Veer Savarkar Biography: Quotes, Political Party, Death, Wife, Children, Ideology, Books and other details

Veer Savarkar Biography: Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, also known as Veer Savarkar has been in the news because of the latest controversy that has erupted in Karnataka. As per the reports, the BJP-led government in the state has been charged for rewriting history as the textbook revision committee has reportedly inserted a section on Veer Savarkar in the revised high school curriculum in the state.

Veer Savarkar, as per the class 8 Kannada textbook used to sit on the wings of a bird and fly out to visit the homeland while was imprisoned in the Andaman Jail.  

Veer Savarkar was an Indian politician, activist, and writer who developed the Hindu Nationalist Ideology of Hindutva while being imprisoned at Ratnagiri in 1922. Savarkar became the leading figure in the Hindu Mahasabha.

Know more about Veer Savarkar Ideology, political party, Wife, Quotes, Ideology, Children, and other important details.

Veer Savarkar Biography

Veer Savarkar Early Life, Student Activism, Education

Veer Savarkar was born on May 28, 1883, in the Marathi Chitpavan Brahmin Hindu Family of Damodar and Radhabai Savarkar in the Village of Bhagur, near the city of Nashik, Maharashtra.

Veer Savarkar began his activism as a high school student and at the age of 12, he led his fellow students in an attack on his village mosque following Hindu-Muslim riots. In 1903, Savarkar and his brother founded the Mitra Mela. It was an underground revolutionary organisation, which became the Abhinav Bharat Society in 1906.

Veer Savarkar continued his political activism as a student at Fergusson College in Pune and was greatly inspired by the radical Nationalist Leader Lokmanya Tilak. Tilak in return was impressed with him and helped him obtain the Shivaji Scholarship in 1906 for his law studies in London.

Veer Savarkar met Mohandas Gandhi for the first time in London shortly after Curzon-Wylie’s assassination. During his stay, Mahatma Gandhi debated with Savarkar and other nationalists in London on the futility of fighting the colonial state through acts of terrorism and guerrilla warfare.

Veer Savarkar Religious and Political Views

Veer Savarkar’s views, during his incarceration, began turning increasingly towards Hindu Cultural and political nationalism, and the next phase of his life remain dedicated to this cause. In a brief period Veer Savarkar spent at the Ratnagiri jail, he wrote his ideological treatise- Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? in which he promoted the far-sighted new vision of Hindu social and political consciousness.

Veer Savarkar began describing a ‘Hindu’ as a patriotic inhabitant of Bharatavarsha, venturing beyond a religious identity. He also outlined his vision of a Hindu Rashtra as ‘Akhand Bharat’, purportedly stretching the entire Indian subcontinent.

Veer Savarkar against Hindu Orthodoxy

Veer Savarkar was an ardent critique of Hindu religious practices he saw as irrational and viewed them as a hindrance to the material progress of the Hindus. Savarkar believed that religion is an unimportant aspect of Hindu identity.

Veer Savarkar was also strictly against the caste system and in his essay which was written in 1931 titled Seven Shackles of the Hindu Society, he wrote that one of the most important components of such injunctions of the past that we have blindly carried on and which deserved to be thrown in the dustbins of history is the rigid caste system.

Veer Savarkar Leader of the Hindu Mahasabha

As the President of the Hindu Mahasabha during the Second World War, Veer Savarkar advanced the slogan ‘Hinduize all Politics and Militarize Hindudom’, and decided to support the British war effort in India seeking military training for the Hindus.

When the Quit India Movement was launched by Congress in 1942, Savarkar criticized it and asked Hindus to stay active in the war effort and not disobey the government. Additionally, Savarkar also encouraged the Hindus to enlist in the armed forces to learn the ‘arts of war’. Hindi Mahasabha Activists also protested Mahatma Gandhi’s initiative to hold talks with Jinnah in 1944, which Savarkar denounced as appeasement.

Veer Savarkar in Andaman Jail

One of the charges on Veer Savarkar was the abetment to murder of Nashik Collector Jackson and the second was waging the conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code 121-A against the King-Emperor.

Following the two trials, at the age of 28, he was convicted and sentenced to 50 years imprisonment and was transported on July 4, 2011, to the infamous cellular jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Veer Savarkar was considered by the British Government a political prisoner.

Veer Savarkar Controversy

After the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948, police arrested Nathuram Godse and his alleged accomplices and conspirators. Godse was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha and of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

Veer Savarkar, a former President of the Hindu Mahasabha, was arrested on February 5, 1948, from his house and was kept under detention in the Arthur Road Prison, Bombay. He was charged with murder, conspiracy to murder and abetment to murder.

The mass of papers that were seized from his house revealed nothing that could be remotely connected with Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. Due to a lack of evidence, he was arrested under the Preventive Detention Act.

Veer Savarkar Death

Veer Savarkar’s wife Yamunabai passed away on November 8, 1963. On February 1, 1966, Savarkar renounced food, medicines, and water which he termed as atmaarpan (fast until death).

Prior to his death on February 26, 1966, he had asked his relatives to perform only his funeral and do away with the rituals of the 10th and the 13th day of the Hindu faith. Accordingly, his last rites were performed at an electric crematorium in Bombay’s Sonapur locality by his son Vishwas the following day.

Veer Savarkar Books

Veer Savarkar wrote 38 books in English and Marathi, consisting of many essays, two novels called Moplah Rebellion and The Transportation, poetry and plays. The best known of Veer Savarkar’s books are his historical study The Indian War of Independence, 1857 and the pamphlet Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?

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