacred spaces.
The Brahmin Files: Independent India's First Political Genocide
On 30 January 1948, the Indian state under Congress decided to punish the Brahmins for no crime of theirs. Devotees of Gandhian Ahimsa were unleashed on innocent Brahmins to perpetrate a political genocide. Congress supported mobs pillaged, burnt and looted the homes of hundreds of innocent Brahmin families. These burning incidents of horror and bloodshed were never granted the space or seriousness they deserved.
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“He who relentlessly served the nation, He who relentlessly worked for the people, He who stood firm against the Brits, He who fought for liberating Maa Bharati, Today was stoned to death by his own brothers for whom he fought.”
— Swatantyaveer Savarkar on the death of his brother, Dr. Narayanrao Savarkar, after the later was lynched in the anti-Brahmin riots by butchers supporting Congress ideology.
On 30 January 1948, the Indian state under Congress decided to punish the Brahmins for no crime of theirs. Devotees of Gandhian Ahimsa were unleashed on innocent Brahmins to systematically identify their homes. Their women were raped; the men were killed, and their houses were burnt. The fact that hundreds of bloodthirsty marauders could be gathered at such short notice, given the fact that this was an era, when forget social media, even landlines were extremely rare, points to a systematic pogrom. Mobs attacking Brahmins knew who they were, where they lived, and had the means to attack them. How else then can one justify the spread of this extermination over the entire geography of Maharashtra — from north to south and from east to west. A Brahmin was seen as a symbol of a civilizational Bharat, a staunch Hindu nationalist — a concept which always made the Nehru-Gandhi family uncomfortable. The Congress’ role in perpetrating this political genocide against the Brahmins of Maharashtra, to nurse their own insecurity against Hindu nationalism is evident from the coverup that followed this massacre.
The silencing of voices associated to the first political genocide in independent India, that followed Gandhi ji’s death, accounts for one of the biggest coverups in modern history. Today, no documents, no commissions, no inquiry reports that will bring to light what happened to Brahmins of Maharashtra are available, and the Congress party is solely responsible for erasing the traces of truth from the mainstream. The state pressure to discourage any recording of the events accounts for the dearth of resources available today. How many people died? No one knows for sure. How many people were injured? No one knows for sure. How many people had to flee from their homes? No one knows for sure. How much property was destroyed? No one knows for sure. There are no definite answers to these troubling questions, because the Congress governments were implicitly involved in the ethnic cleansing of Brahmins in Maharashtra. Though all official records and images of the macabre killings of the Maharashtrian Brahmins were destroyed, the nature of the attacks from the accounts of the survivors, their descendants and other chroniclers has survived to some extent.
Within a few hours of Gandhi ji’s death, mobs aligned to the Congress ideology knew every detail of the assassin. Thus began the naked dance of death, destruction and violence on the streets of Maharashtra. Mobs of anarchists went berserk to commit indiscriminate massacres and bloodbath to target innocent Brahmins. Insane mob of rioters singled out Brahmin families. They were armed with kerosene canisters, rods and machetes. Houses were attacked with cotton-balls and kerosene-soaked paper, and then they were burnt down. The anarchy can be gauged from the fact that even children were butchered like animals by these Congress supported goons. The barbarity spanned across all districts of Maharashtra, where Brahmins were forced to either die or flee from the state. There was no area in Maharashtra where Brahmins were not dragged from their houses and mercilessly butchered.
Starting with Pune, the wildfire spread across Brahmin localities with as many as 50 Brahmins identified and killed on 30 January 1948 itself. 15 Brahmins were killed and more than 50 injured in attacks that swept Mumbai on the next day. In a targeted attack, a mob destroyed three cloth stores owned by a Brahmin family in Pune. In a matter of hours, an entire family was literally reduced to rags from riches. It took them the next 20 years to recover from the losses. The spurge of violence quickly reached to other cities in southern and western Maharashtra. Violence spread to cities like Satara, Kolhapur, Solapur, Sangli, Nagpur and Belgaum. Property damages, burning of homes, mills, and factories owned by Brahmins was rampant in all parts of the state.
