KT Ghatti’s wife urges people to read Savarkar’s lesson in the right context

The family of Canadian writer KT Ghatti, whose essay on the Andaman cell prison where Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar was imprisoned, became controversial, has issued a clarification.

Yashoda Amembala, the wife of Mr. Gatti, who is unwell, while issuing a statement on his behalf, argued that the lesson ‘Kalavannu Geddavaru’, now part of the school textbook, should be read as part of the language curriculum and not as part of the history curriculum. “Being a travelogue, it is not intended to be considered a source of historical fact,” she said in her note. Class VIII Kannada second language textbook lesson criticized for ‘glorifying’ Savarkar.

Unaware of inclusion

Ms Gatti said in her statement: “We were not aware of its inclusion in the textbook until this controversy broke out.” She said the excerpt from the article was part of a book published in 1996.

“Savarkar’s article is just one of several accounts of prison experiences presented in the book. The rest, presented in five chapters, is based on personal interviews with two ex-prisoners, three relatives of ex-prisoners, a prison officer from Maharashtra and several other local respondents. Mr. Ghatti’s account of Savarkar in the book includes nothing more than his experiences in the Andaman jail. No mention is made of the nature of his role in the freedom struggle or the details of his ideology. In fact, there is no mention of Savarkar in any of the author’s writings to suggest that he had any information about Savarkar other than that presented in the book. About 30% of the chapter contains quotations from the book Swatantrya Veera Savarkar (by Mathoor Krishnamurthy, 1966). Savarkar’s autobiography is also among the sources listed in the bibliography,” she mentioned in the statement.

“Read it as a metaphor”

On one particular paragraph that has become controversial, which describes Savarkar “as flying out of prison on the wings of a Bulbul”, she said: “It is self-evident that this is nothing but a metaphor. Much of the confusion seems to be caused by the lack of context/reference in the passage, which may be due to authorial oversight or editorial error… Those familiar with the literature of KT Gatti are unlikely to accept that the metaphor had meant to glorify Savarkar by an admirer of his ideology and may need no clarification on this point.