New Delhi: Pro-left historians, lawyers and Gandhian Nirmala Deshpande on February 25 vehemently opposed the installation of the portrait of Veer Savarkar in Parliament House saying he had sown the seeds of partition.

"Savarkar was a party to Gandhi's assassination. He had instigated it. If the installation of the portrait is not stopped, it will make a mockery of the supreme sacrifice made by patriots," Deshpande told reporters in New Delhi on the eve of the ceremony in Central Hall of Parliament on February 26 where the portrait would be unveiled.

Quoting extensively from Savarkar's "letters to the British Government", eminent historian Bipin Chandra said the Maharashtrian leader had written a mercy petition a few months after his incarceration in the cellular jail at Andamans promising to be the "staunchest advocate of Constitutional progress and loyalty to the British Government".

"What kind of role models are we giving our youth?" Chandra asked.

Freedom fighter and ex-Andaman prisoner V N Mathur said as president of Hindu Mahasabha, Savarkar advocated the two-nation theory three years before Jinnah.

Lawyer Anil Nauriya reproduced a letter the then Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Patel had written to Premier Pandit Nehru on February 27, 1948, which said, "It was a fanatical wing of Hindu Mahasabha directly under Savarkar that hatched the conspiracy and saw it through."

Nauriya also claimed Savarkar was acquitted in the Gandhi murder case on "technical grounds as corroborative evidence was lacking" and even police reports revealed by Justice Kapoor Commission implicated him as "real instigator".

PTI