Tens and thousands of Brahmins were attacked. In Satara alone, around 1500 houses were burnt down. In one incident, the mob attacked a Brahmin home, destroyed all their furniture and then destroyed their printing press next door. Next, they threw lighted balls of kerosene-soaked paper onto the wooden beams of the house and burnt it out of existence. In Kolhapur, renowned film-maker of the times, Bhalji Pendharkar’s studio was burnt down. In another incident, the entire factory of RSS leader GH Joshi was burnt and destroyed. A cloth mill and a hospital were set on fire in Sangli, just because they were operated by Brahmins. In Panchgani, a school was burnt down because it was headed by a Brahmin. A woman and her grandson from a remote Udatre village, and an entire family from a remote Kapare village were burnt alive because they were Brahmins.
Noted Marathi writer and editor of Tarun Bharat, Gajanan Tryambak Madkholkar’s house was also attacked in Nagpur. The Joshi High School in Nagpur was set on fire, when the fire brigade arrived, the mob forced it to return without dousing the fire. Lorries owned by Congressmen took mobs to places where Brahmins lived. The venom spewed against the Brahmins which constitute less than 10% of the total state population burns the state even today. Even today, leaders of the Congress and its offshoots like Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party continue to mock the Brahmins to divide the state on caste lines for political benefits. Veteran Congress leader and the Home Minister of the Central Provinces of that time, Dr. Dwarka Prasad Mishra, popularly called the first Chanakya of modern Indian politics, and one who played a vital role in making Indira Gandhi the Prime Minister, exposes the Congress’ patronage to the Brahmin genocide. In his memoir he writes, “Those who indulged in unlawful activities also included a large number of Congressmen belonging to non-brahmin communities. In fact, in Nagpur and Berar the troublemakers were mostly Congressmen, some even being office bearers of various Congress Committees”. He also mentions that he was subjected to tremendous pressure by the Congress committee to release 100 Congressmen who were arrested for the violence in Nagpur.
The mob under the influence of the Congress had been fed with so much poison of hate that they went to attack freedom fighter, Veer Savarkar’s residence. The entire episode smells of a larger conspiracy aimed against Swatantryaveer Savarkar. First his two bodyguards were arrested on 30 January 1948 itself. This effectively eliminated Veer Savarkar’s security cover. Then a mob attacked Savarkar Sadan in Dadar where Veer Savarkar lived. His house was invaded; furniture smashed; his library was set on fire and documents were burnt. However, Veer Savarkar managed to escape because of his dedicated followers who ensured his safety. Cursing this lost opportunity, the bloodthirsty mob shifted their attention to Dr. Narayanrao Savarkar, who lived a few lanes away from Savarkar Sadan. A freedom fighter and a doctor by profession, Dr. Narayanrao Savarkar provided health services to the poor and the needy. Dr. Narayanrao Savarkar was pelted with stones by the mob and later succumbed to his injuries. No FIR was registered against anyone and no one was arrested.
“When a big tree falls, the earth shakes”, said Rajiv Gandhi while justifying the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The seeds of this tree were planted way back in 1948 when Congressmen perpetrated attacks on Brahmins in Maharashtra. It is estimated that around 8000 people died in the orchestrated violence against the Maharashtrian Brahmins. A conservative estimate of the total damage caused by the violence in 1948 was around Rs 10 crores. There are no numbers on the mass exodus of Brahmins that resulted as angry mobs pillaged, burnt and looted the homes of hundreds of innocent Brahmin families. Despite of this, there were no attempts to heal the wounds, instead Brahmins were subjected to slogans like, “If you see a snake and a Brahmin, kill the Brahmin first”. No commission of inquiry was setup to find the truth. No arrests were made. No FIRs were filed. No justice was served. The unheard voices which suffered the violence were forced to stay silent and move on. At the time, when there was hardly any challenge to the executive power held by Jawaharlal Nehru, a deliberate conspiracy was crafted with the sole view to crush the popularity of the Hindu nationalists. The death of Gandhi ji was used as a convenient tool aimed at crushing this rising popularity. Before the flames of this violence could be extinguished, Jawaharlal Nehru thought it wise to further instigate the bloodthirsty wolves by giving a hate speech against the RSS, of which many Maharashtrian-Brahmins were a part of. These burning incidents of horror and bloodshed were never granted the space or seriousness they deserved. Such was the Congress’ role in aggravating violence against Brahmins.
Tags: Nation, Congress, Maharashtra
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