Savarkar on Rape: Defending the Hindu Honour, a Weapon for War

“Rape is rape, don’t politicize it. How can we say this many rapes happened in your government while so many rapes took place in the following government.” This was a statement by our Prime Minister Narendra Modi in response to rape cases in 2018. He asks us not to politicize rape as if cases of rapes are isolated incidents, and not a result of a much wider and older political project. The BJP follows the footsteps of the Hindutva ideology, founded by Veer Savarkar, who advocated rape as a legitimate political tool.

This is the same Savarkar whose portrait was placed in parliament under the stewardship of the BJP and whom Modi referred to as 'great freedom fighter and nationalist'. Savarkar’s call for rape as a political weapon still finds open resonance among communal fanatics. 

Yogi Adityanath, now the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, once made a speech threatening to “convert a hundred Muslim girls for every 1 Hindu girl that ‘they’ take.” Members of Adityanath’s Hindu Yuva Vahini have openly called for the exhumation and rape of dead Muslim women. In Gujarat in 2002, Delhi in 1984 and Muzaffarnagar in 2013, rape was used as a weapon against minority women.

Savarkar was crucial in giving ideological direction to the Hindu Mahasabha, and today he is venerated by the RSS and BJP. As with all political projects that seek to forge a sense of nationalism out of victimhood, his writings aimed at instilling in Hindus a sense of being history’s perennial victims. At the end of his life, Savarkar wrote a book in Marathi, 'Six Glorious Epochs of Hindu History'. Full of historically inaccurate generalisations that essentialise whole communities, the book reserves particular venom for Muslim ‘demons’ as the catalysts for the downfall of Hindu glory. 

He was of the view that it was a religious duty of every Muslim to kidnap non-Muslim women and forcefully convert them into Islam in order to increase their population. He said that Muslim women encouraged their male compatriots to commit atrocities against women. If this wasn’t enough, he even said that Muslim women abducted Hindu women and later on conveyed them to Masjids.

In the Savarkarite worldview, only those ethical codes should be adhered to which enable the Hindus to establish their supremacy over the Muslims. Thus, he reasoned, it is justified to rape Muslim women in riots because it is revenge for the barbarity of Muslims in the medieval times, whether proven or otherwise. After all, today’s riots are a manifestation of the historical conflict.

In his writings he spoke of the well-wishers of Ravana who advised him to release Sita, whom he had abducted. They said it was highly irreligious to have kidnapped Sita. Savarkar in his book quoted Ravana saying, “What? To abduct and rape the womenfolk of the enemy, do you call it irreligious? It is Parodharmah, the greatest duty!”

He accords a very high stature to Shivaji in the Indian history because he made life difficult for Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, and established a 'Hindu Rashtra'. However, he scoffs at Shivaji, because after defeating the Muslim governor of Kalyan, when Shivaji’s soldiers produced the governor’s daughter-in-law before him as part of the captured loot, he ordered that she be respectfully sent back to her home. He also looks down upon Peshwa Chimaji Appa (1707-1740), who did the same with the Portuguese wife of the Governor of Bassein. 

History has praised Shivaji and Chimaji Appa for this act. Common people view it as part of his greatness. But Savarkar did not.

He writes, “Even now we proudly refer to the noble acts of Chhatrapati Shivaji and Chimaji Appa, when they honourably sent back the daughter-in-law of the Muslim Governor of Kalyan and the wife of the Portuguese governor of Bassein respectfully. But is it not strange that, when they did so, neither Shivaji Maharaj nor Chimaji Appa remembered the atrocities and the rapes, perpetrated by Mahmud of Ghazni, Muhammad Ghori, Alla-ud-din Khilji and others, on thousands of Hindu women and girls like the princesses of Dahir, Kamaldevi, the wife of Kamaraj of Karanwati and her extremely beautiful daughter, Devaldevi.”

Savarkar also believed that Gandhi’s nonviolent way, and appeasement of minorities, was emasculating the nation and, instead, preached military prowess and sexual potency in Hindu men. Savarkar argued that forced conversion and systematic rape are two main ways in which Muslims increase their numbers, and rebuked Hindus for their “suicidal idea of Hindu chivalry”. In effect, the rebuke was a call for Hindu men to prove their masculinity by raping Muslim women and vindicating the honour of Hindu women – legitimising rape as a weapon of war.  

Savarkar’s writings and ideologies have been indoctrinated by the followers of Hindutva, which has caused in the spread of propaganda of the eternally lustful Muslim men as the perennial invaders of the Hindu nation, and the need for a moral policing of women. The Sangh’s everyday acts of violent surveillance of women are plenty – dictating appropriate clothing for women, attacking couples who dare to hold hands in public spaces, and even disrupting celebrations of Valentine’s Day.

Even today, his political doctrines are actively practiced by extremist Hindutva groups throughout the country. The Rashtra Sevika Samiti, the RSS’s women wing, with 55,000 shakhas all over the country, not just ascribes to the above tenets but also holds camps and indoctrinates thousands of girls- toddlers, adolescents and old— to propagate the idea of a ‘culturally sanitised’ Hindu rashtra and the patriarchal roles it offers women to conform.

They propagate the idea of gendered spaces, curbing young questioning minds to aspire for domesticity and motherhood instead of independent, ambitious, liberated  lives. The Samitis regard higher education and professional careers for women as desirable, even though strictly conditional upon parental consent. Not surprisingly, most pracharikas are graduates and postgraduates.

However, the Samiti manual clearly mentions that ‘after marriage, a girl will have many responsibilities in her new home. It is not advisable for her to bring disquiet by refusing to compromise. If ordained by her fate, her husband will permit her to study.’ This stems from the clear understanding that domesticity is the sole purpose of a woman’s existence and that equilibrium has to be maintained at all personal costs. Similarly, love marriage can only be allowed through parental consent.

Muslim lust for the Hindu woman has been one of the staples of RSS propaganda and selective memories of rape during the Partition riots are well known. The ‘invader’ here is a direct reference to non-Hindus i.e. Muslims and Christians.

From Savarkar's formative writings on Muslim rule in India, the stereotype of an eternally lustful Muslim male with evil designs on Hindu women has been reiterated. While the women are made to establish themselves as political subjects through an agenda of hatred and brutality against a besieged minority, it is love jihad that is seen as a crucial combat that they need to collectively and strongly engage in.

Savarkar lived half a century ago, but his idealogy have been ingrained deep inside the psyche of Hindutva supporters, and knowing that Savarkar legitimised rape, should we be surprised when one day, a man rapes a muslim woman, in the name of protecting the Hindu honour? Can the women of this country be truly equal when our leaders actively promote, support, and worship rape advocates like Savarkar?

- Smriti Choudhary