Who is savarkar in indian history

Note: This article was first published on May 28, 2017, and is being republished on August 15, 2022, after PM Modi Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966) – mythologised in popular imagination as ‘Veer Savarkar’ – not only refrained from participating in the freedom struggle after the British released him from prison on account of his relentless pleas for mercy, but also actively collaborated with the English rulers to whom he had declared his loyalty. At the time when Subhas Chandra Bose was raising his Indian National Army to confront the British in India, Savarkar helped the colonial government recruit lakhs of Indians into its armed forces. He further destabilised the freedom movement by pushing his Hindutva ideology, which deepened the communal divide at a time when a united front against colonial rule was needed. Post independence, Savarkar was also implicated in Mahatma Gandhi’s murder. Such is the man who was declared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to be “the true son of Mother India and inspiration for many people”, in his Finance minister Arun Jaitley was quick to follow up on the act. “Today, on birth anniversary of Veer Savarkar, let us remember & pay tribute to this great freedom fighter & social-political philosopher,” he tweeted. And somewhere in the stream of Twitter accolades from numerous BJP ministers that followed, the TV anchor Rajdeep Sardesai joined the chorus, albeit with a caveat. While he disagreed “with his ideology”, Sardesai said he honoured Sava...

In contemporary Indian history, no one has been made to look as controversial as him. To his admirers, he was a personification of supreme sacrifice. To his detractors, he was a demagogue and someone who appealed to the British for mercy. He, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, is a leader whom the old establishment wanted the nation to forget. He, and the movement he represented, has today become the force whose time has come on the horizon of India. Savarkar, when he was only eight, set out to write an epic of his own, never realising that his own life — filled with heroism, pathos and tragedy — would acquire epic dimensions. The sacrifice of the Chapekar brothers traumatised young Savarkar, who would vow before the family deity, the eight-armed Durga, that he would purge India of the foreign occupation. His student life and the subsequent revolutionary saga reflected the various aspects of his personality that would blossom later . He was a devout nationalist and at the same time, a pragmatic rationalist. He had the ability to discern facts and narratives of history and establish alternative narratives. He was a nationalist as well as a global citizen, a poet and propagandist, a social reformer and a vedantic atheist. Today, with those who honour his legacy being at the helm, it is important we study his life and thoughts critically for their relevance to nation-building and national rejuvenation. Savarkar is primarily hailed as a freedom fighter, who suffered and survived gruell...

Hostname: page-component-594f858ff7-x2rdm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2023-06-15T04:01:49.242Z Has data issue: false Feature Flags: hasContentIssue false Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was the theorizer of Hindutva (1923)—the project to radically reconfigure India as a Hindu majoritarian state. Assessments of Savarkar's earlier The Indian War of Independence (1909), a history of the 1857 Indian “Mutiny,” have generally subsumed this tract into the logic of Hindutva. This article offers a reassessment of The Indian War of Independence and situates it within the political and intellectual context of fin de siècle western India. I suggest that this history of Indian rebellion propagated a novel iteration of Indian popular sovereignty predicated on Hindu–Muslim unity. I read Savarkar as adapting the ideas of Giuseppe Mazzini and Johann Kaspar Bluntschli to challenge what he regarded as the fissiparous logic of late colonial liberalism. Finally, this article argues that Savarkar's account of the mutual constitution of general will and the personalism of sovereignty must be read as a previously unacknowledged instance of Indian populism. 4 For a wider interdisciplinary discussion about the conundrum of sovereignty and the tension between the transcendent legitimation of political power and the messy reality of everyday politics and society in India see Gilmartin, David, Price, Pamela, and Ruud, Arild Engelsen, eds., South Asian Sovereignty: The Conundrum of Worldly Power ( Lon...

