Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) was a Hindu nationalist
leader and intellectual whose views have endured.
Savarkar spent his whole life fighting British control, and
he did it frequently with violence.
He was also a vehement opponent of Muslims, whom he
considered as invaders and intruders in India.
He spent four years in London after being dismissed from
college for organizing a political protest, where he and his fellow countrymen
learned how to make bombs and plotted political killings.
He was condemned to life in jail in the Andaman Islands in
1911, but due to political pressure, he was freed in 1924, though he was
forbidden from politics until 1937.
Following that, he served as president of the Hindu
Mahasabha for seven years until his health compelled him to quit.
Throughout his life, he had significant disagreements with
Mohandas Gandhi, first over the latter's dedication to nonviolence, and then
over India's division, which Savarkar saw as the "vivisection" of the
Indian motherland.
When Gandhi was killed by one of his erstwhile colleagues,
Nathuram Godse, Savarkar was brought to trial.
Although Savarkar was acquitted, the charge had a lasting
impact on his life.
Hindutva, Savarkar's signature work, was written and
committed to memory when he was imprisoned in the Andamans.
His core theory was that, despite their social,
geographical, cultural, linguistic, and religious distinctions, Hindus
constituted a nation since India was their homeland, fatherland, and sacred
country.
He urged Hindus to rise beyond their differences and unite
in the face of alien tyranny.
Sarvarkar's emulation conflates Hinduism with Indian
nationalism, thereby excluding Muslims and Christians as "outsiders."
Dr. K. B. Hedgewar, the founder of the Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangh, was
strongly affected by his thoughts (RSS).
Some of Savarkar's beliefs, which acquired national traction
in the 1990s with the establishment of the RSS-affiliated Bharatiya Janata
Party, have been emphasized by the RSS and its affiliates (BJP).
Lise McKean's Divine Enterprise was published in 1996, and
Christophe Jaffrelot's The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India was published in
1996.
