Shafaqna India: VD Savarkar never hated Muslims and his writings showed ways for their progress, but Congress MP Rahul Gandhi portrayed him as an “extreme hater of Muslims,” the Hindutva ideologue’s grandnephew Satyaki Savarkar has claimed in a Pune court.
During the cross-examination in the special court on Tuesday, Gandhi’s lawyer Milind Pawar also submitted Satyaki’s grandfather Gopal Godse’s 2004 video interview and its transcripts, in which he purportedly acknowledged that his brother Nathuram Godse was an RSS member.
Gopal Godse, the younger brother of Nathuram, was also a co-conspirator in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
During cross-examination in a defamation case against Rahul Gandhi over his alleged statements in London in 2023, Pawar asked Satyaki Savarkar to state the exact words from the Leader of Opposition’s speech that “lower the reputation of Swatantryaveer Savarkar”.
Satyaki Savarkar recounted Rahul Gandhi’s ‘statement’ that ‘Savarkar had written in a book that he and five to six friends had assaulted a Muslim youth and derived pleasure from the act’.
“By these words, Savarkar was portrayed as an extreme hater of Muslims and as a mob lyncher. Savarkar never hated Muslims. Rather, in his writings, he showed the ways and means for their progress,” he claimed.
Satyaki Savarkar has alleged that Rahul Gandhi falsely claimed that VD Savarkar had written in a book about how he and his friends had assaulted a Muslim youth and derived pleasure from the act.
The complainant has maintained that no such incident appears in the Hindutva ideologue’s writings.
