From Tipu to Savarkar to Nehru: our history is littered with stories of misinformation, and they gripped the nation in 2022 too
The Hindu“The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice,” wrote Mark Twain in Following the Equator. Much spotlight also shines on the petitions’ contentious sign-off: “I beg to remain your most obedient servant.” Savarkar’s mercy pleas The problem with such debates is, history gets reduced to an amenable ideological prop. But the ideologues on both sides continue to read pragmatism — one in Savarkar’s petitions, the other in Nehru’s proximity to Lord Mountbatten. Although the debate isn’t exactly new, Hindu nationalists fired a bombshell revelation of how Motilal Nehru pulled strings to get his son out of Nabha jail in 1923. Distorting history While we know Savarkar wrote four letters pledging his troth to India’s colonial overlords in exchange for clemency, do we also know that one of those was for all inmates and not just himself?