As the intellectual fountainhead of the ideology of Hindutva, which is  in political ascendancy in India today, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is  undoubtedly one of the most contentious political thinkers and leaders  of the twentieth century. Accounts of his eventful and stormy life have  oscillated from eulogizing hagiographies to disparaging demonization.  The truth, as always, lies somewhere in between and has unfortunately  never been brought to light. Savarkar and his ideology stood as one of  the strongest and most virulent opponents of Gandhi, his pacifist  philosophy and the Indian National Congress.<br>An alleged atheist and a  staunch rationalist who opposed orthodox Hindu beliefs, encouraged  inter-caste marriage and dining, and dismissed cow worship as mere  superstition, Savarkar was, arguably, the most vocal political voice for  the Hindu community through the entire course of India’s freedom  struggle. From the heady days of revolution and generating international  support for the cause of India’s freedom as a law student in London,  Savarkar found himself arrested, unfairly tried for sedition,  transported and incarcerated at the Cellular Jail, in the Andamans, for  over a decade, where he underwent unimaginable torture.<br>From being an  optimistic advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity in his treatise on the 1857  War of Independence, what was it that transformed him in the Cellular  Jail to a proponent of ‘Hindutva’, which viewed Muslims with suspicion?<br>Drawing  from a vast range of original archival documents across India and  abroad, this biography in two parts-the first focusing on the years  leading up to his incarceration and eventual release from the  Kalapani-puts Savarkar, his life and philosophy in a new perspective and  looks at the man with all his achievements and failings.

Savarkar (Part 1): Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883–1924 PDF

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