.jpg "memorial battles around Vinayak Savarkar, the disputed figurehead of Hindu nationalism")
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In India, the 75th anniversary of Independence reignited disputes over the memory of the country. The ruling BJP party is trying to rehabilitate Vinayak Savarkar. This Hindu nationalist theorist, who was accused of being behind Gandhi’s assassination, was reviled by the Congress party.
With our correspondent in Bangalore, Como Bastin
This Monday, August 22, the Congress hall in the city of Bijapur, Karnataka, was found covered in Savarkar’s face. Insults against members of the opposition party.
Supporters of this Hindutva theory, who consider India a Hindu land, are accused of being a conspirator in the 1948 assassination of Gandhi. Despite his release, he remains for the Congress party a symbol of the troubled, even anti-revolutionary, position of Hindu nationalists at the time of Independence.
BJP Memory War
The head of the local BJP assumed he had put up the poster. For which motive? Supporters of Congress reportedly burned his statue on National Day, but above all, Savarkar should be seen as a hero of Independence.
The episode depicts the memory war waged by the BJP to transform the nation’s heroes. Also in Karnataka, a portrait of Savarkar has been linked to the Ganesh celebrations taking place this August, which has angered the Congress party.
The major opposition parties, for their part, regularly criticize the omission of Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, in official ceremonies and history of the country.
Read also: With Modi, Hindu nationalism consolidates its grip on Indian society
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