Over 5,000 Brahmans killed during the riots in Maharashtra after Gandhi’s assassination
Editor’s comments
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Mumbai – Pandit Nathuram Godse, who was a Chitpavan Brahman, assassinated Mahatma Gandhi on 30.1.1948. Congress leaders then engineered anti-Brahman riots in Mumbai as well as the rest of Maharashtra; 20,000 houses and shops of Brahmans were set ablaze. Anywhere between 2,000 and 5,000 Brahmans were murdered. This figure could be 8,000. Women and children were not spared either. During the riots, Veer Savarkar’s brother Narayan Damodar Savarkar, was also murdered. Despite this large-scale manslaughter, the Police did not register a single complaint. All this was due to pressure from the Congress Party. Famous historian Mr. Vikram Sampath revealed this in a programme on ‘Times Now’. Mr. Sampath has compiled the biography of Veer Savarkar in 2 Parts – ‘Savarkar (Part 1) : Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883-1924’ and ‘Savarkar (Part 2) : A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966’.
Mr. Sampath added :
1. The present day generation is ignorant of this manslaughter, which was similar to the brutal killings of Sikhs after Indira Gandhi was murdered in 1984. Hundreds of rioting Congress workers were arrested in Nagpur; however, no criminal case was registered against them.
2. During the writing of the biography, I met many people. Their ancestors of some were victims of this manslaughter.
3. Veer Savarkar was a co-accused in the assassination of Gandhi. Later, He was boycotted politically. The Honourable Court acquitted him of all charges.
4. The contemporary Periodicals gave very little coverage to the news reports; however, overseas Press was on target. ‘Some organisations joined hands to spread the riots that were commenced by the followers of Gandhi’ – they reported.
5. The offices of the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha were ransacked.
6. Savarkar’s implication in the murder of Gandhi rendered him a ‘persona non grata’ in political circuits of the dominant ‘Marxist’ bend of Indian historiography.
7. Savarkar is a part of election manifestos of political parties, he is a part of rallies, there are defamation cases, all of this happening all the time.
8. Savarkar has hardly been academically or in a scholarly manner, been analysed and studied. His work is largely in Marathi, which a lot of mainstream historians did not even access.
9. Police refused to show me the documented reports pertaining to these riots.
10. For the longest time after Independence, there’s been just one shade of ideological history that has been allowed to rule the roost – Marxist historiography, and which ensured that anybody who was talking or writing anything different, gets cancelled there, they lost their livelihoods