The Case for Gandhi-Savarkar Together: Not Sameness, But Completeness

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2 days ago

A poster that pairs Gandhi and Savarkar can remind us that India's freedom was not the work of one man or ideology, but of a multitude of voices
'History is not a battlefield where victors erase the vanquished—it is a tapestry where rival threads must coexist."
The Ministry of Petroleum's Independence Day poster, which brought together Mahatma Gandhi, Bhagat Singh, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, has triggered a renewed debate. At its heart lies a paradox: Gandhi and Savarkar represented sharply divergent philosophies, methods, and political imaginations.
Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence, rooted his politics in ahimsa, inclusivity, and moral force. Savarkar, by contrast, began as a fiery advocate of revolutionary ways and later developed the ideology of Hindutva, arguing for a Hindu nation defined by cultural unity. Their paths, though occasionally intersecting, were ultimately parallel lines—never reconciled, never convergent.
Yet the State, by placing them together, poses a question to us: is this a distortion of history, or is it an act of recognition, an acknowledgment that the Indian freedom struggle was a plural story that cannot be reduced to a single line of thought?
To understand this better, it is worth looking beyond India. Nations across the world, both ancient and modern, have faced the challenge of remembering rivals together. In these acts of commemoration, we see the ways in which societies reconcile conflicting legacies and transform discord into a collective memory.
The Roman Empire was unparalleled in its ability to subsume conflict into symbols of unity. The Forum Romanum, the ceremonial and political heart of the empire, is filled with arches that commemorate victories of rulers who were bitter enemies. The Arch of Titus (AD 81) celebrated the Flavian conquest of Judaea. A century later, the Arch of Septimius Severus marked triumphs over Parthia. Still later, the Arch of Constantine (AD 315) glorified the victory over Maxentius. These men were not comrades—they were adversaries who competed for legitimacy. Yet today, their monuments stand within walking distance of each other, telling not the story of their rivalries, but of Rome's continuity. For the empire, the permanence of the state mattered more than the ideological divisions of its leaders.
Even more symbolic is the Monument of Aemilius Paullus at Delphi. Built originally by the defeated Macedonian king Perseus, it was appropriated by Paullus after his victory at Pydna in 167 BCE. By inscribing his triumph atop his rival's pedestal, he both erased and preserved Macedon—turning an enemy's symbol into part of Rome's narrative of supremacy. Centuries later, historians interpret the monument not as an erasure of Perseus, but as an example of how Rome folded conflicting legacies into its larger civilizational story.
Rivals in Modern Times
This Roman lesson finds echoes in modern political memory. Consider South Africa in the late apartheid years. Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress and Mangosuthu Buthelezi of the Inkatha Freedom Party were not just rivals—they were bitter antagonists. Their supporters clashed violently, and thousands lost their lives in the internecine bloodshed of the late 1980s and early 1990s. And yet, in January 1991, Mandela and Buthelezi met publicly for the first time in decades. Their joint appeal to their followers to stop the violence became a turning point. Today, their legacies are woven together in South Africa's national memory. Mandela occupies the centre of the narrative, but Buthelezi too has his place—as a leader of the Zulu nation and a figure in the transition years. This coexistence in memory is not about equality, but about completeness: the nation could not be whole if the contributions, however conflicted, of one side were erased.
A similar story unfolded in the United States during the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt, with his New Deal, sought to stabilize and reform the economy. Huey Long, the populist governor and senator from Louisiana, advanced a far more radical plan: his 'Share Our Wealth" movement promised to cap fortunes, redistribute income, and directly confront America's inequalities. Roosevelt considered Long dangerous, even dictatorial. Long viewed Roosevelt as timid and beholden to elites. Long's assassination in 1935 ended their personal conflict, but the ideological clash outlived him. Over time, however, many of Long's radical proposals found their way into Roosevelt's policy framework. Today, history textbooks, museums, and documentaries often place the two men side by side—not as friends, but as figures whose rival visions together shaped America's response to crisis.
India's own precedents
India too has reconciled adversarial legacies in its commemorative practices. Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose, who held diametrically opposed views on the methods of resistance, are jointly remembered in exhibitions, postage stamps, and national celebrations. Gandhi's faith in non-violent struggle contrasted sharply with Bose's belief in armed resistance and foreign alliances. Yet both are essential to the story of freedom, and their commemoration together is accepted as part of India's plural past.
Even more striking is the pairing of Gandhi with B.R. Ambedkar. Few debates in modern India were as acrimonious as their clash over separate electorates for Dalits. Ambedkar's insistence on political safeguards was met with Gandhi's fierce opposition, culminating in Gandhi's fast at Yerwada Jail in 1932. The Poona Pact ended the confrontation, but it left deep wounds. And yet, in post-independence India, Gandhi and Ambedkar stand together as architects of modern India—one as Father of the Nation, the other as Father of the Constitution. This coexistence in memory does not erase their conflict; it acknowledges that India's story cannot be told without both voices.
The Gandhi-Savarkar question
It is in this light that the recent pairing of Gandhi and Savarkar must be seen. Critics argue that placing them together whitewashes their ideological opposition. Gandhi saw Hindu-Muslim unity as essential; Savarkar, through Hindutva, envisioned a Hindu Rashtra. Gandhi made non-violence the core of his politics; Savarkar praised revolutionary violence and critiqued Gandhi's approach as impractical. These differences are undeniable, and any attempt to blur them would indeed distort history.
But the act of placing them together need not be read as distortion. It can be seen as recognition. Just as Rome, South Africa, and the United States found ways to place adversaries in the same civic frame, India too can acknowledge that Gandhi and Savarkar were both forces—different, even antagonistic—that shaped the destiny of the nation. The point is not sameness, but completeness.
The risk lies in sanitizing their opposition, in pretending that Gandhi and Savarkar were comrades rather than rivals. But if their pairing is accompanied by honest recognition of their disagreements, then it is a mature step—an acknowledgment that India is not defined by one voice alone. Rather, it is the outcome of many, sometimes clashing, voices.
The larger purpose of memory
History, at its best, is not about enshrining one truth while silencing others. It is about bringing conflicting truths into the same frame, allowing citizens of the present to confront the complexity of the past. Rome's arches did not pretend that emperors shared one vision; South Africa's museums do not deny the bloodshed between Mandela and Buthelezi; American history does not erase Huey Long's radical challenge to Roosevelt. Instead, all these commemorations insist on showing that nations are born not from unanimity, but from the friction of competing visions.
So too with India. By placing Gandhi and Savarkar together, the State is not compelled to declare them equal. It is simply acknowledging that both, in their own ways, contributed to the India that exists today. Gandhi's non-violence remains India's moral compass in the world. Savarkar's militant nationalism shaped strands of thought that continue to influence Indian politics. To deny either is to present a truncated history.
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In the end, history is not obliged to take sides forever. Sometimes its higher purpose is to bring sides back into the same frame—not to erase their conflicts, but to preserve them as part of a larger, truer narrative. A poster that pairs Gandhi and Savarkar can, if presented honestly, serve exactly this function: to remind us that India's freedom was not the work of one man or one ideology, but of a multitude of voices, often discordant, yet together composing the symphony of a nation's birth.
The writer is a senior broadcast journalist who writes on cultural diplomacy. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
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New Delhi, India, India
First Published:
August 19, 2025, 19:26 IST
News opinion Opinion | The Case for Gandhi-Savarkar Together: Not Sameness, But Completeness
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