Abhishek Singhvi makes Congress uncomfortable, says Savarkar was an accomplished man

Singhvi in a tweet on Monday said, "I personally don't subscribe to Savarkar's ideology but that doesn't take away the fact that he was an accomplished man who played part in our freedom struggle, flights for Dalit rights and went to jail for the country."

In a major poll promise in Maharashtra, the ruling saffron party last week made a strong pitch for honouring Savarakar and two other off-springs of Maharashtra Savitribai Phule and Jyotiba Phule with the country's highest civilian award.

India's liberals and opposition parties see the move to confer Bharat Ratna on Savarkar as an attempt to embed the RSS, BJP's ideological patron, in Indian history while the saffron party holds that had it not been for Savarkar, the 1857 anti-British revolt had not been recognised as the first freedom struggle uprising.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah has called for rewriting history from the Indian point of view. He credited Vinayak Damodar Savarkar or Veer Savarkar, a Hindu Mahasabha ideologue, for recognising the 1857 mutiny as India’s first freedom struggle movement as against the British point of view. 

The Congress has more often questioned the BJP's intent to describe Veer Savarkar, one of the early proponents of Hindutva-nationalistic politics, as a 'patriot' and has maintained that he was released by Britishers during freedom struggle after a clemency plea in 1937.

However, the Congress can't deny the fact that its tall leader and former Prime Minister late Indira Gandhi had also praised Savarkar calling him a "patriot" during her lifetime. She had also said lots of people draw inspiration from Savarkar.