British collaborator or fiery patriot? The man behind Gandhi’s murder? Atheist or Hindu nationalist? Savarkar is one of the most fascinating men in Indian history. A man who in the first part of his life wanted Hindu–Muslim unity yet later became the father of Hindutva. A man who called for complete independence twenty years before the Congress but didn’t participate in the Quit India movement. A man who in his younger days was friendly with Gandhi but was later seen as the inspiration behind his killing. Based on Savarkar’s original Marathi papers, accounts of his contemporaries, several of them untranslated from Marathi, court and government records, and newspapers of the time, this new biography is packed with fresh details. Written in a lively, page-turning style, this is a riveting and unbiased account of Savarkar’s life, and the only book you will need to truly understand him. Book: Savarkar: The True Story of the Father of Hindutva Author: Vaibhav Purandare Version: First edition Publishing House: Juggernaut Rating: 5 Blurb: Savarkar was an Indian independence activist, politician, lawyer, writer and the formulator of the Hindutva philosophy. But most importantly, Savarkar was an unsung hero who isn't properly mentioned in history. The narration involves a lot of political references. Was he a British collaborator or fiery patriot? In the year 1948, Savarkar was named as one of the conspirators behind the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The 12 chapters are totally ...

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), popularly hailed as Veer Savarkar by his acolyte followers and Savarkar by his political and ideological opponents, is one of the most controversial men in modern India’s history. Since Savarkarism, a staunch form of Hindu nationalism, succeeded in appearing as a powerful current of political nationalism in India in the 1990s, not only the ideologies but the very personality of Savarkar has been subject to historical autopsy and various interpretations. There is no doubt, Savarkar became the iconoclastic bandwagon of what later came to be known as Hindutva politics in India, and to Hindutva, he is like what St. Peter the Apostle is to Christianity. It is so because the whole edifice of Hindutva politics in contemporary India is based on a partial representation of Savarkar as expressed in his 1923 book ‘The Essentials of Hindutva’, and in his numerous speeches and activities. In addition, his practical politics as expressed in Abhinav Mela and Mitra Mela later became the organisational foundation of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh which now defines Hindutva politics. Savarkar is the most authentic stepping-stone behind Hindutva politics and his commitment towards what he defined as Hindutva forced him to be tactical to submit many unconditional apologies to be released from the Andaman prison to extend his wings in the free world of Hindustan. Yet, to become the saviour of Hindu religion, Savarkar remains to be the most criticised Indian f...

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, popularly known as Veer Savarkar, remains one of the most influential freedom fighters of the country. The revolutionary and Hindutva ideologue was born on 28 May, 1883 in Bhagur. Savarkar was also a lawyer, activist, writer and politician. The freedom fighter is most known for his treatise Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?, wherein he put forth his ideas about what constitutes the Indian nation. Recently, director Mahesh Manjrekar announced a biopic on the life of Savarkar. Actor Randeep Hooda of Highway fame will essay the role of the freedom fighter. As the film is set to begin shooting soon, here is all you need to know about Veer Savarkar: Savarkar was born to a Marathi Brahmin family in 1883. Since his early days, he was influenced by the radical side of the Indian freedom struggle. During his days as a law student in London, he began organising radical political activities, according to reports. He also helped instruct a group of Indian students in methods of sabotage and assassination. It was during his days in London that Savarkar wrote The First War of Independence about the 1857 revolt against British forces in India. According to the revolutionary, the revolt was actually an uprising against the British rule, with Savarkar comparing the events of 1857 to the French and American Revolutions. The book was banned by authorities for its anti-British content. Savarkar was later arrested and tried for his protest against the 1909 Morley-Minto reform...

Decades before the sexual assault of women during the 2002 Gujarat and 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, Hindutva propounder Veer Savarkar justified rape as a legitimate political tool. This he did by reconfiguring the idea of “Hindu virtue” in his book Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, which he wrote in Marathi a few years before his death in 1966. Six Glorious Epochs provides an account of Hindu resistance to invasions of India from the earliest times. It is based on historical records (many of them dubious), exaggerated accounts of foreign travellers, and the writings of colonial historians. Savarkar’s own febrile and frightening imagination reworks these diverse sources into a tome remarkable for its anger and hatred. Savarkar’s account of Hindu resistance is also a history of virtues. He identified the virtues that proved detrimental to India and led to its conquest. He expounded his philosophy of morality in Chapter VIII, Perverted Conception of Virtues, in which he rejected the idea of absolute or unqualified virtue. “In fact virtues and vices are only relative terms,” he said. Virtues or vice? Savarkar added that the test of determining what is virtue or vice is to examine whether it serves the interests of society, specifically Hindu society. This is because circumstances change, societies are always in a flux. What was deemed virtuous in the past could become a vice in the present if it is detrimental to mankind, he said. For instance, said Savarkar, the caste syste...