Varanasi: The Union Home Minister and BJP national president Amit Shah has said at an election rally in Varanasi on Thursday that the freedom struggle of 1857 would not have been recorded in history if it had not been for Veer Savarkar. In fact, the BJP had said in its manifesto in the Maharashtra assembly elections that the party would recommend Savarkar for the Bharat Ratna. Earlier, Congress leaders had termed Savarkar as the mastermind of Gandhi's assassination. Shah replied to these statements of the Congress at the Kashi Hindu University in Varanasi. According to media reports, Amit Shah said that, if Savarkar had not been there, we would have been looking at the freedom struggle of 1857 from the British point of view. Veer Savarkar was the one who had named the revolution of 1857 as the first freedom struggle. Let me tell you that earlier, veteran Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh CM Digvijaya Singh had said that Savarkar was accused of involvement in Mahatma Gandhi's murder. At the same time, Manish Tiwari of Congress had said tightly that why BJP wants to award Bharat Ratna to Savarkar, why not Godse? Also Read: Legislative council of Jammu and Kashmir ends, two union territories to be formed from 31st October Rajnath Singh told Kashmir internal issue, Congress says, 'don't internationalize it' Mamata doing politics in the name of Abhijit Banerjee and Sourav Ganguly CM Kejriwal rejects the report of the Central Government on pollution