vIra sAvarkar

Intro

vIra vinAyaka dAmodara sAvarkara.

chitpAvana brAhmaNa of vasiShTha gotra and hiraNyakeshi-sUtra of KYV, hindu nationalist, the visionary who caused massive Hindu recruitment into the British Indian army - a factor which would prove critical during partition, social reformer.

Pro independence contributions

  • The first political leader to daringly set Absolute Political Independence as India’s goal (1900). Daringly performed a bonfire of foreign (English) clothes (1905). Organized revolutionary movement for Bharat’s Independence on international level (1906).
  • The first law student who was not called to the English Bar despite having passed his examination and observed the necessary formalities, as he asked freedom.
  • The book on the 1857 War of Independence was proscribed by British Authorities even before its publication. The Governor General had asked the Postmaster General to confiscate copies of the book six months before the book was officially banned (1909). The same book was later published by Bhagat Singh.
  • Inspirer of madan lAl DhingrA, rAjaguru.

First war of Indian independence book

In 1907, sAvarkar wrote a history book about the 1857; calling it the First War Of Indian Independence, as opposed to Sepoy Mutiny. He wrote it in Marathi at first, in London, using sources from the British library’s India Office. He even won over a racist librarian who then opened up secret documents to him, like proceeds of the parliament from 1857-58.

Publishing trouble

He was already on the radar of Scotland Yard, and when they heard he was writing a book, they inserted spies into his boarding house, who stole a few chapters of his manuscript. And then they proscribed it. Basically banned it. Anyone possessing a copy in India would be prosecuted and it was illegal to bring in copies into India by land or sea.

So he sent the manuscript to his brother in Nasik. And when he tried to get it published, every publisher he tried to publish it with ended up getting raided and ruined, and the rest got scared enough to say they wouldn’t publish it. So he sent back the manuscript to Savarkar. He and his friends tried getting it published in France. But every publisher had a lawyer tell them they would get into deep trouble with British authorities for publishing it. Welp. They all said no.

So then they went to Germany, because as a center for Sanskrit and Indology, it might be easier to get devanagari fonts to print in. But German efficiency didn’t translate into accuracy, and the copies weren’t readable.

So Savarkar and gang decided to translate it into English and get it published again. Finally they found a small publisher in the Netherlands. And to keep this operation out of trouble, they spread rumors that the book was getting printed in France!

Distribution

Now that they had a whole lot of copies, it was on to the next challenge: actually getting it to people! They could sell it in England and France, because it was legal to. But they had to do it secretly. They sold it for a few shillings each, at small secret events.

This was all in 1908-1910. In the ’20s, another great Indian patriot Bhagat Singh got it reprinted and distributed widely.

Impact

  • Reading the book was a prerequisite to joining his Hindustan Republican Association!
  • In the barracks of Netaji’s Indian National Army in the 40s, you found several copies of The First War Of Indian Independence….. In their Tamil translation!
  • It sparked revolutionary movements in the 1910s (Gadar, Hindu-German Conspiracy), the 20s and 30s (Bhagat Singh, Rashbehari Bose) and the 40s (INA, Naval Mutiny).
  • And eventually, Bose’s INA and the Naval Mutiny of 1946 scared the British enough to realize they couldn’t rely on Indians in the army to maintain their empire.

Imprisonment in Cellular jail

  • Sentenced to Transportation for Life twice, a sentence unparalleled in the history of the British Empire.
  • A fragile poet, deprived of pen and paper, composed his poems and then wrote them on the prison walls with thorns and nails, memorized ten thousand lines of his poetry for years and later transmitted them to India through his fellow-prisoners who also memorized these lines.
  • survivor of the cellular jail who made tactical peace with the British (in accordance with nIti-s of सन्धि, विग्रह, यान, आसन, द्वैधीभाव and समाश्रय )

Hindu consolidation

  • A Ganeshotsava open to all Hindus including ex-untouchables (1930). Interdining ceremonies of all Hindus including ex-untouchables (1931). “Patitpavan Mandir”, open to all Hindus including ex-untouchables (22 February 1931).

Recruitment into the military:

  • For context in Army recruitment, see ambedkar_partition.
  • Success in raising hindu composition to 70%:
    • “Independently and in honourable co-operation with the Government the Hindu Mahasabha workers and leaders gave an impetus to the Hindu militarization movement through the Hindu Mahasabha papers they had at their command, from the platform and through the Militarization Boards which they had established independently of Government recruiting machinery. The effect of this intense propaganda was seen everywhere. The Muslim preponderance was effectively checkmated and brought down and the percentage of the Hindus in the army went as high up as seventy. So powerful was the effect of this propaganda that Sir Ziauddin Alimed, Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University, in a speech at Poona raised an alarm at the increasing number of Hindus enlisting daily in the Land … " - Savarkar and his times
  • “The treacherous conduct of a very large section of the Moslems in India in the Khilaphat (sic) agitation during the last Great War in 1914 has taught us a lesson never to be forgotten as it is almost sure to be repeated in any future attack on India on the North Western Frontier by any alien power. The tribesmen and the Moslem forces throughout Punjab, Sindh etc. are very likely to betray the Hindus and rise en masse in pursuance of the pan-Islamic designs to carve out an independent Moslem State or Federation stretching out from Baluchisthan–to Kashmir–to Delhi. In view of the attitude of many a responsible Moslem Organisation in India as revealed by their resolutions passed in their open sessions betraying their extra territorial sympathies it would be nothing short of a suicidal and purblind step on the part of the Hindus to make light of this serious danger threatening them. Under such an emergency they will have to ally themselves with the British forces in the common objective to avert this National calamity.”
  • “There is no question of co-operating or non-co-operating with the British Government in their war-efforts. The only question that you have before you is to find out how best you can turn this inevitable co-operation with the British as profitable to your own country as it is possible under our present circumstances to do.” “Let the Hindus therefore come forward now and enter the army, the navy and the air-forces, the ordnance and other war-crafts factories in their thousands and millions.”